At Least Neville Chamberlain Realized He Was Wrong

Our chattering classes had a projectile aneurysm over the weekend, when President-elect Trump spoke with Taiwan’s president:

Mr Trump’s decision to turn his back on four decades of US protocol on Taiwan and speak directly to a president of Taiwan will stun policymakers in Beijing.

Since his election last month, they have struggled to understand who is advising Donald Trump on Asia and what his China policy will look like.

This move will turn concern into alarm and anger.

Beijing sees Taiwan as a province. Denying it any of the trappings of an independent state is one of the key priorities of Chinese foreign policy.

It was about thirty years ago when Ronald Reagan sent the “elites” into a similar state of incontinence by walking out of the Rejkjavik talks with Mikhail Gorbachev.

The “elites” said it was a prelude to a nuclear war – pure madness.

The opposite was, of course, the case.  It was a called bluff that started a chain of events that led, five tears later, to the downfall of communism.

Of course, Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan – but then, either are the current administration’s foreign policy hamsters.

Our alllies on the Pacific Rim – Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia – have been wondering where DC’s priorities are, and whether the US can be counted on re the Chinese for the past eight years.   Obama’s Chamberlain-like policy made the region less, not more, stable.

Will Trump’s “gaffe” make things better or worse?  I don’t know – and it’s for damn sure the authors of this past eight years worth of foreign policy don’t, either.  But if they say the sky is blue, I’m inclined to believe it’s red.

39 thoughts on “At Least Neville Chamberlain Realized He Was Wrong

  1. Funny that stocks are up on the overseas markets already. I guess no one, except the left wing ministry of propaganda, is concerned that we’re going war with the Chicoms

    I know about 10 people that travel to China regularly and all of them say that the key to dealing with Chinese officials, is to just say “no”.

  2. EI, given that we’ve had low interest rates for a decade now, I dare suggest that this market rally must be driven by something else. It may be rational, or it may be wishful thinking (though we’ve had a lot of that over the past 8 years, too), but it’s definitely not just low interest rates.

  3. At Least Neville Chamberlain Realized He Was Wrong

    This puts eTASS a level below. Not surprising. But then again, a mud sucking slug cannot get much higher. And as usual, he is wrong, wrong wrong. Did I mention yet he is wrong?

  4. Will Trump’s “gaffe” make things better or worse?

    I see you appropriately put scare quotes around gaffe, since according to some accounts it most definitely was not. It is about time people stood up for Taiwan. Having been to both Taiwan and China at least once a year for the past couple of decades, I can tell you Taiwan is about as close to China as was Hong Kong. And see what’s happening to Hong Kong. People in Taiwan do not want the same fate, nor do they deserve it.

    And, it is about time US righted it wrongs in the Sino conflict by not offering help when it was requested. Mao may not have prevailed and hundred million innocent people may still have been alive. This is what isolationism gets you – a foe for life.

    I am not thirsting for war and hope diplomatic efforts can prevail, but for that we need to pull our head out of the sand and stop avoiding the elephant in the room, as this did not solve the problem.

  5. (REUTERS) – British companies continued to grow modestly in the three months to November and are expected to keep up that pace into 2017, a survey showed on Sunday, chiming with a resilient picture for the British economy so far since June’s EU referendum vote.

    Oh no! How can this be? UK was supposed to descend into chaos and regress back to a feudal state after Brexit! Immediately! That’s what eTASS had been forecasting based on his self-ascribed superior intellect and knowledge. And he was perched atop his mile-high soapbox to tell us that. Well, well, well… How does a mud sucking slug get atop a mile-high soapbox? And it is a long way to fall – not that he will EVER admit he was wrong. EVER.

    So when you see eTASS spout anything regarding economics, climate, politics, well, anything, assume he is wrong – ALWAYS.

  6. Unlike Obummer, it’s not like Chamberlain had much of a choice at Munich. The UK was horribly unprepared for a forceful confrontation with Hitler, so he didn’t make the situation much worse with his agreement, and he did start a woefully inadequate rearmament after the agreement.

    From the reporting, it’s apparent this call was planned in advance by both sides so this is The Donald sending a message to the PRC that he’s not playing by the old set of rules anymore. Between this and threatening to label PRC as currency manipulators, which would seriously negatively impact their exports the US, he’s sending a message without beating his chest about it. This is in contrast with Obummer who loudly proclaimed his powerless “pivot to Asia” and then bungled that implementation. It’s funny that Obama tried all sorts of military maneuvers and martial threats and got ignored and even disrespect from the PRC, while Trump managed to hit them hard and make them worried by picking up a phone.

  7. Emery, I presume that there has been a finding of criminal corruption re: Trump and Taiwan?
    Because that was your standard with Hillary.
    Is this market rally being driven by profits or low interest rates?
    Coincidentally, the day after the election? And gold tanking at the same time?
    The street has been predicting a rate rise for months. In fact, there are rumors of a so-called “Yellen fix”, meaning Yellen had avoided an interest rate increase to help Hillary win in November. Nothing stopping her now.

  8. Just going to throw out there that China might be sophisticated enough to understand that this wasn’t a deliberate policy shift. But this interpretation involves further assumption: China realizing that moving forward, US leadership will be impulsive and incompetent.

    A China that sees Trump as a buffoon probably isn’t good for American interests either.

  9. Every thing I’ve read, Emery, says that the Taiwan call was a deliberate policy shift.
    Keep on misunderestimating Trump.

  10. Donald Trump’s protocol-breaking telephone call with Taiwan’s leader was an intentionally provocative move that establishes the incoming president as a break with the past, according to interviews with people involved in the planning.

    The historic communication — the first between leaders of the United States and Taiwan since 1979 — was the product of months of quiet preparations and deliberations among Trump’s advisers about a new strategy for engagement with Taiwan that began even before he became the Republican presidential nominee, according to people involved in or briefed on the talks.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-taiwan-phone-call-was-weeks-in-the-planning-say-people-who-were-involved/2016/12/04/f8be4b0c-ba4e-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.9da512298434

  11. … China realizing that moving forward, US leadership will be impulsive and incompetent.

    Do you think that the phone call was an impulsive act? Or that it may well have been planned given that the Taiwanese President is notoriously sensitive to the slightest snub? And that Trump’s inner circle apparently thought long and hard about this, as well as to have leaked the that fact, not to mention the fact that Trump himself has set up China as one of the larger purveyors of economic war upon the US?

    Personally, I tend to view this as the WashPo did: a deliberate emasculation of Obama’s Asia policy in a way that would appear not to violate the traditional deference to the sitting President on foreign policy, and a not-too-veiled announcement that Trump doesn’t believe that the status quo vis-a-vis China is in the interest of the US.

    Keep doing your leftist apologetics, Emery. They’re quite amusing and a window into the hysterical soul of the “progressive” movement.

  12. That last comment by eTASS surely sounds like his vitriol about Brexit. Same ol’, same ol’ discredited, uninformed apparatchik-speak. Again, he does not disappoint and only reinforces his own impotence.

  13. If it’s a calculated move, it suggests him and his team are incapable of doing rational risk analysis and a cost/benefit analysis. Neither Taiwan or the US gained anything from this. Both will be hurt by rising nationalist sentiment in China and by potential retaliation.

    I’m tempted to call Trump Tower and claim to be President of Justplainangrystan just to see if Trump will return my call.

  14. If it’s a calculated move, it suggests him and his team are incapable of doing rational risk analysis and a cost/benefit analysis.

    Just like eTASS Brexit analysis, on which ze had been proved spectacularly wrong. Hence ze is wrong here as well. And always. Q.E.D.

  15. Noteworthy is that in the week before the call, Chinese bombers flew around Taiwan in a move that was monitored closely by Taipei and Japan. So there might be more method to this madness than we’d suspected; China makes unprecedented provocation, Trump responds. Nasty game of chess here, but thank God the checkers man is leaving the White House.

  16. Nerd…..someone somewhere wrote an article on British and French appeasement. The writer’s conclusion was that Chamberlain did have his hands tied with a pacifist England. The writer blamed France…saying they could have done a lot more to stop Hitler in the 1930s.. Also noted that Chamberlain built up the military, including building the fighter planes that won the Battle of Briton. Not that I am defending him, but just to present a point of view.

  17. The writer blamed France…saying they could have done a lot more to stop Hitler in the 1930s

    But they did! The Maginot line was stupendous!

  18. Also noted that Chamberlain built up the military

    Well, same could be said for Stalin and his peace treaty with Hitler. But I doubt it was intentional. There is no way Stalin could have predicted US would step in and supply arms to him to help win on the eastern front.

  19. Arms, food, fuel, and even tires. My granddad served on a Liberty ship during the war, and he vividly remembers a Russian-speaking crewmember noting that the Soviets were claiming that tires clearly labeled “Firestone” were made in the USSR. Fitting considering that I’m told that Henry Ford had sold them the lines for the Models T and A, if I remember correctly. Might as well sell them good tires, too.

  20. 45 days left till Trump Inauguration, a lot of hysterics going on. All the miscreants are probing and looking to get a handle on “What would Trump do?” The Dems and MSM (ptr) are wailing as they stand in the pool of their own voided bladders and bowels.

    I seem to remember that geopolitics changed hugely the very day Reagan took office.

  21. bike;

    As I have mentioned on these comments before, I got to know quite a few people that fled the former Soviet Union for Minnesota.

    During one my meetings with two of them, we talked about WWII and the Soviets role in it. Their fathers were from the same town and served in the same tank battalion. Their fathers praised SPAM and Studebaker deuce and a half trucks as the saviors of their country. The trucks were extremely reliable, would usually start during the brutal winter weather and were vital to their transportation system getting troops and supplies to the front lines. To this day, they tell me, Russians love SPAM as much as Hawaiians supposedly do.

  22. ” Trump International is interested in building hotel in Taiwan.”

    And probably dozens of locations around the world where the deal would make any sense. Jeepers EI the discussions about a hotel being built as part of the renovation of their international airport facility started well before Trump winning the election. I’m doubtful that the early discussions were taking place between Trump and Tsai Ing-wen.

  23. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 12.05.16 : The Other McCain

  24. Scott, eTASS believes Tsai will be doing final inspection, so that is why sTrumpet made the call.

  25. “Sometimes you have to fill the swamp before you can drain it.”

    you’re doing an admirable job Emery!

  26. Kel, sometimes the word “cesspool” seems to be more appropriate than “swamp” for some reason. :^)

    Bosshoss; wow. Heard a lot of stories from Russian emigrants (specifically Russian Jews in general), but not that. Just wow. Glad to know that nobody bought the stories my grandfather was told.

  27. If it’s a calculated move, it suggests him and his team are incapable of doing rational risk analysis and a cost/benefit analysis.

    People do not become billionaires when they and their team are incapable of doing rational risk analysis and cost/benefit analysis.

    YOU don’t think his analyses are rational. The rest of the pseudo-free market in the last 30-40 years would disagree with you.

  28. Bill, eTASS claims to be an engineer. Would you ever by a product that he applied his, ahem, mind to? And besides, eTASS is always right, even if the facts are staring him in the face to suggest otherwise. For the only truth is the supreme truth of the collective, and eTASS is but a compliant kommisar.

  29. Regarding that “rational risk analysis”, it occurs to me that what we’ve been doing for decades is to suffer a micro-aggression by the Chinese, make small strategic concessions that give the Chinese a portion of what they wanted, rinse and repeat. And so the trade deficit goes up, their tariffs stay, along with their currency manipulation, they gain credibility in their sphere of influence. And so now the little game they play involves their equivalent of the B-52 flying close to Taiwan’s airspace.

    Trump accepting the phone call disrupts this pattern. Whether it’s a good or bad disruption, I’m not sure, but it certainly does disrupt the pattern in a way that does not necessarily lead to war. I am inclined to think it was smarter than we would have guessed.

  30. BTW, the little games they play in diplomacy remind me of junior high girls passing notes and keeping grudges–not to disparage the maturity of junior high girls, of course. :^)

  31. “eTASS claims to be an engineer”

    Engineering in science applies to processes, nothing to do with particular insight of other fields knowledge.

  32. I myself am “well positioned” to take advantage of an increase in demand for snark.

  33. My, my, my… eTASS on the wrong side of history. Discredited. Again. Always.

    Niall Ferguson
    ‎@nfergus

    EU failures: 1 Monetary union 2 Foreign policy (MENA, Ukraine) 3 Migration policy 4 Radical Islam policy. EU deserved Brexit.

    My mistake was uncritically defending Cameron and Osborne instead of listening to people in pubs. Issue was not GDP but future migration

    Mistake was not referendum but acceptance of EU’s risible offer on migrant benefits. Cameron should have rejected and backed Brexit. Me too.

  34. Just as Americans are beginning to normalizie the Trump, you make the same mistake with Brexit, because nothing has happened yet (Article 50 hasn’t been invoked, Trump hasn’t taken the oath of office) people are telling themselves that the warnings were overblown, nothing is really going to change, etc.

  35. Tsk, tsk, tsk…I so enjoy the smell of burned slime in the morning

    A REMOANER plot to delay divorce talks with Brussels was crushed tonight as MPs overwhelmingly voted to support Theresa May´s timetable for triggering Article 50 by the end of March. In a landslide victory for Brexiteers a Government amendment binding MPs to respect the prime minister´s Brexit timetable in return for a greater role in the negotiations passed by 461 votes to 89. The history defining paragraph states that parliament “calls on the Government to invoke Article 50 by 31 March 2017” – effectively ending any Remoaner plot to indefinity delay divorce talks with Brussels.

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