Mick Hartley

According to the Washington Post, that Taiwan call was no blunder, but "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". Maybe this is the first of what I suggested would become a common theme in Trump's presidency: his team working the Washington media circuit to recast the blunders as cunning strategic manoeuvres. Or maybe it's true.

Either way, the call happened. Michael Totten:

I’d love to see the United States recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation as long as the Pacific Rim doesn’t blow up. For one thing, Taiwan is a sovereign nation whether or not Beijing and Washington say so. It has its own democratically elected government and its own institutions. It makes its own domestic, foreign and trade policies with zero input from the Chinese Communist Party. Its citizens have their own passports with "Republic of China" written across the top. Recognizing these facts is just an acknowledgement of reality….

“Reality,” science-fiction writer Phillip K. Dick once wrote, “is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

Also: come on. China is autocratic. Taiwan is democratic. China is the big China. Taiwan is the good China….

Beijing wants to impose its rule on Taiwan like it has in Hong Kong, Tibet and East Turkestan [aka Xinjiang – MH]. If any half-way moral and sensible person had their way, the reverse would happen and Taiwan would export its democratic Chinese model to its 900-pound cousin. That’s probably what will eventually happen anyway, even if China militarily conquers Taiwan in the meantime.

We all have to deal with the world as it is, but sacrificing Taiwan to the wolves is outrageous. Taiwan had a “permanent” seat on the United Nations Security Council until Richard Nixon, neverminding tens of millions of corpses, gave it to Mao Zedong. Nixon told Taiwan that the US was engaging instead with the mainland Chinese “not because we love them. But because they’re there.” Fine. It may have been necessary, but it was a nasty business. A bully got its way for four decades not because it is right but because it is bigger. Professional diplomats may have to bite their tongues but the rest of us don’t….

Plenty of officials in both the Democratic and Republican parties would go along with a policy change, including many who spent the last several days wigging out about the Trump team’s unconventional methods. Whether we like it or not, though, the unconventional is about to become the new normal, not just in the United States but everywhere populist political parties take power, from the United Kingdom, Poland and Hungary to the Philippines and possibly France.

The entire world is going to have to get used to it.