Donald Trump can pretend that what happened in his chat with Taiwan’s president was “a courtesy call,”
“To be honest with you, the waters here seem like a little bit of a tempest in a teapot,” Pence said, arguing the media had stirred up any controversy.
but his actions represent both an astounding, willful ignorance and an intentional effort to wreck U.S.—China relations.
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.
Trump has made the assumption that he can just wheedle, bully, threaten, and lie his way through conversations with foreign leaders. After all, it’s how he’s functioned in every other aspect of his life. And he means to push China into a corner and force a confrontation.
China’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday it had lodged “stern representations” with what it called the “relevant U.S. side,” urging caution on the issue.
And while Trump surrogates were out trying to make this sound like much ado about nothing, Donald Trump was doing what he does when challenged on any subject: making things worse.
Trump followed up his Taiwan call with a series of tweets designed to apply salt and sandpaper to the foreign policy wound he had opened with his phone call.
At the same time, he explicitly did not attempt to talk with Beijing and put out the word that he’s not planning to do so.
Pence said he was not aware of any contact between the Trump transition team and the Chinese government since Friday and did not expect Trump’s team to reach out this week to ease tensions with Beijing
And of course, Trump’s team would not think of reaching out to anyone in the current administration for information or advice.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday the Trump transition team had yet to contact the State Department for information and recommendations ahead of calls with foreign leaders.
Far from being an incidental thank-you call, the conversation with Taiwan’s leader was absolutely planned, as part of a signal to China that Sino-US relations were headed for a hard reset.
Immediately after Trump won the Nov. 8 election, his staffers compiled a list of foreign leaders with whom to arrange calls. “Very early on, Taiwan was on that list,” said Stephen Yates, a national security official during the presidency of George W. Bush and an expert on China and Taiwan. “Once the call was scheduled, I was told that there was a briefing for President-elect Trump. They knew that there would be reaction and potential blowback.”
Who is pushing the hardest for Trump to get between China and Taiwan? The new administration’s one “reasonable guy.”
Several leading members of Trump’s transition team are considered hawkish on China and friendly toward Taiwan, including incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus. …
Priebus is reported to have visited Taiwan with a Republican delegation in 2011 and in October 2015, meeting Tsai before she was elected president. Taiwan Foreign Minister David Lee called him a friend of Taiwan and said his appointment as Trump’s chief of staff was “good news” for the island, according to local news media.
Trump doesn’t intend to calm this diplomatic spat down. He intends to blow it up.
The “One China Policy” came out of Nixon’s negotiations with China. It’s been formally in place since 1979, through Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. But it seems unlikely to survive Trump.
“There are a lot of things that previous Republican presidents, and Democratic presidents, would do that Donald Trump won’t do,” Grenell said. “He’s a man that understands that typical Washington rules are not always best for our foreign policy.”
If “understand” means failing to spend even ten minutes looking at the history of a situation and being willing to blow up a relationship—figuratively, and perhaps literally—perhaps because you owe a billion dollars to China's state owned bank, then Trump understands.
For everyone else, understanding is likely to come in the form of economic disruption. If we’re lucky.