This past week, President Donald J. Trump did something no other president has done in American history: he placed back-to-back calls with the leader of Communist China, General Secretary Xi Jinping, and then with Japan’s Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae. The President’s decision to make these calls on November 24 enhanced America’s national security by bringing Japan, our treaty ally, front and center into U.S.–China relations amidst increasing regional security concerns over Beijing’s potential invasion of Taiwan.
The unprecedented nature and the importance of President Trump’s calls are best understood in the historical context of what is characterized by the “China Hands” as The Relationship. This term was coined after the U.S. switched recognition from the Republic of China on Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in January 1979. Since that time, various U.S. administrations, Republican and Democrat, along with the various leaders of the PRC, have repeatedly extolled in reverent tones the importance of The Relationship—as if it were a living organism that must be nurtured and protected, no matter the impact on American or regional security.
The importance of The relationship was elevated during Xi Jinping’s June 2013 visit to Sunnylands, California, where Barack Obama accepted Xi’s designation of the so-called “New Type of Great Power Relationship.” Since that time, both the Obama and Biden administrations continued to parrot Chinese Communist Party (CCP) talking points about how China-US relations were the most important in the world.
As a result of this fecklessness, America’s relations with its other treaty allies in the region (Japan, South Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Australia, and the Kingdom of Thailand) were always seen as separate from, and subordinate to, The Relationship between Beijing and Washington.
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