The case for Taiwan
John Copper makes a good, though somewhat narrow, case for Taiwan's strategic importance to the U.S., but hangs it around a rather odd analogy:
In December 1890, the United States Army won a battle against American Indians at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. This battle marked the end of the Indian Wars and meant that the United States could focus on external matters since it had finally consolidated its territory in the west.Within ten years of Wounded Knee, the United States was on the way to becoming a world power. In 1898, the U.S. Navy won the Spanish American War. It acquired the Philippines and Guam as a result. The same year, the U.S. incorporated Hawaii and signed a tripartite agreement on Samoa....
Chinaâ??s reunification of Taiwan will be its Wounded Knee. It will no longer need to focus on territorial matters and will doubtless look to realize power ambitions further from its shores.
So we must defend Taiwan lest China ... act like the United States.
In any event, I'm not sure this analogy is all that accurate since China is surrounded by much stronger powers (Russia, India, Japan, South Korea) than the United States was when it "broke out."
