You list several factors, all of which seem credible enough as far as they go.
But none of them begin to explain why the announcement of the imminent breaking of relations could not have come in January, instead of on Dec. 15. Nowhere do we read how all of this was playing in Taiwan. And although you do give a page to the Dec. 27 visit of deputy secretary of state Christopher, your coverage of the Taiwan situation is summed up in a few unremarkable quotes -- all of them from officials.
After reading About Face, we are still left with the question: was it that Jimmy and Brzezinski did not know about Taiwan's democratic developments, or that they knew but didn't care?
"But," you protest, "that was 20 years ago. Why bring all that up now?"
In your book more than once you point out that to really understand the events you're describing, one must have a grasp of the preceding 20 years. And here and there you help us along with the background.
But with Taiwan you have to go back a good deal more years than that .
Putting aside Henry Ford's advice that "all history is bunk," if I had to pick a starting point for our treasured island, it might be 1943, the year that Taiwan was passed over to Chiang Kai-shek as a wartime bonus for hanging in there and slugging it out with the Japanese while the Yanks made common cause with the Brits et al in Europe.
This happened in Cairo, on Thanksgiving weekend, with an unsigned communique declaring the deed as good as done once the war was won.
The "Good War," that is, the one whose avowed purpose was not to avenge Pearl Harbor but to make manifest the eight points of the Atlantic Charter.
The foremost promise of the Atlantic Charter was the right of self-determination, covered in three of the eight points, including the first one. The 26 countries that joined the UN in January 1942 (I know, we all thought it was founded in San Francisco in 1945 -- the rewriting of history began even before the war was over) did so at the price of pledging their allegiance to the principles of self-determination.
In 1943, Roosevelt handed Taiwan over to a Chinese dictatorship; in 1978, Carter -- again to a Chinese dictatorship. Two precipitous actions by two American presidents, in violation of all that they professed publicly.
Instead of sharing aloud the fears that the US State Department feels concerning President Lee Teng-hui's (
Please remind Clinton that he, like Lee, has the power to unleash passionate forces at the exercise of his slightest whim.
Lynn Miles is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.
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