Elsewhere in this issue: Focus on Sawyer on Warfare • Other Articles • Commentary • Life in the Foreign Service • Reviews of Books & Sites • Important News & Announcements • Archives |  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 “From any reasonable perspective China’s continuity has been cultural rather than political, its heritage throughout one of incessant conflict as different peoples, states, and popular movements fought to control its populace and resources. These inescapable battlefield experiences eventually spawned a contemplative literature that sought to fathom the chaos of warfare and master the principles of its employment, whether offensive or defensive. . . . Professional commanders and political leaders compelled to wrestle with perplexing military decisions studied and contemplated its books, but also—even if reluctantly—so did the intelligentsia because they encompassed tactics and strategic concepts suitable for the civilian realm as well as the battlefield.” [FULL TEXT] “Not too long ago China was widely portrayed as an emerging military and economic threat to the West. Its total economic output was projected to surpass that of the United States in two decades. Its military modernization was expected to provide China the capability to project its power far beyond its borders. . . . Nowadays, however, the speculation about China’s future has generally inclined toward pessimism. . . . In my judgment [however], the current pessimism about China's short-term prospects is as exaggerated as the previous optimism about its long-term economic outlook. ” [FULL TEXT] “This past summer, the fifty-year crisis between China and Taiwan seemed to have entered a new and particularly vexed stage. Taiwan’s president, Lee Teng-hui, said that his country is going to drop the old ‘One China’ formulation that had been the basis of delicate relations between the governments of Taipei and Beijing for some time. What does this mean, and what, if anything, should the United States do about it?” [FULL TEXT]
“In the two-week period prior to the “mini-summit” in Auckland, Beijing gave several other indications it was ready to improve relations with Washington. Leading newspapers and journals in China lowered the invective against the U.S. that had been in fashion throughout the summer, claiming instead that strong ties with the U.S. were important to China’s interests. . . . Nevertheless, while the Auckland meeting was straightforward and short on polemics, it was also short on breakthroughs.” [FULL TEXT]
“My U.S. Army Air Corps unit landed near Liuchow in South China in mid-1945, before war’s end. We landed at an airfield—not on the runway, but on a nearby dirt road. The reason for the dirt-road landing? Over 1,000 land mines had been planted on the field. We feared some of them might be on the runway, as almost certainly there were.” [FULL TEXT] AND THERE'S MORE: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sorin Lungu on NATO Cooperation with Former Adversaries: "As the communist regimes of Eastern Europe began to collapse, NATO governments undertook to provide security assurances to new democratic governments facing a confusing new situation." [Summer 1999] J. Craig Barker on the legal and political implications of The Case Against Pinochet: "While some states may balk at the thought of any court other than their own deciding on politically sensitive issues, the International Criminal Court must surely be seen as a better forum than national courts." [Summer 1999] Louisa E. Kilgroe on Thomas Lamont's role in post-World War I Japan in Banker as Diplomat: "So taken was Lamont by the illusion of timesless serenity that it momentarily blotted out that other Japan, the Japan of 'blood and iron'." [Summer 1999] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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