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South China Morning Post
Crossed Wires Between China And The US Raise Risk Of War
02 June, 2015
A US-China war over the South China Sea was, just a few years ago, dismissed as being absurd. Today, however, such a scenario can no longer be laughed away. The old cliché was that only three issues could trigger a Sino-US war - Taiwan, Taiwan and Taiwan. That danger is still there, but it's on the back burner now. Meanwhile, the maritime dispute has thrust itself to the fore and each player is under pressure to throw down the gauntlet.
A US-China war over the South China Sea was, just a few years ago, dismissed as being absurd. Today, however, such a scenario can no longer be laughed away. The old cliché was that only three issues could trigger a Sino-US war - Taiwan, Taiwan and Taiwan. That danger is still there, but it's on the back burner now. Meanwhile, the maritime dispute has thrust itself to the fore and each player is under pressure to throw down the gauntlet.
We
miss the good old days of tacit understanding between the US and China,
and the Richard Nixon-Henry Kissinger era of "strategic ambiguity",
which actually helped sustain peace based on tacit understanding of each
other's objectives.
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