After reading this on vacation:
“The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on,” Wilkerson said, referring to pre-1970s military and diplomatic relations, “essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing.”
Wilkerson said Powell would then dispatch his own envoy “right behind that guy, every time they sent somebody, to disabuse the entire Taiwanese national security apparatus of what they’d been told by the Defense Department.”
“This went on,” he said of the pro-independence efforts, “until George Bush weighed in and told Rumsfeld to cease and desist [and] told him multiple times to re-establish military-to-military relations with China.”
Routine military ties had been suspended in early 2001 after China forced a U.S. reconnaissance plane down on Hainan Island off Vietnam.
Wilkerson is off his meds. But just the same, by all means, drink up! 🙂 As you see below the US has increased mil-to-mil relations with China:
U.S. Pacific Command delegation visits China
Asian Political News, March 20, 2006
BEIJING, March 14 Kyodo –A U.S. Pacific Command delegation is visiting China this week as part of an agreement last October between U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Chinese counterparts, officials from the two countries said Tuesday.
Commanders from the Hawaii-based unified military command, which covers the area stretching from the west coast of the U.S. mainland to the east coast of Africa, have arrived in China, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a press briefing that the military exchange visit follows up a Sino-U.S. commitment reached last year to strengthen mutual understanding in the military field.
”It’s a plan with rich content and with varied disciplines,” Qin said. He anticipated regular exchanges by military leaders and representatives of military schools.
Bilateral military relations dipped in April 2001 when a Chinese fighter went down in the South China Sea while trying to chase off a U.S. spy plane near Chinese airspace.
When Rumsfeld visited China last October, he met with Chinese rocket missile force commanders in a move that was widely viewed as Beijing’s desire to expand military exchanges with the United States.