John J. Tkacik, Jr.

In 1602, Matteo Ricci (利瑪竇), Jesuit cartographer to the court of the Wan Li (萬曆) Emperor, traced out a great map of the entire world (坤輿萬國全圖) on which he noted that the domain of the “Great Ming” stretched from “the 42nd parallel in the North to the 15th in the South” (自十五度至四十二度). Far south of…

Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken travelled to Beijing on a mission “to cool exploding tensions” (as the Associated Press puts it). The Secretary’s counterparts on the Chinese side aver — as they have for fifty years — that blame for exploding tensions is entirely with the Americans. And exploding tensions now, as…

The 2023 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum “Leaders Meeting” in San Francisco will be a particular challenge because President Joe Biden is obliged to host both Chinese “state chairman” (國家主席) Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Of course, Putin will not attend. He’s very busy and, well, he’s a war criminal. The…

I don’t want to suggest that there currently are any secret undertakings between the Biden Administration and Xi Jinping’s (習近平) regime. I would only caution that secret understandings and clandestine assurances are anathema to America’s principles of diplomacy. President Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” demanded “open covenants, openly arrived at, that proceed always frankly and in…

In 1988, young Comrade Qin Gang (秦剛) did not graduate from the China Foreign Affairs University (外交學院), China’s training academy for diplomats. He never attended the Institute. Instead, he graduated from Beijing’s “University of International Relations” (國際關係學院) which, as I recall from early in my diplomatic career, was a campus well-known for its affiliation with…

As all are aware by now, United States policy toward Taiwan is guided by three canonical texts: the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances. But the State Department now seems to be working with a fourth document which goes by the bland name of “state telegram number 87604” of June…

In the clandestine services they used to say, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it is enemy action.” In the diplomatic services, “the fourth time the President of the United States says something, it’s policy.” During a painful post-Afghanistan evacuation interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on August 19, 2021, President Joe…

Taipei Times readers may not have noticed, but for several days at the beginning of the month, there was a considerable amount of American jet fighter activity out of Okinawa. On Saturday, July 30, Ryukyu Shimpo (琉球新報) reported the unusual arrival of nine refueling tankers at Kadena Air Base (嘉手納空軍基地). Then, just after dark at…

Ned Price, spokesperson of the United States Department of State, is a Twitter influencer at the exalted “celebrity/macro” rank. So, even though it was well after working hours on Friday evening, May 20, 2022 — as Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepared for President Biden’s first presidential trip to Asia — Ned Price was sure…

“John Foster Dulles and the Fate of Taiwan” by James C.H. Wang, Yu Shan Publishers, Taipei, 2021, 268 pages, NT$450.00 I shall begin this book review with an allusion to that legendary “hunk of burning love” Elvis Presley whose seductive voice, terpsichorean undulation and virile pulchritude made him the world’s first “rock star” in 1957.…