THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2023 13 Share your thoughts about this month’s issue. Submit letters to the editor: journal@afsa.org obligation, if fixed and invariable, makes us a prisoner of our client. It is easy, but potentially fatal, to be inattentive to the dangers to a great power arising from its relationship with a much smaller client. In October 1962, the concerns of the client, Cuba, were narrow and intense, as they usually are, and Cuba’s Fidel Castro was ready to see the superpower Soviet Union go to nuclear war with the United States. Our obligations to Taiwan, then, cannot be immune to adjustment to meet real-world developments, such as the transforming growth in the PRC’s capacity and our imperative need for China’s cooperation in ending Russia’s atavistic crime in Ukraine and in fighting climate change. The U.S. needs to regain its capacity for independent action and emerge from the American right wing’s view of Asia. We need a better footing with China, which requires a cooling of our relationship with Taiwan. A respectful and respectable distancing can be gradual, discreet, and consultative. In the case of Taiwan, that means starting a detachment process soon, particularly so that the Taiwanese public understands that the island’s relationship with the United States is changing when it votes for a new president to succeed Tsai Ing-wen in January 2024. Peter Lydon FSO, retired Berkeley, California n
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