Word: diplomats
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...been to give the lie to the common assertion of Asia's authoritarian regimes that East Asian cultures and de-mocracy do not mix. The element of Lee's platform that most disturbed the mainland was the powerful campaign slogan telling voters, "You're the boss." Says an Asian diplomat in Beijing: "Mainlanders are bound to ask, 'If the Taiwanese could directly elect their leaders, why can't we?'" This fear of democratic contagion comes at a difficult time for the Chinese leadership. While the Taiwanese people elected their President directly, China's political elite is struggling behind the scenes...
...going it alone. In the more sensitive area of human rights, a breakthrough will probably have to await the arrival of a new generation of leaders in Beijing, but the U.S. should acknowledge whatever little progress China has made. Says Burt Levin, a veteran China analyst and former U.S. diplomat: "Chinese citizens have greater freedom today than they have had in 50 years. To be oblivious to that is foolish." Comprehensive engagement, sums up Secretary of Defense William Perry, "does not mean that the U.S. will acquiesce to [Chinese] actions with which we disagree. But we will...
...want a confrontation with the U.S.," but some of Beijing's rhetoric about the U.S. commitment to Taiwan has had a harsh tone. Whether with pure bluster or a touch of psy-war, a member of the general staff late last year told Chas. W. Freeman, a former U.S. diplomat in Beijing and Assistant Secretary of Defense, that "America will not sacrifice Los Angeles to protect Taiwan." At this point China lacks the military capability to bring off a successful invasion of a well-defended Taiwan. Even if the Chinese had the amphibious equipment needed to move large numbers...
STEPS DOWN. RICHARD HOLBROOKE, 54, Assistant Secretary of State; in Washington. The famously undiplomatic diplomat leaves office with a miracle on his resume: the Dayton peace accords, which, so far, have silenced the guns of the Balkans...
Operation Uphold Democracy, says a U.S. diplomat, is a model "only for the national war college: exit strategy as diplomacy." If the U.S. will not engage in nation building, he believes, "it's just pasting on Band-Aids." Johns Hopkins Professor Michael Mandelbaum has recently written in Foreign Affairs that lasting democracy requires the firm foundation of law and a functioning market economy. Haiti needed a "deep, protracted and costly engagement" that American politics today will not tolerate, he argues, and so Clinton's achievements in Haiti can only be judged "provisional, fragile and reversible." The intervention may have been...