Asia Has a Taste of Things to Come

Here's a rule of diplomacy: when the blindingly obvious becomes controversial, you've got a problem. If political leaders were sitting down to discuss potential hot spots in Asia, it would be hard to avoid concluding that the Taiwan Strait was one of them. On one side of the waterway is Taiwan, whose democratically elected leader speaks of it as a sovereign state. On the other side is China, which regards Taiwan as no more than a renegade province, and has vowed to prevent, by force if need be, any formal declaration of independence by Taipei. Oh, and another thing: the U.S....