Saving The Connection

George Bush responds judiciously as the troops in Tiananmen Square trample a carefully cultivated relationship with the U.S.

The dilemma has become as familiar as it is painful. The U.S., as George Bush put it last week, "must stand wherever, in whatever country, universally for human rights." But it also has an interest in maintaining ties to regimes that occupy vital strategic positions. Never, though, has the U.S. faced that dilemma on the scale posed by today's China: the world's most populous nation, an important counterweight to the Soviet Union, until recently a force for stability in Asia and now a regime guilty of a massacre of its own people that has enraged Americans far more than anything ever...

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