Links: New York Times Writes Onion-style Op-Ed, Is Serious

An op-ed silly enough to pull me from a recent blogging hiatus:

To Save Our Economy, Ditch Taiwan by Paul Kane, who shows remarkable boldness and daring in discussing foreign policy AND economics when  he seems to understand very little about either. Upon first read, I thought it was some kind of Jonathan-Swift style satire, like suggesting we eat Irish babies. Stunningly, Kane (a former international security fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government who has served in Iraq) seems to be serious. It's the Veteran's Day holiday in the US right now, but no matter how much I respect the service of our military men and women - sorry, that doesn't mean a free pass when it comes to advocating catastrophically ignorant and harmful foreign policies.

The only reason I can think of for the NY Times to publish such nonsense is to get some attention, and they have certainly succeeded in that - demonstrating that newspapers, like misbehaving children, believe that negative attention is better than no attention.

Some highlights from the response thus far:

The Atlantic, Is This NYT Op-Ed a Joke? Selling Taiwan to the Bankers of Beijing

"I kept waiting for the "but seriously now..." transition to a real proposal, or the paragraph saying, "Obviously this would be crazy, yet it underscores..." But apparently the author, Paul V. Kane, identified as a Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and a former fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard, really means it."

Business Insider, The Worst Idea Ever For Dealing With Our National Debt

"...in short, what Kane is advocating is an abdication of our strategic self-direction in exchange for extinguishing a threat (Chinese holdings of U.S. debt) that doesn't exist."
Taipei Times, ‘New York Times’ op-ed calls on US to sell out Taiwan

China Post, 'Dumb' NY Times op-ed calls for US to sell out Taiwan over China debt

And of course, Taiwan's own NMA has their unique animated take on the matter:

The upside is that Kane's ridiculous concept has been the subject of such unanimous derision. This may draw attention to how dangerous and harmful it would be to the US to withdraw support from Taiwan -- and maybe even point out that the US is in fact, slowly and self-destructively weakening that very support. We in the US may see this suggestion of giving up on Taiwan's geopolitical and strategic value (and of course, the freedom and rights of a democratic nation, but those seem to count for little these days) as a silly idea, but we're fine with slowly but surely softening our military and political support in ever-increasing concessions of both rhetoric and action?

And shouldn't the perception that continued economic integration with China is making, as Kane suggests "...the island’s absorption into mainland China...inevitable," give the Taiwanese government and people pause? If Taiwan's rush to integrate with China makes it seem like "absorption" is already decided, what's the impetus for the US to support Taiwan's continued self-rule?

Just a thought, but it seems to me that heading off a cliff in one giant leap and edging off it by inches are not, the end, appreciably different.