Taiwan's not buying

Todd Crowell writes

For the past ten years, the leaders of Taiwan appear to have calculated U.S. intervention heavily into their resource allocation equation and elected to reduce defense spending despite an ever prosperous and stable economy. And this short-change math does not work. We're watching the partisan stalemate over Taiwan's defense spending, and we're doing our own math. In a crisis . . . Taiwan will be stood up against the yardstick of 'national will' and will be measured accordingly.

Bush tried to make clear to Chen that he "did not have a blank check to be filled out in American blood."