Taiwan

John, I'm with you that the "full-on" approach is so twentieth century. If the MAD philosophy holds we can probably keep the nuclear weapons business off to the side, where it's been for so many decades. And I agree that we need not "break the glass" if and when Taiwan goes critical. There should be very careful calculation about how we employ military support means and -- God forbid! -- direct military action in support of Taiwan when push comes to shove.

Vietnam was an attempt to put 'limited war', less than 'full on' into actual practice. The theory was tested by real world actions to see how and if it could work. This was inspired by 2 trends; one the nuclear war dilemma and the internal political struggle within Democracy. This latter shattered the Democratic Party after the 1968 Convention over the anti-war movement in and out of Congress.

Call for Papers

John, I can't quite tell if you mean "full-on" to be (1) any use of military force, or to mean (2) use of a certain level of military power. At the start I thought it was the first, but your discussion of Korea and Vietnam suggests the second.

Conference: 5th World Conference of Chinese Studies 2021
Dates: August 7-9, 2021, at Witten University, Germany (panels August 7-8) and in Brussels, Belgium (panels August 9, visit of academic partners in Brussels and other sites of interest August 10-14)

American Councils for International Education is pleased to announce it is now accepting applications to the summer 2021 Tradition and Modernity in Taiwan Program.

For details, see https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=60946

Academia Sinica, The Institute of History and Philology
A full-time research position

1. Rank: Assistant Research Fellow, Associate Research Fellow or Research Fellow (Positions roughly correspond to assistant professor, associate professor, and professor at a U.S. university.) [1 position available]

The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University is pleased to announce the 2021-22 competition for the Hou Family Fellowship in Taiwan Studies. The fellow is expected to be in residence at Harvard for at least one semester (five months), between August 1, 2021 and July 31, 2022. A longer period of residence up to the full year is encouraged.