Order from Chaos: China’s dangerous Taiwan temptation

By Robert Kagan
August 20, 2020

When the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931, and the United States and the League of Nations began peppering them with public notes and statements calling on them to desist, humorist Will Rogers
observed that, “every time they get another note they take another town.” “We had better quit writing notes,” he suggested, or soon they “will have all China.”
Six years later, the Japanese did try to take all of China, and more. A major reason was that Japanese leaders believed, and the Manchurian crisis offered the first clear evidence, that the United States was ultimately not prepared to back up its denunciations with force.

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