ABSTRACT
Just a few years earlier, the Taiwan Strait had often been described as a potential flashpoint or “tinderbox.” Now the Strait – thanks to President Ma’s policies of rapprochement with Beijing, no doubt – was nothing less than an “avenue of peace,” a description that must have sounded like music to strategists and officials worldwide who were struggling to cope with a variety of emergencies, from terrorism to global warming, from economic crises to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. One year into his second term (in fact, he had begun saying that earlier), President Ma claimed he had succeeded in transforming the dynamics of a relationship that for decades had been on the brink and that at one time, in the early days of the Cold War, had come dangerously close to sparking nuclear war between a nascent PRC and the U.S.
