“The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.” – Shanghai Communique, United States government, 1972
In his essay, Sleepwalking Towards War, eminent Yale scholar Odd Arne Westad provides a compelling insight into today’s tensions between the United States and China. Locating the geopolitical landscape of the rising power of China with the declining power of the United States, Westad traces the structural roots of the conflict and makes an analogy with the events and attitudes that led Britain and Germany to disastrous war in 1914.