Containment, Primacy, Flux: Systemic Transitional Fluidity

President Jimmy CarterCarter, James negotiated US-China agreements on ‘normalizing’ diplomatic, scientific-technological and military relations, but Congress’s Taiwan Relations Act (TRA)Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) injected ambivalence into ties. Reagan’sReagan, Ronald instructions that US arms sales to Taiwan mirror assessments of the ‘Chinese threat’ negated assurances Nixon, Ford and Carter gave Beijing. George BushBush, George deepened counter-Soviet intimacy with China but the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, amidst the Soviet bloc’s transformation, ended Beijing’s role as the strategic bulwark Washington had deployed against Moscow. Soviet collapse transmogrified the bipolar system into a unipolarity, elevating the US into the ‘sole superpower.’ No longer the source of grand-strategic leverage, China was marginalized while Japan’s economic prowess, corroded by its post-Plaza AccordPlaza Accord stasis, rendered it geopolitically peripheral.