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Could President-Elect Donald Trump Accidentally Start A War? [Video]

By Nick Younker
Published on: 19:06 PST, Dec 2, 2016

Donald Trump is the current President-elect, about to take office next January after winning the Electoral College earlier in November but losing the popular vote by an excess of two million votes to Hillary Clinton. But before Trump has even had a chance to assume the Oval Office from the outgoing president, Barack Obama, he has already made all kinds of waves on the domestic and foreign stage.

Just recently, according to a report from CNN, Donald Trump has already used the power of his future office to break a long-standing policy that all presidents since Jimmy Carter have had to abide by in regards to China and the United States. It is a policy that has opened up the doors to diplomatic relations between the two powerhouse nations, and one that many Washington officials will tell you was never meant to be broken.

But this, in effect, is what has happened. President-elect Donald Trump has taken a phone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in which he claims that they only discussed congratulatory words with one another.

Some might think that taking a phone call from the president of Taiwan is no big deal, but it really is. There is a policy in place that was brokered by Washington and Beijing that recognizes Taiwan as a Chinese territory, but China has not went to war with the tiny island nation that they consider to be a “renegade province.”

When establishing the diplomatic relations that the U.S. and China currently enjoy, the U.S. entered into an agreement with China that it would recognize China as the only nation under its own sovereignty and that Taiwan is a part of that, regardless of their claims to be a sovereign nation of their own. Therefore, all communications that involve the rogue province of Taiwan are to be handled at the state level, with China itself. That was when the “One China” policy was born, in 1979.

Therein lies the problem with the incoming Donald Trump administration. Either Donald Trump did not know about the “One China” policy, or he did and he used the power of his “soon-to-be” office to get under their skin while Barack Obama is still the president.

Either way you look at it, there are certainly some disturbing details into the whole scandal. If Donald Trump really did not know about the One China policy, then perhaps he is not fit to be president as liberal commentator Keith Olbermann has suggested. On the other hand, Donald Trump has already promised on the campaign trail that he would go after China for trade “rape” with its policies in regards to American companies moving overseas and stealing American jobs.

But if that is indeed the reason for Donald Trump’s mishap, then that means he is willing to go to war to expand the U.S. economy, thus making the United States an economical powerhouse – but in the process, allowing thousands of people from America and abroad to die for the wealth of our nation.

At this point, it is hard to believe that President-elect Donald Trump did not deliberately take this action, not having assumed office yet. The reason for this is because an advisor to Donald Trump, Stephen Yates of the Heritage Foundation, was in Taiwan at the time of the call and he helped facilitate the call with Trump, thus putting to bed any doubt that Trump himself did not have previous knowledge of the call. But that does not mean that he knew about the One China policy, which could in fact be even more concerning.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who has a seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent out a few tweets about what the possible implications of this are.

It is unclear at this time how China is going to react to this breach of protocol that has been in place for nearly four decades. But it could indicate that relations between the Trump administration and China will be much more strained than previously imagined.

[Featured Image by Ty Wright/Getty Images]

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