S ince the end of the Cold War, the main challenge to those who favor a "constructive engagement" with China has come from human rights advocates and labor leaders. But in the last year, a new opposition voice has been heard, arguing for a return to the containment strategy used against the Soviet Union. This new strategy has very little support at the Brookings Institution or the Council on Foreign Relations, but it is well represented in the Weekly Standard , Commentary , and the New Republic , and in the columns of George Will , William Safire , and A.M. Rosenthal . Some of the loudest voices are former Cold War conservatives who were exiled from inner policy circles in the last revisionist years of the Reagan administration. These include Michael Ledeen (who helped broker the first arms-for-hostages deal with Iran), Frank Gaffney (who was deputy to Defense Department official Richard Perle), and Robert Kagan (former aide to State Department official Elliot Abrams). These advocates...

P resident George W. Bush's first major foreign-policy decision will come at the end of April when he will have to decide what kind of military hardware to sell Taiwan. The debate will be somewhat technical, but very important: It involves America's stance toward a region of the world where the fate of democracy is at stake and where a major war could eventually occur. And American liberals, who usually have something to say about almost any foreign-policy issue, from East Timor to Northern Ireland, have been almost entirely absent from this debate. The Taiwanese want, among other things, Patriot 3 antimissile systems and four Aegis destroyers that could be used to counter the Chinese missile buildup and to prevent a naval blockade. But the Chinese government does not want the U.S. to sell any arms to Taiwan. Addressing the United States in a press conference, Sha Zhukang, head of arms control in China's Foreign Ministry, said, "Taiwan is part of China... . Arms sales to a part of a...