(NYTIMES) - Media coverage of US President Joe Biden's foreign policy tends to focus on his efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan, get tough on Russia and negotiate with Iran. But none of those may prove as consequential as Mr Biden's quiet, incremental moves to establish official relations with Taiwan. Because only his policy towards Taiwan is meaningfully increasing the risk of world war.

He's doing so by undoing a diplomatic fiction that for more than 40 years has served the United States, Taiwan and the world exceptionally well. In 1978, when the US established diplomatic relations with Beijing, it agreed to pretend that there was only "one China".