House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will go to Taiwan on Tuesday, decisively ending weeks of wrangling between the USA and China about whether or not she needs to make the trip.
Pelosi’s controversial stop in Taipei, which could make her the highest-rating U.S. official to go to the self-governing island in decades, suggests that the Pentagon has downgraded its evaluation of a potential credible Chinese army threat to the speaker’s safety.
Beijing is firmly against Pelosi’s Taiwan visit and issued severe warnings of a harsh Chinese response. “A visit to Taiwan through her would constitute a gross interference in China’s inner affairs … and cause a completely severe scenario and grave consequences,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian stated on Monday.
Despite the rhetoric, Pelosi’s Taiwan visit — a part of a congressional trip to 4 Asian nations — indicates that each side has come to a grudging accommodation to permit it to continue even as mitigating the potential for miscalculations at a time of this heightened bilateral tensions. “Part of our obligations is to ensure that she will be able to travel freely and securely, and I can guarantee you that she will,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Monday, without elaborating.
“There’s absolute confidence in my thoughts that the military-to-military are having conversations … to ensure there’s no accident that might happen,” stated Ret. Command Chief Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force. President Joe Biden amplified the concerns when he said earlier this month that the U.S. military assessment of the proposed trip was that “it’s now no longer a great idea right now.”
The Chinese Communist Party considers “reunification with Taiwan,” a territory that the CCP has in no way ruled, a “historic task.” And Chinese President Xi Jinping has ramped up the pressure on the island with a constant campaign of hostility since the election held in 2016 of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party.
Beijing backed its grievance of Pelosi’s travel plans with “stay fire sports” on Saturday off the coast of Fujian opposite Taiwan. In the lead-as much as Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan, China’s Maritime Safety Administration warned on Monday — the politically sensitive ninety-fifth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army — of an extra five days of navy exercises in the place beginning Tuesday.
Those sporting events shouldn’t endanger Pelosi’s visit, however. But the PLA is expected to flex a few muscles in the Taiwan Strait — something that Chinese nation media can trumpet as a symbol of Xi’s iron resolve — and which tasks strength over Taiwan without risking a military clash
PLA Air Force aircraft [could shadow] her flight into or out of Taiwan…however, there wouldn’t be any interaction,” Murrett stated. “Aircraft for countries that aren’t friendly to every other country all of the time … it’s usually dealt with very effectively.”
The Pelosi visit will inevitably fuel the Chinese government’s suspicions concerning U.S. policy towards Taiwan and can activate a longer-time period intensification of ongoing military intimidation of the island.
