An Act of Provocation

Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan trip delivers nothing concrete

Despite several warnings from China, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan and met President Tsai Ing-wen. Pelosi is the first speaker of the US House of Representatives to visit Taiwan in 25 years. Officially, the US endorses One China Policy and considers the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as real China but has also maintained a close relationship with Taiwan over the years, especially in terms of military cooperation. As a result, China announced sanctions against Pelosi and her immediate family members.

Every foreign visit is judged based on two factors; symbolism and deliverables. Nancy Pelosi’s trip was high on symbolism, the whole world was tracking her plane as it landed in Taipei and that should tell you how symbolic this visit was but beyond that what did the US achieve? Has the one-China policy changed? No, it hasn’t. Have the Chinese relented on their claim to Taiwan? No, they haven’t. Has Taiwan’s military magically grown stronger? Again, the answer is no.

The fact is this trip delivered nothing concrete. Nancy Pelosi wanted a foreign policy win before retiring from office, she decided Taiwan was the place to do it. Even the White House was not interested at first. In late July, US President Joe Biden himself was asked about Pelosi’s visit and this is what the US President then said, “The military thinks it is not a good idea right now, but I don’t know what the status of it is.”

Clearly, Joe Biden was not too happy about the trip. The question is what did he do about it? He dispatched his national security adviser to meet Nancy Pelosi to brief her about the risks of visiting Taiwan but by then she had made up her mind. So, the White House shifted to plan B, which was damage control. They tried to draw a distinction between the Speaker and the US government.

There was one such attempt by Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, he said, “The speaker will make her own decisions about whether or not to visit Taiwan. Congress is an independent co-equal branch of government. The decision is entirely the speaker’s.”

To be fair, there is some truth to the statement, the White House cannot control what the speaker does. These are two independent constitutional organs having said that two questions still remain number one why should China or any country care about America’s domestic political structure, for them, it’s all the same, a top US official is visiting Taiwan and that’s all there is to it.

Number two, what does this say about Joe Biden the president? After all, Pelosi is also a Democrat, she belongs to the same political party as Joe Biden. Surely, the president had some leverage over her. Could he not have convinced Nancy Pelosi to abandon the trip? As it turned out, he couldn’t. Pelosi said this trip was supposed to bolster America’s support for Taiwan, instead, it has done the very opposite. It has revealed a split between the White House and Congress.

The White House is happy with the status quo, it is already dealing with a conflict in Ukraine. There is no appetite it seems for another one in the Pacific. Congress on the other hand is looking for trouble; it is trying to provoke China. Imagine being stuck in the middle of this, that’s where Taiwan is at the moment; confused and alone because Nancy Pelosi came and went but Taiwan must bear the consequences.

Their ports have been blockaded by China, their skies are being buzzed by PLA jets and their homeland is surrounded by warships. Was one trip worth all this risk? What exactly did the US gain with the stunt? This kind of Hollywood-style provocation does not really work. What Taiwan needs (if the US really wants to help) is material and military help and on that, the US is faltering.

A report from Defence News in April 2022 reveals a massive backlog in military shipments to Taiwan about weapons worth almost $14 billion. They were purchased back in 2019 but they’re yet to be delivered. Three years, this includes F-16 fighter jets, components for patriot missiles and weapons that will be crucial for Taiwan’s defence.

The problem is they’re yet to be handed over to Taiwan and Joe Biden did the same thing in Ukraine. He kept provoking Russia. He kept promising weapons but once the war broke out, Ukraine was all alone on its own. Yes, the weapons are still flowing non-stop but Ukraine is doing all the fighting. With Taiwan, the United States is repeating the same mistake it seems.

They talk about strategic ambiguity but the current policy is neither strategic nor ambiguous; it is pure chaos. If we remember what Biden said in the month of May, he said, “The US would use force to defend Taiwan.” Hours later, the White House had to clarify, saying, “The US policy was unchanged.”

Pelosi made a similar gaffe in Taipei. She called Taiwan a country, according to her, “It’s one of the purposes of our trip to show the world the success of the people of Taiwan, their courage, their courage to change their own country, to become more democratic. They become more democratic, their respect for people and the rest and quite frankly a model in this region in that respect.”

It’s probably a gaffe but will China see it that way or will they see it as evidence of America’s true intentions? Stephen Roach, a Yale University senior fellow and former Federal Reserve economist, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia”, “We’re on a trajectory of escalating conflict and this will certainly make matters worse. It plays well to local politics in the United States and in Taiwan, but it does not play well to geostrategic forces that are pushing these two nations apart. The leadership in both the US and China to address this conflict is compromised by this basically pouring salt in an open wound for China.”

The fact is this trip had no strategic objective. If the idea was to humiliate China, well, at what expense? At whose expense? The Americans are safe thousands of miles away. Only the Taiwanese face the consequences as of today.

If the idea was to show US solidarity, there are better ways to do that like military cooperation or economic assistance. Taiwan may be a geopolitical chess piece for Washington DC but remember 23 million lives are at stake.