Friday 29th of March 2024

starting a war because of an old bag?…….

The arrogance of power is especially ominous and despicable when a government leader risks huge numbers of lives in order to make a provocative move on the world’s geopolitical chessboard. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plan to visit Taiwan is in that category. Thanks to her, the chances of a military confrontation between China and the United States have spiked upward. 

Long combustible over Taiwan, the tensions between Beijing and Washington are now close to ablaze, due to Pelosi’s desire to be the first House speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years. Despite the alarms her travel plans have set off, President Biden has responded timidly — even while much of the establishment wants to see the trip canceled.

 

By Norman Soloman / Salon

 

“Well, I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now,” Biden said about the prospective trip on July 20. “But I don’t know what the status of it is.” 

Biden could have put his presidential foot down and ruled out Pelosi’s Taiwan trip, but he didn’t. Yet as days went by, news trickled out that opposition to the trip was extensive in the upper reaches of his administration.

“National security adviser Jake Sullivan and other senior National Security Council officials oppose the trip because of the risk of escalating tension across the Taiwan Strait,” the Financial Times reported. Overseas, meanwhile, “the controversy over the trip has sparked concern among Washington’s allies who are worried that it could trigger a crisis between the U.S. and China.”

Underscoring that the U.S. commander in chief is anything but an innocent bystander in terms of Pelosi’s trip, officials disclosed that the Pentagon intends to provide fighter jets as escorts if she goes through with the Taiwan visit. Biden’s unwillingness to clearly head off such a visit reflects the insidious style of his own confrontational approach to China.

More than a year ago — under the apt New York Times headline “Biden’s Taiwan Policy Is Truly, Deeply Reckless” — Peter Beinart pointed out that from the outset of his presidency Biden had been “chipping away” at the longstanding U.S. “one China” policy:

Biden became the first American president since 1978 to host Taiwan’s envoy at his inauguration. In April, his administration announced it was easing decades-old limitations on official U.S. contacts with the Taiwanese government. These policies are increasing the odds of a catastrophic war. The more the United States and Taiwan formally close the door on reunification, the more likely Beijing is to seek reunification by force.

Beinart added: “What’s crucial is that the Taiwanese people preserve their individual freedom and the planet does not endure a third world war. The best way for the United States to pursue those goals is by maintaining America’s military support for Taiwan while also maintaining the ‘one China’ framework that for more than four decades has helped keep the peace in one of the most dangerous places on earth.”

Now Pelosi’s move toward a visit to Taiwan has amounted to further intentional erosion of the “one China” policy. Biden’s mealy-mouthed response to that move was a subtler type of brinkmanship.

Many mainline commentators, while critical of China, acknowledge the hazardous trend. “The Biden administration remains committed to being more hawkish on China than its predecessor,” conservative historian Niall Ferguson wrote on Friday. He added: “Presumably, the calculation in the White House remains, as in the 2020 election, that being tough on China is a vote-winner — or, to put it differently, that doing anything the Republicans can portray as ‘weak on China’ is a vote-loser. Yet it is hard to believe that this calculation would hold if the result were a new international crisis, with all its potential economic consequences.”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal summed up the current precarious moment with a headline declaring that Pelosi’s visit “would likely sink tentative rapprochement between U.S., China.”

But the consequences — far from being only economic and diplomatic — could be existential for all of humanity. China has several hundred nuclear weapons ready to use, while the U.S. has several thousand. The potential for military conflict and escalation is all too real. 

“We keep claiming our ‘one China’ policy hasn’t changed, but a Pelosi visit would clearly be precedent setting and can’t be construed as in keeping with ‘unofficial relations,'” said Susan Thornton, a former acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the State Department. Thornton added that if the speaker goes to Taiwan, “the prospect of a crisis goes way up as China will need to respond.”

Last week, a pair of mainstream policy analysts from elite think tanks — the German Marshall Fund and the American Enterprise Institute — wrote in the New York Times: “A single spark could ignite this combustible situation into a crisis that escalates to military conflict. Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan could provide it.”

But July ended with strong indications that Biden has given a green light and Pelosi still intends to go ahead with an imminent visit. This is the kind of leadership that could get us all killed.

 

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/01/nancy-pelosis-reckless-trip-to-taiwan-a-decision-that-could-get-us-all-killed/

 

LET'S NOT FORGET TO SEE THIS PROVOCATION IN RELATION TO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43171

 

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an annoyance to the SQ…...

President Joe Biden’s administration has warned that China is poised to stoke geopolitical tensions around Taiwan, perhaps through military “provocations,” raising the risk of an unintended escalation in Beijing’s row with Washington over US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s possible visit to the self-governing island.

“China appears to be positioning itself to potentially take further steps in the coming days and perhaps over longer time horizons,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday. “These potential steps from China could include military provocations, such as firing missiles in the Taiwan Strait or around Taiwan, operations that break historical norms such as large-scale air entry into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone . . . air or naval activities that cross the median line and military exercises that could be highly publicized.”

Kirby made his comments after Reuters, CNN, and other media outlets reported that Pelosi would visit Taiwan, in defiance of China’s warnings of a possible military response. The California Democrat is reportedly scheduled to arrive in Taipei on Tuesday as part of a five-stop trip through Asia-Pacific that began over the weekend.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/560032-us-predicts-chinese-military-provocations/

 

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THE OLD BAG HAS NOTHING TO DO IN TAIWAN BUT BE AN ARROGANT ANNOYANCE TO THE STATUS QUO......

 

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washing the old bag off WH's hands...…..

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that as the third most senior official in the US government, Nancy Pelosi is free to make her own decisions and travel plans, warning China not to escalate tensions if the House of Representatives Speaker ends up visiting Taiwan.

“The speaker will make her own decisions about whether or not to visit Taiwan. Congress is an independent, coequal branch of government. The decision is entirely the speaker’s,”Blinken told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York following a Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference on Monday.

The top US diplomat went on to accuse Beijing of exaggerating the significance of the rumored trip, claiming that if “China tries to create some kind of crisis or otherwise escalate tensions, that would be entirely on Beijing.”

Blinken said Washington expects Beijijng to “act responsibly and not to engage in any escalation going forward,” if Pelosi eventually decided to visit Taiwan, as has been reported by multiple media outlets, citing sources in the US and Taipei.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/560038-blinken-pelosi-taiwan-own-decision/

 

THAT THE "WHITE HOUSE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS CONFRONTATION" IS WHY THERE IS A HUGE COTERIE OF SYCOPHANTS WITH THE OLD BAG, AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER DIVISION SAILING TOWARDS TAIWAN AND A ZILLION AMERICAN WAR PLANES OVER THE CHINA SEA.....

 

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