Nancy Pelosi is on the cusp of making a consequential visit to Taiwan, at the helm of a bipartisan congressional delegation. It would not be the first trip to the country by a House speaker. But Pelosi’s visit would be a critical symbol of support as Beijing ratchets up its pressure on Taipei. Though the White House is foolishly trying to block the trip, Pelosi must forge ahead.
After news of the speaker’s intended trip leaked, the president himself made comments hinting at his disapproval, hiding behind what he says is the Pentagon’s counsel. “The military thinks it’s not a good idea right now,” Biden said last week, adding that he doesn’t “know what the status of it is.” If it was true then that the White House wasn’t keeping tabs on Pelosi’s itinerary, that swiftly changed. A CNN report from this week says that Pentagon and White House officials briefed Pelosi on their concerns — for her security and about Beijing’s response. Ahead of a major Chinese Communist Party political meeting in the fall, General Secretary Xi Jinping won’t want to appear weak, this thinking goes, and so the response could be drastic. “I think what the president was saying is that maybe the military was afraid of my plane getting shot down or something like that,” Pelosi surmised.
For their part, Chinese diplomats have responded to Pelosi’s reported plans with their typical histrionics. China’s ministry of defense said that it would “resolutely defend national sovereignty.” There’s speculation that China could declare a no-fly-zone over Taiwan. And if Pelosi were to travel on a U.S. military aircraft, that could add to Beijing’s fury.
But China’s options are limited. The Xi regime presumably understands it would be risky for China’s interests to invade Taiwan. The PLA might send more jets than usual through Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone, but ahead of the National Party Congress, Xi is not thought to be seeking a new, destabilizing military crisis. Further, if he were to invade, it would be based on his own calculations and not because a single diplomatic visit was “provocative.” He and the party more likely prefer to secure further concessions out of Biden, without a frightening cross-strait confrontation in the mix. During an upcoming call between the two leaders, slated for Thursday, Xi might make certain demands — even that Biden lean harder on the speaker to cancel her plans.
It’s unclear whether Biden is capable of resisting such pressure, however, as he and his team seem more likely to take Chinese fire and fury into account than they do the concerns of Taiwanese officials that a capitulation by Pelosi could make their position even more precarious. Because they know what the president doesn’t seem to understand: that the party will push and push, until Washington concedes, then demand further concessions, secure in the knowledge that they are within reach.
Much as we disagree with the speaker on most issues, on this question she has been stalwart. Pelosi, by making this trip against the background of Chinese threats, would do a service to her country, Taiwan, and all nations with an interest in resisting a totalitarian party-state’s military aggression. She must go to Taiwan.