(Expansion) – There was no apocalypse or fatality after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, but the initiative was enough to shake the foundations of international peace and security.
Not only did it escalate into a major confrontation between the United States and China, the two economic superpowers with nuclear capabilities, but it also triggered a regional crisis that has shaken Taiwan, Japan – the third largest economy in the world and a political and unconditional ally of Washington – and the entire group of disputed islands around the South China Sea, including the Philippines, while delving into the deep division that characterizes current geopolitics: the duel between democracies and autocracies.
The implications of the trip of the president of the House of Representatives of the American Union were coming. Beijing failed in its deterrence attempt and now humiliated in a key year for the internal politics of the Asian giant when Xi Jinping seeks to crown his third term in the XX Congress of the Communist Party, he is obliged to act and show his military muscle to dissuade further provocations in case some other world leader flirted with the idea of visiting Taiwan, a gesture that would be seen as tacit support for the island’s independence.
So far, only the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has visited the island, one of the 14 countries with which Taipei maintains diplomatic relations. In the future, the visit postponed since the beginning of the year by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom is expected.
Although the status quo did not change with the visit, China’s belligerent movements do disturb the natural dynamics of the region and the parameters of national security and collective defense. China’s live-fire military exercises, the largest in decades and whose warships crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait, coupled with Chinese missiles landing for the first time in Japan’s considered exclusive economic zone – a message against the US forces stationed there – and the freezing of environmental, labor and military cooperation between Washington and Beijing, is the initial balance of a crisis that is barely escalating.
These events also spoiled the diplomatic efforts of the Joe Biden government to prevent the Asian giant from reinforcing its alliance with Moscow at all costs at a time of the war between Russia and Ukraine, since Vladimir Putin is the winner at this juncture. Beijing had no choice but to take advantage of this momentum to establish a kind of survey and/or trial of how to surround and invade the island militarily, despite the fact that the Party’s Central Committee wishes to unify Taiwan through a peaceful path without rule out the use of force.
The US lawmaker’s 24-hour visit to Taiwan made it clear that “the United States will not abandon the island,” despite the fact that the one-China policy prevents it from establishing diplomatic relations with Taipei. Does this bring us closer to the Ukraine-Taiwan connection, considering that it is in Beijing’s interest to invade the island before the United States rearms it to the teeth, even if that means World War III? Let us not forget the reactions of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader who along with 25 other legislators applauded Nancy Pelosi’s provocation, ignoring geopolitical dictates and turning a deaf ear to the warnings of the White House and the Secretary defense.
At this time and considering the stubborn geopolitical reality, neither the United States nor China can afford to open enemy fire, but the secret lies in the act of communication: making it visible that both have the political will to use military force and exhibit who are willing to pay the amount to employ it. All this happens in the midst of the entanglements that the game of perceptions and messages of self-affirmation of power in the military, economic, technological and discursive version glimpse.
Let’s not forget that Taiwan is the main manufacturer of semiconductors in the world, those chips used in the technological, military and electronic industries that make it an appetizing booty in times of global disaster.
Blockades, sanctions and retaliation from China to Taiwan, bravado towards Japan, diplomatic protests, divergences in regional organizations and cyber attacks are part of the prelude to what may come. How much did Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan contribute so that China perceives the fine thread of considering the United States an adversary or an enemy?
Editor’s note: Rina Mussali is an international analyst and academic at ITAM. Follow her on , and on . The views expressed in this column are solely those of the author.
