Beijing will remember this visit and will respond in ways that are difficult to predict. For the moment (and this is a very early moment indeed) it does not appear that Pelosi’s visit will incur any direct military retaliation from Beijing. commitment.īiden has already stepped up America’s rhetorical commitment to Taiwan by inching away from the policy of ambiguity, which has guided U.S. allies in the region see Pelosi’s visit as necessary to convey U.S. Moreover, it is not at all obvious that U.S.
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The United States clearly needs to prioritize its commitments, no matter what that priority structure may look like.
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China can hurt the United States in subtle and unsubtle ways, which makes choosing a time and place for conflict particularly important. Even if Washington cannot rely on China for friendship, at the very least it could benefit from moderating the degree of animosity. could use cordial (if not friendly) relations with Beijing to pursue its goals in other parts of the world. Strategists in Beijing undoubtedly have thought of other clever ways to hurt the U.S. China can also readily take steps to enhance the capacity of Iran and North Korea to make trouble for the United States. China has been an incomplete participant in the sanctions regime against Russia, but it could cause much greater damage if it wished. This could include the supply of military equipment to Russia as well as economic, financial, and technological assistance. Beijing can obviously take more aggressive steps to support Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Moreover, as a CNAS exercise demonstrated, China doesn’t need to invade Formosa directly in order to put pressure on the alliance it can attack the outlying islands and force either Washington or Taipei to respond.Īnd China need not even launch a war in order to cause problems. Assessments of the cross-Straits military balance still equivocate on whether China could seize Taiwan, but its position has undoubtedly improved. interests at great distances from its coasts. It can project power farther into the Pacific, and threaten U.S. The U.S.-China relationship has certainly grown more antagonistic over the past decade, a trend that Biden’s succession of President Donald Trump has not disrupted.Ĭhina is far more powerful today than in 1996. It is NEVER the case that a competitor (or enemy) is already maximally hostile and maximally committed. For her part, the Speaker has long had a troubled relationship with the CCP, having criticized Beijing on the grounds of human rights and its ongoing occupation of Tibet.Īre relations between Beijing and Washington so bad that the visit could not possibly make things worse? Not likely.
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Indeed, Pelosi has described the reasoning for her visit in such terms. political officials, and in general the need for democracies to push back against the growing global strength of autocracy. citizens to visit Taiwan, the right of Taiwan to host U.S. Many of the justifications for Pelosi’s trip have centered around the right of politically relevant U.S. However, the impact of the visit in the medium- and the long-term do not appear to have been carefully considered.Īt this very moment, the apparatus of American foreign policy does not require an additional crisis, which Pelosi’s visit at the very least risked triggering. Concerns over whether Pelosi’s visit would incur immediate military reaction seem, for the moment, to have been overblown. The United States Speaker of the House left her one-day visit to Taiwan that went counter to express and committed wishes of the People’s Republic of China.