House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) expected trip to Taiwan is creating political and foreign policy problems for President Joe Biden as China responds to her travel plans with a rhetorical firestorm.
The White House has tried to water down China’s fire and fury, including threats to shoot down Pelosi’s escort fighter jets. But after Biden shared that “the military” had concerns regarding the prospective stop on Pelosi’s Asia tour, the speaker’s apparent decision to proceed with the visit not only muddles Biden’s “One China” message but also undermines his authority as commander in chief.
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China’s fierce reaction to Pelosi’s trip, still unconfirmed by her office, underscores Biden’s weaknesses internationally, according to former deputy national security adviser Victoria Coates.
The furor surrounding Pelosi’s trip can be contrasted with past official U.S. travel since “delegations from both parties and both Chambers of Congress have routinely visited Taiwan for decades without hostilities breaking out,” the Trump administration alumna and Vandenberg Coalition advisory board member told the Washington Examiner.
“Speaker Pelosi’s trip would be no different unless Beijing thinks it can extract concessions from the Biden administration that previous administrations had not been willing to give,” she said.
The White House countered with a similar argument Monday, with national security spokesman John Kirby repeating that there was precedent for Pelosi’s possible trip and that “nothing has changed” concerning Biden’s position related to Taiwan.
“There is no reason for Beijing to turn a potential visit consistent with long-standing U.S. policy into some sort of crisis or conflict or use it as a pretext to increase aggressive military activity in or around the Taiwan Strait,” he said.
But Pelosi is not any lawmaker in a congressional delegation. If Pelosi travels to Taiwan on Tuesday, as has been reported, she will be the highest-ranking U.S. official to make the trip since then-Speaker Newt Gingrich visited the self-governing island in 1997, 25 years ago.
China has domestic considerations too. The Communist Party’s 20th National Congress, at which President Xi Jinping will likely be reappointed for an unprecedented third term as general secretary, is scheduled for later this year. And with Chinese unification being one of the party’s governing principles, Xi does not want Pelosi’s overnight visit interfering with him securing power until 2027.
At the same time, China hawk Pelosi’s trip complicates Biden’s attempts to support Taiwan without upsetting Beijing amid heightened political, economic, and military tensions, though Biden has caused confusion himself by saying multiple times that the United States would defend Taipei if needed. Aides have then had to clarify his contradiction of strategic ambiguity.
Kirby reiterated Monday that Pelosi, even as a member of the same party as Biden, unlike Republican Gingrich and then-Democratic President Bill Clinton, has a “right” to travel to Taiwan. The former Pentagon press secretary distanced Biden from White House advice to Pelosi against the trip as well. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, among others, has consulted the speaker and her staff on the visit after drafting contingencies for her safety following her arrival.
The American Enterprise Institute’s Zack Cooper, a China-focused senior fellow, downplayed the interplay between Pelosi’s trip and Biden’s stance on Taiwan.
“But it will raise questions in Beijing about whether the United States is shifting away from the U.S. One China policy through a series of actions,” he said. “Another is the Taiwan Policy Act currently under review in the Senate.”
For Bonny Lin, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies China Power Project, Pelosi’s Taiwan trip is unlikely to jeopardize U.S.-China collaboration on climate change, health security, and counternarcotics. Those were three policy areas the White House identified after last week’s more than two-hour phone call between Biden and Xi, their fifth since Biden became president.
“There are relatively limited areas of key foreign policy cooperation between the United States and China now,” Lin said. “As a result, there are few cooperative efforts that China can ‘roll back.’”
Coates agreed, contending that it is “ridiculous” to think China can be “a responsible partner on health security” as COVID-19’s purported country of origin.
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“The notion that China, the world’s largest polluter that recently announced an expansion of its carbon belching coal plants, could suddenly morph into a responsible partner in the conservation of the global climate was always a fantasy — and a dangerous one at that,” she added. “The sooner Joe Biden and John Kerry are disabused of it, the better.”
