President Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is a symbolic move in the context of a war for geopolitical advantage. Her critics, not unreasonably, decry it as a gesture that might carry very painful consequences for the world and for the human species. President Biden, citing his own military, is said to have disapproved of the visit. That he presents himself to the world as a leader who cannot reign in the country’s No.3, or who lacks the authority to simply instruct the commanders of Pelosi’s military escorts to damn well turn back, with Pelosi inside a cage if needs be, seals his image as either hopelessly weak or shamefully complicit in some filthy maneuver. Either one of these is extremely unlikely to be to the advantage of anyone in the USA who is not a part of the neocon cabal that dominates US foreign policy.

Taiwan’s neoliberal elite may take some comfort in their close relations with the USA and the military aid that it represents. Others will be more doubtful, especially those many Taiwanese whose prosperity depends on business and trade with the mainland. Mainland China is Taiwan’s largest export destination. Nor will it necessarily be to US or Taiwanese advantage if, in the heat of pre-war conflict, more skeptical views are aired about Chiang Kai-Shek’s takeover of Taiwan, his audacious claims to the entirety of the mainland and the 38 year military overlordship of Taiwan by Chiang and his clique, and a history of suppression and exploitation of indigenous peoples initiated with the colonization of the island by Japan from 1895 to 1945, when it was ceded to the People’s Republic of China.

It can be argued that Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is an innocent act of friendship, expressed by somebody who clearly and as a matter of definition (she is Speaker of the House of Representatives) represents a US Administration that is heir to Nixon’s 1972 treaty. This commits the USA to a one-China policy even while it keeps open the door to informal friendly relations with Taipei, a nuanced formula that has operated, relatively undisturbed for fifty years.

But perceptions matter. And there is absolutely no question as to Beijing’s strong opposition to the visit, which it believes to be a provocation. This position, too, is entirely understandable in the wake of many factors. These include Trump’s tariff war with China, US military encirclement of China, controversies over China’s South China Sea claims, and US hostility to China’s road-and-belt global economic clout. To these bones of contention must now be added China’s ever-tightening relationship to Russia, its importance as an ally to Russia in opposition to NATO’s provoked war with Russia over Ukraine, and its role as an important sanctions-busting consumer of Russian oil and gas.

There is ample room for speculation as to what motivates the Pelosi visit. When even the celebrated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman expresses grave concern about its wisdom, we can also understand how the visit may also be deeply divisive within the USA itself. And perhaps it is on domestic rather than foreign considerations we should mainly focus. The prospects for the Democratic Party in the November mid-terms are exceedingly bleak. We know that the Party is capable of the most desperate and decadent behavior when faced with electoral disaster, especially when it can call on support from senior figures in the military-industrial complex (CIA, FBI etc.). The Russiagate hoax provides ample testimony. Bad though things may look now, the strategy of acting tough on Ukraine and celebrating its Vogue magazine model and President, Volodmyr Zelenskiy, is only just beginning to backfire, for reasons that would require a separate article. There are even more persistent rumors about Biden’s health and capacity than the rumors pushed by western mainsteam media indulgence of fantasies about Russian President Vladimir Putin.  If Biden is incapacitated, it is difficult to believe that the US ruling establishment could bring itself to tolerate a Harris presidency. Harris has done little to dispel an image of softness and weakness, one more likely to have added to Biden’s electoral woes than detract from them. I don’t pretend to know how exactly Harris would be by-passed, but I am fairly certain that she would be. This leaves the indomitable Pelosi. Is she, with the tacit approval of the ruling elite, now performing the role of grand, aggressively heroic leader, she of Presidential mettle, standing up for poor little Taiwan against the Asian dragon?  

So if it is all just PR for domestic consumption, is there nothing else to worry about? Unfortunately, yes. Under a Pelosi or Pelosi-type presidency, there will be continuing pressure from the military industrial establishment (McGovern has a longer version: the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academic-think-tank complex, or MICIMATT) for her to continue the performance. It desperately needs more and more justifications for its odious power and economic privilege at the expense of the majority of the US citizenry. It has created multiple fronts for war, including Ukraine, Taiwan, Iran, Kosovo, Ethiopia, the Sahel, Venezuela, Cuba, etc. and so forth. What could possibly go wrong. I would rather take heed from the UN Secretary General when he says that we are just one miscalculation away from utter devastation.