I’ll be taking a bit of a mental health day, so to start things off I want to point to two not-too-long but insightful posts that discuss the dynamics of what Pelosi did, and its effects going forward.
Moon of Alabama has a very good piece, which points out some of the larger implications for what looks increasingly like grandstanding for the domestic political front:
Moon begins by mentioning the now upcoming Chinese live fire drills, which will ignore heretofore respected lines in the … water. Obviously this will basically amount to a blockade, since no shipper will want to come near those activities. As you’ll see from the map, one of the areas is in very close proximity to Taiwan’s major port of Kaohsiung:
But here are the additional issues Moon discusses, with links to other sources:
Many analysts these disruptive live fire drills may become routine, which will have a serious effect on trade for Taiwan.
China is also imposing selective trade restrictions, “including a ban on the export of natural sand, and a halt on imports of fish and fruit products from the island.”
As Moon points out, the ban on exports of natural sand to Taiwan—and China is by far the major source for natural sand—will hit Taiwan’s construction industry hard. Sand is required for concrete. Thus, costs will skyrocket.
China will “sanction” persons and organizations that have supported Taiwanese secessionists.
Moon also cites a Guardian article that reports that 2/3 of Taiwanese believed that Pelosi’s grandstanding was “destabilizing.”
Other observers found Pelosi’s responses to questions from Taiwanese “tone deaf”. When asked about the possible effects of her trip on Taiwan’s economy Pelosi responded that many Taiwanese businesses were already planning to relocate to the US.
Moon observes that "You will get sanctioned while we will steal your prime advantage in chip manufacturing," is not exactly an uplifting message.
Yesterday we reported the negative South Korean reaction—failing to offer an official greeting to Pelosi. Pelosi was reportedly miffed, but the NYT observes that other regional countries also felt that Pelosi’s stunt was counter productive:
Pelosi’s visit may also damage a push by the White House to shore up support against China from key allies in the region who analysts say have felt sidelined by the trip, and frustrated by the spiraling tensions.
None of this helps Taiwanese. However, neither does it help the United States, which will be correctly perceived to care little for the interests of its “allies”.
For a different perspective, see Larry Johnson:
WHY IT IS CRITICAL TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE OTHER “GUY” THINKS
Johnson believes China was foolish to make threats that it didn’t then back up with action. I’m not so sure, but of course there’s always a case for that position. Failure to follow through does introduce a degree of uncertainty into relations and can even lead to a perception that China is somehow toothless or lacking in willingness to defend its interests.
Johnson also notes, on the other hand, that the US has also been sending confusing signals, which reinforce foreign perceptions of the US which may not conform with reality and which certainly harm US interests:
So do you think it matters if the United States correctly understands what the leaders of Russia and China are thinking? And, conversely, does it matter if the leaders of Russia and China correctly discern the intentions of U.S. leaders? The answer–YES on both counts.
Sadly, my impression is that a large majority of Americans do NOT believe that what foreign leaders think actually matters. The common view—expressed so well by Don Surber yesterday—is that America is right and anyone we don’t like or who disagrees with us is wrong, and that’s the end of it. The Neocon version of “diplomacy”—foreigners can be our vassals or our enemies, they can like it or lump it—has been our default version of diplomacy for several decades. There’s no point in trying to understand non-Americans because the world is a simple place. Anyway, wars are things that happen far away to people we don’t know. Or some version of that.
What did the Chinese (and the Russians as well) perceive? They saw political schizophrenia in Washington. On the one had, spokes-model John Kirby insisted that the United States still opposed “independence” for Taiwan and accepted as policy that Taiwan is part of China. But then you have Pelosi and other members of Congress declaring their support for a “democratically free” Taiwan–codeword for “independent”. Raising the valid question–is anyone in charge? Who is calling the shots?
In my experience in dealing with senior officials from more than 65 governments, there is a surprising consensus. Almost all believe that the publicly stated position of the United States is a deception or a half-truth and that the U.S. is playing stupid or crazy in order to hide a shrewd, complex plan. For example, in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, I was questioned by officials from several governments (I was teaching a Senior Crisis Management Seminar for the State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Training Program) about what was the real purpose/objective in taking out Saddam and disbanding Iraq. What was our real plan, they wanted to know.
When I tried to explain there was no hidden strategy behind the chaos that was unleashed in Iraq because the Bush team failed to put in place a stable government, my foreign interlocutors did not believe me. ...
What makes the current international situation so perilous, whether you are looking at China or at Russia in Ukraine, are misconceptions compounded by failures in communication. … There is credible evidence that Russia’s previous belief that there was a way to find mutual agreement between Moscow and Washington has been irretrievably ruptured.
We face a comparable dilemma in the breakdown of communication between Washington and Beijing. False assumptions reinforced by wrong conclusions almost inevitably lead to a deadly miscalculation. Normally, the national intelligence agencies of a nation are supposed to provide a dose of truth and reality. That is the real danger facing America now. The CIA and the FBI are politically compromised and are institutionally averse to telling the President and his team they are wrong. While I no longer have access to current U.S. intelligence, I still hear things through the grapevine of former colleagues and the news is unsettling. …
The Russians and Chinese literally refuse to believe the American foreign policy establishment could be so stupendously stupid. Sounds like as good an epitaph for the Empire’s tombstone as I’ve heard so far.
https://archive.ph/FCytl#selection-325.0-325.3
In the above-linked article, Thomas L. Friedman of the NYT spins the Biden Administration's position on Mrs Pelosi's excellent adventure (published before she touched down in Taipei).
While Friedman’s article is mostly about the folly of Pelosi’s adventure in Taiwan, the article opens with a fairly straightforward and unambiguous outline of U.S. foreign policy. I found it fascinating, as it seemingly transparently describes our current over-arching foreign policy, presumably as informed directly by ‘senior U.S. officials’. Read on, and you can decide whether it is a policy based on reality, whether it is a policy likely to succeed, and whether it is a policy you can support based on your own view of the state of the world and its likely consequences.
Friedman reports that he has been told by ‘senior U.S. officials’ that the U.S.’s Number #1 foreign policy goal is to ensure that Ukraine is able to stop, and, if possible’, reverse, Russia’s ‘unprovoked invasion’ of Ukraine, which, it is claimed, poses ‘a direct threat to the stability of the whole European Union’. If this is true, I suppose the U.S. officials would have to view the Ukrainian conflict as also posing a direct threat to the stability of the entire world. Unsurprisingly, Russia’s view of the United States’ Ukraine policy is apparently not a factor in our policy.
Friedman reports that the U.S. and NATO are backing this effort by giving Ukraine ‘intelligence support and a significant number of advanced weapons’, which ‘have done serious damage’ to Russia’s military, which, he reports, leads to the possibility that Ukraine might eventually prevail, ostensibly because ‘Putin’s arsenal has been diminished by five months of grinding war’. There is no mention, of course, of the alternative view, espoused by observers like Alexander Mercouris and Douglas Macgregor that Ukraine is losing the war and that Russia retains sufficient economic and military resources to decisively win the war.
Notwithstanding our support, however, Friedman does warn that U.S. officials have advised him that there is apparently growing and ‘deep mistrust’ between the White House and Zelensky. He says that ‘[i]t is as if we don’t want to look too closely under the hood in Kyiv for fear of what corruption or antics we might see, when we have invested so much there.’ He also warns that the conflict is fraught with uncertainties, given that ‘dangerous surprises that can pop out on any given day’. And, U.S. officials further warn that Putin would ‘consider using a small nuclear weapon against Ukraine if he sees his army facing certain defeat’. Friedman does not explain how beneficial to the U.S. our support for Ukraine might turn out to be if it is sabotaged by Ukrainian corruption or ‘antics’ or results in dangerous surprises, including the possible use of nuclear weapons.
To further our policy goals Friedman reports that the crack U.S. foreign policy team of Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan have apparently recently held ‘a series of very tough meetings with China’s leadership’, where they have implored Beijing to help the US defeat Russia ‘by not providing military assistance to Russia.’ (Its hard to see how ‘tough’ these meetings could have been if we were ‘imploring’.)
To back up his entreaties, Biden apparently warned Xi that if China ‘enter[s] the war’ in Ukraine on Russia’s side, it would be risking access to its ‘two most important export markets — the United States and the European Union’. Friedman was apparently told that China has thus far not provided military aid to Putin – whether or not this is the result of Biden’s imploring is unclear. But he does not explain whether growing Chinese and Russian trade, and other indicia of Russian-Chinese cooperation is not in effect Chinese support for Russia and whether specific Chinese ‘military aid’ is something that Russia has actually requested or needs. Nor does he explain what leverage the U.S. has to impose trade restrictions on China given the enormous amount of current and necessary imports which the U.S. cannot source from any place other than China and especially given the looming impact of a global recession.
It is in the light of this foreign policy, Friedman writes, that Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan ‘against President Biden’s wishes’ and ‘is utterly reckless, dangerous and irresponsible’.
Since its my view that the Pelosi trip was nothing more than political theater for U.S. voter consumption, I’m not too concerned about the consequences of her visit for U.S./China/Taiwan relations. In my opinion, these will unfold in the coming weeks and months and years regardless of Nancy Pelosi. But I did find Friedman’s recitation of U.S. foreign policy as it relates to Ukraine sobering and chilling, since it suggests that we are indisputably in this war and we are in it, as Lindsey Graham has said, until the last Ukrainian dies or until Putin fires off a nuke, because, we are told, the stability of the European Union, and thus the world, is at stake. Even though we don’t trust the deeply corrupt government of Ukraine…or its ‘antics’, whatever that means.
Friedman's piece is thus very informative, and very disturbing.