“The trip could not have been made at a more inopportune time,” noted the famous New York Times columnist.
The great dangers of the “completely reckless, dangerous and irresponsible”, as he characterizes it, trip of Nancy Pelosi in Taiwanthe famous New York Times commentator Thomas Friedman points out in his article and relays kathimerini.gr.
“Nothing good is going to come of this,” notes the New York Times columnist, and continues: “Taiwan will not become safer or more prosperous because of this purely symbolic visit.” On the contrary, there are “many” “bad” things that “could happen”: among them even the possibility of a Chinese military response that could lead the US to indirect conflicts with China and Russia at the same time, two powers that , as Friedman reminds us, they also have nuclear weapons.
The columnist of New York Times however, it also refers to the attitude of the Europeans. “If you think that the US’s European allies – currently facing another existential war with Russia over Ukraine – will join us if a conflict erupts between the United States and China over Taiwan, a conflict sparked by this unnecessary visit by Nancy Pelosi to Taipei, then you are not reading international developments correctly,” he notes.
According to Friedmanthe priority for the West at the current juncture cannot be other than the war in Ukraine.
Indeed, in its effort to help the Ukrainians against the Russian invasion, the Biden administration held a series of very difficult meetings in the past with the leadership of China, asking Beijing not to enter the Ukraine conflict by providing military aid to Russia.
US President Joe Biden is reported, according to a senior US official, to have personally told Chinese leader Xi Jinping that if China enters the war in Ukraine on the side of Russia (by augmenting Russian forces with Chinese drones, for example), then it will risk losing access to the two most important export markets for Chinese products, which are those of the United States and the European Union.
According to Friedman, the Chinese side all seems to have responded to this American request, as it did not militarily support the Russians on the Ukrainian front despite the fact that Moscow would have wanted such Chinese support.
In such a context of international developments, the New York Times columnist believes that there is actually no reason for Pelosi to visit Taiwan now.
On the contrary, Friedman thinks the timing for such a visit could not be worse.
The war in Ukraine is not over. And in private discussions, US officials are far more worried about Ukraine’s leadership than they show publicly. There is deep mistrust between the White House and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as the New York Times columnist notes.
At the same time, senior US officials believe that Putin may even use nukes if he sees Russian forces losing on the Ukrainian front, as reported.
“Yet, in the midst of all this, are we going to risk a US-China conflict over Taiwan because of an arbitrary, frivolous visit by the Speaker of the House?” asks Thomas Friedman, clearly taking a stand against such a visit, against the which the Biden administration itself has also openly taken a position through the mouth of the president himself as well as national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
If the US is to come into conflict with Beijing, Friedman writes, we (including the US) should at least choose the moment of that conflict and the central issues around which it will revolve.
But now is not the time for a conflict with China, continues the American columnist with an eye on the upcoming 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, expected to be held this fall, and Xi Jinping’s re-election to power.
Instead, by visiting Taiwan, Nancy Pelosi will be effectively giving Xi an opportunity to distract the Chinese themselves from the few failures of Chinese leadership that have gone before: the problems caused by the Zero-Covid strategy and the grueling lockdowns, the real estate bubble that threatens a banking crisis, etc.
Even Taiwan’s current leadership itself might not want this Pelosi visit now, according to Friedman, as no one wants to give Beijing the pretext to take military action against Taiwan…
New York Times
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