During Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, US military power puts arrogant China in its place.
The Chinese aggression during Speaker Pelosi's travel to Taiwan serves as a message to other democratic countries not to strengthen ties with Taipei, but it also raises concerns about President Xi Jinping's capacity to deal with the US challenge in the Indo-Pacific.
The determination of the United States to protect Taiwan and China's leadership's wolf-warrior reaction to Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei have transformed the Indo-Pacific into a new theatre of conflict with significant military implications for QUAD nations.
The House Speaker went one step further on her historic one-day visit to Taipei by vowing a "iron clad" commitment to Taiwan, just two months after US President Joseph Biden announced his willingness to military defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion. The Chinese response essentially followed the PLA's approach of information warfare, in which the enemy is subjected to a barrage of half-truths and dissuaded by the extrapolated military might of the Chinese Communist Party via specialized propaganda media and Twitter accounts.
There are benefits to the Chinese threat of reprisal and outlandish threats against the US for moving forward with the Pelosi visit. The US is the only democratic country with the military might to call the Communist Party of China's bluff, therefore it will make other democracies rethink their decision to engage in diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Europe just lacks the capacity and desire to compete with China because trading with Beijing is a top priority for them. In addition to being historically members of the chopsticks club, the Xi Jinping regime's reduction of ASEAN to a non-aligned position will benefit it. None of these nations want to get crushed in a battle between two mammoths. There is no other reason that the Forbidden Kingdom opened its heavy metals doors for the visit of the Indonesian President on July 26.
A further benefit was Russia's retaliation against China for its assistance in the Ukraine war by denouncing the US for inflaming the situation by bringing in Pelosi. Reiterating the "One China" policy, which sees Taiwan as a part of the Middle Kingdom, client states like Pakistan also raised their hands in favor of Beijing.
The Xi Jinping regime will also be negatively impacted by Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan and the haughty Chinese response because they abruptly raise the risk profile of the Communist regime and will cause US, European, and Japanese multinational corporations to reconsider their decision to increase their investments in China.
While Nancy Pelosi's visit was essentially news less on the Chinese mainland, the subsequent disclosure of the events this week may cause the Chinese people to subtly wonder about the discrepancy between the PLA threat prior to Pelosi's arrival and its delivery on the ground. Questions about President Xi Jinping's capacity to manage the complicated relationship with the US in the future in the context of Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific will also be raised by the way he handled the entirety of Pelosi's visit. The pragmatists inside the Communist Party will reconsider the necessity of engaging the US militarily over Taipei in light of Speaker Pelosi's failure to be deterred by the Chinese war dance. In his role as the eternal leader, President Xi Jinping, this is not promising, it seeks his third term later this year.
The US naval armada in the Philippine Sea, which includes the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group and the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, prevents the PLA from inflaming the situation around Taiwan, with the exception of staging live military drills and allowing fighter aircraft to swarm the democratic island nation in an effort to placate domestic critics. Given the military pace that the wolf warriors have established, the PLA may choose to direct its rage in a different arena. India and Japan should be on the lookout for this.
