By Caitlin Johnstone
July 30, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi has continued to pour gasoline
on the
foreign policy dumpster fire that is her
planned visit to Taiwan next month, now
reportedly encouraging other members of
congress to come along for the ride.
“Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has
invited a small group of lawmakers on her
official trip to Taiwan, including the top
Democrat and Republican on the House Foreign
Affairs Committee,” NBC News
reports.
This trip, which Beijing perceives as an
egregious transgression of Washington’s
longstanding one-China policy, is already so
incendiary that the Pentagon is now planning
to send in fighter jets and other war
machinery to protect Pelosi’s plane in case
of attacks by the Chinese military.
AP
reports:
While U.S. officials say they have
little fear that Beijing would attack
the U.S. House speaker’s plane, they are
aware that a mishap, misstep or
misunderstanding could endanger her
safety. So the Pentagon is developing
plans for any contingency.
Officials told The Associated Press
that if Pelosi goes to Taiwan — still an
uncertainty — the military would
increase its movement of forces and
assets in the Indo-Pacific region. They
declined to provide details, but said
that fighter jets, ships, surveillance
assets and other military systems would
likely be used to provide overlapping
rings of protection for her flight to
Taiwan and any time on the ground there.
This risk alone would be reason enough to
cancel the trip, but adding to the concern
is the fact that the Chinese government has
begun warning against it using the same “red
line” language that Russia was using in the
lead-up to its invasion of Ukraine.
“We have repeatedly made clear our our
firm opposition to Speaker Pelosi’s
potential visit to Taiwan. If the US side
insists on making the visit and challenges
China’s red line, it will be met with
resolute countermeasures,” China’s Foreign
Ministry spokesperson Zhao
Lijiang said Wednesday. “The U.S. must
assume full responsibility for any serious
consequence arising thereof.”
China has been using this same language
since news first broke about Pelosi’s
planned trip, with Chinese state media
Global Times
saying last week that “visiting Taiwan
is definitely a red line that Pelosi must
never cross.”
During the lead-up to the invasion of
Ukraine, Russia was issuing similar warnings
using the same phrase. Putin warned
over and
over again that the west was taking
Moscow’s “red lines” on Ukrainian neutrality
too lightly, and Washington
brazenly dismissed those warnings while
continuing to
float the possibility of future NATO
membership for Ukraine.
“I don’t accept anybody’s red lines,”
President Biden told
the press in December of last year when
asked about the warnings.
Weeks later Putin made good on his
threat, launching a horrific war that has
killed thousands and which
could easily have been prevented with a
few low-cost concessions.
“This is that red line that I talked
about multiple times,” Putin
said. “They have crossed it.”
Was it worth it?
Of course not.
Failing to learn from history is one
thing; failing to learn even from the last
five months is quite another. Pelosi and
whoever’s orchestrating her trip should
abort those plans immediately, because the
dangers that are being toyed with here are
not worth the moral victory of being able to
say that China didn’t make you swerve in the
stupidest
game of “chicken” that has ever been
played.
And that’s exactly what’s happening here.
China’s “red line” warnings make it clear
that Pelosi landing in Taiwan will at best
kick up brinkmanship between the two nations
another notch, while Republicans are
aggressively pushing the narrative that
if the trip doesn’t happen it will mean that
“Communist
China is winning.” The political
pressure is on the side of escalation, with
even
progressive Democrats supporting Pelosi’s
move and calls for de-escalation and
detente becoming increasingly relegated to
the sidelines.
We shouldn’t have to deal with this. We
shouldn’t be watching a whole new country
added to the potential flashpoints for
nuclear armageddon just because some
octogenarian in congress is too old to care
if her plane gets shot down. We shouldn’t be
risking another deadly conflict which stands
to benefit no ordinary person over what
amounts to nothing more than petty egoic
chest-pounding.
We shouldn’t have to hope that the
world’s most powerful people don’t take some
idiotic risks for no good reason which could
hurt us all or even end up getting us all
killed. We should not have systems in place
which can allow the worst things imaginable
to happen if the tyrants who rule over us
don’t happen to make the wisest decision on
any given day.
Our futures shouldn’t depend upon the
better angels of the worst monsters. Those
with power have far too much of it, and the
ordinary people of this world have not
nearly enough.
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