what to Joe Biden ruined a celebration Xi Jinping It came like a glove. the visit of Nancy Pelosi a Taiwan It gave the Chinese leader an opportunity to stir nationalist emotions just as the cooling of the economy adds to the unease generated by the totalitarian methods he used against the pandemic.
Instead, the head of the White House voltage escalation that caused the tour of the speaker of the House of Representatives, eclipsed the achievement he had just obtained in the war against terrorism: the death of the head of Al Qaeda killed in Kabul.
The American drone that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri compensated, to some extent, the stain left by the withdrawal from Afghanistan. At the time, as the world watched in amazement as planes took off with swarms of Afghans hanging from their wings, Biden assured that Washington would continue to fight terrorism in Afghanistan but that it no longer needed to have troops there to do so.
The death of Al Qaeda chief in Kabul it became the proof that, indeed, the war against terrorism can continue without US troops in Afghanistan. Furthermore, the accurate attack ended none other than the creator of global terrorism. Osama Bin Laden’s number two had helped him conceive and organize the structure of “sleeping cells” that are activated from a central neuron.
The Saudi sheikh was the leader for his mystical charisma and for being the financial brain of Al Qaeda. But the Egyptian doctor who left the family clinic in Cairo to cure mujahideen Afghans wounded in combat against the Soviets, was the strategic brain and organizer of the most shocking and devastating attacks.
He had organized the attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar el Salam in 1998, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole military ship in Yemen, and the attack with passenger planes on 11 September 2001.
That strategist of terrorism who had assumed the leadership of Al Qaeda when elite commandos killed Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abottabbad, was flaunting Biden like a war trophy when Nancy Pelosi landed in Taipei, generating the Chinese reaction that looks like the prelude to an invasion of Taiwan.
It’s not the first time China, Taiwan and the United States prowl the edge of a war. The first escalation of tensions occurred in 1954, when Chiang Kai-shek deployed troops to the Matsu and Quemoy islands with the intention of jumping to the mainland and restarting the fight against the communists. As Mao Tse-tung responded by bombing these islands, Washington signed a mutual defense treaty with what was then called the Republic of China, and threatened Beijing with a nuclear attack.
In 1958 the second great escalation took place. Eisenhower moved the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to help Kuomintang forces repel a Communist army offensive at Matsu and Quemoy. While the third spike in tension was after Chou En-lai and Kissinger negotiated the understanding that sealed the Nixon and Mao hug by which Washington began to consider the island as Beijing considers it, a “Chinese province in rebellion”, but obtaining the Chinese commitment not to attack it or attempt unilateral reunification.
That voltage spike was caused by the Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui traveled to New York, although the main reason is that he was the first leader of the Kuomintang who renounced the reunification by defeating the CCP that Ciang Kai-shek wanted, to postulate the independence of Taiwan as a goal.
Beijing reacted with military maneuvers that were answered with the aircraft carriers Independence and Nimitz patrolling the strait. But Defense Secretary William Perry made it clear that he did not expect the moderate Jiang Zemin to invade at that escalation.
Xi Jinping It’s not Jiang Zemin. He has more power, more geopolitical ambitions and also more determination to implement Chinese leadership at all levels. In addition, China today has twice the military power and weight in the world economy than at that time.
In 1997, for the first time a Speaker of the House of Representatives traveled to Taiwan. But it was a different case because it was about Newt Gingrich, an ultra-conservative Republican who, together with Kenneth Starr, the prosecutor who tormented bill clinton with the Lewinsky case, he was an arch-enemy of that president. Therefore, China did not see an American hostility against it, but rather a Republican hostility against Clinton. The question is why Pelosi ignored Biden’s request, if the two belong to the same party.
She has always been the most critical voice of the Chinese regime, but the head of the White House has been maintaining for weeks contacts with Xi Jinping so that China does not deliver to Russia the weapons that it asks for. The priority of the Western powers is not in Asia but in Central Europe, where they are trying to prevent Vladimir Putin from achieving the totality of what he set out to do when he invaded Ukraine.
What Pelosi denounced with her trip is the crescendo of Chinese pressure on Taiwan, which includes a reduction in Taiwanese imports, a boycott of Chinese tourism on the island and cyber attacks. According to the veteran legislator, if Washington does not point out the red line that he must not cross, Xi will feel free to invade Taiwan. But Pelosi’s decision could have the opposite effect.
The move by the Democratic leader increased the risk of the country that was left stunned by the war drums that China has beaten since the controversial visit. The danger represented by this spike in tension can be measured in the scale of the naval maneuvers, which included missiles passing over the island and military exercises with live ammunition.
His trip could not only accelerate Xi Jinping’s plan for China to impose its control over the island; he could also decide the Chinese leader to collaborate fully with the head of the Kremlin, sending him the weapons he demands to crush the Ukrainian resistance.
In addition to increasing the possibility that the Russian army will increase its destructive capacity in Ukraine by incorporating Chinese weapons, it exposed an unprecedented fracture in the Democratic leadership that is governing the United States. Y Joe Biden looks weaker since Pelosi ignored his fair request when he tried to strengthen himself by announcing the death of Aymán al Zawahiri, the prey he hunted in Kabul.
