The preferred Washington parlor game for the past week has been: Will she or won’t she?
She is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and the issue is her putative trip to Taiwan this week. Pelosi is leading a Democratic Party Congressional delegation to Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan to discuss trade and governance issues. But Taiwanese media and CNN both reported on Monday that Pelosi is expected to arrive on Tuesday evening (early morning Tuesday, U.S. eastern time).
There will be sighs of relief from the White House and the Pentagon if Pelosi avoids a visit. Both are concerned that her visit, rumored for months, is poorly timed given the high state of tension between the Republic of China and its much bigger neighbor, the People’s Republic of China. Certainly, Beijing’s reactions to Pelosi’s possible visit can fairly be termed hysterical.
China has regarded Taiwan as a renegade province since Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island in 1949 at the end of China’s civil war. Hu Xijin, a fire-breathing columnist for the CCP-controlled Global Times, tweeted: “If US fighter jets escort Pelosi’s plane into Taiwan, it is [an] invasion,” adding that the People’s Liberation Army “has the right to forcibly dispel Pelosi’s plane and the U.S. fighter jets, including firing warning shots and making tactical movement of obstruction. If ineffective, then shoot them down.” That was too much for Twitter, which took Hu’s tweet down.
Although it’s tempting to dismiss such bluster as mere trash talk, it might not be.
Last Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke with President Joe Biden, with the CCP leader admonishing the White House: “Those who play with fire will perish by it,” according to Beijing’s account of the call. “It is hoped that the U.S. will be clear-eyed about this.” Moreover, the Pentagon is signaling that its previous view that Beijing would not make any military move on Taiwan until later in this decade, at the earliest, may be too optimistic. Instead, according to recent U.S. intelligence, a PLA invasion of Taiwan may happen in the next year or two. Given this tension, it’s worth asking why Pelosi proposed a Taiwan stop in the first place.
Pelosi has a history of criticizing the Chinese Communist Party, particularly on human rights. Cynics have noted that the trip might also serve as a nominal good deed to offset the speaker’s husband making handsome profits off his investments tangentially linked to Taiwan issues. Plus, there’s the irony that Pelosi heads the San Francisco Bay wing of her party, which has a serious and long-standing problem with Chinese espionage and influence operations.
Although congressional leaders have visited Taiwan before, nobody of Pelosi’s stature has done so in a quarter-century, not since Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich. But that visit, three months before Britain handed Hong Kong back to Beijing, was a different era. The CCP was better tempered, and its mood toward Washington was more cordial. Most important, the PLA was much less ready to wage war.
However, the possibility of war between nuclear powers over Taiwan is no longer a theoretical concern. Beijing’s willingness to resort to force to keep its “renegade province” out of the American orbit should not be underestimated. As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s late February invasion of his neighbor Ukraine demonstrates, major powers sometimes do violent things that seem irrational to the postmodern Western mind. Neither are Americans adept at understanding just how important Taiwan is for Beijing. While I detest the CCP and am a hard-line anti-Communist on principle, we should attempt to grasp why Xi and his party care so much about this. Let’s apply an analogy.
Suppose that in the spring of 1865, instead of surrendering at Appomattox, Gen. Robert E. Lee, with Jefferson Davis, led the defeated Confederate Army to exile in Cuba. From that island, 90 miles off Florida, protected by our then-rivals France and Britain, the Confederate government in exile claimed to be the real United States government. This went on for decades. From Cuba, the exiled CSA insisted to the world that it was the real America, and eventually, it’s 1938 and, for Washington, our terrible Civil War still has not ended. How can it have ended when the losers sit right off our shores, taunting us? Many Americans want to crush that arrogant rebel regime, no matter the consequences, to restore the country. To repair what is currently shattered.
Americans are uncomfortable reading that since the Chinese Communists are the bad guys while the democratic Taiwanese are the good guys. But that analogy is roughly how the Taiwan situation looks to many in mainland China, and we’re not talking them out of it.
This really comes down to the strategic principle termed the value of the object. Put simply, who cares more about the fate of Taiwan: China or the United States? It’s fine to extol Taiwan’s democratic virtues, particularly compared to the very undemocratic Chinese Communist Party. But are Americans willing to risk nuclear war to keep Taiwan out of Beijing’s control?
Not to mention that Pentagon war games that simulate how we might defend Taiwan from a PLA invasion — I’ve participated in some of them — seldom go very well. Although the Pentagon hasn’t leveled with the public, the possibility of our military defeat in a war to defend Taiwan is quite real. Then, there’s Taiwan’s lack of seriousness about defending itself. While Taipei professes to be terrified of Beijing, its military efforts tell a different tale. Only over the last couple of years has Taipei’s defense budget risen (barely) past 2% of GDP (it was 1.7% as recently as 2019). To compare, Israel spends almost 6% of its GDP on defense, while Poland, terrified of neighboring Russia, is raising military outlays to 5% of its GDP. Taiwan could make itself well-nigh unconquerable by the mainland by transforming its military into a well-trained and equipped force ready to resist a PLA invasion. Taipei chooses not to do that, preferring American rescue if Beijing opts to resolve the dispute by force.
Americans need a frank and honest debate about what we are willing to do for Taiwan in the face of increasingly likely Chinese aggression. Speaker Pelosi — who can now either enrage Beijing by showing up in Taipei or give the Communists a propaganda win by not showing up — would be wise to cancel any visit to Taipei this week.
Still, this invites an overdue discussion about what the U.S. is truly prepared to do to defend Taiwan.
John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.
