Biden’s Taiwan Strategy Is Flawed Whether Pelosi Goes or Not
On trade, military aid and pushing democracy, Washington’s China rhetoric has overtaken its China policy.
Let her go.
Photographer: Nathan Howard/Getty Images
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to go to Taiwan, to demonstrate solidarity with that besieged democracy. The Chinese government would prefer she didn’t, and President Joe Biden — worried about finding himself in a major crisis in the Western Pacific — apparently agrees.
In one sense, this controversy over Pelosi’s proposed visit is just part of the standard arm-wrestling between Beijing and Washington over Taiwan’s place in the world. But there may also be something deeper in Biden’s anxiety about a potential Taiwan crisis: a realization that America’s China policy is courting dangers the US isn’t ready to handle.