Did Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit Backfire?

At Foreign Policy Craig Singleton says that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan backfired badly:

History is replete with unintended consequences, few of which mattered much. Not so in the case of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent layover in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital. The trip, which garnered rare bipartisan support in Washington, aimed to demonstrate U.S. confidence in Taiwan’s leadership. Instead, the visit and China’s reaction to it left the region reeling, with Beijing apparently more confident than ever that it could retake the self-governed island nation by force if necessary.

Simply put, Pelosi’s ill-timed gambit backfired—and badly. Worse yet, its destabilizing effect was entirely predictable and completely preventable, which explains why White House and U.S. Defense Department officials repeatedly requested that she postpone, not cancel, her travel to Taipei. Sure, Pelosi faced political pressure not to back down once her plans became public. But it was always clear that China would exact a high price for her meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, which need not have taken place in Taiwan or coincided with the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to achieve its stated objective.

The House of Representatives has very little constitutional role in foreign policy. I honestly don’t understand why President Biden didn’t ground the official aircraft Speaker Pelosi used on the trip—it’s well within his authority. The explanations most obvious to me are that either he didn’t actually know anything about the trip (unlikely), he agreed with Speaker Pelosi, Speaker Pelosi made the trip at the president’s behest, or the president didn’t want to offend Speaker Pelosi.

Here’s an interesting amplification from later in the piece:

To be fair, Pelosi’s trip did not occur in a vacuum. Beijing and Washington have been talking past each other on the Taiwan issue since U.S. President Joe Biden assumed office, with each side believing that the other is unilaterally seeking to alter the status quo. Unquestionably, China has endeavored to find a reason—any reason—to justify its increasing belligerence toward Taiwan. But Beijing’s growing skepticism about Washington’s adherence to the “One China” policy can, in large part, be attributed to Biden’s repeated mischaracterization of the United States’ security commitments as outlined in the Taiwan Relations Act, including his claim that the United States has a “commitment” to aid Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion—whereas the act only requires Washington “to provide Taiwan with arms of a defense character” without any guarantee the United States will intervene militarily. Certainly, these gaffes do not excuse Beijing’s behavior. But the regime’s response to Pelosi’s trip—coming just months before a major Chinese Communist Party leadership shake-up—was hardly surprising.

That would certainly seem to lend some weight to my speculation that President Biden actually agreed with Speaker Pelosi. This is risky business.