Nancy Pelosi Is Rolling the Dice on World War III
Nancy Pelosi is in Taiwan. The trip will accomplish nothing except ratcheting up tensions with one nuclear-armed superpower while the United States is already in a proxy war with another.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi leaves the Legislative Yuan during her visit to Taiwan, August 3, 2022. (Annabelle Chih / Getty Images)
Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan — a pointless trip that ratchets up tensions with one nuclear-armed superpower just as the United States finds itself knee-deep in a potentially catastrophic proxy war with another.
President Joe Biden is hardly a pacifist. But even he discouraged her from going, noting that the military thought it was a stupid risk. Hell, Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist who can generally be counted on to be recklessly enthusiastic about American military power, has described Pelosi’s visit as “dangerous and irresponsible” — arguing that “Taiwan will not be more secure or more prosperous as a result of this purely symbolic visit, and a lot of bad things could happen.”
Bringing the US and China Closer to the Brink
The United States has poured tens of billions of dollars into Ukraine’s war effort as well as being more directly involved in semi-covert operations to assassinate Russian generals and sink Russian ships. (I don’t know how “covert” an operation is if “intelligence sources” turn right around and brag about it to the New York Times.) Crucially, China so far has not provided similar assistance to its ally Russia — or at least not yet.
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