This article appears in the August 12, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Nancy Pelosi Plays the Elephant Cow in Taiwan’s China Shop
[Print version of this article]
Aug. 7—The world needed Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan like it needs another global pandemic. The acute confrontation between the U.S.A. and China has now been added to the extremely dangerous and escalating crisis over Ukraine, and the dynamic of the geopolitical confrontation between the leading nuclear powers towards a nuclear third world war has been further escalated. The U.S.A. has thus officially buried its contractually guaranteed compliance with the One China policy, which was also confirmed by the UN General Assembly in Resolution 2758, and sent an unmistakable signal to the forces in Taiwan that are working towards Taiwan’s secession.
In doing so, Pelosi deliberately crossed a red line for China, because she visited Taiwan not only as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, but also in her capacity as second in the presidential succession, after the Vice President, and thus as a representative of the U.S. administration. This violates the core interests of the People’s Republic of China, which endured a long history of imperial wars and encroachments in the 19th Century, which it calls the “century of humiliations,” and which likewise in the 20th Century had to fend off many foreign destabilizations before attaining national sovereignty.
Just to give the reader a rough idea, Pelosi’s visit is a bit like Russian Prime Minister [Mikhail] Mishustin going to the Free State of Saxony in Germany and encouraging the state government there to declare independence from the federal government in Berlin.
Countless official statements by the Chinese government and media had long warned that attempts to support Taiwan’s independence, through arms sales and ostentatious measures such as opening a quasi-embassy in Washington, would jeopardize the long-term goal of peaceful reunification and precipitate a forcible reunification.
It is only thanks to the apparently boundless arrogance that has reigned in the West for some time, that all of China’s warnings that it would do everything in its power to resist U.S.-sponsored secession attempts were ignored by Pelosi. It really shouldn’t have surprised anyone that the People’s Liberation Army reacted with maneuvers in six zones around Taiwan, partly with live ammunition, and the launch of rockets that could theoretically have hit targets in Taiwan. As the PLA’s website reported, these maneuvers included practicing a blockade, attacking targets in the China Sea and Taiwanese territory, airspace control, and combat capability of the troops. In other words, it was an exercise for the military takeover of Taiwan.
Barring further provocations, China will be in no rush to carry out these maneuvers in earnest, as China’s conventional military superiority is overwhelming, given its geographic location—the U.S. is 7,000 miles away. China can afford to show enormous patience because peaceful reunification with Taiwan is only a matter of time.
However, as President Biden sent increasingly clear signals of support for Taiwan independence early in his term, eventually announcing that the U.S. would defend Taiwan after an “incursion” from the mainland, articles in the Chinese media abounded that the PLA would win a military confrontation with the U.S. with ease. However, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg recalled plans by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to use nuclear weapons in the event of a military standoff over Taiwan, citing the Rand Corporation study on the subject entitled, “The 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis: A Documented History.” Ellsberg appealed to today’s potential whistle-blowers to report on debates at the Pentagon involving the use of nuclear weapons.
‘A Swamp of Confrontations’
China’s resolve is also reflected in the severing of various civilian, military and diplomatic ties with U.S. agencies. Thus there will be no more exchanges between military officials, no more consultation on maritime security, illegal immigrants, international organized crime and drug trafficking, and climate change. China has also started imposing sanctions on Taiwan, e.g., on the export of sand, which Taiwan needs not only for the construction sector but for its world leadership in the production of semiconductors, i.e., chips of all kinds.
One of the most important aspects of Pelosi’s trip was her largely overlooked meeting with Mark Liu, Chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), which controls 53% of the world market share of contracts with companies that make chips in other countries. From the start, the Biden Administration has tried to lure TSMC into investing in the United States, including helping them to buy a site in Arizona in 2021 to set up an office there, due for completion in 2024. If Taiwan were to be reunited with the mainland, those plans would be shattered prematurely.
Of course, the unspeakable German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock could not resist taking the side of the U.S. administration in the conflict and promising support to Taiwan in the event that military action were to take place, which the Chinese Foreign Ministry categorically rejected. Chinese Ambassador to Britain Zheng Zeguang warned that planned visits to Taiwan by British parliamentarians would be met with the same measures. Germany will fare no better if eight members of the Bundestag Human Rights Committee stick to their intention to travel to Taiwan in October. The Chinese embassy in Berlin has now warned the Europeans that they should consider whether they should continue supporting “the dangerous and provocative actions of the U.S.A.” and thus “dragging the world into a swamp of confrontations.”
This is putting it mildly. The world is about to plunge into unprecedented chaos, with the threat of mass unemployment, impoverishment of large parts of society, hyperinflationary expropriation of the savings of the population, social conflicts of unimaginable proportions, world hunger and poverty, new refugee catastrophes, and war that will become a nuclear world war in which all life on earth will be wiped out in a nuclear winter.
It is high time for a broad discussion among the population to force the so-called Establishment to reconsider the numerous wrong decisions of the past decades, and to change course in the direction of the common good. If even the former head of the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, can say that NATO, too, made serious mistakes and that the decisive sin was the unrestricted offer to Ukraine and Georgia in Bucharest in 2008 for their admission to NATO—why can’t we draw the appropriate conclusions from it?
To Overcome the Crisis
At its conference on April 9, the Schiller Institute made the comprehensive proposal that we urgently need a new global security and development architecture that takes into account the interests of every single country on earth. President Xi Jinping presented very similar ideas with his Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative.
Together with Lyndon LaRouche’s proposal, made years ago, to replace the hopelessly bankrupt transatlantic financial system with a New Bretton Woods system whose primary goal is to end poverty on this planet for all people, these are programmatic proposals which can overcome the crisis, and which the nations in the tradition of the Non-Aligned Movement are urgently considering again today. The BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the African Union, and other Global South organizations are all striving to achieve and implement a new just world economic order.
Instead of acting like attack-Chihuahuas for the big bully, and contributing to what is potentially the greatest catastrophe of mankind—with what is, in any case, a hopeless attempt to contain Russia, China and the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement—German and European politics must return to their best traditions and draw upon our reservoir of scientific and technological advances to help solve the world’s gigantic problems.
Bold and self-reliant people must now confront the narratives orchestrated by the media and intelligence agencies, which make confrontation the order of the day and pretend that even nuclear war is something to get used to. We need cooperation instead of confrontation, diplomacy instead of saber-rattling, civilized dealings with one another and with other nations without threats that we intend to “ruin” them.
Above all, however, we need a vision of a developing humanity. Do we want to be a barbarian species, or a creative humanity, fulfilling the promise that lies in our nature as sentient beings? If you belong in the second category, then join us.
zepp-larouche@eir.de
