The Smoke Eater for Aug. 1, 2022
Pelosi, power trips, and puppers
Good morning, this is The Smoke Eater for Monday, August 1, 2022, and Taiwan heavy metal is not what you'd expect.
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ABOVE THE FOLD
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Singapore last night ahead of planned diplomatic trip to the South Pacific. This morning, CNN began reporting US and Taiwanese officials are preparing for Pelosi to visit Taiwan.
Fearing a rather predictable tantrum from the Chinese, the Biden administration had been quietly working to discourage the trip. Military officials were concerned the trip could spark a(nother) totally avoidable international incident ahead of the China's Communist Party Conference where Chinese President Xi Jin Ping is expected to nominated for an unprecedented third term.
Pelosi's power trip comes ahead of her own reelection bid, and it's still unclear if she too will run for yet another term as Speaker should Democrats beat the odds in November. Pelosi's San Francisco district is about one-third Asian-American, and the CCP has a special dislike for seeing as she’s spent 30 years dumping on the CPP. In 1991, Pelosi went to Tienanmen Square to pay respects to democracy activists, royally pissing off the CCP who still maintain nothing happened in June of 1989 in Tienanmen Square.
In response to the trip, Chinese officials have avoided their usual nastygrams in favor of saber rattling. Chinese military officials have said China would "defend" Taiwan, and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sent overly dramatic shitposts calling for war on the state-owned social media.
TLDR: Taiwan broke up with China back in the 1940s and China has never accepted it got dumped. Uncle Sam has sent a lot of weapons to Taiwan over the years, but we've never made our relationship Facebook official to avoid pissing off Taiwan's creepy, possessive ex. China has been stalking Taiwan for decades, and has taken to blowing up Uncle Sam's phone, comments and DMs with death threats. Recently, Taiwan's neighbors started to freak out when China began rolling up and down the street screaming it owned the neighborhood.
BELOW THE FOLD
Every power-hungry idiot waiting to declare #HesRunning in 2024 has been blathering to DC reporters with extra whitespace, offering their two cents on Pelosi's trip, the White House's conundrum, and bad and/or useless advice. The loudest have been former officials from the previous administration attempting to salvage their failed madman diplomatic strategy of threats and love letters that no sane person in DC thought would work.
It's been noted that the last sitting Speaker to piss off the Chinese with a visit to Taiwan was the disgraced, bomb-throwing hypocrite Newt Gringrich back in 1997. He resurfaced this week to take ignorant anchors at conservative outlets on laughably inaccurate trips down Bad Memory Ln.
FUN FACT: Gingrich was only in Taiwan for three hours, and Beijing officials called him an asshole for writing checks he couldn't cash. The Clinton White House would tell reporters that Gingrich was, "speaking for himself," trampling many warboners at home and abroad. The CCP was still just as adamant about reunification, though they weren't as quick to talk about pulling a Putin because twenty-five years ago China's military and economic power were a fraction of what they are today. Today, China's military remains relatively untested in a modern conventional conflict, and its impossible to know just how much COVID has slowed their economy.
Foreign Policy's Jack Detsch had a good analysis of the trip, saying that Pelosi is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. If Pelosi backs out, she makes herself, Biden, Democrats, the US, the West and its alliances look as if they're capitulating to China. On the other hand, Pelosi's trip risks triggering a stand-off over the Taiwan straight (again), or worse. Some in think-tank land have argued it's a bad time for Pelosi's trip because August 1 is the anniversary of the PLA, and Xi's "election" is just around the corner, but China has more special days than the US has Hallmark holidays and diversity awareness calendars.
The underlying fear is that China has been waiting for a convenient incident as a cause for an invasion of Taiwan. Both the US and China have accused the other of troop build-ups and said that any provocation would be unacceptable, though the US has maintained an official policy of "strategic ambiguity" by refusing to say whether or not it would defend Taiwan. Multiple US presidents have said the US would come to the aid of Taiwan only for officials to walk the president's comments back a few hours later. And though Xi has been quick to talk tough, he has a tendency to dunk on himself.
One More Thing...
Bonny Lin and Jude Blanchette have a good think piece on Foreign Affairs this morning analyzing some of China's recent foreign policy strategy, and raise questions about whether its efforts to expand in the global south will pay off.
OK, here's your cute critter video!
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