Taiwan may be 10,000km from East Africa, but whatever happens there could still hurt you. This is why a brawl between China and the US over Washington’s dalliance with Taipei could bring the region new worries.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., landed in Taiwan late Tuesday evening local time, a high-profile visit that has magnified tensions between the U.S. and China and drawn a display of military aggression from China.
Minutes after Pelosi landed, China’s Eastern Theater Command announced live fire military exercises would begin as soon as Tuesday in six zones that encircle Taiwan.
Why Relying on Beijing Is a Bad Bet
In July, a popular uprising in Sri Lanka toppled the government and sent its president scurrying into exile. The revolt had been brewing for months in the wake of the country’s economic implosion, but it still caught observers off-guard. In surreal scenes, protesters took over the presidential palace, swam in the pool, dined in the kitchen, traipsed around the bedrooms, and held stylized meetings in the conference rooms.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Monday that the U.S. does not “support Taiwan independence,” amid heightened threats from China about Nancy Pelosi’s reported trip to the island.
How the Ukraine War Has Changed Beijing’s Strategy
In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing was on the back foot. For weeks after Russian troops crossed Ukraine’s border, China’s messaging was stilted and confused as Chinese diplomats, propagandists, and foreign ministry spokespeople themselves tried to figure out Chinese President Xi Jinping’s line on the conflict. Xi’s “no limits” partnership with Russian President Vladimir Putin was incurring growing reputational costs.
Shortly prior to the 95th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on Monday, China for the first time revealed a video featuring the launch of what resembles a DF-17 missile, in a move experts said on Sunday displayed the flexibility of the “aircraft carrier killer” hypersonic weapon that is almost impossible to intercept, at a time when tension is rising in the Taiwan Straits amid US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s possible visit to the island of Taiwan.
The United States (US) has entered into what can be termed as a new Cold War against Russia and China. While this is being put across as a contest between democracy and authoritarianism, people are not buying it. The obvious reason for the US move appears to be a desire to maintain its global primacy against the China challenge.
Rule of law, transparency, accountability and citizenship rights are fundamental pillars of constitutional democracy. These pillars are eroding rapidly. The democratic cultures based on equality, liberty, justice, reason, science, secularism, tolerance and mutual respect for dissenting and diverse opinions are declining across the globe.
Mega-organizațiile eurasiatice și proiectele lor respective converg acum cu o viteză record, cu un pol global mult înaintea celuilalt. Războiul coridoarelor economice este în plină desfășurare, primul flux de mărfuri din Rusia către India prin intermediul Coridorului internațional de transport nord-sud (INSTC) fiind deja în vigoare.
After the Solomon Islands signed a security pact with Beijing in April, Kiribati may be considering a similar deal.
In April, China signed an unprecedented security pact with the Solomon Islands, sparking regional concerns of a future Chinese military presence there. China’s pursuit of greater military reach in the Pacific Islands draws parallels to Imperial Japan’s construction of bases prior to World War II, and the implications are, likewise, strikingly similar. A Chinese military presence in the Pacific Islands could complicate transit between Australia and the United States, allow Beijing to increase its power projection in the second and third island chains, and bring Chinese military firepower closer than ever to Australian and U.S. territory. Can the United States and its partners prevent such an outcome?