Whether or not Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s dangerous journey to Taiwan was a priceless assertion of US resolve or provoked China for no strategic achieve will depend on when, or if, Beijing’s consequent fury and army posturing abate.

Pelosi visited visited legislators and President Tsai Ing-Wen on the democratic self-governing island on Wednesday, giving her hosts the trimmings of a nation-state go to certain to enrage the Chinese language.

Her journey has already prompted uproar in tense US-China relations, with the communist large sending jets to the sting of Taiwanese air house and launching army workouts that despatched an unsubtle message that Taiwan is surrounded.

Nonetheless, if these eruptions cease in need of a full-scale disaster within the Taiwan Strait, an important strategic waterway, and keep away from the opportunity of miscalculations between Chinese language and Taiwanese forces, and even Chinese language and US belongings within the area, the storm over Pelosi’s mission may very well be short-term. The imagery of the US Home speaker bolstering a democracy below China’s large shadow may turn into one of many signature moments in US Asia-Pacific international coverage.

US-China tensions: The geopolitical relationship between Washington and Beijing is crucial nation-to-nation conflict on the globe. It’s unfolding as a generational tussle between two civilizations eager to imprint their values, financial programs and strategic hegemony on the remainder of the world.

Whereas the Biden administration has adopted the Trump White Home in treating China as an adversary quite than as a competitor, the prime aim of US coverage continues to be to keep away from what may very well be a disastrous future struggle between the 2 nations.

So if Pelosi’s go to — a private rebuke to Chinese language President Xi Jinping, who has made the takeover of Taiwan an existential quest — completely worsens already poor US-China relations and brings ahead what some see as an inevitable superpower confrontation, it would change into a large miscalculation.

The identical shall be true if her journey prompts Beijing to take steps that rock the peace and prosperity loved by the Taiwanese of their dynamic island dwelling, an element typically ignored by China hawks taking robust stands to bolster their political place within the US.

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