The United States and China are on the brink of war.

And the culprit is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

She began her big tour of East Asia (with visits to Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan to discuss trade, pandemic, climate change, security and democratization) and decided to stop by Taiwan during it.

Hearing about these intentions, the Chinese threatened military action - up to shooting down the plane with Pelosi (the third person in the United States, by the way - after the president and vice president).

To the Russians, such adherence to principles will seem strange, but for the Chinese it is a matter of course.

And it is explained by both objective and subjective reasons.

The objective reason is that China considers Taiwan its sovereign territory, which broke away from its homeland in the late 1940s and is obliged to return there.

Yes, the United States does not recognize this alignment, but Washington and Beijing, during the establishment of diplomatic relations, worked out a formula for coexistence on the Taiwan issue.

According to this formula, the Americans maintained de facto relations with the island, but withdrew its de jure recognition (from the late 1950s until the 1970s, Washington considered the Taiwanese government to be the official Chinese government, not recognizing the Communists in Beijing), agreeing with the principle "one China", which is the People's Republic of China.

This means that American officials - current ministers and high-level officials - are barred from entering the island.

That is why mostly former ministers go there.

Yes, the United States periodically violated this principle (in particular, in 1997, then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich visited Taiwan), and the war did not start after that.

However, now the situation is fundamentally different, and it is connected with the leader of the PRC, Xi Jinping, or rather, with his very big ambitions.

The fact is that the second leader of the PRC, Deng Xiaoping, established the rule of succession to the throne.

According to him, the head of China rules for five years, then, together with other respected people from the Communist Party of China, at the congress he chooses his heir (that is, the next head of the PRC with his entourage, including the future prime minister), after which he rules for another five years, constantly introducing an heir in the know, and in the end transfers power to him.

As a result, it turned out that each leader rules for ten years and every ten years there is a change of generations of the ruling elite.

However, Xi Jinping violates this rule.

He became party secretary general in 2012, did not choose an heir at the CCP congress in 2017, and now, at the autumn congress in 2022, he must receive an official appointment from delegates for a third term.

It is clear that not everyone in the party is satisfied with this prospect.

This means that Comrade Xi needs to do everything possible to show that he deserves to be an exception, because he is an exceptionally strong, wise and successful leader with whom China will go through the current time of change.

He successfully held the Olympics, expanded China's sphere of influence in Africa, overcame the coronavirus, but all these achievements will be reset if Xi surrenders Taiwan to the Americans.

That is, allow the visit of Nancy Pelosi.

That is why China has taken a tough stance on the prospects for this visit.

Up to readiness to conduct a military operation.

And in Taiwan, this determination was realized - it is no coincidence that the island's leadership is trying to distance itself from the visit.

He speaks with the words “of course, we are glad to all the guests and are very grateful to Pelosi for many years of supporting Taiwan, but we did not take the initiative to invite her.”

So why couldn't the United States have calculated China's reaction?

There can be many explanations.

Among them, for example, is the banal incompetence of the American leadership.

Or faith in the force of precedent: in recent years, the United States has taken extremely unfriendly steps against China more than once or twice (including economic blackmail), and Beijing has constantly retreated, making some concessions to Washington.

It is in the American establishment that the belief has taken root that the Chinese (unlike the Russians, who returned the Crimea and launched a special military operation in Ukraine) are spineless comrades who will retreat anyway.

Therefore, the United States, which considered it necessary to punch China in the nose (in order to somehow respond to its expansion in the Pacific Ocean and high hopes for leadership that arose against the background of the Russian NMD in Ukraine), chose to tap on the Taiwanese sore spot.

Yes, realizing how sick the place is, the States backed off a bit.

Biden called the visit to the island untimely, the Pentagon opposed it, and as a result, when listing the points of her tour, Nancy Pelosi did not mention Taiwan among them.

However, experts believe that she can still look at the island, having found some kind of reinforced concrete reason for this.

For example, it may land in Taiwan due to a “fault on board”.

Or because you suddenly run out of fuel.

And all because the Biden administration also has nowhere to retreat - after all, it also has elections in the fall.

Mid-term congressional elections that the Democrats cannot lose in any way, because otherwise (given the hatred of the Republicans for the Democrats) the already weak Biden administration will turn into a lame duck two years before the end of his presidential term.

This means that if Nancy Pelosi fails and does not visit Taiwan, the Republicans will make the slogan "the current administration chickened out and surrendered Taiwan to China" one of the main foreign policy accusations during the election campaign.

And now the question is what the Democrats should do.

Refuse to visit and lose Congress, or try to land Pelosi in Taiwan and run a high risk of starting a war?

The answer to this question is by no means obvious.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.