Washington

- US experts and commentators believe that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan will seriously damage the already strained relations between Washington and Beijing.

Pelosi is the highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan in 25 years, which angered China, which described the move as a violation of the "one China" policy.

Beijing expressed its anger at the visit to Taiwan, which it considers part of its territory, and promised to "reunify" it by force if necessary, and announced a series of advanced military exercises and sanctions on Taiwan in response to the visit.

A Chinese diplomat said that "the United States must pay the price for its mistake," vowing that his country will not stand idly by and will take necessary and decisive countermeasures, as he put it.

This prompted a new escalation in the relations of the two largest powers in the world today. Therefore, some experts refer to the negative position of the White House and President Joe Biden on the visit and their failure to intervene forcefully to prevent it.

Nancy Pelosi upon her arrival in Taiwan on Wednesday (Anatolia)

Pelosi and the making of foreign policy

The US Constitution grants the president broad rights, especially with regard to making foreign policy, as he holds the position of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, in addition to his presidential position at the top of the executive branch of the state.

But the decentralized nature of the US system makes it easy for any member of both houses of Congress (the House and the Senate) to freely express their views on foreign policy without having to seek permission or adhere to a rigid partisan position.

The space for freedom of movement increases with the leaders of Congress and the chairs of the committees specializing in foreign issues, especially the leadership of the House of Representatives.

According to the constitution, Nancy Pelosi enjoys wide powers, the most important of which is to occupy the presidency when the president and vice president are unable to carry out their duties.

The balance between the executive and legislative branches allowed Pelosi to move freely in her decision to visit Taiwan, despite the high cost of this step.

Congress does not take executive decisions related to foreign policy files, but it has the power to enact legislation and laws binding on the president and his executive branch when passed by a majority of both houses and not opposed by the president using the veto.


5 decades relationship

Pelosi is 82 years old and began her journey in the House of Representatives representing a California state since 1987, while Biden is 79 years old, and his journey in the Senate began in 1973 to extend 35 years until he served as Vice President in 2008.

Biden headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which allowed him to approach the management of relations with China and Taiwan, and allowed him to deal with Pelosi in these files, for more than 4 decades.

Pelosi has a long history of anti-China and Beijing's policies towards human rights issues, and made criticism of China and support for Taiwan a major focus during more than 3 decades she spent in Congress, and unveiled a famous banner commemorating the victims of the bloody campaign of repression launched by the Chinese army in 1989 against protesters. Pro-democracy supporters in Tiananmen Square in Beijing during their visit to the square in 1991.

"We cannot stand idly by while the Chinese Communist Party begins to threaten Taiwan and democracy itself... We are making this journey while the world faces a choice between authoritarianism and democracy. And while Russia is waging its indiscriminate war," Pelosi wrote in the Washington Post. It is necessary to make clear to our allies that we never surrender to tyrants."

Despite the deeply polarized bipartisanship, and Pelosi's hostility to Republican leaders, 26 Republican senators, including minority leader Mitch McConnell, issued a joint statement in support of Pelosi's visit.

The image of Nancy Pelosi tops the Taiwanese websites before her visit, which she carried out on Wednesday (European)

An escalation could have been avoided

Several reports indicated that the White House and the Pentagon refused Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, or showed a lack of enthusiasm for it.

The administration of President Joe Biden has not been publicly supportive of Pelosi's trip, with President Biden himself saying the US military feels it is "not a good idea right now" amid heightened tensions between the two sides.

Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University, tweeted that Pelosi had not coordinated with the White House.

"Just one week after the Biden administration won a major legislative victory in Congress on climate and technology development, the lack of coordination between reckless Nancy Pelosi and the White House, on the Taiwan issue, threatens to lead to an unnecessary diplomatic crisis. Who is in charge here?"


'reckless provocation'

Meanwhile, American commentators from across the ideological spectrum, including the famous liberal writer Thomas Friedman and the famous "Fox" broadcaster Tucker Carlson, described Pelosi's trip as a reckless provocation pushing toward a war that no one wants.

Friedman described the visit as "totally reckless, dangerous, and irresponsible," not least because the White House was involved in sensitive negotiations to prevent China from providing military assistance to Russia in Ukraine.

"Why does Nancy Pelosi go to Taipei? What effect does that have? Well, we don't need to guess. The Chinese government has repeatedly said clearly that if Pelosi lands in Taiwan, it could lead to a world war," Carlson asked.

"The House Speaker's visit to Taiwan is evidence of political dysfunction in which a Democratic president cannot deter the Democratic House speaker from engaging in a diplomatic maneuver that his entire national security team has deemed unwise; from the director of the CIA to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff," Carlson noted. .

They believe that Washington has always maintained a position of "strategic ambiguity" with regard to Taiwan.

This policy, established in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, leaves Washington not taking an official position on Taiwan, but providing "substantive but non-diplomatic relations", including military support.

US officials rarely visit Taiwan, and the last high-ranking official to set foot on the island was then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997.

Nancy Pelosi is expected to retire soon, so she is seeking to crown the end of her service with a remarkable diplomatic move (Reuters)

Why did Pelosi visit Taiwan at this time?

It is widely known in Washington that Pelosi is preparing to lose her position in the House of Representatives after the midterm congressional elections next November, in which Republicans are expected to control a majority in the House.

Pelosi is expected to retire soon, so a visit to Taiwan could be the culmination of a long career in which Pelosi frequently denounced China's record of violations of human rights and democracy.