Taiwan in the eye of worsening East-West tensions

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s current controversial visit to Taiwan is bound to aggravate East-West tensions, besides having the effect of further straining US-China relations. Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the first in more than two decades by any top US administration official to China’s breakaway province, is bound to be viewed as a blatant affront by Beijing which went on record as having warned before the visit that the US ‘will have to pay the price’ for the carrying out of any such perceived outrage.

For those sections expecting to see a reduction in East-West tensions in general and US-China friction in particular, the Pelosi visit to Taiwan couldn’t have come at a worse time. US policy thus far over the thorny issue of Taiwan is to be supportive of its territorial integrity and security interests, while not explicitly and vocally supporting the break-away territory’s aspirations towards independence from China. In this tight-rope walk the US could be described as having implicitly endorsed Beijing’s ‘one-China’ policy while maintaining unruffled, normal relations with Taiwan and extending to the latter its moral support.

Coming at a time when China is making it clear, through the frequent projection of its military power in the Taiwan Strait in particular, that its ownership over Taiwan is unquestionable, the Pelosi visit could disrupt the finely-balanced US-China equation. Most observers would see the Pelosi visit as a shelving by the US of any policy neutrality over the Taiwan question, although the Biden administration, reportedly, had not unambiguously endorsed the Pelosi visit.

However, given Pelosi’s prominent standing in the administration, one couldn’t be faulted for interpreting the visit as an overt siding on the part of the US with Taiwan over the latter’s long-running stand-off with Beijing over the issue of independence and sovereignty. Thus, the world would need to brace for stepped-up tensions between China and the US, although the possibility is remote of direct and immediate military action by Beijing over the fractious issue.

China, though, is likely to make some calculated policy moves in reaction to the US affront. It could, for instance, overtly support Russia in the latter’s invasion of Ukraine. Thus far, China has refrained from condemning the invasion and has adopted a more or less neutral position on the conflict. However, China could opt from now on to militarily and diplomatically support Russia on the Ukraine question. The coming together unambiguously of Russia and China on the issues growing out of Ukraine could pose a formidable challenge to the West on multiple fronts, including the military plane.

An outcome of the above alliance on the Ukraine question could be an indefinite and wasting prolongation of the relevant conflict. That is, there would be no let-up in the blood-letting in Ukraine any time soon. The immediate victims of such delays would, of course, be the people of Ukraine, but the West too would suffer serious setbacks in what has become its proxy war in the Ukraine theatre.

In fact, considering that Russia and China are formidable military powers, their coming together could spell an eventual defeat for the West in this East-West confrontation in Eastern Europe. By hindsight it could be said, considering the foregoing, that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s pronouncement to President Biden to the effect that the West would be ‘playing with fire’ in any interventionist moves on the Taiwan issue was portentous.

Accordingly, US House Speaker Pelosi may not have acted in the best interests of the US or the West by visiting Taiwan at this juncture. On the other hand, the West is bound by its principles to defend the right to self- determination of Taiwan which does not see itself as an adjunct of China. Likewise, the West is obliged to support Ukraine in its determination to be a free and independent state. It could not have ‘looked the other way’, given its principles, while Ukraine was being invaded by Russia.

The above issues cannot be allowed by the international community to be resolved in the battlefield, considering the overwhelming costs that would be incurred in human and economic terms in particular. It is the responsibility of the UN Security Council to be proactively involved in finding political solutions to these conflicts. But the inveighing of China in favour of Russia in the UNSC could greatly frustrate efforts at working out solutions to these crises.

However, given the complex nature of the conflicts in question, it could be said that it is the world armaments industry that would gain most by these prolonged crises in the short and medium terms. The industry would be helped greatly by NATO allies in Eastern Europe, such as Poland, beefing up their military capability in the face of what they perceive to be impending invasions by Russia and its allies in the region.

For instance, Poland recently finalized a $ 14.5 billion arms deal with Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), a principal arms manufacturer in East Asia.

The latter is said to be keen on selling non-lethal weaponry to Ukraine in an indication of a coming together between of US allies in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

For the majority of countries in the developing world this is not welcome news. As matters stand, they are experiencing grave economic hardships as a result of the Ukraine war, among other factors. Prices of essentials are on the rise and these countries are increasingly dogged by aggravating hunger and malnutrition. Likewise, a tendency to overspend on arms by Western governments would have debilitating consequences for their economies. Once again, their publics would be up against grave material hardships.

It would seem right now that the principal powers of both North and South have lost their moral bearings very badly. The majority of these states have permitted power politics to take precedence over human welfare. The Pelosi visit to Taiwan, for example, proves the point. The US centre seems to have allowed its power struggles with China and Russia to take precedence over its responsibility to help out in resolving the main armed conflicts of our time. The same goes for China and Russia. For these powers, Reverence for Life seems relatively unimportant currently.