Pelosi laid a big fat egg
The only credit anyone can give Nancy Pelosi for her stupid trip to Taiwan last week is how undeniably successful she had been in single-handedly bringing the world to the brink of war. On hindsight, maybe the world is not yet ready for another holocaust as all of us are still up and about in our daily lives as if Pelosi did not even exist. But a deliberate first shot is not what we are talking about.
The trip of Pelosi was almost criminally insane in its complete disregard for the very real possibility that even a small mistake by any nervous soul on either side of Taiwan Strait could spark a conflagration where there are no winners but everybody the loser. And the most painful cut of it all is that even Pelosi herself came away from her caper with absolutely nothing to show for it.
Taiwan is no more reassured of its own security after the Pelosi gambit but is in fact now even under greater and more imminent threat from China. What US commitment to Taiwan Pelosi may have wanted to signal is in no way more comforting to anyone, least of all to Taiwan, than when the dangerous hare-brained idea of provoking China first crossed her 82-year-old mind.
People of Pelosi's age who obviously have already had their fill of life should not go around trying to tempt fate especially if the consequences have the potential to alter the course of life for the billions of young people all over the world who are only now just getting started. It is reckless, cruel and unfair. Imagine the whole world hanging in a balance because an octogenarian wanted a final flirtation with self-glory?
Just look at how feeble the justification for such a gargantuan risk. All Pelosi wanted was to show everyone, Taiwan, China, Russia, the world, just how resolute the US is in honoring its commitments to military allies. Big words that can be expressed in many ways without having to court a costly disaster. Yet for all the showboating by Pelosi, the truth is that there is no such thing as an ironclad commitment in a US commitment.
Sure, the US will come to the defense of Taiwan. What is unclear is the extent to which the US will involve itself. Will it send young American boys to fight in Taiwan or will it limit itself to just weapons in the same way it has limited itself in Ukraine? To the teary-eyed keepers of the faith in Ukraine, Taiwan, and even the Philippines who keep up the illusion of US boots on the ground, that is not going to happen.
Not in an election year. Not with so much domestic turmoil. Being the only country in the world that has continuously been at war since World War II, the US is bone-weary. But because its own line of defense has to start at the door of the enemy and not at its own door where it would be too late, it has to sustain its proxies and pawns and keep them encircled around enemies like Russia and China.
If Taiwan falls and the Philippines is immobilized, for example, the US west coast at the other side of the Pacific will be clearly visible from Beijing. And nothing spooks Washington more than having its soft underbelly exposed or hear strange noises at the front door. The US has no business being in the neighborhood of Russia and China except to preserve and protect its own interests.
It is an insult to anyone's intelligence for Pelosi to say her trip was in the interest of Taiwan. Why, even up to now the US has refused to recognize Taiwan as a sovereign and independent state. To this day it continues to play footsie with China through the so-called, Beijing-dictated one-China policy. Its interest in Taiwan is really to act as its first line of defense against China, just as Ukraine is against Russia.