Pelosi visited Taiwan and... nothing

Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan and accomplished nothing.  While it's good to see China's CCP lose face, it doesn't accomplish anything beyond that.  The video below posits a more meaningful outcome.  I'd like to believe it but it doesn't seem likely to be right.

A scenario I had not considered

Russia and China both invade Ukraine and Taiwan respectively, knowing Let's Go Brandon has crumbled on Ukraine in advance.    I previously discussed with friends that there are reasons neither country would invade but the reality has changed since then. Namely, the perception of the U.S. as still having some backbone, is crumbling.

Dictator Watch - The Latest on China

 Via China in Focus, here's the latest news on the evil communist empire.

Taiwan taken by China? Why Dinesh D'Souza is wrong.

Taiwan are the good guys, but not if China can help it.  Dinesh D'Souza thinks an invasion is imminent. I respect him, although I disagree in this case. While I hope he's wrong, there's a good chance he's right.  Here's his case:

Here's why this analysis could be wrong.  While they are clearly able to do so at this point, and the current American administration, whom I still refuse to call by name, is weak.  They are in many ways beholden to China.  BUT even though there is no Pacific version of NATO, South Korea, Japan, Australia and a number of other regional nations would not be happy and call upon the United States to engage militarily. 

Geopolitically it may be unavoidable to engage militarily.  China is not blind to this possibility. I'm sure they've wargamed it all out. China's philosophy is to play the long game.  Their most recent foray into domination of Hong Kong is a win for them.  They will likely be willing to consolidate that win and play the long game against America.  It's in their best interest to avoid a war since they are winning without actually fighting one.

It makes sense for them to keep a feckless oaf as their adversary rather than to risk alienating even more voter from him and potentially facing another Trumpian president after 2024 who is willing to stand up to China and embolden allies to do so as well.  Would they rather face that or have an extra four years of a know-nothing, do-nothing administration?  Especially when all of the levers in America are pulled in the support-the-feckless position (big tech, the mainstream media primary among them). 

No, I don't see a war.  I see China using the threat of a war where it might suit them politically, but that's all.  If there is going to be a war, the earliest opportunity would be 2025. 

Taiwan did warn the WHO about COVID-19

Dave Rubin digs into how Taiwan warned the WHO and everyone else about the dangers of the COVID-19 virus.

Saturday Learning Series BONUS - Why China never took over Taiwan

Every wonder why communist China did not take over Taiwan?  Here's a brief primer:

Trump's Taiwan call - smart geo-politics

There's a great quote in the Washington Post today by Marc A. Thiessen that sums up perfectly Donald Trump's call with Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen:

...Trump knew precisely what he was doing in taking the call. He was serving notice on Beijing that it is dealing with a different kind of president — an outsider who will not be encumbered by the same Lilliputian diplomatic threads that tied down previous administrations. The message, as John Bolton correctly put it, was that “the president of the United States [will] talk to whomever he wants if he thinks it’s in the interest of the United States, and nobody in Beijing gets to dictate who we talk to.”

The reaction in the media to the call that Trump was either unaware or foolish is ridiculous. What was naive or foolish was president Obama's apology tour. His embrace of Hugo Chavez. His deal with Iran. His embargo relaxation of Cuba. His snub of Queen Elizabeth II. Or Hillary Clinton's Russian reset or Benghazi mess.

It must be painful for the media when their political adversaries get it right where their heroes got it wrong.

Obama's Reaction To China's Reaction To Obama

My latest post on China's reaction to the latest U.S. arms deal with Taiwan and the economic implications, only has a couple of ways it can play out. China's further actions depend on President Obama's reactions to their threats. And Obama's reactions, depend as always, on what makes sense for him politically, and also what fits his agenda.

The choices for Obama are pretty simple. Obama can relent to China's threats, or he can press on with the sale of arms to Taiwan.

The case for relenting is straight forward. The U.S. economy would not be subjected to an unquantifiable dollar devaluation shock and possible plunge back into a recession as a result of increased interest rates and further savings and reduced spending that would result. Chinese relations would be less strained simply because China would get what they wanted - a weakened Taiwan and a facing down of the other Superpower. That said, it avoids the dollar correction that is needed to combat the ever-present trade imbalance.

Nevertheless, the economic shock isn't the biggest deal for the President. He's said in the past he wouldn't care if the price of gasoline went to $5 per gallon, but he'd wished it went more gradually and wasn't such a shock to consumers. So, he's indicated he's not in favor of shocks to the system per se, but that corrections are okay. What his real drivers are his agenda. He wants to spend that money. He's got social programs to foist upon the unwilling unwashed mases, like health care. He wants that debt to have money to spend. He doesn't even see the point in getting "savings" from Medicare to pay for Health Care is not real. When you cut Medicare all you are doing is reducing the debt you are going to incur over time. But he sees that "savings" as money he can spend on his health care plans. All he's doing is changing the name of the debt. What's driving him is that urge to spend.

How does that relate to Obama's Taiwan deal? Well, arms sales do represent revenue, a small amount. And they do represent geo-political obligations that must be addressed, since the U.S. doesn't have the resources to defend Taiwan from China.

But really the implications come from China's threat. How does the President react? Backing down is bad geo-politically in the Asian theater. It emboldens China and leaves not only Taiwan, but South Korea, and Japan feeling a bit stranded. There are domestic implications too. A further sign of weakness would hurt Obama's job approval in the national security area. The right already sees him as soft, but no one, save the far left, would see backing down as a cause for celebration. It's a sign of weakness and Americans would recognize it for just that.

The case for not relenting is almost the mirror image. The dollar would not be safe. But it would curb the appetite for imports. Taiwan, South Korea and Japan would all be thankful. But domestically the president would certainly score points for having some backbone with China. It would be a welcome change. But would China then carry through on it's threat? It would almost have to do so, or it would be weakened in the eyes of itself and it's neighbors. And if China starts undercutting the dollar by flooding the market with U.S. debt, you'll see interest rates rise, spending decline and the recession return. The President would face a November with unemployment at 12%. That's just not feasible.

So it would seem the logical course for President Obama is to back down. That is unless he believes China is bluffing. After all, it was a military suggestion to try using economic activity to stifle a military issue for them. It didn't come from the ruling Communist Party directly. Not yet. So it could be merely posturing. President Obama finds himself in a poker game here, with the weaker hand and no easy way out. The best he can hope for is the opportunity to do nothing as the situation blows over on it's own. If it's not on his agenda list, that seems to be his favorite approach (like voting present on bills, like going with the flow). I don't know if that can work here, unless Chinese officials first come out and denounce their military's opinion. But don't hold your breath. As the Chinese military has just brazenly pointed out - geo-politics is just as economic as it is martial. And China isn't looking to get saddled with another trillion dollars in U.S. debt.

Then There's China.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, one of my favorite pundits, is musing today on the situation with China talking about dumping U.S. bonds in response to the sale of U.S. arms to Taiwan. He is, as usual, quite right about the potential of China using economic efforts as a military tool. The other consideration worth noting, is that like Iran today, this should not really have come as much of a surprise.

Let's preface the discussion by pointing out the fact that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are nothing new. This is part of an on-going effort. Between 2001 and 2008, Taiwan received $7.7 billion in arms shipments from the United States. China has never been thrilled about it, having stalled the North Korean nuclear negotiations in 2008, partly at least, in response to previous arms sales to Taiwan, according to CNN.

So China has balked in the past, why are they now ramping up the threat meter? It's mainly because of the confluence of two points; (1) they see the President as having less resolve than his predecessor (i.e. he's weak) and (2) right now they know that they have a lot of leverage in the current U.S. financial situation because they own so much U.S. debt. The U.S. economy right now is the soft underbelly of the superpower. They know it and they're seemingly willing to use it.

But take a look again at those two points. Both of those points have Obama failure written all over them. Weakness is neither feared nor respected. Obama's bowing, and apologizing and diminishing of the United States may have won him admiration from the Nobel Committee for another Peace Prize, but it isn't causing adversarial states to treat the U.S. with any respect. It has diminished America in the eyes of the world - friend and foe alike. 

China has observed President Obama's retreat on missile shield deployment in eastern Europe as a result of Russian bellicosity on the issue.  They've simply applied a little bit of a different, clever, spin on the same approach and are expecting the same type of result that Russia got.

The other point is the debt owed to China. China owned $713 billion in U.S. debt in November 2008. It's not all Obama's debt, but since coming to office, his prodigal spending ways have ballooned the number even more.  the debt was over $800 billion at last count, and it could conceivably grow multiple-fold if Obama had his way. The Chinese might have a convenient excuse to put the brakes on Obama's spending and borrowing by using the Taiwan situation as the rationale. Shanghai Daily hinted at Chinese concern last December;

The same fears took hold almost one year ago when the US government said it would issue up to US$2.56 trillion of US Treasury bond debt to stimulate the economy to get through the recession.

This time the budget deficit is larger. The Obama administration on Monday proposed a budget of US$3.83 trillion for fiscal year 2011 with a forecast deficit of US$1.56 trillion in 2010.

The planned fiscal deficit is 10.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) - up from a 9.9 percent share in 2009 - the largest deficit as measured against GDP since World War II.

The President is following an unsustainable spending path, and the Chinese are starting to want no part of it, despite the growth boost it gives their own economy.  Whether that's the reason, or the Taiwan issue is the reason, or both, China feels it is safe for it to flex it's muscle because they aren't intimidated by, or enamored of, President Obama. Welcome to the club, China.