Benard Cankara (PhD Candidate)
The US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan adds to the existing efforts by the United States to defend the democratic world order. Over the last few years, autocriticism has been pushing democracy to the edge in an attempt to change the world order. The visit by US third most powerful leader to Taiwan strengthen Biden’s foreign policy agenda to restore the world democratic jig-saw. This visit comes after US and NATO pushed hard in defending Ukraine against Russia's territorial invasion.
However, the new frontier for defending the democratic worldview will not come cheap. The world now faces economic crises stemming from the global gas crisis which has sky-rocketed inflation. The other cost is the US risk of the 40 years ties built between US and China.
Pelosi’s visit adds salt to already exhausted 40 years of relations and could plug the two countries into another crisis. At the height of the brief visit, Beijing immediately activated classified tactics as was seen taking patrol around Taiwan. A top Minister in Beijing came out and asserted that Taiwan is a province of China and that China is advancing “One China Policy”. It is now likely that Beijing will sanction Taiwan on several fronts as retaliation to Pelosi’s visit but also to send a clear message to Washington.
Although Washington has its eye on the existing vagueness in the Taiwan Relations Act to continue advancing democracy in Taiwan and suppress Beijing’s budding influence in the Indo-Pacific.
As we closely watch this development, we expect more issues to continue evolving in the contest between autocriticism and democracy.
