Letter From Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy on October 26, 1962:
Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly of what terrible forces our countries dispose.
Both President Xi and Joe Biden are pulling on that knot as hard as they can.
SET News is reporting that Taiwan is putting its air defenses on war footing as four Chinese warplanes entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), and Chinese rhetoric threatening war became even more violent.
Western news outlets were unable to independently verify the report.
What’s clear is that China has chosen the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan to throw down the gauntlet and challenge U.S. dominance in the region.
“We would like to tell the United States once again that China is standing by, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will never sit idly by, and China will take resolute responses and strong countermeasures to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Zhao Lijian, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters. “As for what measures, if she dares to go, then let’s wait and see.”
The Biden administration seems a little perplexed by the virulence of the Chinese response.
“There is no reason for Beijing to turn a potential visit consistent with longstanding U.S. policy into some sort of crisis or conflict, or use it as a pretext to increase aggressive military activity in or around the Taiwan Strait,” John F. Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, told reporters. “Meanwhile,” he added, “our actions are not threatening and they break no new ground. Nothing about this potential visit — potential visit, which oh, by the way, has precedent — would change the status quo.”
There’s a reason to turn Pelosi’s visit into a crisis and it has to do with internal Chinese politics.
It’s no coincidence that the Communist Party Congress will be held sometime later this summer. Chinese posturing on Taiwan is directly related to this twice-a–decade meeting. While President Xi’s position is unchallenged and he will likely be voted a third term, there is great unrest in the middle and lower ranks of the Communist Party apparatchiks, and any sign of weakness by Xi in this crisis would be seen as a surrender. Xi may see some sort of strong response as a way to control the turnover happening in the lower ranks.
American officials monitoring intelligence reports have become convinced in recent days that China is preparing a hostile response of some sort — not an outright attack on Taiwan or an effort to intercept Ms. Pelosi’s plane, as some fear, but an assertion of military power that may go beyond even the aggressive encounters of recent months. Some cited the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995 and 1996, when China fired missiles to intimidate the self-governing island and President Bill Clinton ordered aircraft carriers into area.
Analysts said a similar conflict could be vastly more perilous today because the People’s Liberation Army is far more robust than it was then, armed now with missiles that could take out carriers. The worry is that even if no combat is intended, an accidental encounter could easily spiral out of control.
“This is an exceptionally dangerous situation, perhaps more so than Ukraine,” Evan Medeiros, a China expert at Georgetown University told the New York Times. “The risks of escalation are immediate and substantial.”
Both China and the U.S. are on a hair trigger and it wouldn’t take much at all to “cut the knot” of war and get the U.S. involved in another world war.
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