One of the worst aspects of Biden’s handlers’ thoroughly preventable disaster in Afghanistan is the message that it has sent to the world. Among those who have received that message loud and clear is Communist China. Focus Taiwan reported Sunday that “a total of 19 Chinese military aircraft, including fighter jets, flew into Taiwan’s southwestern air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Sunday, the fourth time this has taken place in September, according to the Ministry of National Defense. The aircraft involved were 10 J-16 multi-role fighters, four H-6 bombers, four SU-30 fighters, and one Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft, according to a report released by the ministry.”
It’s hard not to see China’s new belligerence toward Taiwan as yet another core element of the Biden legacy: When America projects weakness to the world, malign actors take advantage. Nor is this even anything new; the ChiComs began acting aggressively toward Taiwan just days after Old Joe took office. The Daily Wire reported that “this is not the first time during the Biden administration China has sent a multitude of jets into Taiwan’s air defense zone; on January 24, 15 aircraft were spotted; on 12 April, Taiwan reported 25 jets.”
On June 15, after the G7 issued a statement calling for “peaceful resolution” of issues between Communist China and Taiwan, the People’s Republic made it clear that it understood the significance of this less-than-ringing defense of the freedom of the Republic of China, sending a record 28 aircraft into Taiwan’s ADIZ.
None of this should come as any surprise; the Communist Chinese have known what Old Joe is made of for quite some time. The Daily Wire noted that back in 2001, then-Senator Joe took to the Washington Post to declare that “as a matter of diplomacy, there is a huge difference between reserving the right to use force and obligating ourselves, a priori, to come to the defense of Taiwan. The president should not cede to Taiwan, much less to China, the ability automatically to draw us into a war across the Taiwan Strait.”
They were paying attention in Beijing back then, and have remained attentive. As the catastrophe in Afghanistan was just beginning in mid-August, Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organ, was ready to draw its inescapable conclusions. In an editorial published on August 16, the CCP sent a harsh message to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the ruling party of the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan: “The DPP authorities need to keep a sober head, and the secessionist forces should reserve the ability to wake up from their dreams. From what happened in Afghanistan, they should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and the US military won’t come to help.”
The Global Times article features a cartoon of the American eagle with one wing on the shoulder of Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, presumably offering her wise counsel while leading her to walk right into an open manhole. That succinctly summed up the article’s point. “The world has witnessed,” says Global Times, “how the US evacuated its diplomats by helicopter while Taliban soldiers crowded into the presidential palace in Kabul. This has dealt a heavy blow to the credibility and reliability of the US.”
Yes it has, and China has wasted no time in exploiting our weakness. Clearly the Chinese Communists see Biden’s handlers as appallingly weak and having provided them with an unparalleled opportunity to seize Taiwan, secure in the knowledge that America’s response will be weak, schoolmarmish, self-righteous, and ultimately impotent.
The escalating Communist Chinese incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ are almost certainly just the beginning. There will be a great deal more trouble for Taiwan, and for the world at large. The spectacular weakness and wrongheadedness of Biden’s handlers in Afghanistan will have consequences that will play out not just in Taiwan, but all over the world, for decades or even centuries to come.
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Are Biden’s handlers really as naïve, miseducated, weak, and spineless as they appear? It wouldn’t have required a foreign policy “expert” to tell them that projecting weakness on the world stage would only embolden the most evil actors. Or maybe they did know this, and it didn’t make any difference to them. Maybe they’re so indefatigably committed to repudiating Trump and affirming socialist internationalism, and to pursuing the interests of any country except America, including the People’s Republic of China, that they just didn’t care.
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