NY Times Columnist Tom Friedman Blasts Pelosi’s ‘Arbitrary and Frivolous’ Taiwan Trip: ‘Utterly Reckless’
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan as “utterly reckless.”
Pelosi just touched down in Taiwan moments ago, despite Chinese threats over the past several days.
“I have a lot of respect for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,” wrote Friedman on Monday. “But if she does go ahead with a visit to Taiwan this week, against President Biden’s wishes, she will be doing something that is utterly reckless, dangerous and irresponsible.”
“Nothing good will come of it. Taiwan will not be more secure or more prosperous as a result of this purely symbolic visit, and a lot of bad things could happen,” he continued. “These include a Chinese military response that could result in the U.S. being plunged into indirect conflicts with a nuclear-armed Russia and a nuclear-armed China at the same time.”
Friedman went on to explain that the United States has been able to get China to not give military assistance to Russia in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Given all of that, why in the world would the speaker of the House choose to visit Taiwan and deliberately provoke China now, becoming the most senior U.S. official to visit Taiwan since Newt Gingrich in 1997, when China was far weaker economically and militarily?” wrote Friedman.
“In short, this Ukraine war is SO not over, SO not stable, SO not without dangerous surprises that can pop out on any given day,” he added. “Yet in the middle of all of this we are going to risk a conflict with China over Taiwan, provoked by an arbitrary and frivolous visit by the speaker of the House?”
Friedman expressed admiration for Taiwan and wrote that “it is a vital U.S. national interest to defend” the Pacific island nation’s “democracy, in the event of an unprovoked Chinese invasion.”
Friedman wrote that a Pelosi visit would allow Chinese President Xi Jinping “an opportunity to divert attention from his own failures — a whack-a-mole strategy of trying to shut down the spread of Covid-19 by using lockdowns of China’s major cities, a huge real estate bubble that is now deflating and threatening a banking crisis and an immense mountain of government debt resulting from Xi’s unrestrained support for state-owned industries.”
Friedman also remarked that Taiwanese leadership unlikely wants Pelosi to visit their country given Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s “consistent efforts to defend Taiwan’s independence while not giving China an easy excuse for military action against Taiwan.”
