China’s Peoples Liberation Army [PLA] sent warships, bombers and fighter planes into the Taiwan strait after a visit by U.S. Senators to the independent island nation once a refuge for Mainland Chinese nationals led by Chiang Chai Shek fleeing the 1949 Maoist Revolution to the Island of Formosa. Back then, the U.S. saw the Maoist Revolution as the threat to democracy all around the globe, affording Taiwan the ultimate protection in the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty. President Dwight D. Eisenhower felt squeezed by the Soviet Union continued expansion into parts around the globe, especially in Asia and Africa, competing for world domination with the U.S. But Chinese nationalists in Taipei became the rallying cry for democracy around the world, just like it is with Ukraine, promising to defend the Island nation from a Mainland Communist takeover.
As the years progressed, the U.S. continued to arm Taiwan and provide economic assistance, watchomg the Republic of China [ROC] grow in prosperity, serving as an early beacon to South Korea, another country emerging from a bloody war against North Korean communists, largely aided by Maoist China. When the war ended in a stalemate AKA and armistice, July 27, 1953, the U.S. did in South Korea what it did in Taiwan, provide economic and military assistance. But unlike Taiwan, the U.S. left a contingent to 30,000 troops based in South Korea. Visiting Taipei March 14, a contingent of U.S. Senators led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Robert Portman (R-Ohio), Benjamin Sasse (R-N.E..), Ronny Jackson (R-Tx.), and Bob Mendendez (D-N.J.) all met with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen. Beijing reacted harshly sending in a fleet of war planes.
When you consider the war in Ukraine against the Russian Federation, a number of Capitol Hill elected officials fear that Taiwan could be next, especially if Russia succeeds in annexing more parts of Ukraine. White House officials, led by 79-year-old President Joe Biden, and backed by bipartisan U.S. Representatives and Senators, see Ukraine as a necessary stand against Russian expansion. Many war hawks in Congress still subscribe to George F. Kennan’s 1947 “Sources of Soviet Conduct” where he advocated stopping the Soviet advance with a political and military steps to keep Soviet power in check. So the fight in Ukraine, armed an funded to the tune of $16 billion, continues the tradition of stopping the Russian Federation from taking more ground in Europe, serving notice that the U.S. government won’t let it happen. Yet the Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union.
Graham’s delegation to Taiwan could not happen at a worse time, with the U.S. scrambling to defend Ukraine, without U.S. troops, against the Russian Federation. But let there be no mistake, Biden sees the battle in Ukraine as one Kennan described in “Sources of Soviet Conduct,” holding the line against a communist advance. Meeting with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei, Graham reiterated U.S. commitment to a free Taiwan. “To abandon Taiwan would be to abandon democracy and freedom,” Graham said. “There’s a backlash gr oing in the world to thuggery—to the bad guys,” Graham said. Yet Graham knows that the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, signed into law by former President Jimmy Carter, agreed to recognize only one China, the one in Beijing. In that act signed by Carter, the U.S. agreed to stop defending Taiwan, agreeing in principle that Taiwan was a part of Mainland China.
Taiwan Relations Act evolved from the U.S. under President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger both normalizing relations in 1972 with Communist China. When it came to normalizing relations, Nixon and Kissinger saw a bonanza for the U.S. economy, letting U.S. companies make use of China’s cheap labor markets, keeping inflation under control and giving the American consumer cheap foreign goods for the foreseeable future. All that happened from 1972 to current time, where the U.S. and European Union [EU] have become wholly dependent on Chinese manufacturing to feed the insatiable appetites of Western democracies for consumer goods. But now that there’s war in Ukraine, war hawks in the U.S. Senate see it as a prelude for a Chinese invasion. Going to Taipei didn’t help Taiwan’s independence, it hurt its desire to stay free of Beijing.
No one in Congress believes that under the Taiwan Relations Act the U.S. would do anything to defend Taiwan from a potential invasion. When it comes to Chinese politics, less is more, meaning that high profile visits by U.S. Senators or one by the House Speaker only pushes Beijing closer to invading Taiwan. If Congress would stop meddling in Taiwan’s internal affairs, they’d keep Taipei’s independence a lot longer than grandstanding during a time of crisis. When you consider the unprecedented commitment to Ukraine in terms of cash and arms, the U.S. has too much on its plate to rock the boat in Taiwan. “This operation is in response to the recent frequent release of wrong signals by the United States on the Taiwan issue,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian.. Sending war planes into the Taiwan Straits directly relates to the Senate delegation visit.
