Republicans, Democrats and politicians elsewhere agree: the US Speaker of the House is within her rights to travel to the island Beijing calls its own.
Beijing has warned Washington of serious consequences if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visits Taiwan, escalating its threats of retaliation as politicians in Asia and America back her planned visit to the democratic island.
“If the US side insists on making the visit, the Chinese side will take firm and strong measures to safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.Former prime ministerA US delegation of senators arrives in Taipei for a visit last year.As the third-ranked US politician, Pelosi would likely travel on a military aircraft, triggering concerns that Beijing could declare a no-fly zone or prevent the aircraft from entering Taiwan’s airspace.
“Speaker Pelosi should go to Taiwan and President [Joe] Biden should make it abundantly clear to Chairman Xi that there’s not a damn thing the Chinese Communist Party can do about it,” said Republican Senator Ben Sasse.Senior Japanese MP and former foreign minister Taro Kono said it was up to Pelosi to decide if she wanted to travel. “If speaker Pelosi would like to come to Asia, I think it is her freedom to do so,” he said.
Tomohiko Taniguchi, a diplomacy expert from Keio University in Tokyo said governments needed to move fast.“A crisis scenario around Taiwan is so acute that we don’t have the luxury to talk about building multilateral institutions from scratch or waiting for an extended period for the existing institutions such as NATO to extend its arms to this part of the world,” he said.
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