Many people were relieved to see the sabre-rattling between China and the US over US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan come to an end when she reached there safely last Tuesday.

However, China still continues its military drills around the Taiwan Straits despite the presence of a US Navy fleet nearby.

And Russia, which in the past has stayed clear of the cross-strait issue, has come out with a statement describing the visit as a “purely provocative” act and fully supports China in its dispute with Washington.

“We stand in absolute solidarity with China here. Its sensitivity to this issue is understandable. It is justified. And instead of respecting this, the US is choosing the path of confrontation. It doesn’t bode well,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding that Washington’s decision is “regrettable.”

The current siege mentality on both sides actually started on May 23, when Biden angered Beijing by making a blunder in declaring that despite abiding by the ‘One China Policy’, the US would involve its military in any potential conflict between China and Taiwan.

This was taken badly by China and many analysts as unraveling the decades-long policy of strategic ambiguity with regards to Taiwan’s independence.

Although the White House swiftly clarified that the president’s words did not represent a change to the US’ long-standing recognition of China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, the damage was done.

Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the US recognises, but does not endorse, China’s sovereignty over Taiwan. While the act codifies the US’ ‘One China Policy,’ it also authorises informal diplomatic relations with the government of Taiwan, and allows Washington to provide Taipei with enough military support “to enable Taiwan to maintain sufficient self-defence capabilities.”

The act does not guarantee or rule out US military intervention should China threaten to assimilate Taiwan by force. Instead it considers any attempt to change Taiwan’s status a threat “of grave concern to the US,” intended to dissuade China from going down that road, and to dissuade Taiwan from issuing a formal declaration of independence.

Earlier last month, authorities in Taipei accused the Chinese military of flying 18 aircraft, including two nuclear-capable bombers, into its air- defense zone.

By July, the issue of Pelosi’s visit took centre-stage culminating in a tense phone call on July 28 between Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, where Xi issued his famous warning for the US not to “play with fire”, and “those who play with fire will eventually get burned.”

On August 1, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US warned China — who is poised to stoke geopolitical tensions around Taiwan, perhaps through military “provocations” — raising the risk of an unintended escalation in Beijing’s row with Washington over Pelosi’s possible visit to the self-governing island.

Saying the speaker had the right to visit Taiwan, and a former speaker of the House had visited Taiwan without incident — alluding to a 1997 trip by Newt Gingrich — Kirby also stressed that Washington doesn’t expect a direct attack, but admitted Chinese threats and provocations could trigger a conflict.

He made his comments after Reuters, CNN, and other media outlets reported that Pelosi would visit Taiwan after all, in defiance of China’s warnings of a possible military response.

One can clearly see that it is the US who started trouble after perhaps being frustrated with the failure of its own efforts to bring China to its side in the Ukraine war as China still refuses to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and participate in the massive sanction against Russia due to the invasion.

The US is pushing China into the warm embrace of Russia, which will just prolong the Ukraine war, and create a potential new one.

Perhaps it is time for the US to accept that the world now is no longer a unipolar world with the US at the apex but a multipolar world where the US, Russia, and China should treat each other as first among equals.

Let’s hope saner heads will prevail in the Biden administration that will accept the realities of today’s multipolar world by working hard to prevent the Pelosi saga into becoming a deadly conflagration with global impact. – August 8, 2022.

* Jamari Mohtar reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.