This post has taken much longer because I got myself into thinking deeply about intrinsic and extrinsic values in philosophy especially in ethics, the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles governing human behaviors. The more I think the less satisfied I became with the current discussions, which have not moved us much further from ancient Greek scholars. Of course this is not the place to get into details so I will stop here.
After the previous discussions on why Pelosi has the full right and even good causes to travel to Taiwan, it is time to talk about why the visit is an example of risky, selfish and irrational moves, despite Pelosi herself claiming the trip being worth it.
Pelosi Broke the Status Quo
The first problem is to make a high profile and provocative move toward changing the delicate status quo — when not seeking unilateral change is in the best interest of China, Taiwan, the US and the world.
It is the familiar “Pelosi Hypocrisy” in its worst déjà vu, this time in foreign affairs, for Pelosi to declare, upon arrival in Taiwan that the US “continues to oppose unilateral efforts to change the status quo” — when her own visit did just that, with a smoking gun in her hand, visible from anywhere in the world.
Bear in mind that the so called “Taiwan Question” always involves three parties, not just the two sides across the Taiwan Strait. Therefore, the obligation of no unilateral efforts to change the status quo applies to the US just as well as to China and Taiwan.
The Shaky Ground for the Visit
Worse still, it was a trip of big risks with zero expected gain, neither for the US, China nor for the world, neither in short nor long runs. In her essay in Washington Post, Pelosi tried to defend her trip but after reading it through I failed to find any pressing and convincing reason for her trip now. The strongest evidence that Taiwan is in great danger is that “the U.S. Defense Department to conclude that China’s army is ‘likely preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC by force.’”
Come on, let us be reasonable. If all we know is Beijing “likely preparing for” something, does that warrant a visit by the House Speaker? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to hold talks with Beijing on security issues involving Taiwan?
While there is a shaky ground to expect any gain in national security and international peace, the trip will clearly benefit Pelosi by attracting global limelight before her house speakership comes to an end. I am also willing to suspect that her son, who went along with Pelosi as her “escort,” may have some pressing business need to visit Taiwan in person.
Believe it or not, it also benefits Beijing, because even though the G7 had shown symbolic solidarity with the US, it is safe to say that the top priority for the rest of the world, especially the neighboring Southeast Asian countries, is to avoid taking side between the two largest economies.
Even the US, in the interest of containing the negative repercussions from the visit, can and should only accuse China of over-reacting but not unilaterally provoking, because Pelosi started the bad move first.
Ignorance and Lack of Empathy Are Worrisome
Sure, the visit itself is peaceful as most visits are; and sure, other members of Congress have done it before. Pelosi seems to be puzzled by the “big fuss” about her trip when other visits essentially went unnoticed.
I hope Pelosi is only pretending she does not know — I really would rather see her comments as a game play, because the other possibility of genuinely not knowing why her visit differs from others is more scaring: It indicates such a high level of ignorance that can only trigger more risky conflicts in the future.
International relations are definitely more art than science. There is no simple and linear formula to follow. One thing that is always clear however is that just like in all human communications it is not what you say or do alone but how other people interpret your words and deeds that matters. Having some empathy therefore is foundationally important and helps everyone.
Unlike sympathy, empathy means you do not have to agree with someone, but do, at least once in a while, look at things from her perspective. Completely incapable or unwilling of doing that creates far more problems between two countries than between two individuals, given the complexity of international relations, especially with the global ramifications of Sino-US relations.
“President” Pelosi vs Speaker Pelosi
It does not really matter whether Pelosi was sincerely confused because the damage is already done one way or the other. It is however important for the public to know a few key reasons that made her visit unique.
The first has something to do with her position in the Washington power hierarchy. Unsurprisingly all comments from China have never failed to mention, or more accurately highlight, the fact that Pelosi is the second in line for presidential succession, meaning in the rare event when both the president and vice president were to die, resign, or be removed from the office, Pelosi would be the next US president.
In reality the chance for that to happen is perhaps not bigger than you and I were to die from an air crash. But still, remember the word “empathy?” It does not matter how unlikely that would happen, but how the Chinese think of the possibility.
Being a one-party state where the notion of “government” really only refers to the executive branch, in the eyes of Chinese, Pelosi’s title of Speaker of the House, while means a lot in this country, carries less weight than her second in line for presidency. This is why China can easily let any “rank and file” members of congress visit Taiwan but not Pelosi.
Gingrich vs Pelosi
What about Newt Gingrich, the Republican Speaker of the House who visited Taiwan 25 years ago in 1997? Pelosi herself has avoided citing Gingrich for the obvious reason that Gingrich is from the other side of the aisle. But for the rest of us, the question is inevitable.
This is where context of an event can overshadow the event itself. According to this report of LA Times, “the Chinese leadership–who had been trying for more than two years to get the speaker to visit” China, mostly because, as this report from South China Morning Post tells us, Gingrich “had led the campaign to end sanctions on Beijing after the bloody Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, also expressed support for the Chinese government’s position that Taiwan and China are part of the same country.” In other words, Gingrich did exactly what Beijing wanted from any American politician.
This gave Gingrich a bargaining chip to insist on a visit to Taiwan as a precondition for his visit to the mainland. As a compromise, Beijing asked that he avoid going to Taiwan directly from the mainland but take a detour through Japan, to which Gingrich agreed.
What was the big deal in those background facts? First of all, Gingrich negotiated his way with Beijing before he actually landed in Taiwan (for only three hours), while Pelosi simply decided her trip without bothering with any interaction or negotiation, neither domestically nor internationally.
Secondly, Beijing saved face last time by having effectively controlled the most important portion of Gingrich’s itinerary in 1997. By having some say in the trip, the mainland must have felt that the trip was a controllable damage, especially considering that in 1997 Beijing’s military might was not nearly as big as today.
All the above events were dwarfed by the one big contextual factor: Back then Beijing needed Gingrich more than Gingrich needed Beijing. Several key reasons included China did not enter the WTO yet but wanted to, Deng Xiaoping just died, and the new party boss Jiang Zemin was eager to impress the world by improving the crucial relationship with the US.
Although China now says that allowing Gingrich to visit Taiwan was a mistake, it never was. Instead, it was a completely rational decision. On the other hand, Newt Gingrich may be a seasoned player in domestic politics, but he is at the elementary school level when it comes to diplomacy. As much as he would like us to believe that playing the tough card with China will be rewarding, diplomacy is never completely about human style of interaction but dominated by situational and contextual imperatives. Chinese has a good way to say it: 形势比人强.
All these together meant Beijing stood to gain more from a high profile visit by Gingrich, even if that meant to tolerate his “side trip” to Taiwan. Again, Gingrich might think himself as a hero by issuing a straightforward warning directly to Jiang Zemin that the US would protect Taiwan in the event of the mainland invading Taiwan. It is highly likely that Beijing never took his warning seriously because they knew it was not up to a House Speaker to make the final call in military decisions.
Sure enough, according to this report, “A Clinton administration official responded to Gingrich’s statements by saying he had received briefings about American policy toward China, but that Gingrich ‘was speaking for himself’ in his conversations with Chinese leaders.”
Not Adding Fuel to the Fire
Speaking for himself or not, the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns went too far by claiming the current situation across the Taiwan Strait after Pelosi visit “a manufactured crisis by the government in Beijing.” His comment shows how poorly qualified he is as the top US diplomat stationed in Beijing, whose job should have been to cool down the situation as much as possible, given the currently extremely sensitive situation following Pelosi’s visit.
No, the US does not have to say “Sorry” to Beijing for Pelosi’s trip, because like I said previously it is well within her right to visit Taiwan — despite all the problems and risks it has caused. However, we do not want to give China the middle finger, either. Sometimes saying less is better than saying more. We are allowed to admit the current situation is bad — without making explicit attribution to the cause of the situation. We are also allowed to ask Beijing not to over-react, again without accusing it of having manufactured the crisis.
Learning a Lesson from Zelensky
As an example of saying too much to the media, consider Ukraine President Zelensky, who recalled his reasoning behind the decision for not sharing with the public the US intelligence reports on Putin’s plan to invade. Zelensky is entitled to let the public know how decisions were made, although there is no need to mention any financial figures (e.g., the potential loss of $7 billion a month in case of public chaos), even though they may be truly educated guesses.
Putting out a dollar figure inevitably invites criticism: Did the President of Ukraine sees $7 billion loss more valuable than his citizens’ lives? In reality, this is an unfair comparison because at the time when Zelensky made his decision there was no human casualty, which only came after the Russian invasion. Meanwhile the loss of billion dollars is highly possible.
This is why I am sympathetic to Zelensky and his reasoning but not to his poor post-invasion communications. Sometimes you can do things without discussing them in detail, while other times you can discuss things without doing them.
Showing Mutual Respect to Forewarnings Is Good Diplomacy
When it comes to Taiwan, I must say Beijing has shown a rare degree of transparency in its stance — putting aside the issue of whether the stance is justified or not. They have clearly and consistently stated what is on their mind and issued repeated official warnings before the trip, including its potential military responses. I simply have not seen the same transparency elsewhere from Beijing.
Forewarnings serve a crucial function: They make communications and decision making easier for both sides, far better than withholding the reasoning and then striking by surprise. This principle applies to both sides.
One good example of forewarning diplomacy is from President Biden, who called and warned China’s Xi Jinping not to provide material support to Russia — or else to face economic backlash. Meanwhile, the White House refused to say that Biden’s warning has effectively changed Xi Jinping’s mind, which is the smart thing to do to save Beijing’s face.
Even Burns admitted that the warning worked well, as Beijing indeed had refrained itself from offering any military assistance to Putin. But this is the question: If Xi Jinping kept his words in heeding the US warning, should the US show some respect to Beijing’s warning? I believe so.
I am not saying what Beijing said and did is right and has pointed out that the mainland’s sovereignty claim over Taiwan has been on a shaky ground from the very beginning. However, given the sunk history of the Sino-US diplomatic relations, given where we are now, the best way forward is to work with the present issues and more importantly, to put global peace as our most pressing top priority.
Peace Has Higher Intrinsic Value Than Democracy
I remember Thomas Friedman claiming himself not a pacifist or of pacifism in his essay criticizing Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. I do not mind being called a pacifist because — if I must choose or must trade off — I see a higher intrinsic value in peace than in democracy. I know it sounds odd or even “politically incorrect” to compare the two but in real life we often are forced to pick and choose from among several seemingly equally desirable and noble goals.
My main argument is that peace is directly and immediately linked to the safety of human lives, while democracy is a mode of governance that is only meaningful when human beings are still existing rather than on the way out toward extinguishing. In that sense, democracy is a luxury while peace is a necessity, democracy can wait while peace cannot, because no democracy can be built overnight but peace can be lost overnight.
Based on the above reasoning I never hide my view that global peace has its own intrinsic value that sits above the fights over ideologies. When lives are lost, there is no point arguing which ideology is superior to, or “righter” than, others.
At the risk of being pessimistic, for a foreseeable long time into the future we humans may have to stick with the status quo, where democracy, as a concept, has gained an unprecedented and decidedly upper hand over autocrats — but not as a full-blown institution. In other words, most countries in the world today will be happy calling themselves a democracy, yet many if not most will be “democracy in the name only” (i.e., a DINO) paraphrasing Trump’s term of “Republicans in the name only” (i.e., a RINO).
What does this long, sticky status quo mean? It means we should celebrate the prevalence of democracy — even though it is just a DINO, while we should have patience — a lot of it — for turning democracy from a concept to functioning institutions.
Think Like an Insurance Agent
Insurance carriers constantly look for “good risks” and try to stay away from “bad risks” in writing homeowner policies. “Good risks” are households with signs of “ownership pride” like good maintenance of driveways, backyard, lawn, porch, roof and external walls. “Bad risks” on the other hand have signs like spiderweb all over the places, broken windows, vandalized walls and unoccupied dwellings for an extended period.
The same applies to international relations and we should all think like an insure agent looking for good risks. What makes a good risk? Maintaining peace is definitely one while losing peace is a sure bet for a bad risk. The reason? Losing peace means immediate risks of losing lives, while losing or never having democracy is not always life threatening.
The Need to Move Along with Time (与时俱进)
Speaking of “life threatening,” here is one report on February 19, 2021 that has since been buried under government and media propaganda about genocide in Xinjiang, China. I will simply quote the subtitle: “Despite the Trump administration’s declaration of a genocide in Xinjiang, upheld by the Biden administration, some legal experts suspect China’s behavior may fall short of actual genocide.”
Actually, the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor went further than “suspecting” it. It had concluded “there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide” in Xinjiang.
Here is what worries me: The world has moved forward, thanks to three things: (1) the demise of the first communist regime of Soviet Union; (2) the globalization that helps redistribute global wealth by playing with the comparative advantage and (3) the interconnected global mass media. As a result, even dictators today must govern in less barbarian ways. More importantly, they can now afford not to rely exclusively on brute forces of suppression but leverage economic, financial, cultural and social means to maintain ruling power — simply because these new means are more effective with lower risk, both domestic and international risks.
Yet in the US the prevailing view has been lagging behind and many stayed the same as the cold war era: “Dictators are always dictators;” “Once a dictator, always a dictator;” “A dictator will always kill whenever he wants.” The danger of not keeping up with the time — for cognitive or emotional reasons — is that we will exaggerate the danger and damage of modern day dictators.
Listen to What Mao Zedong Had to Say
Back to the discussion of peace & democracy, I say not having democracy is “not always” life threatening. There were times however when no democracy could indeed endanger human lives even during peace time. Let me show you why.
Ignoring the intrinsic value of peace and implicitly putting ideological fights above potential losses of human lives from military conflicts is nothing new. It had been the dominant mindset of dictators like Mao Zedong and Stalin during the Cold War.
Mao Zedong once made a famously reckless claim on war and ideology. On November 18, 1957, at the Moscow Meeting of Representatives of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, Mao said, as recalled by the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev in his memoir:
“Mao spoke about the war at this meeting. His speech content was roughly this: Do not be afraid of war. Do not be afraid of either the atomic bomb or the weapons. No matter what kind of war, we socialist countries will win. When it comes to China specifically, he claimed: ‘If the imperialist impose war on us, we now have 600 million people, even if we lose 300 million, so what, this is war. Years later, we nurture new, and the population will be restored.’ After he spoke, the meeting room was in a tomb-like silence.”
The same Quora article also cited an official but perhaps “gentrified” version of Mao’s speech in 1957 from the “Selected works of Mao Zedong’s diplomatic article” (the link to the original source however no longer works and you will get a “404 error” from clicking it):
“Now we have to estimate a situation: madmen who want war, they might drop the atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb everywhere. They drop, we drop, then leave chaos, and lose a great many of people. We need to consider the worst scenario. Our Party Politburo held a few meetings, talked about this issue. If we fight now, China only has grenades, no atomic bombs, but the Soviet Union does. Imagine how many people would die if war broke out. The world has a 2.7 billion population, it’s possible to lose one-third; say a little more, may lose half. We don’t want to fight, they do, and a fight will lead to the atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb. I and a foreign statesman debated this issue. He believed that if we fight an atomic war, people will die extinct. I said, in extreme terms, half dead, half live. Imperialism will be gone in the war, and leaves a world of socialism, and then after many years, there will be 2.7 billion people back, and even more. We Chinese have not build up our country yet, we want peace. But if imperialism insists on fighting, we’ll have to summon up the resolve to fight the battle and build later. Daily fear of war, the war comes, what can you do?”
Whichever version you chose to believe, Mao’s fundamental message was loud and clear: Fear no war and worry no human casualties because wars and casualties are the necessary price to pay to wipe out the “imperialism” and to let socialism prevail, which is a cause more valuable than the lives of half the human population on the face of the earth.
It is no surprise for Mao to think that way, because he had been an avid reader of Chinese history throughout his life, much more than books written by Karl Marx. Chinese history has been full of bloody killings, which were the widely accepted way to solve the problem of power struggle and power redistributions. Just like Mao, emperors, kings and warlords took it for granted that physical destruction and elimination of human bodies were the necessary evil — sometimes not evil but pleasure — for a country to settle down in peace under a new regime.
While in Mao’s time in the 1950s, the only weapon of mass destruction was atomic bombs. Not anymore. Starting a war is never easier today as we humans have so many more weapon options enough to destroy the world multiple times. This is exactly why self- and coordinated constraints against hot war are so important as maintaining global Peace has never been so delicate. This is where we are different from Mao Zedong who argued ideology is above human lives. In today’s world whoever contributing to the global peace is the real hero, whoever provoking conflicts, especially military conflicts between those capable of destroying the world multiple times is just as guilty as dictators like Mao and Stalin.