[ On TV news, a jingoistic discourse is already developing over
the Taiwan crisis — and not just on the right. The result could be
another disastrous great-power conflict, this time with China.]
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CABLE NEWS WANTS WAR WITH CHINA OVER TAIWAN  
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Branko Marcetic
August 4, 2022
Jacobin
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_ On TV news, a jingoistic discourse is already developing over the
Taiwan crisis — and not just on the right. The result could be
another disastrous great-power conflict, this time with China. _

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Taiwan, Aug. 2; Official Photo by Chien
Chih-Hung / Office of the Taiwan President,

 

House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and the rising
tensions with China that it’s fed, are fairly complicated issues.

After a series of careless statements
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President Joe Biden and ramped up US military activity
[[link removed]] off
China’s coast, Pelosi’s visit is the latest test of the
long-standing US policy that’s underwritten stable US-China
relations for decades. That is, that Washington officially views
Taiwan not as an independent country but as part of China, supports
the general concept of their eventual reunification, but reserves the
option of defending it militarily if China uses force to retake the
island.

China has always bristled at any US actions that seem to move the
country away from this doctrine and closer to open recognition of
Taiwanese sovereignty — given its firm belief that Taiwan is Chinese
territory — but has historically been too weak to do much about it.
But as an ascendant economic and military power today, China is more
assertive in pushing back, and Pelosi made her visit in direct
defiance of warnings from Chinese leadership. It also comes in the
context of years of heated, bipartisan US rhetoric singling out China
as a threat.

That’s broadly how we might summarize this enormously complex and
dangerous situation the world finds itself in right now. And
encouragingly, a few establishment voices have taken Pelosi to task
for the recklessness and irresponsibility of what she’s done here,
from Tom Friedman
[[link removed]] in
the _New York Times_ to the _Washington Post_ editorial board
[[link removed]].
China is, after all, a nuclear power, and US military strategists
once secretly planned
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nuke the country if it invaded Taiwan.

Meanwhile, let’s have a look at what the largely Democratic-voting
audience of the country’s leading “liberal” cable network was
told about the crisis.

The “Liberal” View

MSNBC viewers didn’t need to burden themselves with grappling with
the complexities of the history of the real-world risks of Pelosi’s
trip and US policy more generally. The whole matter, it turns out, is
a simple story of a liberal leader striking a righteous blow for
democracy against an authoritarianism threatening to swallow the
world.

“The people of Taiwan have been living under the threat of China for
decades,” Biden campaign advisor and Democratic strategist Adrienne
Elrod explained
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her host, former Biden campaign advisor and ex-Biden White House
staffer Symone Sanders. “China’s constantly threatening them with,
‘Oh, if you become more democratic, if you align with more
democratic countries, we’re going to come after you. So this is a
huge step forward in not only, as Nancy Pelosi said, supporting
democracy over autocracy, but it’s a huge sign of support.”  

Elrod went on to explain that Pelosi’s trip wasn’t just a “sort
of, ‘Ha ha, in your face China,’” but also about “put[ting]
our money where our mouths is [_sic_] and stand[ing] with the people
of Taiwan who, all they want is to have freedom and have a full-on
democracy.”

“I think there are lots of people out there who agree with you,”
Sanders told her, before moving on to the assassination of Al Qaeda
leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

It didn’t get much more sophisticated over at _Zerlina_, where
former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele filled in
for the usual host, Democratic strategist Zerlina Maxwell. “I was
like, yes, thank you Nancy!” Steele told his guest
[[link removed]],
author Gordon Chang, about his reaction to Pelosi’s trip.

The choice of Chang was an interesting one. An anti-China hawk who at
least _twice_ incorrectly predicted the collapse of the Chinese
ruling establishment (“Instead of 2011, the mighty Communist Party
of China will fall in 2012. Bet on it,” he wrote
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his first didn’t pan out), Chang is a regular
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he’s attacked
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“extraordinarily weak posture” for inflaming the current crisis,
and who had urged
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president to not even engage in his diplomatic phone call with Xi
Jinping, where the Chinese premier had directly brought up concerns
over Pelosi’s visit. At other times, Chang has accused
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pro-peace South Korean president Moon Jae-In of being a “North Korea
agent,” and called
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students in the United States “the long arm of authoritarianism.”

For Chang, what was happening was purely the result of Xi’s “many
problems at home,” and that “he actually needs some sort of,
quote-unquote, provocation to divert people’s attention.” If
Pelosi hadn’t gone and triggered this crisis, he elaborated, “she
would’ve been emboldening the worst elements of the Chinese
political system by showing everyone that intimidation of America
works, and that would’ve been unacceptable.”

“Because of the debacle in Afghanistan, and the failure to deter
Russia in Ukraine, Taiwan has become _the_ test — _the _test —
of American credibility, not just in the region, but worldwide,” he
said, concluding that “defending Taiwan in my view is defending
America.” Today, Chang made his return to Fox
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hail Pelosi’s visit as a “great day for America.”

“Conservatives” for Catastrophe

Speaking of Fox, the network unsurprisingly took a similarly
aggressive line on the matter.

One anchor framed
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matter of China “saber-rattling” and threatening the United States
without giving any further context to the crisis, and hit Biden for
undermining the long-standing US policy of “strategic ambiguity”
around Taiwan — not because of his repeated statements that the US
would come to Taiwan’s military aid, but because, in her view, “he
was very clear, we don’t support Taiwan independence.” (No
presidential administration has supported Taiwanese independence since
the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979).

When faced on the network with Friedman’s _Times _op-ed warning
about the United States being plunged into conflict with both a
nuclear-armed Russia and China at the same time, Hudson Institute
senior fellow Michael Pillsbury laughed
[[link removed]]. “Well
he’s totally wrong,” he said.

“From the Democratic Party point of view, whether it’s primaries
or the midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi has just stolen an issue away
from Republicans,” Pillsbury explained, revealingly. “The other
success that this trip means is we’ve shown a bipartisan support now
for Taiwan.” It’s worth noting the Hudson Institute takes
in funding from the Pentagon
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various arms manufacturers and military contractors
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Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman who stand to profit from rising
tensions with China.

One figure on the network who, surprisingly, seems to have broken from
this view is fake populist
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Carlson, who has highlighted
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threat of nuclear war over Pelosi’s needless provocation
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Before you give him too much credit, though, bear in mind Carlson has
spent years now vilifying China, claiming it controls US politicians
and institutions, inviting guests who daydream
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“sit[ting] on a throne of Chinese skulls,” and, most recently,
charging it was turning Brazil
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its “colony” and so “establishing
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threatening new beachhead in our hemisphere.” In other words,
Carlson has played a leading role in creating the kind of toxic,
paranoid discourse in the United States that’s led precisely to this
moment; the fact that he now has buyer’s remorse shouldn’t let him
off the hook.

The Center No Better

Even centrist TV press outlets got in on the act. CNBC invited on
Republican uber-hawk Senator Tom Cotton, who claimed
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merely a matter of Xi “trying to see what he can get away with,”
and called for the government “to make it clear to Xi Jinping that
we will not back down.”

“That’s the best way to avoid what no one wants, which is a war
with China in the western Pacific,” Cotton told viewers.

Just as with MSNBC and Fox, this was a common talking point at these
outlets: that the crisis over Pelosi’s visit was purely a result of
Chinese domestic politics, had no connection to US actions which were
not that big a deal, that Chinese officials were merely using it as an
excuse to saber-rattle, and that Pelosi had every right to do what she
did — and in fact, that Washington should keep up the pressure.

“I would hope that we don’t and no one give Xi Jinping a relief
valve, if you will, or a life ring as he’s having so many difficult
issues internally over the course of the last year or two,” former
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen told CNN
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“The United States is not going to be intimidated by the threats,”
National Security Council official John Kirby told the network
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denying that the trip was a violation of sovereignty, and insisting
Pelosi’s sojourn was “absolutely consistent” with the One China
policy.

On PBS, national security advisor Jake Sullivan similarly insisted
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was “a decision she had every right to make, and in fact, a speaker
of the House has previously traveled to Taiwan without incident, and
members of Congress travel to Taiwan all the time,” and that “it
doesn’t signal a change in US policy, it doesn’t threaten China in
anyway.”

“For China to turn around and turn this into some kind of crisis, or
use it as a pretext to take aggressive action against Taiwan, that’s
on China,” Sullivan added, before vowing to “not be deterred from
operating as we have operated,” and so “continue to assert freedom
of navigation,” and “continue to take steps to support Taiwan’s
self-defense.”

For the most part, viewers were kept blissfully unaware of the
potential risks of Pelosi’s decision. That’s both in terms of
nuclear escalation and embroiling already struggling Americans
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another disastrous, far-off conflict, and in terms of Taiwan itself,
which would bear the brunt of any Chinese aggression these moves
provoke. As the lead-up to Pelosi’s visit showed, among the
Washington establishment, this was the consensus view among its narrow
spectrum of political opinion.

“I think China should not have any say over where American officials
travel,” Donald Trump’s former defense secretary, Mark Esper,
had told CNN
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likewise pointing to previous Congressional visits to Taiwan. “I
think if the Speaker wants to go, she should go. . . . I believe that
our One China policy has outlived its usefulness.”

“We’re not going to let the Chinese Communist Party dictate where
the Speaker of the House should go,” said
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Ro Khanna, a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2020 who is
currently maneuvering
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into place as the progressive flag-bearer in a future presidential
election. “She should absolutely go,” he went on, waving away
concerns about military escalation. “We shouldn’t allow them to
bluff and dictate to America, the greatest nation in the world, where
our Speaker of the House should travel.”

You could hear this kind of rhetoric even in progressive spaces —
for example _Democracy Now!_, where the Quincy Institute’s Michael
Swaine was browbeaten
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Taiwanese-American journalist Brian Hioe, merely for attempting to
explain the political and historical context of the One China policy
and its role in preventing US-Chinese conflict.

“Why we are talking about a fifty-year-old agreement without talking
about the wishes of the Taiwanese people in the slightest, justifying
that the present actions China takes are somehow justified towards
Taiwan?” Hioe interrupted to ask.

“Well, the point here is not so much what the Taiwanese themselves
are saying in this regard. What I was just saying was about the United
States,” Swaine replied.

“So, then, it doesn’t matter, huh?” Hioe cut in.

In reality, Taiwan’s status as a democracy means that its citizens
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one voice on foreign policy, and the One China policy has long been a
matter of contention
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Taiwanese politics. A representative of the opposition Kuomintang
party commented
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“the entire episode is not constructive for either party,”
referring to Taiwan and the United States.

Repeating Recent History

Although not uniform across all coverage of the crisis, we are seeing
some of the worst aspects of the foreign policy discourse surrounding
war in Ukraine reappear in discussion of the rising tensions over
Taiwan: the compulsory embrace of a cartoon version of international
relations in which China has no legitimate interests, de-escalation is
weakness, and anyone who disagrees is accused of sinister motives.

And right now, this is the case just about across the political
spectrum, where progressive lawmakers and liberal cable news hosts
sound indistinguishable from hard-right military officials who served
under Donald Trump and George W. Bush. This is exactly the sort of
jingoistic atmosphere that leads countries to sleepwalk into disaster.

_[BRANKO MARCETIC [[link removed]] is
a Jacobin staff writer and the author of Yesterday's Man: The Case
Against Joe Biden [[link removed]]. He
lives in Chicago, Illinois.]_

_The new issue of Jacobin is out now. Subscribe today
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yearlong print and digital subscription._

_Catalyst [[link removed]] - A journal of theory and
strategy published by Jacobin_

* China
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* Taiwan
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* U.S. foreign policy
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* Nancy Pelosi
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* Biden Administration
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* international relations
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* US-China relations
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* Asia
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* Asia/Pacific region
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* Xi Jinping
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* Communist Party of China
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