Recently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi stopped off in Taiwan on her trip to East Asia. Normally, you wouldn’t think that was much but the Chinese considered Taiwan part of China. They were quite angered by it or at least pretended to be angry. They made lots of threats. The Chinese media even talked about shooting down Pelosi’s plane. That was probably never going to happen but it gave a sense of how seriously it was taken.

The US administration also took the Chinese threats seriously. The Defense Department, the CIA, and the State Department all urge Pelosi not to go. Well, let’s think about this in terms of both U.S. politics and Chinese domestic politics.

Pelosi really had to go. She has long been a supporter of Taiwan. She has constituents in her San Francisco district with close ties to Taiwan. She wasn’t going to give that up. Second, it’s important for Congress to assert its independence from the administration and with DOD, State and CIA urging Pelosi not to go, it was an opportunity for Congress to assert its independence. She got a lot of support from across the aisle, including former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was the last speaker of the house to visit Taiwan. In general, more hawkish people in both parties were quite supportive. And a lot of people both in the Senate and the House believe in asserting the independence of Congress. There was a third political reason for her to go, and that is Congressional Democrats are trying to separate themselves from President Biden, who is deeply unpopular. And there’s no better way to do it than have one of their leaders do something that the Biden administration doesn’t want them to do.