U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrapped up her trip to Taiwan despite facing protests from China. China called the visit a "serious violation" and said it would launch a series of military exercises off Taiwan's coast. Pelosi is the highest-ranking U.S. official to have visited Taiwan in 25 years. David Tafuri, Fmr. Obama Campaign Foreign Policy Advisor & Fmr. State Department Official joined Cheddar News to discuss.


Opening Bell

Pelosi Wraps Up Controversial Taiwan Visit, Despite China Warning

for more on this. David Tafuri, former Obama campaign, foreign policy adviser and former State Department official joins us now to break it all down. We got to start with what was the purpose of US House Speaker nancy. Pelosi taking this trip to Taiwan in the first place. Well Pelosi published an op ed yesterday, which I think explains her reasoning and the main thing she wanted to do was show solidarity with Taiwan. That was the purpose of the visit. She noted that Taiwan has a vibrant democracy. It's an important ally of the United States and that she does not want to be seen as backing down to authoritarian governments in this case china and she certainly wasn't going to back down what once China made publicly clear that it did not want her to go and there will be repercussions for her going. They basically threatened her and if she had not gone after they made that very public threat, it would have endangered the ability of other people to go in the future. And of course china has no right to dictate whether members of Congress leaders in Congress or members of the biden administration visit Taiwan in the future. So, can you explain why China was so against her trip? Well, China obviously believes that Taiwan has no right to engage in foreign relations outside of the leadership of the government in Beijing China wants to maintain the one china policy and of course China wants to um curb Taiwan's democracy which it finds threatening it is, you know, perhaps a model for those inside china who would like to see china become more democratic. The government in china does not want that model there. It does not want people to feel emboldened by the fact that there is you know a democracy that China claims to be part of china. And so for Pelosi to go and visit without the permission of china, China felt was very provocative. And it sets a precedent that China did not want to be in place. Which might have resulted in other might result in other leaders visiting Taiwan not just leaders from the U. S. But leaders from other western democracies. Which would you know further make China threatened that Taiwan was engaging in foreign relations across the world which it has a right to do right. Well I know Pelosi was given a series of warnings from china and the US advising her not to visit Taiwan and the US military advised against it and for the trip. So why was Pelosi so insistent on maybe making her rounds to Taipei despite all of these warnings and her them saying don't do it. This was before trying to even threatened her not to go. That's right. I think the biden administration made clear that they did not want her to make this visit. I think we need to distinguish between whether they wanted her to make a visit at all or if they just thought the timing of this visit was not good and that's what I think. I think it's the latter. It's not that they were against any visit by any U. S. Official to Taiwan. But they felt the timing was difficult especially because the number one policy and priority of the biden administration right now as it should be, is to support Ukraine in the war against Russia and the illegal invasion of Russia in order to do that successfully. We really need to keep china on the sidelines. So nobody wants to provoke china at this time right now because we want to make sure that china continues to not provide military support to Russia and does not help Russia evade sanctions. Which is such an important part of the response to China's illegal Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. So does her visit maybe signal in any way that Washington is going to shift its policies towards Taiwan or perhaps china? Well this is a really interesting question. Remember we have a policy of strategic ambiguity as to what we would do if china you know tried to invade Taiwan. But President biden has said um a couple of times that the US would defend Taiwan and then he and his aides have walked that back. So we don't necessarily you know whether the policy has changed or not. The biden administration has emphatically said the policy is still the same strategic ambiguity. We do not want there to be any change in the status quo of Taiwan but it's not entirely clear what we would do if China attacked Taiwan. But I think you can also read into some of President biden's, you know, off the cuff comments about what we would do. Alright. Well a spokeswoman at the chinese Foreign ministry at a news conference in Beijing said that the there is punishment to the US helping our visiting Taiwan this whole situation following closely visit. And we know that Taiwan recently had some cyber attacks. So are we may be expecting to see more attacks or more punishment? Well, this is something Taiwan lives with all the time and they're constantly under both military threat and cyber attack threats from China experiencing cyber attacks all the time and none of this unfortunately is new for Taiwan. Yes, there'll be some more military exercises, you know, dangerously close to Taiwan missile tests near Taiwan. You know, flights over, you know, Taiwan's airspace, that's probably going to happen in response to this visit by Pelosi. But it's not entirely different with the threats that Taiwan lives with all of the time. As long as China doesn't go any step further than those things, I think it's going to be okay. And hopefully tensions will ease over the next few months. Alright, let's definitely hope so. David Tafuri, former Obama campaign foreign policy adviser and former State Department, Thank you so much for joining us