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Strategic Vision vol. 11, no. 53 (September, 2022)
Stepping Up
US Congress has historic role to play in helping Taiwan defend against attack Thomas Shattuck
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recent rash of high-profile government delegations visiting Taiwan, spurred by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 trip, marks the beginning of a new chapter in the tense trilateral relationship between Beijing, Washington, and Taipei. In and of itself, the Pelosi visit was nothing particularly new or different, since members of Congress regularly travel to Taiwan. In fact, 2021 saw the most US congressional trips to Taiwan in at least 10 years, with 2022 thus far following this trend: Just a couple of weeks after the speaker’s delegation left
Taipei, another congressional delegation, this one led by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, made a similar trip, to much less fanfare and media coverage. Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb also traveled to Taipei in late August, to discuss semiconductor investment in his state. These visits have resulted in Beijing expanding its coercive toolkit against Taiwan. The reason that the Pelosi trip became so contentious is because Beijing decided that the visit crossed one of its ambiguous red lines and carried out an unprecedented response that included economic bans
photo: ROC Presidential Office Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Kausea Natano, left, meets with ROC President Tsai Ing-wen during a state visit to Taiwan.
Thomas Shattuck is the Global Order Program Manager at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, and a member of Foreign Policy for America’s NextGen Foreign Policy Initiative and the Pacific Forum’s Young Leaders Program.