U.S. and Taiwanese officials indicated Monday that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be making a stop in Taiwan as part of her tour of Asia. It’s still unclear when exactly Pelosi will land in Taipei. Her expected trip comes despite warnings from China that a visit to Taiwan would ignite a response.
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Robert Sutter is a professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs and an expert in contemporary U.S. policy toward Asia and the Pacific.
In a recent article for The Diplomat, Professor Sutter writes that “the controversy over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s purported visit to Taiwan has overshadowed major congressional achievements defending America in the face of multifaceted challenges posed by Chinese government behavior.”
Gerrit van der Wees is a professorial lecturer and a former Dutch diplomat who served in the Dutch government from 1982 through 2005. Professor van der Wees also previously served as chief editor of Taiwan Communiqué, a bi-monthly publication chronicling developments in and around Taiwan’s transition to democracy. He continues to write about Taiwan’s history and political developments in and around East Asia.
In a column for the Taipei Times, Professor van der Wees recently wrote, “To have a sufficient counterweight to China, it is necessary that the US and Europe jointly push back against China’s aggressive behavior, and work more closely together in their support for Taiwan so that we can ensure that it continues to exist as a free and democratic nation-state, and becomes a full and equal member in the international family of nations.”
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