Pentagon planning for Taiwan visit by US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, report says, SCMP, Jan. 24, 2023.
Pentagon planning for McCarthy’s visit in ‘early stages’, while US President Joe Biden’s officials expect spring visit, Punchbowl News reports
Beijing likely to understand that McCarthy’s opposition party status differentiates the situation from Nancy Pelosi’s visit last year, analysts say
The US Defence Department is preparing for House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy to visit Taiwan later this year, Punchbowl News reported on Monday, citing an official directly involved.
Punchbowl also said that planning for the trip is in “early stages”, and that officials in US President Joe Biden’s administration expect McCarthy to visit sometime in the spring.
House Republicans under McCarthy’s leadership have made countering Beijing a priority, with a select committee on US-China competition established this month as one of the first legislative acts of the new Congress. Taiwan’s defence has been a key agenda item for Republican congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, McCarthy’s pick to lead the committee.
McCarthy, who represents a California district north of Los Angeles, had said he would “love” to visit Taiwan if he were elected speaker, days ahead of then-speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to the self-ruled island in August last year.
Beijing reacted to Pelosi’s August 2 visit with a near complete blockade of Taiwan, followed by live-fire military drills around the island that were unprecedented in scope.
The government also cut off a range of communication channels with the US, including on climate change and military exchanges – moves the White House labelled as an “overreaction”.
The speaker of the house is second in the presidential line of succession, after the vice-president, according to the US Constitution. The last speaker to visit Taiwan before Pelosi was Newt Gingrich, a Republican, in 1997, during the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton.
Analysts at the Eurasia Group, a New York-based political risk consultancy, noted that Pelosi’s visit may have set a precedent that other House speakers will need to follow, amid a bipartisan push for a harsher stance on China.
Her visit “raised the bar for subsequent speakers, especially Republicans, all but ensuring that McCarthy would have to plan his own trip in order not to appear soft on China,” they wrote in a research note on Monday.
Biden appeared, initially, to try to discourage Pelosi, but made no apologies to Beijing once she made the rounds in Taipei, insisting afterwards that the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches gave him no authority to stop the Democrat House speaker.
Biden then caused confusion about Washington’s policy towards Taiwan, when he said in an interview that the US would defend Taiwan in the event of a military attack from the mainland.
That comment threw into question the US’s long-standing stance of “strategic ambiguity” towards Taiwan, a policy of being intentionally vague about whether it would come to Taiwan’s defence.
The White House has since denied that it has changed its policy towards Taiwan.
Beijing, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has not renounced the use of force to achieve reunification, is opposed to other nations making formal contact with the government in Taipei.
Like most Western countries, the US does not have official diplomatic ties with Taiwan. While Washington does not recognise Beijing’s claim of sovereignty over the self-governed island, it “acknowledges” that the claim exists.
Eurasia Group analysts noted that the timing of the visit’s leak to Punchbowl suggests the White House is looking to “get ahead of the issue” and prevent the confusion that plagued Pelosi’s visit.
They predicted that China’s response could be “somewhat less severe” than its response to Pelosi’s visit due partly to recent efforts by Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping to stabilise relations and Xi’s focus on China’s post-Covid recovery.
“Beijing’s response may also be influenced by [its] understanding that McCarthy, as the leader of the opposition party, is not an emissary of the White House,” they added.
McCarthy’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Pentagon spokesperson said that “it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment on any congressional travel possibilities”.
Senator Todd Young of Indiana, who visited Taiwan last week, told Politico on Friday that “every member of Congress should visit Taiwan” after being asked whether McCarthy should visit Taiwan.