We Have All the Power We Need on the World Stage

By Kevin D. Williamson

Thursday, August 04, 2022

 

‘Don’t put on a show of power if you don’t have the power.” That was one of many similar sentiments expressed by Chinese nationalists infuriated that the Beijing junta did not undertake some extraordinary effort — such as the deployment of military force — to stop Nancy Pelosi from visiting Taiwan.

 

“Don’t put on a show of power if you don’t have the power” is excellent advice. Even better advice is: “Don’t put on a show of power even if you do have the power.” If you have the power, everybody who needs to know knows.

 

Why go to Taiwan? Pelosi is not the first speaker of the House to visit the republic, though she is the first speaker — and the highest-ranking U.S. official — to do so since Newt Gingrich paid a visit to Taipei in the 1990s. The United States has long maintained an official policy of “strategic ambiguity” vis-à-vis Taiwan — a dangerous fiction, in my view — with Washington notionally in agreement with Beijing’s view that there is “One China.”

 

So, why stir it up this summer?

 

One excellent reason for Pelosi to go to Taiwan is because Beijing tried to tell her that she couldn’t. Whatever theoretical consent the United States has given to the “One China” myth, the fact is that Taiwan is, and long has been, an independent, self-governing country. The United States also is an independent, self-governing country, and Xi Jinping has just been shown that he does not have the juice to tell officials of the U.S. government where they may and may not go — “Don’t put on a show of power if you don’t have the power.”

 

It doesn’t hurt to remind Beijing of that every now and then. We could perform a bunch of high-profile military exercises in the region or stage one of those nifty look-at-the-size-of-my-missile parades that figures such as Xi and Kim Jong-un are so fond of. But, instead, we sent an 82-year-old legislator — one who has been, to her credit, an energetic critic of Beijing’s human-rights record. The United States doesn’t have to whip out the artillery to remind everybody we have it. And, besides, we have something more powerful than nuclear weapons in our arsenal: an open society. Nancy Pelosi is, in her daft and corrupt way, as ready an exemplar of that as anybody.

 

While Xi was having his little hissy-fit about Pelosi’s itinerary, Vladimir Putin was raising a ruckus about NATO’s decision to admit Sweden and Finland as new members, a decision just ratified by a nearly unanimous Senate, the only opposition coming from that cretinous sycophant from Missouri. (The disappointment from Kentucky voted “present.”) Moscow has threatened “retaliatory steps” in response to the NATO expansion.

 

Like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin believes — and is encouraged by some of his American admirers to believe — that he has veto power over the actions, alliances, and relationships of other countries. The Senate has answered him: “Don’t put on a show of power if you don’t have the power.” Putin may be willing to bomb maternity hospitals in Ukraine, but that is not power — that is only brutality. Conflating power and brutality is a common error among a certain kind of thug and thug-groupie — Xi, Putin, Kim, Muhammad bin Salman, Daniel Ortega, Donald Trump — but brutality is the mark of a weak regime rather than a powerful one. Powerful countries have enduring institutions, influence, and the power of attraction that you can see in the millions of people risking their lives for a chance to live in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, Australia, etc.

 

You cannot build anything worth having out of brutality. No doubt the average mugger in New York City would beat the stuffing out of the average Fortune 500 CEO in a street fight, but if you think that means the nobody street hoodlum has power, then you don’t know what power is.

 

Whether through expanding NATO or by Republicans’ backing Pelosi as a representative of the country rather than her party, it is good to see Americans take their own side in a fight from time to time. And if you don’t think there is an American side to Putin’s war on Ukraine or Xi’s threatened war on Taiwan, you aren’t paying attention.

 

“Don’t put on a show of power if you don’t have the power.” We have plenty of power — as much of it as we are willing to deploy. What we don’t always have is a good understanding of what we want to get out of using that power. While the baby steps taken by Pelosi and the Senate are welcome, the fact remains that the United States isn’t getting what it wants out of its relationship with China or its relationship with Russia not because Washington doesn’t have sufficient power but because Washington does not understand what it wants or what it should want out of those relationships.

 

If Joe Biden needs someone to help explain that to him, Taipei is only an overnight flight away.