Antony Blinken, the highest-ranking member of the Biden administration to visit China, had hoped to reestablish communication between the militaries of the two nations after China's generals have refused to answer the phone. Blinken also hoped to advance the U.S. position relative to Taiwan, the self-governing nation that has been a target of of mainland China since 1949.
Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says Blinken’s trip did neither.
“You have to ask why China even accepted this trip,” Self said Monday on the "Washington Watch" program. "I don’t think [Blinken] scored on either one of the major issues, one being Taiwan. Whatever spin they put on it, I think he was probably called or accepted in Beijing for the message of, ‘Leave Taiwan alone.’”
Taiwan, an island nation of 23 million, was declared an independent nation by Chiang Kai-shek after World War II. After being defeated by Communist forces on the mainland, China's nationalists fled there in 1949 to escape execution at the hands of Mao Zedong and his Red Guards.
China's communist leaders have always claimed Taiwan is the legal property of mainland China, and the Chinese Communist Party has vowed "reunification" will eventually happen one day.
Regardless of what public policy the administration might put forth on Taiwan, the congressman warned, its actions are speaking, too.
“Since we’re three years behind on shipping the weapons to Taiwan that they’ve already purchased, I think we need to get a move on,” Self told show host Tony Perkins. “Frankly, China has already said they will take Taiwan by force if necessary.”
There is no U.S. treaty with Taiwan vowing to fight and defend the island nation if China invades but the U.S. has supplied Taiwan with military weaponry to defend itself.
Meanwhile, President Biden has complicated the U.S. position by stating the U.S. will defend the island if China attacks. That vowed has been walked back more than once after Biden's vowed to defend Taiwan.
Earlier this year, in a story about a military battle over Taiwan, AFN reported the U.S. eventually defeats China in numerous tabletop exercises conducted by Washington think tanks. That win comes at a great cost, however, of military service members and irreplaceable U.S. Navy warships.
World was watching Afghanistan withdrawal
Self says U.S. foreign policy has created questions for potential business-partner nations and has emboldened the bad actors after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“When the Biden administration did that, the entire world started testing us. For instance, (Russia’s Vladimir) Putin started moving troops toward Ukraine within weeks of our withdrawal from Afghanistan," the congressman recalled. "China's aggressive actions have increased since then. Iran has tested us. North Korea has tested us. You see countries around the Middle East looking for another partner other than the U.S. because they don't think they can trust us right now."
Department of Defense officials in their annual report to Congress in 2022 acknowledged the impact of the Afghanistan withdrawal, the images of chaos and people hanging onto exiting aircraft, on aggressive decisions made by China and Russia.
"In 2021, the [People’s Republic of China] employed multiple diplomatic tools in an attempt to erode U.S. and partner influence, such as highlighting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and criticizing U.S.-backed security partnerships..." according to the report.
General Tod Wolters, then head of the U.S. European Command, acknowledged that the Russian invasion was likely an attempt to "take advantage of the fissures that could have appeared in NATO as a result of the post-Afghanistan environment,” Fox News reported.
National security analyst Bob Maginnis tells AFN the high-level delegation failed accomplish much. The issue of military communication was not resolved, Maginnis says, and Blinken failed to even mention the Chinese spy balloon that loitered over the U.S. for days.
"If appears as if we're going to increase dialogue," he says of the diplomatic trip, "but I'm not sure that anything truly meaningful has been resolved here."
Self sees China on war footing even if it’s not the traditional war that first comes to mind.
Actively seeking to disrupt U.S. relationships overseas and using America’s weakened southern border to send dangerous drugs into the country are acts of war, Self said.
“China is at war with us both psychologically and economically for certain with the fentanyl coming across the border," he told the radio show. "I understand that was one of the issues the secretary wanted to make some progress on and did not."
Biden's hot air over Chinese balloon
As two world super powers try to figure out their relationship it’s China, not the U.S., that is leading the discussion, Self said.
Not only has the Biden administration not held China accountable for answers on the release and spread of COVID-19, it was also slow to take down a spy balloon that drifted across the continental U.S.
It did not drift aimlessly, Self said, even though comments by Biden over the weekend would lead Americans to believe, the President hopes, that the Chinese government was not directing the balloon’s movements.
“I don’t think the leadership knew where it was, and knew what was in it, and knew what was going on,” Biden told a gathering of media Saturday as he headed to Philadelphia for his first campaign rally of the 2024 election. “I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional.”
“That is a ludicrous statement," Self counters. "Any thinking American knows that balloon wandered. In fact, it turned circle eights over one of our nuclear bases. When you do that, someone is controlling the balloon."
Biden didn't really believe his own statement, Self said, and neither should the American public.
Self said Biden’s lost balloon theory is an example of the administration’s effort to manipulate its citizens. Even though this same administration allowed a spy balloon to travel across our country, he says, the Left really believes the American people will believe whatever they're told to believe.
"We watched the balloon go across the entire United States, across some of the least-populated land in this country," Self recalled. "And they refused to shoot it down ostensibly because it might hurt someone, might hit a cow, might hit a fence. Absolutely ludicrous.”
