August 12: Taiwan’s tipping point?

In which, China’s saber has a pretty loud rattle, the economy continues to mystify us, and the FBI pays Mar-a-Lago a visit.

Breaking: The CDC appears done with Covid

New guidance from the CDC that was released yesterday appears to acknowledge that there’s no difference between vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals when it comes to exposure to the virus, and thus requires no differentiation between the two groups in terms of quarantine or vaccination requirements. The CDC has been quick to say the pandemic is still going, but it’s apparently now a pandemic of such mildness that individual decision making is now considered “safe”.

Taiwan’s tipping point?

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi paid a visit to Taiwan that was quite a clap back to the Chinese government and to President Biden. A Chinese response of some seriousness and scale was anticipated and China did not disappoint. Live fire drills around the islands, warplanes buzzing Taiwanese airspace, and passenger airlines being warned away from the area were all part of China’s week of saber rattling.

So why is this story leading the newsletter this week? Well, mainly because the Chinese reaction to Pelosi’s visit continues. Over a week after the visit, with Pelosi and the Biden administration focused on domestic policy (more on that later), the CCP appears to be laser focused on upping the ante on Taiwan. With warplanes continuing to buzz and live fire drills continuing through this week, Taiwanese officials have warned about the heightened possibility of an invasion. 

Such a move would seem pretty extreme for a diplomatic visit, but remember, Taiwan may be a high salience strategic issue for the US, but it’s an existential one for the CCP, and its officials have not laid off their warlike rhetoric. It almost seems like they are spoiling for a fight of some kind. At the very least, Pelosi’s visit seems to have crossed some kind of internal line for Chinese diplomacy, and it hasn’t exactly been a month of geopolitical wins for China.

Turning the tide in Ukraine

While rumors of war in the Strait of Taiwan abound, the ongoing war in Ukraine continues unabated. With summer drawing to a close, both sides are eager to make and hold gains in the Donbas. Not satisfied with gearing up for a Donbas offensive, Ukrainian President Zelensky appeared confident of success in one area by signaling Ukraine was ready to settle old scores by retaking Crimea, the strategic peninsula lost to Russia in 2014. 

Zelensky may be confident because he’s getting another large arms shipment from the US, new NATO member Sweden is set to train Ukrainian soldiers in Poland, and it appears Ukrainian partisans in Crimea nearly wiped out a Russian airbase (pretty sophisticated attack for partisan, I think). 

Ukraine and its international backers appear eager to make gains and push Russia back. However, as Russia military expert Michael Kofman pointed in the War on the Rocks podcast earlier this week: Western powers shouldn’t underestimate Russia’s capacity to muddle through. Russia expended a lot of political, economic and military capital to get Crimea and prosecute this war. I doubt they’ll leave quietly.

Escalating diplomatic tensions with the US this week, Russia violated the nuclear START Treaty by banning American observers from its nuclear sites.

Well, that’s awkward: Iran’s assassination plot

Earlier this week, European officials were ready to submit a compromise deal to the US and Iranian diplomats in Vienna on Iran’s nuclear program. It appeared, and still appears, as though there may be some kind of a movement on a deal, but then news broke in the US of an alleged Iranian assassination plot against former National Security Advisor John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Arrests have been made, so I expect we’ll hear more about this. Suffice to say, though, it’s a bad look for an American president to be seen to be cutting a deal with a country intent on assassinating public figures.