House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) may be planning to visit the Republic of China next month. Some folks are worried about that.

A Taiwan trip by Mrs Pelosi (D, CA) would likely set back any nascent rapprochement and set off a new bout of tensions, US officials and international affairs specialists said.

I’m having trouble seeing the downside of not continuing a “rapprochement” with an enemy nation whose avowed goal is to supplant and control us.

And

The visit, they said, would confirm Chinese suspicions that the US is deepening support for Taiwan, allowing its democratic government to resist Beijing’s claims to the island….

As well we should be doing, on both counts.

Further making Pelosi’s putative trip imperative is the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping’s threats of dire consequences, including military, if she actually travels. Any withdrawal of the trip now could only be taken as American abject surrender in the face of threats.

There’s this, too:

For Beijing, a trip by a politician as senior as Mrs Pelosi is seen as part of a perilous backtracking by the US on commitments limiting its relations with Taiwan.

We never should have betrayed the RoC all those decades ago in the first place. After all this time, it’ll be deucedly expensive and risky to correct that mistake, but it’s never too late to do so. All that just makes it imperative to get started; the expense and risk only grow over time.