Opinion | Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan trip highlights need to reset global thinking

Can our world develop a collective mindset that allows it to stay calm even under extreme pressure? Anyone who tracked with growing alarm US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip through East Asia last week might well have asked themselves: but at what cost? The entourage of the US’ most accomplished domestic politician left behind few patches of peace and security and instead scattered seeds of disarray and doubt.

Even the good people of Taiwan, the putative beneficiaries of Pelosi’s march to Taipei, with their ears ringing from missiles overhead, had to wonder what, if anything, had been gained.

In South Korea, the new government pointedly ducked Pelosi’s arrival as best it could: the country’s president was “on vacation” and its foreign minister was “travelling”, excuses which left many Koreans relieved. Why annoy China? Why hand North Korea yet another reason to go on a missile bender? There are enough problems in East Asia.

In fairness, Beijing managed to mostly keep its cool without disappointing its fiery nationalists or appearing resigned to yet more American interference in its internal affairs. It moved some troops around and fired off this or that projectile precisely calibrated not to hit anyone or anything, but to remind all in the neighbourhood who was boss. As if no one knew.

What the Xi Jinping government did was sulk, quite openly. This is what Beijing, not lusting to launch World War III, tends to do when there is little else that can be done. Its neighbours’ job is to wait for the sulk to play out, while saying as little as possible.

The sulk now in effect looks to be a big one, though. Measures so far include not answering the phone when foreign counterparts call, especially if from the United States; playing hooky from scheduled bilateral meetings; and backing out of cooperation on climate change, anti-drug trafficking and illegal immigration.