No Time for Mixed Signals in the Western Pacific

The Western Pacific will get some welcome attention today with the Japanese Prime Minister making an address to a joint session of Congress and summiting with President Biden and their Philippino counterpart. Unfortunately, the needed display of allied solidarity and resolve in countering the Chinese Communist Party’s intensifying aggression throughout the region has just been undercut by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s latest appeasement tourism in Beijing. 

That’s a seriously fraught message to be sending even as the CCP’s forces are routinely assaulting Philippine vessels and penetrating Japanese airspace and waters – as they are those of a fourth strategically critical, but uninvited, regional partner: Taiwan. 

At a time when Team Biden is actively betraying its most important ally in the Mideast, Israel, there is no room for signaling that America is determined to undermine any others by “engaging” with the CCP. 

This is Frank Gaffney.