In recent days several things have happened in international politics. They all seem to be unrelated but actually, there is an interesting link among them.

First of all, there was Christian Tybring-Gjedde, an extreme right-wing Norwegian MP, who has nominated the U.S. President Trump for Nobel Peace Price 2021, with the reason that Trump has contributed to the historic peace agreement signed between Israel and UAE. This is the second time Trump being nominated for Nobel Peace Prize and the last time, he was nominated by the same person. The second thing was on Sep. 11, Trump announced Israel and Bahrain have signed a peace agreement. That means within a short week, two Arabic countries have signed peace agreements with Israel.

The third thing has brought our focus back to the Indo-Pacific area and it was about Taiwan. Keith Krach, Undersecretary of State of the U.S., is expected to visit Taiwan on Sep. 17-19 to host “U.S.-Taiwan Economic and Commercial Dialogue.” This is a new dialogue platform between Taiwan and the U.S. and its meaning, subjects involved and importance have been widely discussed. The fourth thing was the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) harassing Taiwan in the last few days with their military aircraft, which has flown as near as 90 miles (166 kilometers) from Taiwan. Although they have not yet invaded Taiwan airspace (12 miles from Taiwan), but has entered its air defense identification zone (ADIZ), which is not valid like the airspace under the international law; but it still has an important meaning in an empirical discussion.

So what is the link among these four things? I believe it is the U.S. Presidential election, or shall I say, “the road to Trump’s re-election.” There are 50 days until the voting day and Biden, who was leading in poll previously has now a worrying situation in several key swing states such as Florida, as Trump is catching up on the polls. Trump has previously tried to blame the epidemic outbreak to China but this tactic is running out of steam. What card has Trump still in hand to turn things around in the last 50 days?

Maybe it is worth a try with those Middle-East peace haloes. Even though we will not find out if Trump wins before the election on Nov. 3, but the nomination has highlighted Trump’s achievement on diplomatic matters. Whether it would help with his election campaign, we will have to wait and see.

How should we interpret the Undersecretary of State visiting Taiwan and the CCP military aircraft circling Taiwan? People’s most direct impression is: the Taiwan-U.S. relationship is at its peak as the Undersecretary of State is the highest-ranking State Department official of the U.S. visiting Taiwan in recent years. China is obviously not happy about it, so by sending military aircraft to disturb Taiwan, it tried to threaten the U.S. and test the tone and level of the response from the Trump administration. But my view is somewhat different.

We must first consider: why did the Trump administration send the Undersecretary of State to Taiwan 50 days before the election? What can the U.S. benefit from? Are they trying to help U.S. pork exporting to Taiwan? Yes and no, on paper it was probably for the U.S. pork, but that is only the secondary goal. The ultimate goal of the U.S. is to call China’s bluff, and to cause some limited local conflicts in the Indo-Pacific areas, so the U.S. Military has a reason to send troops, at the same time lift Trump’s chance at the election so he could be re-elected. Don’t forget, war is an effective sharp tool for the current president to maintain a high poll (although not always), and right now in the U.S., whether it is Republicans or Democrats, their anti-China sentiment (or their dissatisfaction towards China) is in all-time high due to the U.S.-China trade war and Wuhan virus pandemic. If a limited local war between the U.S. and China can be created, and the U.S. quickly gets the upper hand, then the chance of Trump being re-elected would be greatly increased.

China must have already known Trump’s logic. What Xi Jinping needs to think about is, does he want to indirectly help Trump to be re-elected? With this as the background, it has led to the CCP military aircraft disturbing Taiwan in the past two days and the back to back press conferences by Taiwan Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The recent major development of Taiwan-U.S. relationship is actually closely related to the rhythm of the U.S. election. From the U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar visited Taiwan to the planned visit from Undersecretary of State Krach, it was apparently due to the “Taiwan Travel Act” passed in 2018, which “encourages” senior officials from both sides to visit each other, but why has no one visited from either side since the act passed right until the first half of 2020, then suddenly on the second half of 2020, the U.S. was sending the Health Secretary and Undersecretary of State to visit one after another? It is not so difficult to guess the intention of the Trump administration, who uses “lifting the ranks of Taiwan visiting officials” to anger China, induce it to make diplomatic misjudgments, and create small scale local conflicts, which allows Trump to stir up even more anti-China sentiment in the U.S.

In view of the above, the U.S. pork importing to Taiwan is a subject used to pave the way for the visit of the Undersecretary of State, who is in charge of economic affairs. The U.S. has its finger on the trigger, its focus is not Taiwan’s limited U.S. pork market, but to diplomatically create a background for the U.S.-China hostility. Whether it is Nobel Peace Price or the Undersecretary of State visiting Taiwan, the huge factor behind, which is the U.S. election, surely cannot be ignored. The Taiwanese should know it better than anyone else.

(Jerry Liu Shih-chieh, ex-diplomat, director of International Affairs for the New Power Party.)

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