The passage of two U.S. guided-missile cruisers, Antietam and Chancellorsville, through the Taiwan Strait on Aug. 28 shows that there is anything but a “new normal” in the situation across the Taiwan Strait yet.
After the large-scale exercises by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which followed U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s early August visit to Taiwan, a number of commentators had come to the misguided conclusion that with those exercises, Beijing had created a “new normal” under which it could cross the Taiwan Strait center line and conduct military operations closer to Taiwan at will.
While Beijing is certainly trying hard to push in the direction of such a “new normal,” it is certainly far too early to tell, as Taiwan and the United States are pushing back against that notion. Both are working hard to prevent China from slicing another slice of the salami by pushing in the opposite direction, as expertly described by Bonnie Lin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Joel Wuthnow of the National Defense University.