There has been a lot of commentary assuming Taiwan is the new Ukraine, ignoring the history of the North East Asia region and viewing the Pelosi Trip simply as a test of Xi's will.

Taiwan, though less so today, is still a nation with divided support for reunification and increasingly, those seeking more independence. But most Taiwanese see their best course of action is to remain secure is to maintain the current status quo.

In my view, any Taiwan military conflict is extremely unlikely to be geographically isolated to that one nation, as is happening in the Ukraine. Historically, Taiwan has not had self-determination in North-East Asia - much less so than the Koreans. The Japanese controlled Taiwan starting with the Treaty of Shimonoseki. In WW2, the Japanese used Taiwanese forces on mainland China as part of the occupation to control mainland Chinese. When the KMT invaded Taiwan, they named the electorates after Chinese provinces, killed the Japanese/Taiwanese administrators and realigned the government with their authoritarian views. General McCarthur sought to arm the KMT in the Korean War to attack mainland China until he was dismissed by President Truman for fears of creating a new world war. Just north of Taiwan are the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, which were divided up by the US in the 1970's at the protest of the Chinese. This is very intertwined regional area.

The point here is that to view Taiwan in a one dimensional mainland way ignores the complexities of the region that are vastly different to Ukraine/Donesk region and NATO region surrounding it.

For China, every US political trip and military cargo plane to Taiwan unsettles the regional peace and flares up historical fires that could quickly spread out of control. The PRC leadership still has to take into account domestic sentiment when ruling, even though it is authoritarian regime. Nationalistic sentiment is growing within China as the nation economically develops to be the worlds largest economy. Therefore any Taiwan crisis isn't just a test of Xi's leadership but a core challenge to Chinese mainland psychology, CCP and PLA.

So if there was an escalation…. Let’s walk through the hypothetical logic of it… Pelosi flies to Taiwan and makes some tone deaf political comments (not out of the realm of possibility)…. PRC citizens are outraged. Xi must respond… PLA fly over Taiwan in protest. US congress is outraged. Biden must respond as now, his political will is tested and so too the US support for Taiwan. So Biden then decides US sends an aircraft carrier via Japan or Korea, to go through the Taiwan Strait. The PLAN is much stronger than in 1996 so the PLAN responds by taking the area around Senkaku Islands to deny access to the Taiwan Strait, drawing in Japan into the conflict. What does Japan do? US launches planes from South Korea…. What would North Korea do?

With one misstep we don’t simply have another Ukraine but a regional conflict that potentially spirals out of control. This is not to say the US should or should not support Taiwan. But to simply perceive and tell the western world this a one dimensional problem is ignoring the North-East regional history and ignoring what’s at stake.