The Biden administration has spent months building an economic and diplomatic strategy in Asia to counter China, shoring up its alliances and assuring friendly countries that the United States is in the region for the long haul. The president has sent top military officials to seal new partnerships, and paid attention to a tiny nation in the Pacific, the Solomon Islands. He has launched a plan to arm Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and initiated a regional economic pact. He visited South Korea and Japan in May, and for the first time invited the two countries to a NATO meeting, to reinforce that Asia wasn’t forgotten as war raged in Ukraine. The visit to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now threatens to undermine the push by the White House, leaving allies to wonder what damage had been done to the president’s united front in Asia. (https://news.yahoo.com/pelosis-taiwan-visit-risks-undermining-181014800.html) The fear is that the trip, which will also include stops this week in South Korea and Japan, is an unnecessary provocation that distracts from the allies’ efforts to counter China’s military might and economic clout. While U.S. allies have largely remained mum on the visit so far, there’s a sense among America’s friends that they were left out in the cold to watch as China threatened the United States and Taiwan, the self-governed island that China claims as its own.