(OPINION) Are we on the verge of World War 3? Things are really beginning to deteriate between China, America, and Taiwan as The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has just issued another warning to Nancy Pelosi ahead of her expected trip to Taiwan with a video simulating a missile strike, aircraft carriers advancing and fighter jets in formation – and a stern warning from state media.
According to the Daily Mail, The video was posted on WeChat on Monday morning following reports the U.S. House Speaker will arrive in Taipei on Tuesday night – despite Beijing’s warning they could shoot her plane down and launch a military response.
Chinese state media personality Hu Xijin also issued a grim message to the top Democrat: ‘Let her go to Taiwan. But pray before departure: wish herself a safe journey and wish herself not be defined by history as a sinner who starts a spiral of escalation process expanding military frictions to a large-scale war in the Taiwan Strait.’
Senior Taiwanese government officials and a US official both told CNN that the stop is on her trip, even though it is not on her public itinerary. This comes as the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi was set to visit Taiwan on Tuesday, three people briefed on the matter said, as China warned that its military would never “sit idly by” if she visited the self-ruled island claimed by Beijing. Pelosi, who began an Asia trip earlier on Monday in Singapore, was due to spend Tuesday night in Taiwan, the people said.
Taiwanese defense officials have canceled the leave of some soldiers and officers “to immediately prepare” for the chance of war in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Asia this week, according to local reports.
China warned early Monday that its military would not “sit idly by” if the House speaker visits Taiwan during her trip this week, echoing similar comments from Chinese President Xi Jinping last week that the United States should not “play with fire.” Pelosi is expected to stop in Taiwan during her visit this week, although the island is not listed on her itinerary.
“Her stature as the No. 3 U.S. official means a trip would be highly sensitive,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters Monday. “As to what measures, let’s wait and see whether she insists on this visit.”
The UN has also just made a grim warning that humanity is ‘one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation and we have been ‘extraordinarily lucky so far”
UN head Antonio Guterres warned Monday that the world faced ‘a nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War’ and was just ‘one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.’
‘We have been extraordinarily lucky so far. But luck is not a strategy. Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions boiling over into nuclear conflict,’ Guterres said at the start of a conference of countries belonging to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
‘Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,’ he said, calling on nations to ‘put humanity on a new path towards a world free of nuclear weapons.’
Guterres’s comments came at the opening of the Tenth Review Conference of the NPT at the UN headquarters in New York, an international treaty that came into force in 1970 to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
