Overreaction, Unfit Behaviour from a Nuclear Superpower: US Tells China
News18.com
Last Updated: AUGUST 05, 2022, 11:43 IST
Washington
The United States harshly criticised China this week once more as the latter continues its military exercise near the Taiwan Strait.
The US said that China’s 11 ballistic missile launches were a sign of overreaction to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit.
The US also countered by saying that it held back from its own ballistic missile test due to the tensions in the Taiwan Strait and accused China of brinkmanship.
The US postponed its Air Force Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in order to avoid raising tensions with Beijing after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit.
The war drills in the Taiwan Strait were met with stern response even from the Japanese as prime minister Fumio Kishida condemned the act saying it negatively impacts peace and stability of the region.
Five of those 11 missiles flew past the island of Taiwan and landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
“China has chosen to overreact and use the speaker’s visit as a pretext to increase provocative military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait. It’s also a pretext to try to up the ante… and to actually try to set a new status quo, to get to a new normal where they think they can keep things at,” White House spokesman John Kirby said, according to news agency AFP.
Meanwhile, Russia extended support to the war drills being conducted near Taiwan saying that China has the legitimate right to do so. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, according to Russian news agency TASS, called the war drills China’s ‘sovereign right’ and said they were due to ‘artificial provocations’.
“You and I are well aware of what provoked them: Nancy Pelosi’s visit. It was a completely unnecessary visit and unnecessary provocation,” Peskov said.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that Pelosi’s visit is a display of US’ impunity to the rest of the world.
Kirby slams US critics’ saying that by withholding from the tests the US behaved like a ‘responsible nuclear power by reducing the risks of miscalculation’.
However, the USS Ronald Reagan will remain in the area, Kirby said. Chinese military-backed research group, South China Sea Probing Initiative, told news agency AFP, that the US aircraft carrier was about 1,000km due east of Taiwan on Wednesday.
The White House told China that the US is behaving like a responsible nuclear power by withholding its ICBM tests and depending on diplomacy rather than sabre-rattling
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