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Japan has been looking eager to defend Taiwan and its navy might be better than chinas. That said I think the US would intervene if china tried anything. That stratigic ambiguitity in the treaty is "dont gently caress with this island."
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May 24, 2022 19:44
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Daduzi posted:Surprised this hasn't already been mentioned: great and chilling article from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/85qihtvw6e/the-faces-from-chinas-uyghur-detention-camps Im sure someone here will complain about the source even if the data is impossible to forge (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 24, 2022 19:55
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Daduzi posted:Surprised this hasn't already been mentioned: great and chilling article from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/85qihtvw6e/the-faces-from-chinas-uyghur-detention-camps It's nothing new really with respect to what we already know and have known for quite some time. Not much to discuss unfortunately since absolutely no action will be taken in any way shape or form and it's not like the CCP gives a poo poo about naming and shaming. BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:An amphibious 100 mile invasion of a mountainous island of 23 million people is not in any way a fait accompli even for a great power’s military lol. Despera posted:I doubt china could take taiwan even if the US didn't interfere. Amphibious landings against a fortified position are basically impossible. Just a reminder that in a vacuum, assuming zero outside interference, Taiwan is already a hopeless case. Taiwan currently imports 65% of its total caloric intake from the overseas market and is actually the US's eighth biggest export market. The PRC, if it chose to, could conquer the island without a single amphibious landing and simply starve the island into submission over the course of 3 or 4 months by enacting an air and naval blockade which it is more than capable of doing. It probably has had this capability for the past 5 years now but the balance of power between the two grows at an increasing rate with each year that passes. The key question is not *if* the PRC can take out Taiwan in a military conflict, but whether the PRC is willing to pay the diplomatic and economic price (whatever that may be) and whether it can successfully impede the US Navy from interfering with such a strategy. In the past 2 years, we have seen the PLA exercising its air and naval forces for such a strategy. For example back in October 2021 when the PLAF launched its 'incursion' into the Taiwanese ADIF, I commented that there was no war coming and that it looked far more like the PLAF was practicing and demonstrating to the Taiwanese and American governments that its capability had reached the point where it could send large formations of land-based aircraft to potentially attack any potential US/Allied naval assets stationed off the Taiwanese coast. More recently (just this month) the PLAN launched an exercise with its surface force including a carrier battlegroup on a similar area denial operation (A2AD), once again to show its increasing capability and confidence in a potential military conflict. It is important to understand that within strictly the military sphere, China retains a significant edge in terms of what 'victory' looks like. It neither needs to decisively defeat US/Allied naval forces nor does it need total command of the ocean around Taiwan. They merely need to make any attempt at resupplying Taiwan with the basic necessities of life a cost-prohibitive option in lives, materials, and manpower and victory will come on its own. Indeed another facet of the ever-increasing size and complexity of the PLA's exercise around Taiwan is to remind its politicians and populace of this fact in the attempt to convince the Taiwanese to accept the inevitable so to speak. Of course, such a conflict, lasting months with the specter of the entire world watching the Taiwanese get starved into submission, would invite economic warfare from the West although I am not sure anyone has a really good idea just how strong the pushback will be. Some have cited how the West came to Ukraine's aid as proof that China will face crippling sanctions of its own but it is important to remember that even today, Russia continues to fund its economy using Western money in exchange for energy so there is clearly a hard stop point as to what the West is or is not willing to do. Furthermore, unlike in Taiwan, Ukraine represents the domino next door so to speak for many NATO countries from the Baltics to Poland so there is extra incentive to take a hardline approach with the Russians. This is an incentive the Taiwanese lack. TSMC, the world's leading semiconductor manufacturer, does represent a significant asset that is valuable to the West. However, the technology that TSMC uses is not inherent to the Taiwanese. TSMC itself purchases manufacturing equipment from ASML, a company based in the Netherlands so the core technology required for manufacturing cutting-edge silicon still rests with the West. Technical know-how in the form of skilled engineers and workers is likely the first people that will flee and/or get evacuated in the event that a PRC military takeover occurs so Taiwan, unfortunately, doesn't have a defining security interest for the West to actually come to save it. If the US/West does abandon Taiwan to the PRC though, it will be a big signal that the US is no longer committed to the Pacific theatre and is allowing China to ascend as the dominant power in the region and undermine its network of alliances and economic treaties as the players scramble to reorient themselves. If the Americans do intervene either militarily or economically, the trigger for such an intervention will probably be more that they refuse to allow the PRC to ascend unchallenged rather than over interests with Taiwan per se. The military equation is tricky though, neither side really has a good grasp on the likelihood of success in a military confrontation. My gut feeling is that the Americans would have the edge as their technology, training, and competence in operating in all areas of the world is a proven commodity. The PLA, while having nominally caught up in technology, remains untested in war and lacks the institutional knowledge and experience that the Americans have amassed in over 50 years of wars and deployments since World War 2 so the scope of uncertainty in terms of performance is much greater for the PLA than it is for the American military and I think they are acutely aware of that. That said, Taiwan is no fortress, nor is its military and population a Ukraine. People forget that the Ukrainians have been in conflict with Russia since the Crimean takeover and the succession of the Donbas. It has effectively been preparing for 7 years and its preparation has paid off dividends. The Taiwanese military, both the professional and reservist arms are nowhere comparable to the Ukrainians even if they had the equipment and the fighting spirit to resist. While they possess a significant reservist manpower pool, they are in no way, shape, or form able to perform on the battlefield with the 4-month military conscription program being largely treated as a "summer camp" where military skills are not always provided to trainees. It is something the Americans are now intensely trying to get the Taiwanese to address. Therefore the primary strategy for the PRC, if it was to resort to force, would be to do what the Russians failed to do - conduct a lightning operation in Taiwan lasting no longer than a week which would decapitate the government, eliminate the small Taiwanese land forces (of questionable quality), and quickly bring major population centers under its control in a relatively bloodless campaign and ask the world whether it is really worth it to try and reinvade Taiwan to liberate it from PLA control or given that Taiwan has already fallen, whether it even makes sense to suffer mutual economic consequences if it was to engage in sanctions. If a fait de accompli such as this were to occur, the main deterrent wouldn't be Chinese nukes, it would be more of a 'why bother' from the viewpoint of the Americans. Unlike ISIS mentioned earlier where the outcome was a foregone conclusion (the Americans would smash face with minimal effort), it is very questionable whether the American public would tolerate significant military casualties going up against a military peer and some think tanks have already called on the US to drop any pretensions of military deterrence since it isn't worth it and instead seek to emphasis economic consequences. Though to their credit, Iraq 1991 was not anticipated to be a walk over and the US was prepared to accept casualties in the hundreds of thousands and they went into liberating Kuwait anyways even though Iraq actually had chemical weapons at that time. As such, the recent trend of US military advice to Taiwan has been to prepare against the fait de accompli scenario in the hopes that China, if unable to win the lighting war, will not have the stomach to fight a protracted conflict that might see crushing economic sanctions brought upon it as well as the fact that the Americans really wanted to play rough, they could simply turn off the supply of oil coming out of the Persian Gulf in the Indian Ocean, an area in which the PLAN has no capabilities vs the USN. This is why they keep emphasizing man-portable anti-air weapons, land-based anti-ship missiles by the hundreds, sea mines, and other asymmetric weapons to play its own area of denial game in the Taiwan Strait and sink any potential PLA naval traffic which would be needed to carry out a long term occupation force. I am far less well-versed than ronya in how internal CCP thinking operates but I remain wary of a Xi that might be tempted into doing something stupid if he feels his back is up against a wall politically. ----- A collection of links you might find useful https://ap.fftc.org.tw/article/2570 https://www.rchss.sinica.edu.tw/files/publish/1239_4394902e.pdf https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202205/1265069.shtml https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/busting-asml-myths https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/15/china-threat-invasion-conscription-taiwans-military-is-a-hollow-shell/ https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2022/01/28/2003772205 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/19/deadly-serious-u-s-quietly-urging-taiwan-to-follow-ukraine-playbook-for-countering-china-00033792 https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/taiwan-temptation https://www.brookings.edu/research/taiwan-and-the-dangerous-illogic-of-deterrence-by-denial/ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/07/us/politics/china-taiwan-weapons.html
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May 25, 2022 00:21
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Daduzi posted:Surprised this hasn't already been mentioned: great and chilling article from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/85qihtvw6e/the-faces-from-chinas-uyghur-detention-camps Utterly insane crimes against humanity. I can't believe there are still people who defend the CCP's monstrous policies and actions.
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May 25, 2022 01:48
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Russia failed to do. With a superior force to the PLA against and not having to go over any signifigant water. They thought they could take Ukraine in hours. Taiwan has been preparing for invasion since the 50s. D-Day took a year to plan, took 10 to 1 casualties and was against a largely undefended coast (also anti ship missiles didnt exist(the russians lost their best ship to 3 home grown missiles)). Also the allies had air and sea superiority, something the chinese if the americans/japanese decided to have 0 control over. Even if the chinese had loving moses taiwan is a mixture of urban hellscapes and mountainous jungles which the ukrainians would love to be defending. Also you have to wonder how long the parents of 1 child could take their sole source of income dying on a foreign shore. As for an economic/starvation embargo. Dont think the chinese have the balls to fire on a unarmed foreign supply ship Really think XI has enough problems that pulling a 100x harder putin isnt on the table. If their strategy is invade and hope nobody in the world do nothing I think they can see after Ukraine that isnt an option especially when trying to 5x the holocaust. Despera fucked around with this message at 02:22 on May 25, 2022 |
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May 25, 2022 02:16
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It's an ISLAND Is everyone forgetting this is an ISLAND? Chinese military thinkers have the same ideas of Taiwan's defensive capabilities as the US. This isn't as difficult as you folks claim it to be. It won't be a straight up Sea lion style assault. China will instead use it's titans of public transport to dig gigantic tunnels into Taiwan and transport troops into the countrys subway network to quickly shuffle troops through the entire metropolis side of the island
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May 25, 2022 02:39
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MikeC posted:The PRC, if it chose to, could conquer the island without a single amphibious landing and simply starve the island into submission over the course of 3 or 4 months by enacting an air and naval blockade which it is more than capable of doing. I feel like shooting down planes and ships headed to Taiwan would provoke more of an international response than an invasion. With a blockade. countries wouldn't even have to decide to cut trade with China because China itself would be shutting down its seas and cracking down on one of the most trafficked seaways in the world. Although I guess they're getting data on a population starving under siege from Shanghai.
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May 25, 2022 04:27
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The problem also with a blockade is what happens when a "Tanker War" happens? What do they do when US flagged ships are delivering food and aid?
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May 25, 2022 04:31
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MikeC posted:Lots of interesting stuff Agree with most of what you said, except on the part with the potential of Americans to be unwilling to intervene directly in Taiwan. Since the end of WW2 Americans have viewed themselves as the guardians of democracy. Unless America was extremely distracted with internal problems (like the January 6 attack on the capitol), there would be soldiers shipped to Taiwan, despite the risk of a nuclear escalation. America has a deep vein of militarism embedded in the national consciousness, and has started wars on flimsier pretexts (Iraq). Simply put, Americans thirst for a "just war" to participate in. Taiwan's best defense would be to portray themselves as a victim similar to the surprise attack of Pearl Harbor in WW2, and America would find joining the war to be irresistible. They could in fact lose to an attempted fait accompli military takeover by China as long as they had some sort of government in exile, and probably expect to win the war over time.
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May 25, 2022 07:50
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Yeah I don't think a three-six month blockade to starve millions of people is the winning PRC move; it is the worst of all options, not actually producing a decisive effect but also giving the West all the time in the world to mobilise a response with a really clear moral high ground behind it, and basically placing all your bets that you can starve Taiwan out before the inevitable economic blockade starts to bite too hard.
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May 25, 2022 08:08
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Jarmak posted:This is "the US won't intervene because the earth is flat and they'd sail off the edge" level of economic analysis. The only faulty analysis here is you believing that US planners would trade likely nuclear armageddon for a chip factory or an oil field (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Red and Black fucked around with this message at 10:56 on May 25, 2022 |
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May 25, 2022 10:40
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:Utterly insane crimes against humanity. I can't believe there are still people who defend the CCP's monstrous policies and actions. better yet, there’s a whole SA subforum for it (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 25, 2022 12:46
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https://twitter.com/LHongqiao/status/1529427660853616643 https://twitter.com/LHongqiao/status/1529438155744628737 Leak is blunt
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May 25, 2022 14:52
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https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1529428388003315713 https://twitter.com/BonnieGlaser/status/1529486873546080261 quote:WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — China wants 10 small Pacific nations to endorse a sweeping agreement covering everything from security to fisheries in what one leader warns is a “game-changing” bid by Beijing to wrest control of the region. A helpful graph of the top 25 aid-dependent countries (aid as a percentage of GNI), although the Solomons has improved since; Pacific island countries are highlighted in red:  https://www.cfr.org/councilofcouncils/global-memos/how-improve-aid-pacific-island-nations Traditionally there is not much pro demanded for all that quid but this may change as the race for the region tightens up.
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May 25, 2022 17:55
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quote:China also wants to jointly develop a marine plan for fisheries — which would include the Pacific’s lucrative tuna catch — increase cooperation on running the region’s internet networks, and set up cultural Confucius Institutes and classrooms. China also mentions the possibility of setting up a free trade area with the Pacific nations. All of this sounds horrifying. Fisheries are already at their absolute limits, and Chinese pirate fishing vessels are part why they are in the first place. Also, any nation that gets in bed with the CCP on running their *loving internet* has got to be insane. Can you imagine putting your only connection to the global community in their hands?
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May 25, 2022 17:59
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Going by his Wikipedia article, Panuelo is known for being pro-China. They must have really overreached if even he's reacting like this.
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May 25, 2022 18:07
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Red and Black posted:The only faulty analysis here is you believing that US planners would trade likely nuclear armageddon for a chip factory or an oil field Is china planning on starting a nuclear war over 'a chip factory or an oil field'? Ukraine has neither and the US just brushed aside literally years of Russias 'don't forget that we have nuclear weapons!! you don't want to risk a nuclear armageddon!!' threats. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 18:09 on May 25, 2022 |
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May 25, 2022 18:07
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isn't "just a chip factory" also insanely reductive, like there are only a couple of places in the world that do the sort of chips that are done in Taiwan and it is not very easy to create both the expertize and the machinery to create that stuff
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May 25, 2022 19:10
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Yeah and significantly it's been one of China's primary strategic goals for the better part of a decade to get their domestic chip manufacturing up to speed so they can stop depending on american/german/taiwanese/south korean chips. The current highest tech, 5nm chips, are only commercially being made by Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung. Despite their efforts, Chinese chip manufacturing is still several generations of chip technology behind. iirc taiwan produces ~90% of the most advanced chips in the world Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 19:41 on May 25, 2022 |
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May 25, 2022 19:36
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Silver2195 posted:Going by his Wikipedia article, Panuelo is known for being pro-China. They must have really overreached if even he's reacting like this. The Federated States of Micronesia are a U.S. protectorate and the Cook Islands are a New Zealand protectorate. Tonga is also a fairly staunch US ally, having even sent troops to Iraq. If China got all these states to sign on it would be a huge coup, but for the most part it’s kind of absurd. That said, if Biden still has 2 brain cells to rub together we should be putting a lot behind our diplomacy in the pacific after the Solomons debacle and we should absolutely buy them all off with nice aid packages as a precaution, with a further commitment to helping them develop sustainably going forward.
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May 25, 2022 19:58
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i'm glad the pacific island countries finally have something to base an economy around besides tourism and guano: playing the US and china off each other
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May 25, 2022 20:10
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:i'm glad the pacific island countries finally have something to base an economy around besides tourism and guano: playing the US and china off each other The return of John Frum.
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May 25, 2022 20:42
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According to the leaks some 14 year old girl got 15 years for using a non wechat app https://mobile.twitter.com/TGTM_Official/status/1529553990018555904
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May 25, 2022 21:23
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Despera posted:Japan has been looking eager to defend Taiwan and its navy might be better than chinas. That said I think the US would intervene if china tried anything. That stratigic ambiguitity in the treaty is "dont gently caress with this island." It's one of the few things that unites the entire Japanese political spectrum. The Japanese Left sees unconditional and absolute defense of Taiwan as one of the few ways they can apologize for colonizing Taiwan in the past. The Japanese Right misses the colonial era and feels that if they can't have Taiwan, no one else should be allowed to conquer it. And the Center really doesn't like the CCP.
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May 25, 2022 22:12
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Is china planning on starting a nuclear war over 'a chip factory or an oil field'? Ukraine has neither and the US just brushed aside literally years of Russias 'don't forget that we have nuclear weapons!! you don't want to risk a nuclear armageddon!!' threats. yeah what Ukraine offered is the opportunity to let russia catastrophically weaken and isolate itself, dissolving tremendous amounts of its presence as a geopolitical rival because it just had to do the dumb poo poo dictatorships like to do as they become more obviously dictatorial. taiwan can be looked at as the same temptation, and by extension a barometer into how removed china is from the same autocratic degradation towards that kind of impulse. i personally think that level of removal is pretty high, so china will talk tough on invading, aggressively posture, etc, and taiwan will continue to diverge as an obvious sovereign entity
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May 25, 2022 23:26
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Is china planning on starting a nuclear war over 'a chip factory or an oil field'? Ukraine has neither and the US just brushed aside literally years of Russias 'don't forget that we have nuclear weapons!! you don't want to risk a nuclear armageddon!!' threats. It's just kind of funny that no one ever flips that around. If it is all so meaningless as to just be a 'chip factory or an oil field', then why would China be supposedly willing to end the world over it?
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May 26, 2022 04:48
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:i'm glad the pacific island countries finally have something to base an economy around besides tourism and guano: playing the US and china off each other This is exactly what happened during the Cold War in a lot of developing countries. The end of the Soviet Union was disastrous for those countries because industrialized countries basically stopped paying any attention to them and keeping them stable. If we jump back into a Cold War hopefully foreign aid will get a boost. Edit: the flip side of this is pf course coups and strongmen but we can always hope that doesn’t come along with (it will)
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May 26, 2022 04:54
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Despera posted:Russia failed to do. With a superior force to the PLA against and not having to go over any signifigant water. They thought they could take Ukraine in hours. Taiwan has been preparing for invasion since the 50s. D-Day took a year to plan, took 10 to 1 casualties and was against a largely undefended coast (also anti ship missiles didnt exist(the russians lost their best ship to 3 home grown missiles)). Also the allies had air and sea superiority, something the chinese if the americans/japanese decided to have 0 control over. Even if the chinese had loving moses taiwan is a mixture of urban hellscapes and mountainous jungles which the ukrainians would love to be defending. Your outlook on a potential PLA vs USN/Allied war in the SCS/Taiwan Strait arena is considerably rosier than professional military planners. The potential arena for battle will be in an area where the Chinese will have the benefit of using land-based aircraft while US/Allied forces will inevitably be forced to rely on naval aviation. In-air refueling will allow some land-based air assets to participate but they will suffer from low sortie rates and the airbases in nations participating in hosting US/Allied planes will be subject to swarms of Chinese missiles. Also, Taiwan hasn't been preparing for 50 years. While defense spending has increased, its preparedness has been decreasing steadily with continuous clawbacks on the length of the national service (now down to a measly 4 months) Every serious analyst both civilian and military views the Taiwanese army as underequipped, undertrained, and lacking in institutional knowledge and culture, particularly in the senior NCO ranks since the military isn't seen as a prestigious career choice. The Taiwanese themselves have all but admitted that their reservist program is next to useless as those who have left compulsory service spend next to no time doing any refresher courses and mobilization schemes are non-existent. For example, if you were to try and call up reservists, most wouldn't have a command structure to report to. Compare this to something like the US Army Reserves which sees reservists assigned to actual units that can be mobilized quickly in times of war. Despera posted:Also you have to wonder how long the parents of 1 child could take their sole source of income dying on a foreign shore. The Russians have shown how successful propaganda is. The Russians only have a birth rate of 1.2-1.5 per woman from 1998-2008 so they have effectively been on a one-child policy themselves. I see no radical mass movement against the Russian government do you? Similarly, do you see reams of international shipping moving in and out of Odessa? No? So why would they all of a sudden be ok running a Chinese blockade? Good luck finding an insurance company willing to underwrite your ship if you plan on doing that. SlothfulCobra posted:I feel like shooting down planes and ships headed to Taiwan would provoke more of an international response than an invasion. With a blockade. countries wouldn't even have to decide to cut trade with China because China itself would be shutting down its seas and cracking down on one of the most trafficked seaways in the world. Raenir Salazar posted:The problem also with a blockade is what happens when a "Tanker War" happens? What do they do when US flagged ships are delivering food and aid? This is why I prefaced that section with the assumption of zero outside interference. It was important to dispel the notion that conquering Taiwan is hard and that's why it hasn't been done yet. Conquering Taiwan is actually easy for the PRC. It is dealing with the myriad of possible consequences that is hard and is what prevents the Taiwanese from being rolled. This is why it is critical that the Taiwanese ensure that there is zero possibility of a lightning takeover. The moment the PRC think they might be able to pull it off, the odds of them taking that leap grow significantly precisely because it opens the door to avoid sticky situations like you described. Keep in mind Taiwan isn't Ukraine where there is a land border where you just drop stuff off and let the Ukrainians move it to the front lines. Everything has to come through air or sea transports. Do you see NATO cargo planes flying supplies into Kyiv? Do you see an armada of container ships ready to move Ukrainian grain supplies out into the world even though the Russian Black Sea Fleet has effectively been put back into port? No one knows the depth of the commitment should the hour come. Not even the Americans themselves. SpiritOfLenin posted:isn't "just a chip factory" also insanely reductive, like there are only a couple of places in the world that do the sort of chips that are done in Taiwan and it is not very easy to create both the expertize and the machinery to create that stuff Herstory Begins Now posted:Yeah and significantly it's been one of China's primary strategic goals for the better part of a decade to get their domestic chip manufacturing up to speed so they can stop depending on american/german/taiwanese/south korean chips. The current highest tech, 5nm chips, are only commercially being made by Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung. As I said, the underlying technology and machines used by TSMC to do its work is based on equipment manufactured by ASML, a western company. Without the lithography machines coming out from ASML, they wouldn't be able to do what they have been doing so as I said, the underlying technology for advanced silicon remains in the West. That is not to say TSMC doesn't have considerable expertise in using that equipment but that human expertise can evacuated and moved on shore. TSMC is already building a new plant in Arizona as part of this effort. So, if the Chinese were to take over Taiwan they wouldn't all of a sudden be the kings of making silicon and the West would be screwed. Even if all TSMC facilities were taken intact, the foundational technologies it relies on is European and American based.
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May 26, 2022 05:15
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I dont know what planet conquering taiwan would be easy on. Even Mao who was how do we say, not particularly concerned with casualties didnt even try. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/4/4/how-difficult-would-it-be-for-china-to-invade-taiwan https://www.brookings.edu/articles/can-china-conquer-taiwan/ https://thediplomat.com/2021/05/why-a-taiwan-invasion-would-look-nothing-like-d-day/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-with-china/ https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/23/asia/taiwan-china-invasion-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59900139 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/yes-china-could-invade-taiwan-and-then-comes-hard-part-164360 https://en.rti.org.tw/news/view/id/2007303 All these were before Biden said he would defend Taiwan Oh and Taiwan is an insurgents paradise
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May 26, 2022 06:02
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Is china planning on starting a nuclear war over 'a chip factory or an oil field'? Ukraine has neither and the US just brushed aside literally years of Russias 'don't forget that we have nuclear weapons!! you don't want to risk a nuclear armageddon!!' threats. Taiwan isn’t a chip factory to China its a part of their sovereign territory. And the US/NATO aren’t marching their armies into Ukraine either
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May 26, 2022 08:02
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You think china is going to start a nuclear war over taiwan?
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May 26, 2022 08:04
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Herstory Begins Now posted:You think china is going to start a nuclear war over taiwan? If we get to the point where the US military and the Chinese military are directly fighting a hot war over Taiwan, then yes I think that could escalate to nuclear war
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May 26, 2022 08:21
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Red and Black posted:If we get to the point where the US military and the Chinese military are directly fighting a hot war over Taiwan, then yes I think that could escalate to nuclear war US and China have fought against each other before in proxy wars and what not, with it going nuclear, and while there's always a "possibility" I think both sides would be doing hell of a lot to avoid that sort of escalation.
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May 26, 2022 08:31
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Red and Black posted:If we get to the point where the US military and the Chinese military are directly fighting a hot war over Taiwan, then yes I think that could escalate to nuclear war China starting a 'nuclear armageddon' (your words) over taiwan seems completely loving unhinged of them when they could just not use nuclear weapons. I don't see China being nearly that unhinged, personally. Doesn't China's nuclear doctrine specifically preclude ever launching a first-strike, too? Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 09:25 on May 26, 2022 |
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May 26, 2022 09:22
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Herstory Begins Now posted:China starting a 'nuclear armageddon' (your words) over taiwan seems completely loving unhinged of them when they could just not use nuclear weapons. I don't see China being nearly that unhinged, personally. The NFU policy is nice and good until China is staring down an invasion of their territory by the US. And that is how both the general population of the mainland and their leadership would perceive it. Their policy could change in those circumstances. There's also the threat of accidental launch from either side in response to percieved first strike, which would be dramatically escalated during a hot war. Even if the probability of nuclear war is 0.1% the expected cost of such a war is staggeringly high. US planners understand these risks, unlike you, which is why there is not a no fly zone in Ukraine, or a NATO invasion force. I get the impression you don't understand how important Taiwan is to the PRC. It's not just an island to them, it's connected to them by hundreds of years of history and represents the last part of their territory left outside their direct control. Taiwan has meant many things to the US over the years: an "unsinkable aircraft carrier", a bulwark against communism, a cash cow to sell arms to, a chip factory. But Taiwan probably isn't even in the top 50 strategic priorities of the United States, while for China it's a core issue. Why do you think they refuse to do trade with any country that recognizes the ROC? Even when China was relatively poor, they were willing to throw away hundreds of billions of dollars of trade over this issue. They're not going to let this go, but the US will. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 26, 2022 10:22
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Red and Black posted:The NFU policy is nice and good until China is staring down an invasion of their territory by the US. This is a distorted way of looking at things. Red and Black posted:But Taiwan probably isn't even in the top 50 strategic priorities of the United States, Please name 50 other strategic priorities more important to the US than Taiwan. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 10:31 on May 26, 2022 |
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May 26, 2022 10:28
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Name a strategic priority higher than Taiwan to Taiwan. Same failure of thinking Putin made over Ukraine. Yes Ukraine means more to Russia than it does to the US. That's the wrong actor to be looking at.
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May 26, 2022 14:21
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/26/china-economy-covid-li-keqiang/quote:‘No time to lose’: Top Chinese official sounds alarm over economy
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May 26, 2022 15:26
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Regarding Taiwanese defense, my father was a conscript in the '70s and from what he said the whole experience was a mess of incompetence, nepotism, and on the whole pretty much a waste of time. Apparently the professionals were probably better but the ones in charge of the conscripts tended to resent them and spend more time upbraiding them for lack of proper military appearance than anything to do with combat training. The one major exercise he was involved in had the professional opfor run so many circles around his conscript garrison unit that they were withdrawn from the outlying island they were nominally defending to the main island. That was one anecdote from the '70s so I'm not sure how much has changed since then but yeah as far as I'm aware most Taiwanese parents do their best to get their kids out of conscription if they have the means to do so since it's generally regarded as pointless. There is not, exactly, the same sense of military urgency in Taiwan as there was in Ukraine in 2014+. Well, until recently. Mind you, I still think that an attempted invasion of Taiwan would go terribly for multiple reasons but on the whole I think Taiwan's been a bit complacent about the serious possibility of military invasion in the past few decades.
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May 26, 2022 16:59
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Today China hesitates to confront Taiwan too aggressively as the domestic conventional wisdom is that 1996 backfired and instead confirmed Lee Teng-Hui's localization drive through a landslide electoral victory A blockade is unnecessary: the Taiwanese economy is itself enormously exposed to China. China can harass Taiwanese agricultural exports at present because it knows that farmers are a key swing electoral constituency, but this is a peacetime tactic. To really escalate a national crisis for Taipei, instead China could just completely obliterate Taiwanese industrial exports to China (drawing instead from, e.g., South Korea). It could ban China Airlines from its airspace and Taiwan-bound ships from its ports. It could annex Kinmen at its discretion at pretty much any time. Beijing today possesses many options short of a wholesale invasion of Taiwan island that it does not use on Taiwan for fear of completely losing the possibility of an acquiescent (if grudging) reunification, like Hong Kong Conversely Taiwan - being democratic - is in no position to coldly render, on rational strategic calculation, the really critical decision that would decide its fate: does it want to be Taiwanese, if it meant risking really significant costs in blood and treasure? The Taiwan electorate will decide that, and Beijing may do something so carelessly repellent that it may drive voters to do so even if it is not rational (to use that favourite word) ronya fucked around with this message at 18:19 on May 26, 2022 |
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May 26, 2022 18:14
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