Hacker News Reader

Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

The US still has a huge Navy compared to China, and far more allies in the region than China does.

This might well change if China takes back Taiwan. If that happens, China could engineer a situation where it's better for the local powers to cozy up to China, than to take the side of the distant US. Even though the US, as a distant hegemon, is the better option, the US might not have the power to keep China at bay any more, so the lesser of the two evils for everyone could be seen to give in.

If I were in the Defense Department, I would be creating SOSUS-like arrays near Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, plus an R&D program to create a swarm of super quiet autonomous midget submarines to go along with it. Basically, take unprecedented steps to make it tremendously dangerous to invade Taiwan, even if China has air superiority. (I very much doubt we'd be able to prevent China from getting that in the long term, even temporarily.)

View on HN

Taiwan Can Win a War With China

“One of the central hurdles facing the offensive is surprise. The PLA simply will not have it. The invasion will happen in April or October. Because of the challenges posed by the strait’s weather, a transport fleet can only make it across the strait in one of these two four-week windows.“

“There are only 13 beaches on Taiwan’s western coast that the PLA could possibly land at. Each of these has already been prepared for a potential conflict.”

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-wi...

Assumptions like this have a way of getting countries invaded. They're true until they're not true.

The only assumption that matters is the assumption the USA will defend the country and not look away to prevent a world war. The moment that assumption does not hold true...

There is a serious proposal for the Mainland Chinese to unilaterally build a civilian tunnel to Taiwan. If the Taiwanese bomb it, the Chinese have a pretext for retaliation. That might be tricky.

Just in a practical global stability sense it would probably be best if China re assumed its historical role as regional hegemon.

I actually think it would be better for the us to unburden ourselves of the need to provide security for Taiwan, japan and Korea, as long as we continue to have trade agreements.

I realize that their system of government isn’t great and violates human rights on a massive scale, but in terms of foreign policy and the actual usage of their military for the past several decades, they’ve been a lot more reasonable and done far less damage than the us has.

Basically, because the US geopolitical strategy has kept them in check. Give them access to the world's oceans and the global stage to play in, and one might well see a lot more of that not-so-great stuff from China.

If they behave exactly like the United States that would be scary. Between Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria the US attempts to flatten about 1-1.5 countries per decade in the Middle East.

If China used that strategy in South America, I'm not sure the US military would smile and quietly appreciate the parallels. They'd be angry.

Basically everyone who gets to be world hegemon ends up acting like bastards a little or a lot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com