Why wouldn’t we defend Taiwan?
It would cost American lives. We're war weary--I don't think we've fought a legitimate war in generations. That takes a lot to get over. It's, ironically, similar to the situation that led to European appeasement the last time this happened.
I thought WMDs were the lie that justified invading Iraq? The Afghanistan lie was that ObL was hiding in a cave there rather than openly living down the street from the Pakistan Military Academy. I'll admit that as the stories pile up it gets hard to keep them straight. It seems possible that the war pigs have gone a bit overboard with the stories in the last several decades. They've turned the knob so far that it may have broken off. After the "disastrous" aspects of the recent withdrawal have been hyped so much in the war media, I've heard normal red-blooded high-school-educated Ozark hillbilly Americans laughing out loud at e.g. CNN's instant backflip on the performance of Biden as president. It has been made exceedingly clear which interests really decide what's news.
Historically, American public sentiment has swung between periods of imperialism and isolationism. Based on the last few years, I think we’re swinging back towards isolationism. But yea, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a near-future President looking for an easy military victory (e.g. Panama).
1. we just finished a 20 year war with nothing to show for it. Jumping into a new war is probably worth some cost/benefit analysis beyond "well, why not?"
2. correct if wrong, but I assume the projection of power backing your usage of "we" actually means "policed by others, who are not me"
I'm not sure I want to see a new generation of kids slurped up into another war (formally declared or otherwise) on the other side of the globe to dubious end effect.
Why would we defend Taiwan?
It's on the other side of the world from the US, there's no particular economic / strategic US interest in defending it, and on top of that it's current arrangement with China seems to be working for everyone.
I find the notion that China would invade and that the US should then step in to be mystifying.
With Taiwan part of China, it has direct access to the pacific ocean and a naval blockade will be much less effective.
Most of Chinese GDP relies on external trade and a naval blockade would cut it off from vital resources to be able to conduct war against western targets.
Also PRC, along US has the LEAST trade:GDP dependency among major countries in the world. And PRC, unlike Japan has enough domestic resource production to be more or less self sufficient to run a war economy to support a military multiple it's current size.
All which have to be imported.
The Chinese belt & road initiative is a huge project to reduce the reliance on the china sea with a hallmark project opening a new main economic corridor to Karachi & Gwadar in Pakistan. That would allow for an alternative import-route through less hostile waters and dramatically increase the cost of a blockade.
China is very interested in Afghanistan because it provides a route for an oil-pipeline to Iran and has large mineral deposits, reducing their dependency on the seas.
Maybe it could military counter-blockade some of these islands, but that would not prevent the US from enacting an efficient naval blockade in the chinese seas.
BRI hype is mostly theatre / exporting excess infra capacity, it will take decades to cultivate alternate routes and still won't rival shipping via water. The numbers don’t add up. Almost every country with PRC supply route is subject to US bombing in full scale war - US think tanks already proposed landing missiles in SCS islands even if against wishes of SCS nations if shit hits the fan. The US will have no problem bombing infra in the Stans to contain the PRC. Only viable secure route is via Russia due to nuclear deterrence but again land routes are simply insufficient longer term alternatives.
Ultimately US-PRC confrontation / PRC breaking US containment for good will be decided in the waters. In case of the USN attempting a blockade on PRC (legally an act of war), the battles will be decisive, with existential consequences. PRC has options to undermine blockade like bait the USN into defending Japan / Korea, or counter blockade of everything in the 1st island chain from the US. Or destroy all east Asian semi supply chains which set back US manufacturing for decades. Or massive crippling cyber attacks. There are multiple domains of MAD, not just nuclear that makes prolonged confrontation unfavorable. PRC is not just going to sit there and take it.
Also, even if the US sinks the entire PLAN fleet, PRC may still force pyrrhic costs on the US. Every ship in the USN fleet has to dock eventually, including nuclear powered, PRC has enough conventionally tipped ICBMs to hit them without complex kill chain considerations. Destroying the oilers and replenishment ships while in port and the nuclear USCGs that’s hiding out at sea become useless. People aren't fathoming scenarios where both sides lose terribly, but ultimately the US loses more because she started so far ahead. A US unable to honor her global security commitments because she lost so much assets to the PRC loses her hegemony. Is TW worth that? All interest calculus points to no. Especially considering PRC is much easier to contain once she takes over TW. Most countries in the region will become MORE willing to US assets to contain PRC once the TW conundrum is resolved, because they want to deter PRC, but not at the cost of being dragged into war over TW.
China claims about 80% of the SCS which would give them control over 60% of global maritime trade and yield enormous leverage over dozens of SEA nations.
Taiwan is as good a place to make a stand as the inevitable next island.
Remember that they were colonized/humiliated by the west, then occupied by Japan, up until Mao secured their independence. The foreign supported force fled to Taiwan. Do you think they might look at their situation differently than we do?
EDIT: changed 'foreigner force' to 'foreign supported force'
It is China that is bullying Taiwan, not other countries bullying China.
> It is China that is bullying Taiwan, not other countries bullying China.
That's not their perspective. Hard to argue effectively against someone without understanding where they are coming from.
So what? Who cares? I have no delusions that they are going to be convinced of what is wrong with wanting to invade and take over a country. Why bother trying to convince them of anything?
Country to country interactions, in the context of war and invasions, aren't really solved in the marketplace of ideas, of rousing debate, to totally prove that the other side is wrong.
Instead, such problems are solved with power.
The way to stop an invasion from china, is to put in disincentives. Arm up opposing forces, establish treaties, trade relations, and economic sanctions, such that an invasion would cause china a huge of amount of damage, if they did decide to do that.
And if they ignore that, and go through with the invasion, then you follow through on your threat, and actually cause as much damage, in terms of economics, PR, and lives as you can get away with, while reducing the same from your own side.
If you don't understand their perspective you are at a disadvantage. You won't be able to do a good job predicting what they will do. You may unnecessarily start a war. You may be manipulated into starting a war. You may start a war that you can't win. You may be wasting resources. You may be operating out of emotional fear rather than calculated reason.
Wars are lost over such misunderstandings. In the case of the United States that would include Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Lots of blood and treasure wasted. One might also add the cold war, given what is now known about how the maliciousness and capabilities of the Soviets were vastly overestimated, meaning we wasted a vast amount of resources there, also.
In this case I suppose it would be important to understand their motives and capabilities. Are they posturing for domestic consumption? They have said before that they are not in a rush to reclaim Taiwan. Is that still true? How do they feel about the trade-offs involved in a war? How would the war most likely be started and fought from their side? And can we stop them? Are we willing to make the trade-offs that would be involved.
I'm wary of anyone who calls for war and hasn't looked into these things. Blood and treasure for wars doesn't grow on trees.
The original statement that you responded to, was this "It is China that is bullying Taiwan, not other countries bullying China."
And you responded to that statement, by saying that it is "not their perspective".
By responding to that point, in that way, you are basically saying "Well maybe china is right!".
They aren't right on that. They are wrong on that specific point, and it doesn't matter if from their perspective, they think they are correct, except as it comes to defeating that perspective.
So, to rephrase your original statement, instead of saying "thats not their perspective", you should have instead said "Yep, they are totally wrong, and should be stopped, but we need to figure out the best way to stop them from invading taiwan", or something like that.
You also said this "because we are good and they are bad". Which is a true statement, but you are being dismissive about it. Yes, their actions are bad, if they include invading Taiwan. And by saying that, you are basically disagreeing with that idea, by saying it dismissively.
So, please, don't do this bait an switch, where you are now pretending like you care about, uhh, the most effective way to stop China's bad actions, when instead you were quite clearly, quitely obviously, attempting to excuse their actions.
That is what you are doing, when you say this "because we are good and they are bad". You are dismissively attempting to excuse their actions, to support them invading Taiwan, because, well, according to you, "its just their perspective".
My original reply in this thread was that I didn't think that the fear of China attacking the West was worthy justification for the U.S. to go to war with China over Taiwan.
I never said that I support China invading Taiwan. That would mean I advocate sending troops to help China, which I don't. That would be like saying that I support the regime in Saudia Arabia because I don't want to go to war with them. Or that the U.S. supported communist China because we built them up through trade, knowing the whole time they wanted Taiwan back. Maybe these are bad examples, I don't mean to sidetrack things.
I mentioned perspective because Taiwan used to be part of China and I'm sure they look at it differently than other countries which were never part of China. I say this beause I don't believe their desire to retake Taiwan is also a desire to attack the West. I assume they have something comparable to "American Exceptionalism" and psychologically don't want to permanently loose Taiwan, so they bide their time. Just like the Reconquista - lots of Mexicans want Texas back. That doesn't mean they want to attack Europe! Also I do believe that understanding a country's perspective, China, Taiwan, and the U.S. in this case, allows for better outcomes and less possibility of costly mistakes.
On the other hand, in regards to your opinion of this matter, I wonder what would you have thought of Spain attacking the U.S. during the civil war in support of the Confederacy because a re-united U.S. was more of a threat to Spanish control over South and Central America? We eventually went on to treat a lot of those countries like shit, making banana republics of many, etc. Would this Spanish attack have been justified according to the original posters logic, because the U.S. would be an eventual threat to other countries?
There's a variety of nuances to this stuff, if one can get past the "we are good, they are evil" version of things. Maybe that's not always possible.
No, stop. I said nothing about you supporting troops. I am talking about support of the moral argument, about how we can, from a moral perspective, disregard their "perspective", when thinking about what is right or wrong, or to get moral advice.
If their perspective is that they want to invade that other country, in a moral discussion, I don't care about their perspective, when determining if that is right or wrong.
So then, you would agree with me that if they invaded that you would absolutely condemn them, morally, and say that they are wrong and that you don't care about their moral opinion on the matter, as you disagree with it.
> I don't believe their desire to retake Taiwan is also a desire to attack the West.
Them wanting to invade Taiwan is a good enough reason, in and of itself, to arm Taiwan, and engage in severe economic or political actions against China, if they ever follow through with that.
Ideally, they wouldn't do that through, due to our actions in arming the opposition though.
Obviously, it would be way better if China simply never invaded, due to our actions, and if we could avoid war, and could avoid anyone being invaded.
The best action, is not to give in to their perspective, instead it is to make it so if they ever invaded, they would take a lot of damage, so that they then decide to not do it in the first place, and there is neither any war or invasion.
A much better case could be made that wars are really started over greed and fear. And that's what I was talking about originally. This thread started with me objecting to the assertion that a justification for militarily defending Taiwan was to prevent China from attacking the West. I don't think they plan on attacking the West. What do they plan on doing? To know that requires thinking from their perspective. This is what the state department does. This is the level I was talking on. I personally think that the world would be a better place if citizens everywhere better understood the reasons for problems between nations.
I don't think that this has anything to do with morality. I didn't bring morality up. I've studies a lot of history, and that doesn't appear to be how these things work. That's why the U.S. does many immoral things, supports many regimes that do immoral things, ignores many others, and changes their mind sometimes. Same as every other country. The bigger and more powerful a country is the more immoral they tend to become. Given all that it hardly makes sense to single out Taiwan for special treatment based on morals. If you want to go on discussing morality in relation to Taiwan you have a lot of contradictions to deal with, our support of Saudi Arabia for example, our abandonment of the Kurds, Afghanistan, etc. Morality is not why wars are fought. Morality is how wars are sold to the masses that have to suffer and pay for them. I apologize if you already know this and we are otherwise miscommunicating.
So where do you want to go from here?
Just be aware, that if you do that, you can't complain about anything at all, regarding any moral issue, what so ever.
And you cannot complain, when people, who actually do care about right or wrong, treat you equivalently to the worst of any political ideology that you can think of, and call you horrible political slurs, regarding the obvious bad ideologies that should immediately come to mind.
If you want to bite the bullet on that, and say "yes, I dismiss any arguments at all, relating to morality, and the people who do care about that stuff, should definitely treat me like the obvious trope evil ideologies that come to mind", then fine. Just say that.
But that is your position. Own it, and say it to the world, so that others can treat you, how they treat other such proponents of such ideologies.
It's not an ideology. I'm saying that it's simply the way geopolitics works. The way things have been throughout history, including the modern era. It's what all the books on this topic talk about. Might does makes right when it comes to countries relations with each other. Countries act in their self interest. The strongest country gets their way. The law of the jungle. There's no judge or god for a country to appeal to or to enforce rules of morality. Ultimately there's only armies and allies. If the group of people running things in one country think they can dominate another country to their advantage, they do. That's why all large empires ultimately make so many enemies, causing their downfall. In this case I think that China wants to regain their traditional territory and expand their influence in their neighborhood region, and the U.S. doesn't want to give up an inch if they don't have to. At stake is economic and political influence in South East Asia. The rich and powerful care about that, not morality.
I personally have a quite different ideology when it comes to these matters, but I'm not the one in charge. I wouldn't send people to fight a war over Taiwan. I don't think it's justified based on a fear of them attacking the West, nor because some people think China is evil. Is it better for China to quickly take Taiwan or for us to enable a war that could kill millions? If you want to raise money and hop on a plane to fight the Chinese over Taiwan, I'm cool with that.
> Just be aware, that if you do that, you can't complain about anything at all, regarding any moral issue, what so ever.
> And you cannot complain, when people, who actually do care about right or wrong, treat you equivalently to the worst of any political ideology that you can think of, and call you horrible political slurs, regarding the obvious bad ideologies that should immediately come to mind.
I saw your comment above before you edited it. You seem to be quite emotional about this, and quite hostile towards me in this thread.
You seem to look at international politics very differently than anything I've studied, and I'm not sure that I understand. I've tried to explain my understanding of the way the world works in this regard, but you haven't much explained how you think. Worst case I might assume that you just get enraged over whatever the news headlines tell you to, but that wouldn't be very charitable.
I'm genuinely curious and have a lot of questions. How should a country choose what evil in the world to oppose, seeing as how there is so much? If we don't always confront evil, does that mean that other considerations are more important? Do you think that the leaders of countries think of good and evil in their calculations, or money and power? Does it bother you that the U.S. sometimes supports evil regimes? Or sometimes does evil things itself?
I'm wondering if you have answers for any of these questions. I know a lot of people haven't thought much about this stuff.
Ok fine. Then if that is the case, then you should have no problem saying "Yes, I completely and totally agree with you, that the people who want to invade Taiwan, are extremely evil, should be condemned, and the people and individuals who support that, are morally equivalent to the obvious extremely evil ideologies, that come to mind, and should be treated as such by society."
If you agree with that statement, then great. In that situation, you reject that other ideology, entirely, and agree that such people, including individuals, can and should be treated the same as any other horrible evil political group, with all of the implications that this implies.
> If you want to raise money and hop on a plane to fight the Chinese over Taiwan
Whoa, I have already given other options. Such as for example, continuing doing what we are currently doing, which is to arm Taiwan, as much as possible, so that if a war breaks out, a whole lot of damage is caused to china.
Such an action, would likely disincentive china from invading in the first place, which would be the goal. Arming the opposition, and economic and political sanctions and measures, are likely more than enough to prevent an invasion, without a war.
> Is it better for China to quickly take Taiwan or for us to enable a war that could kill millions
Or, instead of that, we could give them the ability to cause as much damage as possible, without us needing to be directly involved.
Such a situation, would provide strong disincentives, that would likely cause china to not start the war in the first place.
Yes, I would condemn it. I think any group of people who want to be independent should be able to be independent. Also I assume the system in China is more the cause of evil, as opposed to all the people, so many of whom are along for the ride.
But that doesn't mean I'd be in favor of going to war with China over Taiwan.
> Whoa, I have already given other options. Such as for example, continuing doing what we are currently doing
The main article that we are commenting on, and the start of this thread, was about defending Taiwan if China invades. I thought that was what we were talking about.
Any chance of you answering any of those questions I asked? Or maybe this is one of those emotional things that are difficult to reason about?
Great! Finally! Glad you agree with me completely, and are no longer dodging the questions about morality.
> was about defending Taiwan if China invades.
There are a whole lot of ways to defend another country, without launching a thousand nukes and ending society as we know it.
Such a word, "defending", could include a multitude of options.
> Any chance of you answering any of those questions I asked?
"How should a country choose what evil in the world to oppose, seeing as how there is so much?"
You do what you can, whereever possible, and you disregard people who say "well, you are saying that X is bad, but did you know that there is also Y that is bad?"
If you want the world to do more to stop bad things that are happening in the world, you should not say "Keep doing X, because we are doing Y", instead you should say "stop doing Y which is bad, and also don't do X which is also bad!".
> Does it bother you that the U.S. sometimes supports evil regimes
You can be bothered as much as you want about whatever, but do not use whataboutism, to disregard someone else saying that Z is bad.
I'm pretty sure that I do not agree with you, most certainly we don't reason about these things the same.
Along the way during this conversation I wondered if I'd learn anything about your position. I'm not sure if I did. It seems like you'd rather bully your way through a debate, like with the above statement and many others you have made. Some of the things you said left quite an impression. Personality differences, I guess.
Its pretty simple. When people say stuff like "X is bad", there are people out there who hide their real position, and try to attack that idea by saying "well stopping it impractical!" or "You say we should stop X, but what about Y thing that is also bad!", or "X is only bad from your perspective!".
They do this to misdirect around their real position, which is that they do not actually agree that X is bad. It is a bad faith way of hiding someone's beliefs, and not actually talking about the main point.
Next time, if you don't want to be confused with these bad faith people, just start off by say "Hey, I totally and completely agree with you that X is very bad! That is a good moral position for you to have! But what about these other things, or issues with how we go about stopping X?"
This much more accurately seems to be your position, that you completely agree with me that X is bad in this case.
Because if you don't do that, and just start talking about "Well what about if from their perspective, actually they don't think X is bad", then that very clearly implies that actually you don't think that X is bad, but you just don't want to admit it, and back up your position, and are acting in bad faith.
I knew I was not engaging in misdirection. At first I did leave unsaid that I always believe it is wrong to impose on others (China and Taiwan, for example). It's hard to completely state ones position in every comment. I jumped right into a geopolitical discussion, where I'm still convinced that might makes right is the primary driver of interactions between countries, as opposed to morality, given that countries are run by less than perfect politicians. I was thinking more along the lines of the practicality of the U.S. getting involved, factors driving that, likely outcomes, how motivated the parties involved are, etc. Wars so often create more tragedy, and it seems there's so often questionable motives involved.
I guess that it's often the case that it takes a while to sort through the different context people bring to a discussion. I've seen this before, a better discussion after getting the initial yelling back and forth over assumptions out of the way.
> It's not an ideology. I'm saying that it's simply the way geopolitics works.
But none of us here is a geopolitical power, so for you to argue as if you were is just fucking silly. You are, AFAIK, an ordinary human (unless bots have developed a heck of a lot while my back was turned?), so discussing as if you weren't is not just hilariously pretentious but ultimately meaningless.
But again you are viewing things with a twisted perspective. The legitimate Chinese government is the one that had to flee the evil usurpers, and ended up on the island of Formosa. It's actually kind of the other way around: Mainland China "used to be part of" what is now Taiwan. So, sure, reunite them: Give China back to Taiwan.
The US strategy is to enforce peace through strength which is what you can expect from a democratic country and which is widely supported by allied nations.
Dictatorships tend to seek external enemies to boost a rally-around-the-flag narrative that boosts centralized control. It's a very old playbook that works everywhere (also in US domestic politics).
The Chinese communist party will need these distractions more and more as the GDP growth will stall due to internal corruption (they rank lower than Ghana and Tunesia in corruption indexes).
I think we can agree that whatever the communist party thinks it needs to stay in power should not lead to WWIII
I agree about external enemies. I think that both China and the U.S. are playing that dangerous game.
I also agree that the Chinese communist party will come under more pressure domestically. besides the things you mentioned are also some tough demographic changes coming up.
I also assume that the communist party in China doesn't want WWIII.
China claims 80% of the South China Sea as "ancestral lands" and they are actively building capability to take it by force. How would you feel if you are in charge of Indonesia or the Philipines?
Which territory does the US claim?
We've seen in the last few weeks in Kabul that that era is over, but that would be an answer to "why"
TSMC is one of the most important companies for the US.
I could well imagine Biden consulting with his military advisors and coming to the conclusion that it just isn't worth it. We saw a similar thing play out with Obama and Crimea.
The winning strategy for the U.S. right now seems to be to convince China we would defend Taiwan so they don't attempt an invasion in the first place. But that's hard to do when it looks like the U.S. has pretty compelling reasons to stay out of it if it came to that.
(This is all assuming that Taiwan asks for our help. I don't know why they wouldn't, but I feel like it's an important caveat that we shouldn't involve ourselves in conflicts we aren't invited into by at least one party.)
I also think we should host a sovereign election and ask the Taiwanese people what they think we should do.
Taiwan already has a democractically-elected President. Instead of holding a "sovereign election," you could just listen to her:
>Tsai expressed her solidarity with Hong Kong protesters, remarking that Taiwan's democracy was hard-earned and had to be guarded and renewed. Pledging that as long as she was Taiwan's president, she would never accept "one country, two systems", Tsai cited what she considered to be the constant and rapid deterioration of Hong Kong's democracy over the course of 20 years.
This is why America entered the war so late. If America were thinking of itself as world police at the time, why did it take America so long to actually go to war?
e: account throttled, last reply for this thread
@Ekaros
I think in case of war prior to TSMC productions shifting off island, the survival of those fabs would be the only point of agreement and deconfliction between the mexican standoff. The idea that US would negotiate conceding TW to PRC over fab sharing access / where US controlled supply chains ultimately determine the fabs viability is not inconcievable. The US is fucking negotiating with the Taliban over civilians. Thre are tons of US civilians AND economic interests in TW worth preserving, even if it means handing TW over to PRC, as long as said economic interest has US leash. Which TSMC supply chains are absolutely tethered to. Why would TW agree? Because they're a developed country who doesn't want to be Yemen if conflict gets seroius, it's their only short term barginning chip.