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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

So is helping Estonia after a Russian invasion. And that’s already part of NATO Article V. “Whatever it takes so it doesn’t happen” is a long laundry list of things, but number one is always to convince the attacker that the invasion would cost more than could be gained.

Saying that Taiwan will definitely be defended and hesitating after the fact is much better than hesitating in policy.

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The problem is that your opponent also knows this. And therefore will discount the fact that you said it and make their own judgment about whether you actually would respond.

Large wars happen when antagonists misjudge how protagonists will react.

Therefore it is extremely important to only say that you will do things that you absolutely know that you will do, to take the guessing out of it for your opponents. Because if they credibly think you might have bluffed, at some point they will call with drastic results. (And every time you're caught in a bluff, your credibility goes down for the next conflict. See the German invasion of Austria.)

This is true for a purely bilateral situation like US-China, but the situation is different if there are more parties involved. For example, the public policy drives what policy other countries have (mutual assurances). Policy also can’t be merely an oral statement it’s also action. A credible policy to defend Taiwan means massive investment in ability to do so. It’s what makes the bluff expensive enough to call at any odds.

> See the German invasion of Austria.

Oh, please. Anschluss isn't even remotely comparable to the possible China - Taiwan situation. If you meant that about the reaction of other countries i think you can't really draw any meaningful parallels there either.

They could have been referring to the German invasion of democratic Czechoslovakia, after which the British and French did nothing.

Oh please, yourself. Winston Churchill wrote an excellent series on WW II and the invasion of Austria was one of the key points that WW II could have been prevented.

The fact that Britain and France failed to enforce the Treaty of Versailles after Hitler's violations demonstrated to Hitler that he could continue violating the treaty and nobody would stand up to him.

That is why, when Germany decided to invade Poland, they didn't expect that Britain and France would actually fight. And the cowardice that they had seen displayed left them convinced that Britain would quickly sue for peace when put to the test.

Furthermore HAD Britain and France responded with force in 1938, Germany wasn't ready and would have backed down. In fact the big reason why Germany wanted Austria was to secure Austrian steel that Germany needed for war manufacturing.

If you put a line in the sand and your enemy crosses it without consequence, you shouldn't expect that they will believe your next line in the sand, no matter how strongly worded your statement is.

Lithuania would get invaded long before Estonia, after all, once Lithuania is 'done' the rest of the Baltics will be cut off from Western Europe by land.

Note that it is only a very tiny strip of land that separates the Russian enclave at the Baltic sea from Belarus, a country very much friendly to Russia. I'd happily bet that there are many different plans on how to occupy that strip in a hurry should it come to that and just as many plans on how to deal with those attempts.

https://www.google.com/maps/@54.2105194,22.8701257,10.42z

All it would take is to take out two highways, one major, one minor and it's done.

I think there are two mindsets here. Russia is a gangster, brutal and clumsy, yet rational. However Russia is also barely hanging on to first world status, they are not a global balance of power threat. China is a threat to shifting the balance of power decisively towards China and away from America and the West. They mean it when they say this will be the China century.

"China, a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she awakes it will shake the world."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

Taiwan will go down like Ukraine. Security Guarantees are toilet paper.

Russia was already heavily sanctioned and Putin needed a domestic boost. That’s a different prospect.

I don’t think the party leaders in China believe that massive sanctions would be balanced by the nationalistic boost of invading Taiwan.

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