Hacker News Reader

> I wonder if they have given China extra pause in their stance toward Taiwan.

I expect so. But China is a great power, and Russia is only a regional power. It's much easier and cheaper to isolate Russia.

China's claim on Taiwan is 1000x more valid than the Russian claim on Ukraine, and the world would react differently. I say this as someone who likes the RoC, and thinks they have a right to self-determination.

Ultimately, though, China is trying to win the economic and political game. You need a large military to play that game as a great power, but you don't have to actually invade people to exercise military power. And wars are terribly costly when you're trying to modernize infrastructure. Decoupling China from the US would be terribly costly to both sides, while trade is profitable. So they use that to buy a sphere of influence, largely in Africa and South America. Putin is the idiot who still thinks he can invade his way to a sphere of influence, which hasn't really worked out for anyone after the Spanish-American war.

> China's claim on Taiwan is 1000x more valid than the Russian claim on Ukraine

I think you got it backwards: Taiwan's claim on China is more valid - after all, they are the original China unspoiled by the demon of communism.

That's exactly the point – if both countries claim to be the rightful owners of both other countries, they are not really separate countries.

Sure, in the same way that the confederacy's claim on the south is valid.

In the same way that the North’s claim on the US South is valid. Mainland China is the Confederacy. Taiwan is the Union. Taiwan and the North were the original governments.

Taiwan was a frontier until the Nationalists, losing the civil war to the Communists, fled there. Taiwan has never been the government of China. Are you saying the Nationalists were the original government of China? They didn't exist as a party until the 20th century and didn't last as a party in mainland China past 1949.

I don't say that to support the CCP - the only legitimate government is one chosen by the Chinese people - but saying "Taiwan and the North were the original governments" is plainly false. The Confuscian emporers, going back 2,000+ years and lasting until ~1911 (with many interruptions), would have by far the best claim on 'original government'.

> Taiwan's claim on China is more valid - after all, they are the original China unspoiled by the demon of communism.

I absolutely support the freedom of the people in Taiwan - and of those in all of China, though only the ones in Taiwan have it - but the parent doesn't make sense to me:

What is the "original China"? Imperial, Confucian China, which (including many interruptions) goes back over 2,000 years, and ended in ~1911? The predecessors to imperial China? Neither has anything to do with the Nationalists (who fled to Taiwan when they lost the civil war to the Communists).

> Russia is only a regional power

Which region would that be?

Europe. It has no power in Asia, Africa, Americas.

Once I learned their economy is as big as the Benelux, it's even smaller than you can imagine. They are still riding the good old Soviet days.

Their military spending is less than France and Germany combined.

The world would react differently to a CCP invasion of Taiwan for sure, but not in the way you imply. It would be a full scale war against US, Japan, Australia, UK at least right away. With the current president, being a democratic country the US people can of course choose an isolationist president and change their policies.

> China's claim on Taiwan is 1000x more valid than the Russian claim on Ukraine, and the world would react differently. I say this as someone who likes the RoC, and thinks they have a right to self-determination.

The PRC claim to Taiwan is about as weak as can be. They have after all _never_ ruled the island. The mainland and Taiwan have only been unified (if you can call the 45-49 “unified”) for four years in the last 125 years. Moscow ruled Ukraine up until a generation ago (not that I think that gives Russia any claim to Ukraine).

The PRC’s claim to Taiwan is ludicrous.

> If Putin loses in Ukraine, could that also mean the end of his regime in Russia? The Russian people are standing up to him. He has proven that he is not only fallible. Will this also be taken as a sign of weakness to Russians?

I believe that’s the play EU and NATO is going for. Putin made a mistake so obvious and of such magnitude that the western powers decided to go for the jugular. The risk is of course that it doesn’t work, as it didn’t in Belarus. We’re facing Cold War remastered in that case.

> probably because they believed that Russia would easily walk over Ukraine

Sorry to be brass, but why would NATO support Ukraine? Its not a strategy ally. There aren't any special resources there. I don't know why the US was tempting Ukraine to join NATO in the first place.

With neighbors like Ukraine has article 5 is the obvious temptation, USA didn't have to do anything. Believe it or not Ukrainians can have their own opinions and not everything they do is because of they are pawns

There are several guilty parties. US/NATO are not fully responsible.

I can't help but read that as you acknowledging Ukraine deserves some of the guilt of wanting to join NATO instead of just the USA's fault, which is definitely not what I meant. Russia is the lone guilty party in this invasion, or more specifically Putin, I feel pretty awful for the poor soldiers who are getting killed in foreign land or forced to play role of occupier to hostile locals. People who understand his concerns about NATO are people who have bought his lies.

Question: Whose fault was the Cuban Missile crisis and post-crisis economic sanctions of Cuba?

Mostly the fault of the USA. But lets not forget the ridiculous scale and number of military interventions Cubas worldwide. They were hardly an innocent bystander during the cold war but a very active opponent.

In what ways was the US tempting Ukraine to join NATO? Because NATO expansionism is the core of Russia's propaganda, along with other non-sense like clearing the country of Jewish Nazism.

Bucharest Summit Declaration 2008

> NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm

It's 2022. You're pointing to a declaration that is 14 years old. Do you have anything more current? Why the invasion now?

I have been wondering the same thing; what was the trigger? Maybe new ties to Turkey:

> Over the past two years, NATO member Turkey and Ukraine have bolstered defense industry ties, including an agreement by Turkish drone-maker Baykar to build a production facility near Kyiv for its popular Bayraktar TB2 drone. The Ukrainian government has also dubbed Turkey "one of its key economic partners."

https://www.dw.com/en/turkeys-intelligence-agency-abducts-ar...

Russia Annex Crimea in response to that in 2012. Russia's power and economy is weakening. They needed time to prepare their forces and complete their Crimea annexation. We also had COVID in 2019-2022.

So Ukraine says "hey, we think we probably want to join NATO". And NATO responds "cool, that sounds good", and... so what? Ukraine is a sovereign nation and should be allowed to ally itself with whatever country or group it wants to. Perhaps Russia should take a hard look at why Ukraine didn't feel that allying with Russia would be in their best interests?

So, Mexico is a sovereign nation and should be allowed to ally with North Korea or Iran, right?

The USA would be understanding of Mexico’s sovereignty and stand by while North Korea sends military aid to Mexico, installs their elite sons and daughters as board members of Mexico’s largest corporations, and blatantly strategizes who will become the “elected” leader of Mexico.

Perhaps you should take a hard look at the reality of what all powerful nations do when they feel threatened by their foes close to their borders. Ignoring it is at everyone’s peril.

To add: "Cuba is a sovereign nation. They should be allowed to store Russia's nuclear missiles." /s

> So, Mexico is a sovereign nation and should be allowed to ally with North Korea or Iran, right?

AFAIK they are allowed to do that. And if they did, the USA should take a long hard look at itself and think why Mexico wanted to do it.

There, do you have any more strawmen for us to burn?

> Mexico is a sovereign nation and should be allowed to ally with North Korea or Iran, right?

Yes.

Or, more realistically, China.

Is this supposed to be trap of some kind?

I didn't say NATO, I said "the west", but you're right, I probably should have said "the world" or something else.

A major superpower decided to invade a sovereign country with absolutely no provocation with the goal of extending their borders. This isn't the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last. It shouldn't be allowed.

Let's be clear here as well. Russia is not the only country to have done this. Western countries have been just as guilty in the past.

You are not correct when you say “without provocation”. The UKR government had been assaulting its own ethnically-Russian citizens in Donbass four 8 years. Russia went in to stop that. There are many journalistic documents that prove those societies.

Link to the documents? I appreciate we are getting differing stories depending on what media you see.

I'm not sure what to believe anymore, honestly. Certainly there has been military action between Kyiv and the separatists. But there's been so much anti-Ukraine propaganda coming out of Russia in the past 8 years, plus what seems to be questionable or incomplete reporting from Western outlets, that it's hard to know where the truth is.

Did the separatist movements start because of Russian agitation, or because of actions the government of Ukraine took? Is Ukraine targeting ethnic Russians in the Donbass region, or are they just attacking separatists, who maybe(?) happen to mostly be ethnic Russians? I'm having a hard time understanding the true history here.

> with absolutely no provocation

This is false. NATO in 2008 invited Ukraine to join. This is the equivalent of Cuba inviting Russia to setup a military base on US borders. The US's reaction was to economically nuke Cuba.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm

The US did not invade Cuba...

Ok, there was the Bay of Pigs, but the US pulled out support at the last minute. Had they invaded Cuba we'd be using that as an example of where the US did the wrong thing by invading a sovereign country (there are other examples...FYI, I'm not American).

As I commented elsewhere, this is a 14 year old invitation.

> The resultant lack of food and medicine to Cuba contributed to the worst epidemic of neurological disease this century.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8942780/

We didn't take up arms, we just starved Cuba to death and didn't give them access to modern medicine.

Though I am aware of the blockade (I'm not American), I was not aware of the humanitarian crisis it caused.

The document you linked clearly states that the US now recognizes this was a mistake.

"The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States has informed the US Government that such activities violate international law and has requested that the US take immediate steps to exempt food and medicine from the embargo."

But your initial comment was if Ukraine provoked Russia, so you're going down a rabbit hole of history that has no bearing on this.

You think an embargo is a blockade is US policy?

The US agreed not to invade again and also remove missiles in Europe in return for the missiles being removed from Cuba.

That's conspicuously not what happened with Ukraine. It could not be more not what happened with Ukraine.

Cuba makes no sense as an argument about current events, and if it did, one could have a conversation without random whatabouts.

russia wanted to deploy forces in the USA's borders. USA wants to deploy forces on Russia's borders.

I don't see the difference.

Yes, I was working with your premise! The parallelism as you see/state it.

You don't see a difference in what caused the crisis, right, sure.

THEN what happened?

In both cases, there was precedent for violating sovereignty. Bay of Pigs with the US, and Crimea with Russia, among other things.

But the US agreed to not invade again, and Russia on the other hand...invaded.

No, NATO didn't invite Ukraine to join. Ukraine wanted to join but NATO didn't reach unanimous decision to allow Ukraine to join. Back then Germany voted against Ukraine joining, out of consideration for Russias interests. Since then, there was no new movement for a NATO membership. And again, during the last minute diplomatic efforts, the German chancellor very clearly offered to Putin, that the question of an Ukrainian NATO membership would be decided quite far into the future. So there was no actual thread of a NATO membership - any claims of that were just a made-up reason by Putin. Also, while a lot of former Warshaw Pact countries did join the NATO, the NATO didn't install a permanent military presence in those countries.

> NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm

This is on NATO's website from 2008 meeting. How is "welcomes" not be interpreted as an invitation?

Well, yes, it is an invitation. But NATO didn't let the Ukraine join, that was blocked by at least Germany. And on during his visit in Moscow, Chanceller Scholz basically offered Putin that Ukraine joining into NATO could be very far in an undetermined future.

> Also, while a lot of former Warshaw Pact countries did join the NATO, the NATO didn't install a permanent military presence in those countries.

Well, after those countries became NATO countries their own militaries were NATO militaries, so of course NATO has a permanent military presence in those countries. Unless they totally demilitarised.

Comparing the Cuban missile crisis to now is mindblowing...why do people think it makes sense as a defense of Russia?

The USSR put missiles in Cuba, and got the US to agree not to invade and to withdraw missiles from eastern Europe.

We need to know about the parallel universe where the "NATO aggression" results in Russia agreeing not to invade Ukraine.

>given hope to other regions and countries that may come under threat in the future.

To be determined. I surmise Ukraine will go the way of HK/Belarus and demonstrate that shitpost supremacy is not a counter to disproportionate military force. That getting drunk on propaganda manufactured and reinforced by liberal western media is ultimately going to trigger harsher reprisals and bloodier escalations. The alternative to Putin's quick "special operations" / decapitation strike is UKR cities getting shelled to rubble that we witness now. PRC will learn not to half measure in the name of cross strait "brotherhood", strategy can change but enduring geopolitical interests do not. We're now setup for an even bloodier resumption of Chinese civil war, and TWers will see the cost of porcupine strategy and prolonged insurgency and connect the dots of how much more hopeless doing so on an isolated island will be.

>What happens when Europe faced with the threat of a lack of energy going into next winter?

What's the sociopolitical aftermath of EU embracing migrants? People are fickle once policy touch their lives, it's much easier to turn on the gas spigot again, waive away sanctions, reduced promised military expenditures than to kick out already settled migrants. There's also Trump 2024.

That's a reasonable take. But on the other hand...

It took 20yr to replace the Taliban with the Taliban and that was without much external meddling. How's Syria doing? This could very much turn into "Iraq for white people" and unlike Ukraine does not have strong internal race/religion animosity (well it kind of does, but those regions left in 2014) that can be harnessed to keep the pressure off the invaders and puppet government.

With the west providing the people of Ukraine with financial, material and ideological support this has the potential to become an incredibly bloody conflict. Ukraine is 40million people. If even 1/10th of that say fuck it that nation is a level of ungovernable that is hard to appropriately quantify. I don't think many people appreciate the kind of "once in generations" abyss eastern Europe is staring into.

Or I could just be wrong and Ukraine could roll over. After all they were ruled by Russia historically and it hasn't been that long. Time will tell.

they already had a couple of revolutions when elections got rigged. now, based on what i am reading, even people that were pro-russian forever, after all the shelling hate russia with passion. it's will be much more than 1/10th

edit: there is an inflow of Ukrainian male population into Ukraine. There is Foreign Legion now

How Taliban's Afghanistan and Syrian clusterfuck doing is precisely the right question. UKR "winning" = potentially decades as a collapsed state, which RU would rather have than UKR embracing west / replacing RU as gas station of EU. And with respect to RU and NATO / west EU, we're early days and have not seen RU responding to EU economic warfare and direct military support. RU unable to respond in kind doesnt mean they won't do so proportionally in other realms like cyber that makes EU lose proportionally less than RU but in aggregate more. Things can get a lot uglier for everyone now that bottom is out, I think we're on verge of entering territory of total non-kinetic warfare.

> I surmise Ukraine will go the way of HK/Belarus and demonstrate that shitpost supremacy is not a counter to disproportionate military force.

What does this even mean?

You also have no idea what you're talking about, because HK was part of China (just a "special administrative region"), and Belarus isn't democratic and wasn't invaded by another country to get taken over. The situation in Ukraine is dramatically different. You're talking like Ukraine has lost the war and Taiwan is next, but, besides that you're being hyperbolic and, again have no idea what you're talking about, you're disregarding the reality that Russia cannot sustain this war either economically or by force in Ukraine (they may be able to take control of the country but won't be able to occupy it forever, there is way too much resistance) and that Taiwan will likely have more direct military support.

It means there is IMO collective delusion on UKR chances of "winning" due to manufactured misinfo landscape in western filter bubbles. By winning I define as UKR remaining a viable state with semblance of domestic serenity in face of RU pursing long broadcasted security interests. RU may not achieve it's OG strategic goals but it can ensure UKR regress and stay a collapsed buffer state with relatively minimal intervenion indefinitely. Which is still better than West leaning UKR long term.

Ditto with TW who has UKR tier of military support on paper, i.e. help country defend itself, except it's significant easier for PRC to turn TW info a isolated failed state if the geopolitical calculus neccessitates it. The reality is it costs a lot to integrate these regions RU/PRC but little to spoil them. UKR lost the war the same way Afghanistan did, it won't be a normal country for generations.

You're still stating that Ukraine has lost the war and it's 1. currently not true, and 2. not a forgone conclusion. Stop pretending that it is.

> I wonder if they have given China extra pause in their stance toward Taiwan.

> If Putin loses in Ukraine, could that also mean the end of his regime in Russia? The Russian people are standing up to him.

If we see a loss of Putin's power in Russia as the world and his own population lionizes against him, a botched Taiwanese invasion could lead to a similar outcome in China.

Lots of food to chew on for the strategists.

A key difference is that Chinese citizens, soldiers, and leaders won’t lionize against the state. Nationalism is total. But no doubt China is taking notes.

Last time I was there (in college during Obama's presidency), most of the students I got close to secretly told me they disliked their leaders but couldn't do anything about it.

I attended lectures taught by incredibly nationalistic professors with an almost religiously fervent level of support for the CCP's "triumph over the America and the world" (paraphrase, but true to the content). Most of the young folks either didn't care or harbored distrust. They told me corruption was rampant and people were bitter.

After the earthquake, people really hated on the CCP.

Anecdotal, but it really shaped my opinions.

Look at Hong Kong. They clearly hate it, but they can't do anything about it.

More likely, to me, is that China will see what did and didn't work with Russia's invasion or Ukraine, and take those learnings when they go for Taiwan. I unfortunately don't see Taiwan's position getting better because of any of this.

Also, I expect that the Chinese government has tighter control ("physically" and propaganda-wise) of their people than is the case in Russia. So I don't know that we'd see demonstrations or protests if China invaded Taiwan. Also I would guess that more people in China believe that Taiwan should be ruled by Beijing than people in Russia who believe Ukraine should be ruled by Moscow. Unfortunately I can't find polling numbers on this, which isn't surprising, as that data may not exist outside of some Chinese intelligence system.