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This is nonsense for several reasons.

Painting the Ukraine conflict as something to reduce US risk is a view with aggressive blinders. Russia is a risk to European countries, foremost, without a doubt.

The United States absolutely does not want china to invade Taiwan. The loss of the TSMC would be disastrous. The loss of sanctions against China on a similar scale would be disastrous. Russia is not comparable. Russia’s economy was shit. It’s ok to walk them off. The oil is a significant piece but that’s really it. And it hardly harmed the US. An economic conflict with China would be very painful.

This is not scorched earth either. A dead man’s switch on an important asset is a very different thing from scorched earth.

I don’t think the US wanted Ukraine to get invaded either. But they did want Ukraine to be NATO-aligned in spite of the harmful effect towards Russia’s security and despite its warnings. Morally that might make sense, but geopolitically it was a risky and cynical move. If it pushes Russia and China into a stronger alliance it may yet backfire in spite of weakening Russia and making the EU more dependent on the US.

The very aggressive sanctions (well, aside from gas, oil, etc) cannot be explained by the European history of accepting Russian oligarchs and money of dubious origin nor by the fate of Ukraine which let’s be honest no government in the EU really cared about so far.

The more plausible explanation was that the US told the EU that they won’t defend them unless they show a strong united front against Russia.

> But they did want Ukraine to be NATO-aligned

You know who wanted to be NATO-aligned? Ukraine. Ukraine wanted to be NATO-aligned so much that they put it in their constitution.

> in spite of the harmful effect towards Russia’s security

Codespeak for "Russia would like to reserve the right to annex neighbors at their own leisure back into the federation and/or have a few more puppet states". Next you are going to tell me NATO promised not to expand eastwards.

> The very aggressive sanctions (well, aside from gas, oil, etc) cannot be explained by the European history of accepting Russian oligarchs and money of dubious origin nor by the fate of Ukraine which let’s be honest no government in the EU really cared about so far.

EU and related states very openly threatened far-reaching sanctions and other consequences if Russia were to invade prior to the invasion. The reason the response is strong is because it makes a large difference to Europe if you are invading Georgia or if you are invading Ukraine.

> The more plausible explanation was that the US told the EU that they won’t defend them unless they show a strong united front against Russia.

Nothing like a good ol' "only the US has agency" meme to finish your TED talk.

Don’t understand the hostile tone. Are you on some moral crusade that you forgot to announce?

When your neighbor’s Russia, China or the US what one wants is perhaps less important than what the superpower next door wants. Ukraine and the EU knew this and wouldn’t have tried anything on their own unless the US wouldn’t have offered guarantees. Except unfortunately for Ukraine nobody can guarantee that Russia won’t bomb them to bits and whatever happens they’ll continue to have an angry neighbor with thousands of nuclear weapons on their doorstep.

There is no such right to annex neighbors, that idea is silly. Superpowers do whatever they can get away with and Russia can certainly invade Ukraine, even if the outcome remains to be seen - could be anything from loss of territory to global destruction.

The EU threatened things, but there was lots of disagreement internally and there’s still disagreement around for example energy imports. It makes a difference, but it’s no secret that the EU expected Ukraine to quickly fall and afterwards it would have been sanctions as usual.

Lol, the Taiwanese almost certainly have much worse scenarios drawn up by their own politicians and security forces.

They don’t need the US to be terrified about living next to an aggressive China.

And almost the entire point of TSMC is to make Taiwan too important for China to attack, and the U.S. dependent enough on Taiwan that it eventually provides Taiwan with a security guarantee.

Only people with blinkers who cannot think beyond the US a would come up with the idea that any of what the US aid suggesting is news to the Taiwanese.

China buys US debt as a balance against the fact that they export so much in goods to the US.

If China and the US were to get into conflict, the cesation of exports would balance out the US's cancelation of debt.

It's not as big of a motivator as you think.

Debt is not a sword of Damocles hanging over the US. Debt is basically China having sent a bunch of actual stuff to the US in return for a promise that the US will make them whole sometime in the future.

And because of inflation, the value that the U.S. has to make China whole by keeps reducing.

If the US sand China went to war, China could keep waving those pieces of paper and the U.S. would simply ignore it.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

I can't see any positive things to come out of this. Supposedly Russia has now been buying armaments from Iran. I don't know, maybe Russia will sell them some nukes in return?

The world is a lot more dangerous place that it's been just 10-20 years ago, and it's not good.

Well, the US is a military industrial complex that, since ww2, learned to thrive on fear and war. Its not for no reason they keep pushing for 2% gdp to be spend on defense by their fellow nato members. The US profits from that.

US has a lot of benefits from it but the impact on EU are EU's responsibility as well. Countries like Germany didn't take the threat seriously and kept them reliant on Russian hydrocarbons. They didn't spent money on their military and kept outsourcing it to US.

We will never know this but if saying that NATO membership is off the table could have prevented the war, they should have pushed for it.

> and we have to consider letting our culture of more freedom leak into these countries instead of forcing it upon them

With PRC, this had been the approach itself but it turns out it is not going to happen. We shouldn't even expect PRC to follow the values of west, it should be up to them to decide what they want to do.

> Isolation of a power (first Russia, soon China) that endangers the US empire

It does endanger the US empire but it endagers other nations as well like you found in the case with Ukraine.

Man, Germany relying on Russian gas is such history ignorant meme by now. Ever since Stalin Germany got gas from the USSR, relaibly at that. Fun fact: we still do, despite the war.

How is it an history ignorant meme? I didn't state it is new, I was just pointing to the lack of strategic vision.

It' ignorabt because it ignores a stable relationship with the USSR since the 60s, that's why.

> We will never know this but if saying that NATO membership is off the table could have prevented the war, they should have pushed for it.

We can reject this as a potential outcome. Putin tells you why he invaded Ukraine. He has penned essays about this with little to no mention of NATO whatsoever. NATO membership makes no difference and is just rhetoric to confuse you.

> I feel like news like this is just here to normalize the thought of a China/Taiwan conflict.

The news is to get clicks. China isn’t going to invade Taiwan.

Some people said things like that about Russia/Ukraine a few months ago.

Not me. I was making bets about when it would happen. I thought it would be earlier in February actually. Every day Russia waited was warmer temperatures and more missiles and supplies funneled into Ukraine.

But an invasion of Taiwan doesn’t really make any sense. Likening it to Ukraine is poor reasoning because you assume the CCP has the same motivations as Putin, or that there are any similarities in logistics or war tactics. The U.S. would defend Taiwan, and an invasion would require months of buildup and would be an incredibly complex combined arms and logistical challenge. The Chinese have little to no experience in executing any sort of operation like this under real world scenarios. Even if they were to succeed somehow the cost would be unbearable. No. It makes much more sense and fits better with Chinese strategy to play the long game and convince Taiwan itself to reunite.

It would (in CCP thinking) remove a major US ally from proxomity to PRC homeland, give PRC greater territorial and economic zones in the sea, give freedom of action to the PRC navy, and of course vindicate CCP legitimacy. Only problem is - wars are easy to start but hard to control or stop, and never go the way you wanted them to.

Oh yea 100% it would definitely be a great move for China. That’s why there is so much saber rattling. But if you just wait you are so close to Taiwan that you can probably just win it over eventually via its own political system. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but Taiwan public opinion was much more lukewarm to China before they invaded Hong Kong. A hasty attack (within 10-15 years and no significant global alliance changes) could be catastrophically bad.

You should go tell the Taiwanese that. Their entire foreign policy (and through TSMC even their manufacturing policy) is based around the fear of China invading Taiwan.

Right. Which is why they bought weapons and have deterred China from invading, hence China won’t invade.