US permanently deploys training mission in Taiwan
defensehere.com
defensehere.com
I realize there are good reasons not to do so right now -- RoC itself still says on paper they own all of China, and the West is still too dependent on Chinese manufacturing -- but it would be good to move towards recognizing reality.
I'm glad to see the US appearing to cease the moment similarly here.
Kindly recognize Palestine as a separate state according to United Nations Resolution 181, before you recognize Taiwan and kick-start yet another war.
The U.S. has started bombing campaigns for less reasons when organizations whose existence it has objected to have become armed. So the sanctimonious hypocrisy of baiting someone then claiming foul when the other responds won't really work here. The U.S. media will of-course fully blame China with 24x7 "evil china" campaigns. The non-NATO world will just shake their heads.
The current status quo is quite confusing, but has resulted in economic prosperity on both sides of the straits and mutual economic dependency of China and the West. There is little to gain and a whole lot to lose for all involved parties.
The rich strata of the U.S. who would never serve in a real, active war and have never faced human suffering in their lives - will actively cheer on and sponsor the losing side resulting in extreme number of human casualties.
Apart from that, the training mission could be recalled just as quickly again. Curious about what's gonna happen after the next election.
The only thing changing is that there are US soldiers in Taiwan, so if China invades it might kill them and trigger a response.
It shouldnt be that hard not to invade Taiwan in the first place, many countries are not doing it.
Similarly to how China threatened Hongkong if there had been any democratic reforms by the British. That does not hinder China apologists now from bringing up the lack of democracy under british rule.
Trump, as president-elect in late 2016, took a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan's president, something that had never happened before since normalization of US-China relations. I suspect that a second Trump administration will see him visit Taiwan, and restoration of formal diplomatic relations as opposed to the current "American Institute in Taiwan".
I hope Trump goes further and explicitly encourages Taiwan to build nuclear weapons. Had the US not twice squelched Taiwanese efforts in the 1960s and 1970s, East Asia would be a much, much calmer place today.
Taiwan was pressured to give up their nuclear program for the simple reason that none of the big boys want nukes that they can't control. And nothing would force China to take the risk of invading Taiwan faster than the latter starting a nuclear weapons program.
The Taiwanese first and foremost decide their status, and they want to maintain the status quo. We can’t force another people to declare their own independence when they don’t want to.
However, US actions have also been clear. In 1996, the US sailed a carrier battle group right down the straits when things get testy. The US has been selling weapons to Taiwan for decades. The US has enacted export limitations against one country, but not another.
Functionally, this action did not declare war on China. Yes, China leadership could find a way to stretch this into "war", but they also could have stretched any of the other things the US has recently done (including Biden straight up saying that the US would intervene if China invaded).
That being said, credibility is important when making threats. And letting your lines in the proverbial sand get crossed, moved, erased, redrawn, etc. endlessly can make for some ... interesting geopolitical situations.
The presence of US troops means that if China attacks, the USA is going to suffer military casualties, so there is almost certainly going to be war between the CCP and the US.
Without US troop presence, things are more ambiguous.
The trainers turned themselves over to the Russians, and were interred (at the Ritz) as neutral soldiers.
A training team can be a tripwire, or not.
Again, ambiguity.
China just uses its weight to bully countries into submission on declaring their view on Taiwan.
The short history version is basically like this: after the overthrowing of the last emperor and WW2, the Chinese civil war continued between the KMT political party and the Communist party. KMT basically lost and moved to which is Taiwan today and even the KMT now is no longer the controlling majority now (they have elections whereas mainland China does not).
Though, in my experience, asking that question to people in China (or from there) is generally met with:
* I don’t know, not interested in politics
* Chinese people live there so they’re a part of China (not separating gov from race/ethnicity as a naive answer)
* (no comment)This isn't something that can be understood outside of the "ends-justify-the-means", "but my pragmatism" and other sausage making slogans of the foreign policy establishment. We'd have to go through all of the historical machinations before we'd even begin to have a context.
You're not wrong for looking for some semblance of logical consistency. If you prefer analysis from first principles, that's fine, I'd even agree with that perspective in many ways, but you'll have difficulty evaluating the status quo of geopolitics.
Maybe a long way of saying that it doesn't make sense, it isn't supposed to make sense under scrutiny, it probably never will make sense and the expectation is for knights-errant.
Taiwan is a sovereign nation in most respects, at least to the extent that any non-superpower is. China insists stringently on the legal fiction that it is a part of China controlled by a different faction in a frozen-but-ongoing civil war, and other countries - not least Taiwan itself - go along with that legal fiction under the implicit or explicit threat of Chinese force; a threat that is less effective against the US than against many other countries.
Is this an act of war by the US against the PRC? Eh, maybe, if you accept the PRC's territorial claims. A lot of technically-acts-of-war happen, especially in situations like this. Again this is a case where the abstraction breaks down and the realpolitik becomes paramount.
In practice, it is an independent country. But the People's Republic of China (PRC) has a "one China" policy where they claim Taiwan as theirs.
PRC spends a large deal of their diplomatic efforts trying to enforce their policy.
But it is, obviously. Anyone who's not a moron can see that.
Fast forward to sixty years after the fighting just stopped one day. How would you view those two political entities? Are they equal? Does the existence of the CSA mean the USA doesn't exist as a country? What if the CSA implements trade policies which dissuade you from recognizing the USA as an independent nation? Does the USA still exist in your eyes? Is the USA or the CSA the "true" country?
The answer at this point in time is quite simple: the Republic of China (aka Taiwan) is clearly an independent country. However, the People's Republic of China (aka China) holds such economic power, they bully the rest of the world (though trade policies, etc.) into not recognizing Taiwan as an independent country. Also, the combination of geography and maritime law means that if Taiwan is an independent country, China has very little direct access to the open seas. They want freedom of navigation, so there's a geopolitical angle as well. Look into the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea to advance the Nine Dashed Line policy.
You also need to remember that Chinese civilization is extremely old. The PRC claims to hold something called the Mandate of Heaven, which is a fairly important concept in Chinese history, as it is divine authority to rule over the Chinese people. Frankly, based on how the PRC acts, the RC clearly holds the Mandate of Heaven these days.
The Mandate of Heaven is rather more like a justification of de-facto rule and claiming to have lost it is an argument against a failing dynasty. The dynasty managing to unite China would declare it, and as it eventually collapses, rebels would declare it to be forfeit. There would be messy civil war, one of the warring groups would dominate all the others, and the cycle starts anew.
This is totally fine for commercial traffic. Since China has a huge export market, it is also not interested in raising shipping costs.
The Taiwan situation has been escalating for awhile now that almost everyone expects an invasion before Xi’s lifetime term ends.
Diplomatically? No, most countries officially recognize it as part of the PRC.
Why the inconsistency? If you recognize Taiwan’s independence, the PRC won’t talk to you. If Taiwan declares independence, the PRC will invade (or at least has threatened to).
Pretending that Taiwan is part of China while also making it very clear that we will defend Taiwan from China bit silly, but being silly is better than having a great power war.
Maybe US frogmen can join Taiwanese frogmen in going ashore on the mainland and going to the movies. At least that's what Taiwanese frogmen were doing some decades ago.
At the same time, there is a danger Putin will try to call NATO's bluff and start something with one of the East European members: attack one of the Baltic states or Poland and see how willing US and West European countries will to be take a step closer to WWIII. If NATO hesitates just a moment, it would be its effective end, the alliance won't be worth the paper it was signed on.
There is increased fatigue about the war, and the initial sympathy is turning to apathy in the West. I don’t see France and Germany being prepared to send their soldiers to fight Russians over a Lithuanian or Polish village. I’d like to believe they would, but I don’t see it realistically.
Obviously if Russia launches a nuke, NATO would respond. But what if it sends one drone to blow up a rail yard or sends a sabotage team to blow a power substation? What if it hacks and manages to paralyze all banking all communication in some East European NATO member country. Notice it wouldn't even need to accomplish any military objective, it just needs to show that NATO is bluffing.
Yugoslavia broke up because of ethnic fighting, not an US invasion. Most former Yugoslavian countries are now heading towards, or members of the EU.
Yes the USA is in favour of democracy, liberalism and free-trade. That's something to be proud of not ashamed of.
Ahah yes the "free" korea where you are "allowed" to work up to 21 hours per day. Also I wonder what (or who?) keeps the north poor. Probably nothing to do with US sanctions, right guys?
> Yugoslavia broke up because of ethnic fighting, not an US invasion. > Yes the USA is in favour of democracy, liberalism and free-trade.
And who supported ethnonationalists in Yugoslavia? Totally not uncle Sam again, it's not like he was known for providing fundings to right wing para military groups by selling cracks in America cities. Really a shining beacon of Freedom those USA, a city upon a hill.
I'm over this crap. Feels so dystopian to me.
War is peace.
They wouldn't go away if the USA did nothing.
They would get worse in most cases.
I do believe the USA has maintained a tense pseudostability in the post-WW2 world, at the same time it's the USA who destabilised a lot of Latin America through covert operations, who has spread its economical and social ideology around the world for its own benefits (and detrimental to a lot of countries being shackled to US's economic policies), and who has fostered an unstable Middle East after the French and Brits created the whole mess. America's thirst for oil has its own set of extreme damage to the world, including the climate.
Problems would be different, probably some of it could be much worse but there are a lot of countries in the world who got shackled by America's interests and haven't had true sovereignty for decades (e.g.: look at Latin America as a whole).
Nonetheless, the world would be very different, we can't know how much better or worse in some areas. So it is what it is, we won't ever know what we could be without USA's imperialism.
The Middle East is an unstable place. Not due to the USA.
Countries that have become liberal free market democracies have benefitted tremendously in living standards. I wouldn't describe Sweden, Singapore or Poland "shackled" to the USA.
We can absolutely see the positive impact on the USA around the world:
- North Korea (not US aligned) vs South Korea.
- Ukraine (invaded by Russia) vs Baltic countries.
- Venezuela (Socialist) Vs Chile (a liberal democracy).
That really does come across as rose coloured blinders.
The Iran–Contra affair was the 1980s.
More recently:
In what The New York Times described as "Washington’s most overt attempts in decades to carry out regime change in Latin America", the administration of President Donald Trump made an attempt of regime change in an effort to remove President Nicolás Maduro from office during the Venezuelan presidential crisis ...
Countries that have become liberal free market democracies have benefitted tremendously in living standards. I wouldn't describe Sweden, Singapore or Poland "shackled" to the USA.
We can absolutely see the positive impact on the USA around the world:
- North Korea (not US aligned) vs South Korea.
- Ukraine (invaded by Russia) vs Baltic countries.
- Venezuela (Socialist) Vs Chile (a liberal democracy).Not only is that false it's alsdo clear that "the positive impact on the USA around the world" hasn't manifested itself within the immediate umbrella of the Monroe Doctrine.
Nor would many argue that the US sets a great example of a liberal free market democracy, it doesn't rank well on things that matter to people against others.