How the right U.S. chip strategy can keep Taiwan free

Because nobody else wants to foot the bill to maintain the emp—err, I mean the rules-based international order. They have social safety nets they need to pay for.

To play devils advocate, does Europe really benefit from Taiwan's independence? I would say only because the US has picked this fight to protect it's own industries. Without the fight there would be little difference.

To be clear I very much defend Taiwan's right to independence. My argument is with your logic.

It would be more like if the Confederates won, took over the entire land mass, and what was left of the Union fled to an Island to form an independent government. Our adversaries would probably support the breakaway government to whatever extent they could get away with it.

Wasn't aware that the Taiwanese had slave plantations

So, leaving aside the implicit value-judgement over which side of the US civil war ended up in which spot... Kinda?

> *Pretend that Hawaii was already part of the USA prior to the civil war for better apples/apples-ness.

Was briefly concerned about that, yeah. 1865 it was the Hawaiian Kingdom, an nominally independent monarchy, and I don't think either the Union or the Confederacy believed it was "part of the nation" or had revanchist plans to make it that way.