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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Chips are but a tiny reason the US wants to maintain the independence and integrity of Taiwan. (The same can likely sadly be said of their democracy, given the US stance on Ukraine.)

Taiwanese independence is primarily about containing China's naval power projection and their ability to keep unimpeded shipping lanes open during times of war.

China can currently be easily blockaded, and within a few weeks of such blockades, their supplies of food and energy will be put under tremendous strain. That's why it's so important to the US Navy that China does not obtain Taiwan.

Fighting a war with a superpower that has that kind of Achilles heel is much easier.

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It’s a nice line to say the US cares about democracies but I think history has shown that geopolitics trumps form of government every time. The US allies itself with dictatorships when it is expedient and overthrows democracies when it is expedient.

You are right that Taiwan makes it harder for China to project its navy, but chips are by far more important now. Building fabs in the US means we don’t have to defend Taiwan, because it’s looking less and less possible.

Also, China has a huge internal border, including a shared border with Russia. Even with a total naval blockade it would only increase food and energy costs. And sanctions won’t work, they didn’t even work with Russia and China is the number 1 trade partner globally.

What do you think it can be blockaded with? Submarines... barely. Carriers are sitting ducks these days, especially since China already has an equivalent of Russian Onix missiles and launch platforms. Subs won't cover the land corridor, and they will get all they need across the Russian border if it comes to that.

China will eventually get Taiwan without firing a shot. Pretending that the US can defend an island next to a Chinese border is a pipe dream.

The Taiwan Strait is around 180 KM long, UK to France is around 30 to 40 KM in comparison. That same strait is also not safe to traverse except for two periods each year, so if they are going to invade we will know beforehand.

China needs to win this quickly, because any sort of kinetic war is going to put freeze the global economy and likely cause a mass recession, while the USA (& India) can blockade China's supply and oil chains from the Middle East beyond their force projection. Russian-Chinese infrastructure in Siberia isn't well developed and could also easily destroyed with strategic weapons from Alaska. Not to mention the sheer logistics of sending and maintaining millions of men across the strait. One missile and those troops sink into the ocean.

Trying to do a blockade on Taiwan premature isn't a good idea either, because it's conversely giving the USA the first move to organize it's forces out of harm's way, and basically turns a signficant chunk of the PLAN into sitting ducks out at the sea. Most Chinese victories are predicated on the China quickly wiping out US assets in Japan, Korea and Guam, if they don't manage to do that and fail to achieve air superiority, their troop carriers are going to sitting ducks for drones and fighters in the air.

You are missing one thing: any weapons flying into China will result in stuff exploding in New York and Washington. US carriers will be sunk, and there is no appetite in the US for either scenario.

Anyway, the whole thing won't require a single shot. The island and the mainland have close economic ties; people that determine taiwanese policy are heavily invested in China. All the tough words that are being said are for public consumption.

That’s not really how war works.

A regional conflict over Taiwan is highly unlikely to result in ICBMs headed for NYC and DC, because China knows that’s effectively the end of modern China. And sinking carriers would also be a very risky escalation given the ability of the US and other allies to retaliate.

I do think you’re right that Taiwan will ultimately lose without much warfare, because Trump is a world-class coward and rolls over for every autocrat who looks in his direction.

Strikes by the US inside China are highly unlikely for the same reason. As for Trump, he is simply pragmatic. Taiwan is indefensible from the military standpoint. I would not count on allies too much, because Europe's remaining 1 1/2 soldiers cannot make any difference, and the UK can barely get its ships out of the harbor. Anyway, all of this is just a show.

Strikes by the US on Chinese military facilities are vastly more likely than ICBM strikes against civilian population centers on the other side of the world, for obvious reasons.

You wrote this:

  That’s not really how war works.

Then you proceed to write that China can't sink US carriers that are there to destroy Chinese ships and kill Chinese people. Next, you say that the US bombing China would not cause ICBM nuclear warheads on US cities.

So how does war work? Only one side gets to fight?

Yep. The side that sits at the keyboard of a basement computer shooting at zombies.

Here is my suggestion to people who want the US to play part in Taiwan/China affair: they should take their broomsticks and volunteer. And that includes the war in Ukraine, too.

Some people here thinks the US is fighting Vietnam or Afghanistan where the US can hit them but they can't hit back.

I served in the navy, actually, which I was proud to do.

It’s revealing that you can’t differentiate between hitting military assets actively engaged in a conflict, and hitting civilian population centers on the other side of the world.

If carriers are being used to help support Taiwan in this hypothetical, they are obviously fair game and sinking them isn’t escalatory, right? We don’t get to go to war and declare the troops fighting the war off limits to retaliation.

If that was how it worked, why wouldn’t China declare all their transport boats sacrosanct?

If we think our retaliation to getting a carrier sunk would be to end the world, we should probably not use them.

War isn’t a boolean.

China currently would have a serious bad time economically, cut off from intl trade. So there are options in addition to military - if there was a will. The rest of the world would have a hard time without China intl trade but probably far more survivable.

And blockade options go both ways: China could blockade Taiwan? They have more and more attack submarines and anti-aircraft missiles - which may be good enough.

"China can currently be easily blockaded"

Back in the day we used to add [citation needed] to statements like that.

Sure, if anyone tried to blockade continental China (coastline from Vietnam to Korea!), controlling Taiwan would be helpful, but chances are it would not really make all that much of a difference. It's not exactly Gibraltar or the Bosporus.

Why couldn't that massive blockade just go around Taiwan is well?

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