Taiwan

[watu05]

Who votes for going to war with China over Taiwan?

Taiwan was considered part of China until Chiang Kai Shek fled there to escape from Mao. China is resolute that Taiwan is still part of China and now that China's military is stronger in that part of the Pacific than the US, it will not back down. Any hopes of a peaceful end rest on choices about diplomacy and use of the military by all three.

I tell a Chinese American friend that I can't understand why China would upset the current relationship which economically benefits Taiwan, China and the US and at a business level functions smoothly. My friend who grew up in Taiwan mostly blames Taiwan for not being willing to negotiate a reunification deal with China. I point out that the recent Hong Kong experience has to make Taiwan less interested in trusting China. He claims the HK resistance was not representative of most in HK. And so the back an forth goes.

But the problem remains. China is resolute and on the upswing. The US has to worry about 'backing down', but is Taiwan worth going to war over? The European colonialists had to make decisions like this after WW2, and the US will be forced to consider similar decisions in the upcoming decade.

 

[lawpoke87]

China should be embolden by the US and NATO’s sit back and watch approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I would expect China to expect the same reaction to their occupation of Taiwan. There will be no war. Only another strongly worded condemnation.

 

[noble cane]

I guess the bigger question is what do Russia and China go after after the West cedes millions of free people to totalitarian rule without a shot?

Where do we draw the line.. or is appeasement the name of the game?

Why not? It worked in the 1930s..

 

[astonmartin708]

China should be embolden by the US and NATO’s sit back and watch approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I would expect China to expect the same reaction to their occupation of Taiwan. There will be no war. Only another strongly worded condemnation.

Are you advocating for open military conflict with not one but two of the biggest powers on earth?

 

[lawpoke87]

Are you advocating for open military conflict with not one but two of the biggest powers on earth?

I’m advocating giving the impression that invasions of Ukraine and Taiwan will trigger a U.S. military response.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

Are you advocating for open military conflict with not one but two of the biggest powers on earth?

Are you advocating for laying down to not one but two super powers in the world.(rhetorical)

God you read what you want to into any statement so you can argue against it. Sometimes you can be really annoying. You see him as the enemy to argue against, and defend your side. If he is implying anything, it would be that if we hadn't lain down in the dirt against Russia, we probably wouldn't have the same problem with China. The solution to that isn't to go to war with both. But you argue for appeasement with both?

 

[astonmartin708]

Are you advocating for laying down to not one but two super powers in the world.(rhetorical)

God you read what you want to into any statement so you can argue against it. Sometimes you can be really annoying. You see him as the enemy to argue against, and defend your side. If he is implying anything, it would be that if we hadn't lain down in the dirt against Russia, we probably wouldn't have the same problem with China. The solution to that isn't to go to war with both. But you argue for appeasement with both?

What happens when they call our bluff anyway?

 

[Gmoney4WW]

What happens when they call our bluff anyway?

You go to war. Just the same as we would have all the other times we didn't get our bluff called. Otherwise it would be called a fluff, instead of a bluff. Stop pointing out the risks, we all know them.

You apparently are ok 👌 with Russia 🇷🇺 reforming the Soviet Union and joining up with China 🇨🇳, to go to war with us a few months or years down the line. But just see if you can appease your way out of this.

Submission or war is where appeasement leads.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

Watch Man in the High Tower if want to see where actions like this can lead.

 

[noble cane]

Appeasement of Putin has been going on since 2014 when he was allowed to take the Crimea... then Georgia fell under his control, Belarus, Moldavia, and Kazakstan...

Interesting parallel to the 1936 annexation/Re-occupation of the Rhinelands by Germany and the subsequent taking of the Sudetenland, the Anschluss, and the demand for the Danzig corridor to reunite with Koenigsburg and eastern Prussia... Germany also coveted the Ukraine because many ethnic Germans lived there (just like Poland) and he felt that was all the excuse he needed to rescue them from Bolshevism..

Japan (like modern China) watched the West react to Hitler and Mussolini's conquests with appeasement and launched their own war of conquest..

Interestingly, Russia still controls Koenigsburg on the Baltic sea and keeps a large military presence in an annexed German territory. They forced all the ethnic Germans out in 1945-46 and renamed it Kaliningrad. How long till Putin demands a corridor across Poland to get to their territory. Much like Adolph did?

If Britain and France ( who had forces in the Rhineland) had stood up and denied Hitlers aggression militarily and enforced the terms of the Versailles treaty in 36. We likely would have avoided ww2.

Unfortunately, the time to stop Putin was in the Crimea. He knows we are led by weak and corrupt men.

 

[astonmartin708]

You go to war. Just the same as we would have all the other times we didn't get our bluff called. Otherwise it would be called a fluff, instead of a bluff. Stop pointing out the risks, we all know them.

You apparently are ok 👌 with Russia 🇷🇺 reforming the Soviet Union and joining up with China 🇨🇳, to go to war with us a few months or years down the line. But just see if you can appease your way out of this.

Submission or war is where appeasement leads.

I’m 100% ok not going to war with a power that has as many nukes as we do. Are you willing to die to prevent a country from reforming that already existed during your lifetime? We weren’t willing to go to war with the USSR over Ukraine (Or East Germany for that matter) in 1948… why should we go to war with them now?

The fact that you think we would is a bluff. It has always been a bluff.

Lest we not forget, we didn’t go to war over German Encroachments. We went to war after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. Same thing goes about WWI.

The real question for the US should be are we in a strategic position to win a war with the Soviet Union right now? If the answer is no, then you don’t go to battle.

 

[noble cane]

I’m 100% ok not going to war with a power that has as many nukes as we do. Are you willing to die to prevent a country from reforming that already existed during your lifetime? We weren’t willing to go to war with the USSR over Ukraine in 1948… why should we go to war with them now?

Just like any prize fights.. eventually the heavyweights have to square off.. unfortunately the main champ has ducked the challengers to this point and gotten fat and soft since his last outing.

 

[astonmartin708]

Just like any prize fights.. eventually the heavyweights have to square off.. unfortunately the main heavyweight has ducked the challengers to this point and gotten fat and soft since his last outing.

This isn’t a boxing match where everyone goes home at the end of the day. People will die. Millions of Americans will die.

 

[noble cane]

This isn’t a boxing match. People will die. Millions of Americans will die.

How many people died because no one stood up to Hitler in the beginning?

 

[astonmartin708]

How many people died because no one stood up to Hitler in the beginning?

The same amount roughly (if not more). It would have still meant open war with Germany and the major powers. One strategy just meant we had more time to prepare for war. The main difference is that we might not have won. Britain might have been invaded.

 

[noble cane]

The same amount roughly (if not more). It would have still meant open war with Germany and the major powers. One strategy just meant we had more time to prepare for war. The main difference is that we might not have won. Britain might have been invaded.

Push him back when his troops cut the barriers at the gates to the Rhineland and its done... he had no real armor at that point. Just infantry. His troops walked in at 8 am and were having beers at the local hall while waving at the Brits and French troops as they left. They encouraged a bully and faced the consequences.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

You can't convince me that if Castro hadn't backed down there wouldn't have been an armed conflict. When Germany 🇩🇪 threatened/bluffed it had plans to take Mexico and kept bombing our ships and & merchant vessels we joined the war. Bluffs do not always end in appeasement.

 

[astonmartin708]

You can't convince me that if Castro hadn't backed down there wouldn't have been an armed conflict. When Germany 🇩🇪 threatened/bluffed it had plans to take Mexico and kept bombing our ships and & merchant vessels we joined the war. Bluffs do not always end in appeasement.

Study some history before you reference it. They did not threaten to take Mexico. They clandestinely asked Mexico to start a conflict with us. They sank a ton of our “freight” ships before we finally went to war.

Castro didn’t back down at all. Krushchev did. He turned their freighters with ballistic missiles around in exchange for our removal of missiles from Turkey and a pledge that we wouldn’t attempt to overthrow Castro (again). That Turkey agreement wasn’t made public until the 80’s so no one knew at the time that it was a condition.

Also, that was the reason that the Cuban Missile Crisis was so dire. We were on the precipice of not just armed military conflict with Russia but also global nuclear war. It seems as though we are back… though nuclear missiles in Cuba that could reach Washington seem a bit more dire than the fate of a former Soviet state… (though everyone would prefer the Ukrainians remain free)

 

[Gmoney4WW]

We knew about Mexico 🇲🇽, it was a threat whether done clandestinely or not. And they knew we would find out about it. They had more faith in our intelligence than that. And both that threat/enticement, and the bombing of our ships were cited by Johnson as reasons for entering WW I. Yes the ships were considered more primary, but that attempt on Mexico 🇲🇽 played a significant role. Quit using semantics as an argument.

Yes Kruschev backed down, then Castro. Of course it would be the world 🌎 power 💪 that would be the root of it. Once again semantics.

 

[noble cane]

(though everyone would prefer the Ukrainians remain free)

No... it doesn't appear so...

 

[Gmoney4WW]

Yeah, reforming of the soviet union is a threat to us, whether you want to admit it or not. China 🇨🇳, Russia 🇷🇺, Iran, Turkey, Argentina 🇦🇷, and others would be a formidable threat to us. If we let Russia 🇷🇺 advance at will, they will join together against us eventually, if left to their own devices. Or we could just appease them all the way to taking half of Europe.

 

[astonmartin708]

We knew about Mexico 🇲🇽, it was a threat whether done clandestinely or not. And they knew we would find out about it. They had more faith in our intelligence than that. And both that threat/enticement, and the bombing of our ships were cited by Johnson as reasons for entering WW I. Yes the ships were considered more primary, but that attempt on Mexico 🇲🇽 played a significant role. Quit using semantics as an argument.

Yes Kruschev backed down, then Castro. Of course it would be the world 🌎 power 💪 that would be the root of it. Once again semantics.

They didn’t think that we would find out. Especially because we didn’t find out. The brits did and they fed us the information months later. It wasn’t until they got physical evidence through espionage that they let us know.

I will let the Johnson? Reference go because I expect you know it was Wilson.

Wilson wanted to go to war previously, he just didn’t have a good excuse, because much of the American public was very much isolationist at the time. The other thing is that he wasn’t dealing with nuclear capabilities.

This isn’t 1914 or 1941. The world changed when the first nukes dropped. The entire algebra of geopolitics changed. Appeasement is still questionable, I agree, but I’m not prepared to risk nuclear catastrophe for Kiev. I’m just not.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

They didn’t think that we would find out. Especially because we didn’t find out. The brits did and they fed us the information months later. It wasn’t until they got physical evidence through espionage that they let us know.

I will let the Johnson? Reference go because I expect you know it was Wilson.

Wilson wanted to go to war previously, he just didn’t have a good excuse, because much of the American public was very much isolationist at the time. The other thing is that he wasn’t dealing with nuclear capabilities.

This isn’t 1914 or 1941. The world changed when the first nukes dropped. The entire algebra of geopolitics changed. Appeasement is still questionable, I agree, but I’m not prepared to risk nuclear catastrophe for Kiev. I’m just not.

My apologies on Johnson, I was just reading bout his advisors tapes, and typed his name instead of Wilson.

Our intelligence network includes Great Britain 🇬🇧.

 

[astonmartin708]

My apologies on Johnson, I was just reading bout his advisors tapes, and typed his name instead of Wilson.

Our intelligence network includes Great Britain 🇬🇧.

It does now. But certainly did not back then. The last interaction we had with them before WWI was essentially 1812.

 

[watu05]

The US has more global military power than anyone, but in spots Russia and China have more power than the US does, especially near their borders. A peaceful resolution will depend on our ability to think about solutions other than military action. Brokering or encouraging a deal between Taiwan and China would be hard and maybe tough to swallow, but a lot better than the alternative for all involved. That’s not the only option, but is worth thinking about.

 

[noble cane]

The peaceful resolution would be China standing down and recognising Taiwan's sovereignty.... that way the millions living on the island can continue to live free of totalitarian rule....

 

[URedskin54]

Considered me not shocked at who is parroting CCP talking points about Taiwan

 

[watu05]

Considered me not shocked at who is parroting CCP talking points about Taiwan

What is your solution?

 

[lawpoke87]

Taiwan has been a model of success. High standard of living for its people. Low crime rates. Economic growth. A generally happy population with the current state of affairs. How about status quo? Seems to be working.

 

[watu05]

My point exactly, but it won't be left alone. Part of the problem is that Taiwan independence is a critical political issue in domestic politics that attracts international attention about which China is incredibly sensitive. That Taiwan exists is a public embarrassing reminder of China's century of humiliation at the hands of the west. It is also a key promise to the Chinese populace by the Chinese government. When the US sells Taiwan advanced military equipment, it only exacerbates the problem. China let it go when they couldn't go anything about it, but now they can.

If Taiwan would just shut up and if the US told China that it would lobby for a peaceful reconciliation maybe that would allow the status quo to continue, at least longer than it is likely to now. Even if that happened, some party in the US would likely politicize it, and blow the arrangement up.

BTW I'm told that Japan is pro Taiwanese independence in part because of the large number of occupying Japanese who elected to stay in Taiwan after WW2 and who want nothing to do with China. Given Japanese atrocities in China in WW2, China doesn't want to hear from Japan either.

It would be great if everyone would shut up and do business together, but hard to see than happening.

 

[watu05]

It would be great if everyone would shut up and do business together, but hard to see than happening.

BTW, history is not on the side of peace either. As Graham Allison points out in his book: "Destined for War?. Can China and the US escape Thucydides Trap " in 12 out of 16 cases which a rising power has confronted a dominant power, bloodshed has been the result.

China, the US and Taiwan should all work hard to avoid screwing up a situation that is currently greatly benefiting both. Key to that is not going out of our way in 'embarrassing' China publicly regardless of our actual policy. Trump's public antagonism was exactly the worst way to go about it.

 

[URedskin54]

What is your solution?

Launching all CCP sympathizers into the sun

 

[lawpoke87]

To no one’s surprise (other than WATU) China is on team Putin

 

[noble cane]

BTW, history is not on the side of peace either. As Graham Allison points out in his book: "Destined for War?. Can China and the US escape Thucydides Trap " in 12 out of 16 cases which a rising power has confronted a dominant power, bloodshed has been the result.

The China, the US and Taiwan should all work hard to avoid screwing up a situation that is currently greatly benefiting both. Key to that is not going out of our way in 'embarrassing' China publicly regardless of our actual policy. Trump's high publicity antagonism was exactly the worst way to go about it.

F$ck China and F$ck the CCP. They need a little embarrasment in their lives.

Keep Taiwan Free!

 

[noble cane]

To no one’s surprise (other than WATU) China is on team Putin

View embedded media

Can WATU please translate?

 

[lawpoke87]

Doesn’t appear China is willing to play nice. I’m sure it’s the fault of the US though

 

[astonmartin708]

Launching all CCP sympathizers into the sun

I’m sure that would have been their preferred solution when we invaded Iraq.

 

[URedskin54]

I’m sure that would have been their preferred solution when we invaded Iraq.

Not sure what that means or how it’s relevant to me trolling WATU

 

[watu05]

Pretty easy to see this coming. Putin calls on XI just before Olympics, attends Olympics instead of boycotting, and the day after the Olympics ends, Putin starts invasion so he doesn't undermine attention on the Olympics. At least Putin has some basic understanding of timing and the value of not antagonizing potential sources of help.

Pretty clear message from China about Taiwan. Putin told Xi he was just reclaiming an old territory as China wants to with Taiwan.

So who has a great idea about what to do about this situation?

 

[lawpoke87]

Not sure there is a “great” idea. Just a reminder who Putin and XI are. People tend to forget and bad policies are the result.