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Notes -
Hypothesized chain of causality:
America expends large numbers of munitions on Iran > this lowers China's risk of making a play for Taiwan over the next ~5 (10?) years > China makes a move for Taiwan > both juggernauts slug it out > during the conflict, global trade collapses > depending on who wins the conflict (or if it even ends, it might just turn into a stalemate with occasional explosions), global trade potentially never recovers, and the world bifurcates a lot > we all are worse off as a result
In your worldview, am I to understand that the reason China doesn't start World War 3 is because it fears America will bomb Taiwan into oblivion, and thus, if at any point we seem like we can't glass the entire place, they will invade?
No, where did glassing Taiwan come from?
China doesn't start world war 3 because of all the various American missiles that are likely to blow up Chinese things before they could complete their strategic objectives. There's also lots of American missiles that prevent Chinese missiles from blowing up American things.
If America uses massive quantities of its offensive and defensive missiles, they can't use them against China.
If America bombed Iran with only JDAMs/bunker busters and never fired any cruise missiles or defensive interceptors then sure, that's "free" (we'll ignore airframe wear).
Your chain of causality there suggests that it's our munition reserves -- and our ability to launch them at Taiwan if China invaded -- keeping China in check. That is, we'd render Taiwan useless before they could extract any value out of it. It's not like we'd start lobbing missiles into mainland China over Taiwan!
Oh
My mistake for being unclear then.
I highly doubt America will be glassing Taiwan, that seems very unhelpful
So what do you think is keeping China out of Taiwan right now, if not the bombs I'm proposing we drop on Iran? Or is it you think we'd be targeting China itself, and not the chip factories?
I'm trying to understand the causality chain earlier.
I'm honestly pretty confused as to how this got communicated so poorly, but you seem to be acting in good faith so I'll take responsibility for the miscommunication.
I tried to differentiate earlier between "missiles", "interceptors" and "JDAMs/bunker busters". Perhaps you are not aware of the difference, which is fair.
When I say "missiles", I mean weapons like Tomahawks, PrSM, JASSM, JSOW. Guided missiles with engines that target and destroy things. When I say "interceptors" I mean missiles that shoot down other missiles. "JDAMs" are dumb bombs (think ww2) that have guidance kits (computer+wings) strapped on so they can aim and hit things. However JDAMs need to be dropped much closer to the thing being exploded, as they have no engines. Bunker busters are basically fuck-off huge JDAMs + some extra tricks.
What is keeping China out of Taiwan right now, is that they are not confident that they can keep the US Navy far enough away from Taiwan to stop the USA from blowing up all their landing/resupply craft to execute a miliary occupation of the island.
So every Tomahawk, PrSM, JASSM, or JSOW shot at Iran, cannot be shot at a Chinese landing ship (or missile launcher, or SAM, or shipyard, or airbase, etc). Every interceptor used to shoot down an Iranian ballistic missile cannot be used to defend against a Chinese missile.
Hence why I said that if America bombed Iran with only JDAMs, that wouldn't effect readiness against China, as JDAMs are useless against China (can't get close enough to release). However this feels unrealistic as it would be high-risk, lower effectiveness. Usually militaries don't tie one arm behind their back. Also even if you only use JDAMs, you're still going to need to use interceptors when they start shooting back.
There is no universe in which the USA is bombing TSMC facilities. I'm really not sure how I gave that impression, but to be clear that is not happening. There are allegedly "kill switches" in fabs to make the machines not work anymore in the event of an occupation.
In a hot war with China I assume that the USA would target mainland Chinese facilities for strikes. Although it's actually an interesting question as I doubt they could materially impact Chinese war production given the size and distribution of it. Russia can't even shut down Ukrainian war production. So shooting at their mainland might not be worth inviting China to start lobbing things at LA. Who knows, that's beyond my pay grade lol. They would definitely be trying to swat every plane from the sky, sink every ship on the sea, and destroy ground based missile launchers in and around Taiwan.
No, I see what you mean now. You're imagining a much more significant investment of resources into Iran than I've advocated, one that would meaningfully cripple us in the face of China. At no point would I suggest we drain ourselves (comparatively) dry.
No, I'm saying that's what is really keeping China out, and what our munitions would be better purposed for. We would never let them dominate the chip factories utterly, we'd absolutely destroy them. Whether that be kill switches or utter destruction. We can't 'conquer' China, or even do much to stop it absent nuclear armageddon. But Taiwan's much easier pickings. Better to destroy a resource than let an enemy seize it.
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