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US can't defend Taiwan's integrity anymore and has begun exploring "scorched earth" strategies instead. That's the conclusion of various US reports that David Goldman has read and now written about.
Trump's former NSA Robert O'Brien at a recent conference basically conceded the same argument, saying the US won't let China take Taiwan's semiconductor factories intact. So the focus has shifted from winning a war to making China's victory a phyrric one.
All this makes sense given that aircraft carriers are now more or less sitting ducks in the SCS given China's massive and rapidly growing missile inventory, many who can hit moving targets and that's even excluding hitting stationary ones such as airbases on islands, where China's hypersonic missiles can't really be defended against.
I guess the "good" news is that sending in US troops to die on foreign soil in large quantities has now been all but eliminated in the case of Taiwan. Senior US officials are telegraphing to the Taiwanese that if SHTF, then we will take out your crown jewels whether you like it or not. It also tells a story of diminishing US innovation advantage in military matters. America is still the top dog, but the days when it could send a few carriers to the Taiwan strait without seriously worrying about a Chinese military response - as Bill Clinton did in the 1990s - are now long gone.
I suspect the big constraint for China is now economic blowback. Chinese companies are still big exporters and would essentially lose those markets in the event of a major geopolitical conflict. This differentiates China from Russia, which doesn't have much to sell other than natural resources, is why I think a hot war over Taiwan is unlikely. And even in Ukraine, it's a proxy war and not a direct one. In Taiwan, all sides agree that the US would have to get directly involved for Taiwan to even have a chance because the numbers are absurdly lopsided in China's direction otherwise. I suspect the Taiwanese just didn't used to calculate that the Americans would be contemplating destroying vital Taiwanese infrastructure in the event of an outbreak of hostilities.
You're operating under the premise that only China has long-range weapons and the will to use them. Possibly true for the latter part, but if you're China, do you take the bet that your A2/AD is sufficient to prevent the US from interfering with your (incredibly vulnerable) amphibious operation, or do you take the first strike and hope that whole "awakening a sleeping giant" thing was a one-off that only works against Japan?
The entire campaign will start with a blockade of Taiwan. At that point, the US can either dedicate resources to break the blockade in perpetuity or it can capitulate. If we go with the former, China would start sinking US ships in a way that is still significantly less provocative than Pearl Harbor. Regardless, there's not much the US can do short of war; and a state of war exposes US assets to China's A2/AD and must be maintained indefinitely.
An amphibious invasion can take place at a time of China's choosing and may not even be necessary; there's no particular reason to invade Taiwan while US missiles still can sink half your fleet.
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I was baked the other day and realized that the hippie classic One Tin Soldier is actually about Capitalism. Watch the video and listen to the song, it's only like three minutes.
The valley folk below envy and resent their neighbors on the mountain and their wealth. The mountain people are rich, the valley folk are poor. The valley folk, being retarded farmers, think that the mountain treasure must be in the form of some great pile of gold and jewels "buried deep beneath a stone." But that's not the case, gold and jewels don't make you rich, productivity makes you rich! Burying your money beneath a stone ruins the velocity of money!
The mountain folk are more than willing to share "All the secrets of our mountain, All the riches buried there." After all, trade is good! The more capitalist countries the more trade opportunities! We'll even lend to you on very favorable terms to develop the valley, to become more productive!
And what makes you productive, and thus rich?
Or, to put that in song: "Now they stood beside the treasure, On the mountain, dark and red, Turned the stone and looked beneath it, 'Peace on Earth' was all it said."
So the Mainland Chinese folk can "cr[y] with anger Mount your horses! Draw your sword!" And they can kill the Taiwanese and get their just reward, poverty. There is no treasure in Taiwan. Those who think the machines, or even the technicians, are some kind of physical asset are suffering from the superstitions of the Valley Folk or the brainworms of video game logic. The machines aren't worth a war and anyone who thinks they are is an idiot. What makes Taiwan rich is Peace on Earth. It is "peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice;" it is capitalism and rule of law; it is education and human development that encourages men to work to better themselves and their families. The ChiComms certainly aren't going to conquer Taiwan only to institute the same "One Country, Two Systems" policies they have used (and now reneged) in Hong Kong. And without freedom and rule of law, Taiwan will not be the rich nation it is now. There's nothing under the stone, guys.
So go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend. It won't make you rich, and you can't justify it in the end. Cooperation and trade make you rich. Hopefully the ChiComms are bright enough to realize that the path to taking control of Taiwan is being so rich and so cool that Taiwan wants to join, not destroying what makes Taiwan great trying to snatch it.
The primary motive for reunification is territorial integrity and national pride.
It’s certainly not prosperity.
Go ahead and feed the people on national pride.
But the point is that China can have both! It will reclaim Taiwan, in time. If China is wealthy and rich and powerful, even if it loses Taiwan it will come back within a century. If China is weak and impoverished, even if it takes Taiwan it will lose it again within a century.
I think the leaders of China hold the same opinion. They'll just keep on trucking until the reunification sentiment in Taiwan grows large enough that it can happen peaceably. China also hasn't been trying to upend the status quo regarding Taiwan. It's the United States that for whatever reason has decided to jeopardize the One China policy.
I still struggle to understand the motive here, as the United States certainly got the better end of that deal. Of course they did, since China had no leverage at that time. All China got was to save face. The United States got to treat Taiwan as a sovereign country in every way except name and visits from high-ranking officials.
Taiwanese opinion is trending against reunification and toward independence. An increasing number of Taiwanese people identify explicitly as Taiwanese over Chinese.
(I agree that China isn't going to be running an amphibious assault against Taiwan unless a series of serious mistakes and miscommunications have been made.)
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If I were the Taiwanese government I would be crash starting a nuclear weapons program right about now.
Hypothetical:
Once missiles and nukes are built, signal to all involved that you'll use them on anyone attacking you. China if they invade, and the US if they blow up your missile plants.
What would the outcome of this likely be?
China nukes your enrichment facility before you have a bomb assembled.
Buried under the mountains of Taiwan, this is doubtful it will be possible. Especially if it’s a covert op like Israel’s
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USA will stop you before you have nukes (they did it already, they have not liked "and the US if")
Ah I see. I suppose emigrate to the USA is next on the list for the Taiwanese government then?
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Ok maybe file this under "ideas fired from the hip" and discard then haha.
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The Redline Podcast had a good episode on the whole situation including Microchips. Several notes:
You really cannot move the high-tech semiconductor lithography machines. They are the size of a bus with incredibly complicated innards that have to be setup outside of highways or other disturbance to be able to create the microchips. A hot war would probably destroy the capacity for years even under best of circumstances.
The whole game with microchips now is that the tech is moving very fast. Basically the cost of producing high-end chips doubles every four years. It is a race against time, even if China conquered Taiwan they would only get temporary reprieve. Moreover even Taiwan is not self-sufficient as high-tech chipmaking has truly global supply chain and it is connected to suppliers from US, Netherlands, Japan and other countries that provide tens of thousands of components for their chipmaking machines.
Making chips is very dependent on high-skilled work. If key people flee Taiwan then China will be left with just some hardware that they are unable to utilize
Specifically for invasion, this is highly unrealistic. Russia attacked Ukraine from multiple angles, they had huge army just ready to roll in by tanks. Taiwan is an island with famously rugged coastline. Moreover Taiwan already has high-tech army including anti-ship missiles as well as strategic partners in the region. This invasion would be nightmare from Chinese side.
Second, China is highly vulnerable to sanctions and not because of exports. They rely on imports for basic things like energy and food and their sea routes are unsecure as there are several bottlenecks controlled by hostile nations - that is the whole point of Chinese belligerent stance toward their immediate neighborhood of South China Sea or Malacca Strait in Indonesia.
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The great tragedy is that this is all America's fault. They shut down Taiwan's nuclear weapons program back in the 1980s! They shut it down twice, to be precise, there was another secret attempt at becoming a turnkey nuclear power. The US reasoned that Taiwan wasn't being threatened with nuclear weapons, that it would provoke China, that it wasn't helpful...
People speak now about Taiwan developing asymmetric weapons, area-denial missiles and so on. There is one asymmetric area-denial weapon that is overwhelmingly powerful as a deterrent and in action. The US prevented Taiwan from developing it. A nuclear Taiwan is surely safe from Chinese attack.
And now if they try anything like nuclearising now, the Chinese will smell a rat and pre-empt a nuclear Taiwan with war. The US oh-so-helpfully gave them a precedent for invading countries developing weapons of mass destruction (real or imagined).
More on topic, the Taiwanese should sabotage the US semiconductor industry in retaliation. Why is TSMC building a factory in the US and diminishing the island's 'Silicon Shield'? If Taiwan did some backroom deal with the US and actually trust them, they're uniquely gullible considering the trend towards betrayal. The people who suppress your nuclear weapons acquisition do not have your best interests at heart. Maybe they'll build a factory in the pretend way that is fashionable these days: all announcements, no actual construction. Take their time filling in the forms... However, that is contradicted by the evidence: TSMC is apparently increasing their investment in the US.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/biden-visit-taiwans-tsmc-chip-plant-arizona-hail-supply-chain-fixes-2022-12-06/
Worst comes to worst many Taiwanese people would get to be highly paid American technicians, engineers and managers rather than subjects of the CCP. It is an exit plan.
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And if Taiwan had started developing nukes in the 1980s, China also would have launched a preemptive war, though probably with nukes.
Nuclear nonproliferation is sound policy, for the world in general and particularly for a country that already has them. It would have been stupid for the US to make an exception for Taiwan, esp at the time, when it was economically irrelevant.
In the 1980s the US could've snapped China in two like a twig in a conventional or nuclear war. Even in 2000, there was only a minimal chance that the Chinese would be able to fire even a single nuclear missile at the US. A US first strike would destroy their nuclear weapons in their siloes. They didn't have a credible second-strike capability and their relations with Moscow were not good. The Chinese navy was a joke compared to America's. The Taiwanese used to have a qualitative advantage in conventional weapons, even without US help.
Deng was fairly sensible too, he wouldn't have risked a disastrous war with the US.
Now it's a very different story. The US can't credibly bluff that it will sacrifice LA and NY to save Taipei. There's a reason Israel and Britain and France have nuclear weapons - they correctly reason that there are important scenarios where the US wouldn't back them up with their full power. Israel has used its nuclear weapons to encourage America to assist it lest they break the nuclear taboo. The US tries to render its allies dependent on American goodwill - this is a logical but obnoxious strategy that has various perverse outcomes, including this looming war.
The US that, out of the blue, murders its plausible competitor is the US that cannot be «the leader of the free world». I think you're overly cynical with regards to the ideological homogeneity of the West in the 80s-90s. Other nations still possessed some living culture and autonomy. It'd have been a massive shock, and would have reinvigorated the project of the independent EU with nuclear, Russophilic Franco-German core.
That would've been a very hard situation to reverse. The actual course proves to be risk-minimizing: the Chinese are happy enough to beclown themselves and implode.
What about the thousands (Tens of Thousands!) of murdered students, bitterly yearning for liberty, cut down by the Red Tyrants? They could've played that card or at least not intensively exported capital and technology to the Red Peril.
The US was practically handed the perfect excuse to look like a righteous leader of the free world and they swept it under the carpet. They could've just not suppressed Taiwan's nuclear program, let them maintain nuclear ambiguity like Israel perhaps.
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Yes, they could have, but why would they have, for Taiwan? And, as the old bumper sticker said, "one nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day." There might have been a 99% chance that a first strike would eliminate all Chinese nukes, but what,exactly, would have been worth it to the US to take that risk? Not to mention the global ramifications of a first strike.
Well for one thing it would make a lot of sense to devour infant threats in the cradle, Kronos-style. That tactic worked out fine for Kronos, it was only that through the intervention of others Zeus arrived and overthrew him. Failing to destroy/subjugate/weaken one's future rivals is a huge mistake.
It is wise to bully the weak and negotiate with the strong. The US seems to have adopted the reverse tactic, providing assistance and consideration when China was weak and suppression/condemnation now that it is strong. Just think how hysterical the media would be if China pulled a Tienanmen or a 3rd Taiwan straits crisis today! And yet back in '89 and '94 the US did effectively nothing to suppress China - they actually thought strengthening the country with trade and investment would make them more compliant to US authority. This is extremely stupid and wrong in a way that should've been visible then but that's not my main point.
My main point is that Deng would not start a war he'd surely lose. He had nuclear inferiority, conventional inferiority, general inferiority. Since China was weak, he'd have to grin and bear it if Taiwan nuclearized. He wouldn't even have the excuse that there's a precedent to invading countries one suspects of developing weapons of mass destruction!
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China could not have afforded to fight the US in a conventional war in the 1980s.
Who said anything about fighting the US? The US has never committed to defending Taiwan in the event of an attack, and if there is nothing the USSR would have liked better in the 80s than a war between the US and China. And, since the US knew that, and since Taiwan was essentially irrelevant to US interests, the US was not going to go to war with China over Taiwan. Especially if China had already used nukes.
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That raises my suspicion that the deal is for the US to evacuate the Taiwanese tech and managerial class to run operations in the US, while leaving the ruins of the island to the Chinese. Cooperating in moving their national industry to the US is how they (unlike the Vietnamese) end up running more than a laundromat when they immigrate.
I expect that's "Plan B".
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Seems odd that this conclusion is being drawn at the same time that the newest Defense Bill allegedly provides for a constant rotational U.S. present on Taiwan - aka, permanent forward-positioned U.S. troops as a tripwire against Chinese action - and also for wholly-integrated joint-training exercises with Taiwanese military units and increased arms transfers.
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Reagan used to joke that if things ever got too complicated he'd nuke Switzerland just to keep the rest of the world on their toes.
I don't know if I credit the current administration with that level of humor or acumen but "the US is exploring X" doesn't mean much. Coming up with war plans for [insert contingency] is basically what staff officers get paid to do. Strategic ambiguity is a hell of a drug.
Exactly, for instance in interwar period, USA had War Plan Red in case of conflict with British Empire that involved invasion of Canada. Military is paid to plan for such outlandish scenarios, there cannot be anything assigned to the fact that these plans exist.
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American destroyers routinely transit the Taiwan Strait.
That's not what's being alluded to. It's parking then there that is no longer risk-free.
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A few years ago I would have predicted this. China would offer to Taiwan what Hong Kong gets: limited local rule and also some CCP oversight. But now the CCP has cracked down on Hong Kong. So Taiwanese people know what kind of repression they face if they peaceably submit.
There's either some brilliant 4D chess going on here or the CCP doesn't have a sensible plan. This may be some scorpion and the frog situation in which the CCP can't resist ugly crackdowns even when it would be to their advantage.
Edit: Fresh Hong Kong news today. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/10/asia/jimmy-lai-hong-kong-prison-intl-hnk This is the future of Taiwanese elite if they peaceably join the mainland. Assets seized, businesses shut down, reasons found to imprison them, etc. The peaceful option is being thoroughly destroyed.
That’s what we said about Russia re Ukraine, then Putin just went Leroy Jenkins on them.
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A few years ago I might have agreed with you, but the CCPs draconian domestic policies combined with demographic meltdown, epic levels of pollutions, slow GDP growth (don’t let the official numbers fool you, GDP per capita is estimated at ~5k), and insane police state makes Taiwan seem like a paradise for the average citizen compared to the mainland.
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Not just "people", you said that. and given that Cimafara has always been /r/TheMotte's resident CCP cheerleader color me skeptical about your assessment here.
Agreed. Well, I don't want to be too harsh, being one of the few here on record in favor of CCP's Taiwan operation, specifically due to the TSMC factor (though I have doubts now); but the point is – nationalism isn't some unique and rare essence, dependent on TFR (like Hanania argued), or particulars of local culture and history and ethnography (indeed, this is Putin's mistake that's costing me my country), or whatever Moldbug can concoct about reality of languages, or any other galaxy brain justification for denial of reality where large armies are not hard to man with volunteers.
For decades even in the least developed regions, centuries in more fortunate ones, we've been living in the era of nation states, bonded by education and shaped by conflicts with peers. However aristocratic and superior one feels or affects to be, it is crucial to remember that modern «plebs» aren't literally premodern peasants either; when struck, they don't surrender or break ranks and run to their little peasant huts in the boonies (like, say, Russian Empire's conscripts often did, folks who identified far more strongly as Tambovians or Kaluzhians than Russians). People are ideological and political, they identify as citizens of a given national polity, take pride in that fact, like their countries (and Taiwan is more deserving of affection than most); and universally despise their wannabe imperial conquerors who pontificate on historical destinies of peoples and seek to philosophize with cruise missiles. People take even verbal, to say nothing of violent, attacks on their, genuine or imagined, collective sovereignty personally – and that alone can make it real.
If the Taiwanese aren't «blood-and-soil nationalists» yet (doubt), they sure will be when first missiles land. Judging by the history of 24.02.2022, in a week they may begin clamoring for the genocide of «subhuman, ethically inferior, natural slaves» on the continent.
I've never heard it personally, but I would be willing to bet on some Taiwanese having their own "Great Sort" myth. Much as Americans like Murray have long maintained that the meritocracy of public school-college-job-promotion-endogamous marriage-children pipeline has thoroughly sorted white Americans by IQ and class by 2000.* Or as I've heard in real life and from Malcolm Gladwell on both sides of the Jamaican/American Black debate, both "Jamaica was a rich colony, Georgia was poor, everyone knows the best slaves were sent to Jamaica and the worst to America, and it carries right on down" and its inverse "Most of the slaves in the Caribbean died, its where the masters sent criminal slaves so they wouldn't be around too much longer, the Jamaicans are their descendants." And hell, throw in Nigerian PhD students who will give the line right out of Boys Don't Cry about "American Blacks are the descendants of guys so useless we sold them for a pack of cigarettes, and they want to make fun of my accent?"
Some Taiwanese probably buy into some "All the decent Chinese with any brains or ambition fled the PRC to Taiwan after the revolution, and any that were left died in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Those left behind are the slaves, the losers, the invidious commissars. We need to return to rule over them."
*I personally find this one so dangerous I almost refuse to think about it, as it would very conveniently slice me and mine into the upper class at the exact moment Charles Murray says that scientifically all my prejudices against the lower class are justified.
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Are you talking about this report? If so the short version is basically what @sarker said, it's one thing to expect Kiev to fall within the first few, it's another to expect the Russian invaders to be greeted as liberators.
The longer version can be found within the report itself...
The report goes on for another 30+ pages, but the long story short is that the UAF was far better prepared and enjoyed a far wider base of support amongst the general population than predicted. Russian command and control also sucked, in particular their battle damage assessment and general level of preparedness was abysmal. The Russian high command appears to have assumed that a strike having been carried out meant that the strike had been successful. IE they assumed that if the barracks, garage, hangar etc... that ordinally housed a UAF unit had been destroyed, that that corresponding unit had been destroyed. However because the first thing the UAF had done once it became clear that invasion was immanent was order their forces to disperse, a sizeable portion of the initial Russian strikes hit nothing but dirt/empty buildings.
The VDV were sent into Hostemel on the assumption that the UAF had already been crippled and that they would be greeted as liberators, instead they found themselves dropping into the proverbial woodchipper. The UAF units surrounding Kiev that the Russian high command had classified as "destroyed" were still very much alive, and rather pissed about having their towns being cruise-missiled.
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It's one thing to say that Russia will take Kiev in two weeks. It's another to say that they will be greeted as liberators.
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Can you point in the direction of reading more about this?
I think that she may be referring to this report here (it's the only RUSI publication matching the description that I'm aware of), but if so she seems to have come away with very different conclusions.
Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022
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I get the sense that there definitely is a Taiwanese nationalism that has been slowly bubbling to the surface, probably at least ever since that politician cosplayed Asuka Langley Sohryu on the campaign trail, but especially after this year.
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