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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.
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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