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The US ditching Ukraine to prioritize Taiwan I think would actually spook China. The US doubling down on its commitments to Ukraine means fewer weapons in the Pacific, unless the US also slashes its social services or something else to double down on walking and chewing gum. China would prefer the US bogged down in Ukraine, and the US openly abandoning them to their fate to focus on the Pacific would demonstrate that the US "ambiguous" policy towards Taiwan is actually one of total strategic commitment to Chinese containment.
This is not an actual available option. Please try again. Trump won't even ban TikTok ffs.
Prime the Pump. If we have munitions capacity issues what better way to fix them.
What on earth does "bogged down" mean here? I'm not arguing we conduct military operations.
Why not?
Sure, if Ukraine/Europe can release funding to fund US munitions (which I do gather is happening, and that seems fine). But if the US has budget X and they can split it between the Pacific and Europe, or just spend it on the Pacific, the latter option is scarier for China.
That ship has already sailed. The US has been conducting "non-kinetic" military operations in support of Ukraine's war effort for the duration of the war.
Empirical evidence suggests strongly that it keeps not happening, even by people who claim to want it to happen. Furthermore, the Taiwanese themselves (unlike the Ukrainians) are pretty lackluster in their own efforts to build up deterrence to China.
My guess is that it's a foregone conclusion that Taiwan will be absorbed by China in the coming years, similar to Hong Kong, due to everyone recognizing the inevitable and Taiwan and the US being unwilling to go to war over it once China decides to exert significant pressure. Possibly, a future US administration that was very hardline on China might change that calculus, but both parties are pretty antiwar these days.
Don't confuse stocks and flows.
We are not, in any meaningful sense of the term, "bogged down" in Ukraine. Notably, our US Navy ships have not sailed to pressure Russia in any significant form (as we did re: Iran). Also, ships can change course if ordered to redirect. As could any of the other military assets in the region. They aren't being permanently committed or destroyed. (Note that we always have some level of military presence countering Russia and conducting ISR.)
Look, there's a difference between something not happening and something being impossible. I'm discussing how China would react in a hypothetical.
Yes.
Sure. Both are important, and which is "more" important depends a lot on your timeline.
The munitions, vehicles and weapons we sent there are. I agree that we aren't "bogged down" the way one might describe us as being "bogged down" in Afghanistan, but we are "bogged down" in the sense that it remains a large center of US governmental attention (which is not unlimited) and, for as long as we continue to support the war effort, US industrial capacity (which is also far from unlimited).
Hypothetically, the US could do a lot to increase its military pressure on China re: Taiwan without taking away from Ukraine support at all. Maybe we could try that first?
We were not even "bogged down" in Afghanistan. As a percentage of our actual military capacities, only a tiny fraction was ever committed to Afghanistan. Sure, we lit a lot of money and attention on fire, but in term of actual combat capacity it was not a big deal to run that occupation. Even with Iraq, it was primarily the Army, and even then not our major units like say armor/artillery (after the initial invasion).
The USAF and USN were either only lightly involved or, by definition, have assets that are very easy to rapidly redeploy.
Vietnam was a much, much larger and costly commitment. One of the very reasons the "forever wars" were "forever" is that it was not that costly to continue indefinitely.
Sure. What do you have in mind?
Money and attention counts on my bogging-down meter, at least half-credit. Regardless, this is a semantic discussion: the point is that for China, more US investment in Ukraine is (generally) better, regardless of what that looks like. Obviously there's a sort of "looping back around to being bad" outcome where the US nukes Russia, or switches all its rare earth supply chains to Ukrainian sources, or what have you.
We need to dramatically increase our advanced missile stocks and production capacities. We should probably just buy ships from e.g. South Korea and Japan, because boy did we fuck up there. We should also make Anduril a very valuable company by having enough autonomous capacities to make the Chinese realize that even if our carrier battle groups can be taken out, Taiwan would effectively be a minefield.
No, it's not, because the actual proportion of our commitment of resources matters and you are failing to recognize second-order effects of priming the pump of the defense-industrial complex. As well as the signal of Western resolve and military competence. The best way to deter China is not to have a bunch of missiles in a warehouse. The best way to deter them is making them fear the resolve of the US in defending its friends and allies in the face of risking WWIII.
Since we aren't giving Ukraine any nukes, we have plenty of those laying around. Which is why the question of "will they/won't they" is more important than "just how long will US missile stocks last."
Sure. None of these, frankly, seem all that far-fetched.
Look, China can do math. All the "resolve" in the world doesn't do us any good without missiles in the warehouse.
If we are confident nuclear madman theory alone is sufficient to deter China, we don't need to do any of the above. But I don't actually think anyone wants to die in nuclear fire for Kiev or Taipei and as such the threat of a nuclear madman is unlikely to be persuasive and, even if persuasive, unlikely to be consistent in a democratic society (note the difference in Russian foreign policy towards Ukraine after the election of President Biden!) So one concern with the nuclear madman threat is that it will simply result in waiting out the madman. (Another concern is that two can play that game, of course!)
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