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I am begging you to think through the implications of "missile defense doesn't work" for China when their most obvious path to seizing Taiwan by force is "successfully defending a few hundred transports against tens of thousands of missiles and guided bombs."
Their most obvious path (diplomatic / ‘peaceful’ / semi-peaceful unification aside) is a blitz campaign (with or without attacks on US bases in the region) followed by a quick deal with whoever survives in the leadership. The options for them at that point are “make a deal with Xi” or “call in the yankees and turn my country into a wasteland and die along with hundreds of thousands of civilians and my family and friends”, and they will pick the former.
I am begging you to think through the implications of "Operation Epic Fury has failed" (as you posit) for China if their most obvious path to seizing Taiwan is "Operation Epic Fury With Chinese Characteristics."
What makes you think that it failing in Iran isn’t due to specific characteristics of Iran rather than some universal strategic truth?
Let me give you an example: if Trump bombs Belgium heavily tomorrow demanding some political arrangement, they would surrender by midnight; the political leadership don’t want to fight and won’t, they would rather be ruled by America than die. Maduro’s party preferred making a deal with America to dying. The Iranians don’t.
Taiwan is neither Venezuela nor Belgium nor Iran, but its political leadership is closer - when it comes to ideological position on this - to the former than the latter. If the Islamic Revolution is overthrown then the IRGC are penniless and prosecuted at best and hunted and slaughtered at worst, probably the latter. If the Taiwanese elite accept Chinese rule relatively quickly…they get to go back to being rich in Taipei, or at worst exile themselves to America if they love democracy.
If Iran was ruled by people with the character and belief system of EU bureaucrats they would have surrendered on the day, shaking their heads.
Has Delcy actually done anything that benefits America and goes against their interests? So far it seems like sanctions shuffling or limited sanctions relief with oil being redirected to US refineries. I'm not plugged into what the flow of drugs looks like at a statistical level, but it sure doesn't feel like there are fewer drugs around.
Has this ever come true? The same was said about Ukraine wasn't it, that surely they would surrender their fake bullshit country? I don't know what country has ever actually surrendered under bombardment without even a threat of ground invasion.
WW2 Japan surrendered with only threat of ground invasion (declaration of war from USSR) but no actual ground invasion happened on it's mainland, both atomic bombings had been cited as part of the reasons for surrender
Depends how you score Okinawa as part of Japan, no?
And certainly Japanese ground forces were joined in battle before the surrender.
Have a look at the map, saying Okinawa is part of mainland Japan is like saying Hawaii is part of mainland US, perhaps some will say you are correct, but in this discussion I believe it is fair to say that Hawaii is not part of mainland US and Okinawa is not part of mainland Japan
It's closer to Tokyo than I am to Florida. It's less than half the distance from Hawaii to California.
Actually it's nearly perfect to the distance from Puerto Rico to Islamorada, Florida.
So if an army fielding over a million ground troops took Puerto Rico with the express intent to take Florida, that would be the parallel.
If Trump were demanding Iran's unconditional surrender with 1.8 million troops stationed in the middle east and the express intent of occupying Iran, I'd believe that Iran might surrender. Currently the USA has 50,000 total troops in the middle east, with less than half of that in fighting ground troops.
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