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Notes -
Vivek Ramaswamy has written an article on his foreign policy doctrine, focusing on China.
He is squarely taking aim at the "neocons and liberal internationalists", in other words the two main constituents of what Obama referred to as "the Blob" dominating foreign policy in D.C. He is predictably being called an isolationist and WaPo columnists are freaking out.
WaPo columnists themselves are not relevant but they are often mouthpieces for more powerful interests. Trump was hated for many things but one underappreciated aspect of why the Blob hated him was his instinct not to start new wars. In fact, he is one of the few presidents in recent memory who did not start a new war and he tried to get out of Syria - twice - but was undermined by his own bureaucracy.
Vivek is a much smarter guy than Trump, so I wonder if the Blob would be able to run circles around him the way they did around Trump. I doubt it and I suspect they doubt it too, which is why I think a campaign to destroy Vivek is likely to ramp up before too long. Trump couldn't be controlled outright but at least he could be misled.
People have really summed up the issue with the guy; he really does sound like he's playing Paradox grand strategy games with actual grand strategy.
Vivek has publicly said that he's going to tell China "we'll defend Taiwan until we get semiconductor independence". Which...I guess everyone is supposed to take well?
Can we consider one potential consequence of telling Taiwan that the US will defend them right now (against an enemy that continually states it'll declare war if Taiwan ever tries for independence) while also promising to throw them under the bus as soon as the US is sufficiently diversified?
In Paradox-land, only the player has agency so it isn't that big a deal. People are less cooperative.
This also sounds as "we will defend Taiwan, but only while it is profitable for us, and only if Taiwan is very nice to us and does exactly what we say". Which, consequently, means that if China either manages to make Taiwan takeover not threaten "American interests" (like promising to put TSMC into a special economic zone of something, Chinese are very practical in such matters, they'll find a way), or, alternatively, make costs of defending it higher then giving it up (like saying "if you intervene, we'll nationalize all your factories and kick you out, and to heck with economic consequences, people starved in China before many times, who cares, that's why we have this fascist regime to be able to pull of such things") - in either case Taiwan is out to dry. And since the condition was "if they behave nicely" - this will be presented as them not behaving nicely and "provoking" China and being unreasonable and ultimately their own fault.
Cynically, this is what would happen in any case - I mean, if defending Taiwan is too hard, US won't do it anyway. But declaring it upfront is inviting China to make it so, and any person who doesn't understand this has no business even talking about those things.
Agreed.
"Here is a list of exactly what needs to happen for my government to stop defending Taiwan".
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