It's hard to know "what could have been," but what aspect of current life/ society/ the world wouldn't be significantly different today?

It was culmination of long process started by Nixon in 1972. Shanghai Communique pledged to work toward the full diplomatic relations. Ford and Carter followed trough the process.

Taiwan really didn't matter during the Cold War. Relations with China was strategic move to help create distance between Soviet Union and China.

The US had plenty of time to safely pivot to a different position regarding China/Taiwan (e.g. letting Taiwan get nukes in the 70s-80s; Shifting diplomatic position and recognizing Taiwan right after the Cold War was over; Not allowing Globalization to go so far in the 90s-00s). If the US didn't take that option, one can blame successor presidents rather than Nixon.

Giving Taiwan nukes would’ve been a casus belli situation.

This would’ve caused China to invade. Damned be the consequences or cost of lives.

The same is true today. If America arms Taiwan with too many advanced weapons, then it will also trigger a casus belli event on China’s part.

If America couldn’t beat China in North Korea in 1950, when the Chinese were literally fighting with bows and arrows, and America had air power and carpet bombing, then do you really think America can beat China in 2021? Or 2030? Or 2050?

At that time, the PLA was in a poor state. China simply did not have the ability to invade Taiwan or even get air superiority. They'd have lost, badly, so long as the US kept supporting Taiwan, quite likely the US wouldn't have had to even get involved directly. That's a consequence the CCP can't afford, they'd have had to get used to nukes. Of course, now the balance has changed and that's not practical.

E: You're assuming China always gets stronger over time. Recently that's true, but at the time China was picking itself up from the Cultural Revolution, while the US was rearming after Vietnam. US had a far bigger advantage in 1975-1985 over China than in 1950. This scenario would have also required the PLA to make an air or amphibious assault without (at the time) sufficient airplanes or boats, while 1950 was just a land assault.

A war with Taiwan is a completely different story.

But of course, you're correct.

And Carter (and Nixon and Ford) obviously didn't have the foresight to realize the ultimate impact of the process/decision. Yet they would have been aware it was a major, influential policy decision.

Does "starting the process" count as an ultimately-weighty-political-decision?

Along the lines of "Deciding to drop the bomb on Hiroshima," if you want to count that as a decision by one person. Of course it was also just one node of a decision tree that was a long, complicated chain-of-events.

It was probably Kissinger with rosy “divide and conquer” thinking given Moscow & Beijing had a fall out.

If Nixon hadn't started the process, if carter hadn't recognize the communist government of China.

- Offshoring/globalization may not have been the boom it is today, due to the lack of a major source of cheap/obedient labor force. In the 70s offshoring occured in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and others SE Asia countries but they didn't have enough cheap labors to continue. American companies would have been timid to shift operations to Indonesia and India when they lacked severe infrastructure, with no totalitarian government to enforce cheap labor.

- As a corollary, GE/Intel would not not have shed all its capabilities to Asia, and be greatly diminished today.

- Wall street might not have been able to push companies to greatly shed cost and ship capabilities overseas due to national security issues. As a result, US unions would have been intact somewhat and the jobs would not have been shipped to China. Flyover states would have enjoyed greater strength as they did in the 60s and 70s.

- the great crash of 2008 would not have happened (Chinese entry into WTO greatly reduced manual jobs in US and Europe, crashing both economies)

- Trump would not have been elected. Trump was a reaction to much jobs lost and much sufferings in flyover states caused by China.

- Coronavirus spread around the world and all the deaths that occurred may not have happened (China would have been still a closed off country, not unlike what Xi Jing Ping is trying to do today). No mass flights out of Wuhan or Beijing.

The Chinese would’ve come online, sooner or later. The WTO sped up the process of course, but China’s technological ascendancy was inevitable.

The other theory is that if China was denied entry into the WTO, then they would’ve just created their own international trading agreement. And in 2020, they did just that, and called it the RCEP.

Besides, without China, then your iPhone would’ve probably never been created. Apple would’ve never made enough money from the iPod, to justify further investment into the iPhone. China and the iPhone, really are symbiotic. Instead, we might all be living in a Blackberry world.

I dispute that anything is inevitable - China was an economic and scientific mess in the 80s and 90s, thanks to the Cultural Revolution and Communist anti-truth thought control ideology.

The US and our democratic allies had a fleeting opportunity in the 90s to collectively pressure China into making a grand bargain, where in return for permanent access to Western markets, they enact major democratic and human rights reforms - multiple political parties allowed, separation of powers, checks and balances, independent judiciary, military serves the national constitution rather than a specific political party, etc.

This is what should have happened, but in Wall St. and corporate America's rush to cash in on cheap labor and a potentially large new market, we replaced that grand bargain with wishful thinking and a rose-tinted predictions of an authoritarian regime that just a few years earlier in 1989 violently crushed a nascent effort at Democracy.

This was likely the most costly strategic mistake in US history. We spent 50yrs fighting a cold war to push back authoritarianism, and won, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the 90s due to short-term greed. Now we'll have to fight that cold war all over again this century, against a much more formidable adversary that has been able to learn how to meld state authoritarianism with effective economic development and Orwellian technological thought control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan

What does population have to do with self determination?

> Nope. Let them settle it. We shouldn't have been involved in the first place.

Except they were allied with the US and deals were drawn up that should be honored.

> Are you serious? One is the second largest economy in the world. The other is taiwan.

He said in a strategic industry, which semiconductors are.

If there is TSMC spam it's probably because this is a tech forum and they is a lot of movement in the field in the last year, mostly related to the failings of Intel and the rise of TSMC.

Are you really sure only westerners are having an awesome time in Taiwan? Have a look at the data for who travels most to Taiwan (and presumably enjoys it):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Taiwan

Simple test, if you go talk to anyone on the street, in English, they will try to answer in bad English(if they can). this is especially true for young/highly educated demography like me because we are educated in western value since very young.

If you came from southeastern, say, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam. There's very good chance you see people look them in distain. Because those are usually imported labor for manual tasks.

I'd hazard a traveler's experience can highlight a culture's stereotypes more easily than it can the experience of a naturalized member of the community.

I used to love watching Bourdain's travel series for exactly this reason; he seemed to always want to get the deeper context and insight from the people he'd meet and his narration showed a firm understanding of how who he was and where he came from influenced his experience of a place/culture and the conclusions he'd draw (if any).

Would you say the same thing for the Hawaiians?

A lot of them want independence from the colonial United States. They want their nation and its territory back.

So, using your logic, would you grant them their wish?

I think not.

But it's a false equivalency anyway given that:

1. No such efforts are underway.

2. Taiwan is not presently part of the PRC.

3. Taiwan merely seeks de jure recognition of its de facto independence.

It is another false equivalency as the PRC has never ruled over Taiwan. And the CSA did not enfranchise their populace fairly. Any such referendum was not an expression of the will of the people but merely the slave holding classes.

It is not true that the United States waged the war to end slavery. Though of course slavery is why the Southern states seceded, the North prosecuted the war to preserve the Union. After all, the institution of slavery remained legal in the US at the outset of the war in '61, with no end in sight--Lincoln had been selected by the Republicans specifically because he was not a radical abolitionist. Only after the North struggled to defeat the South in a timely manner (in large part due to the fact that slave labor allowed the South to field ~80% of able bodied free men) did Lincoln put out the Emancipation Proclamation in '63--expressly as a matter of military necessity. The document gave only a cursory nod to it being "believed to be an act of justice", and it only freed Southern slaves.[0]

Slavery remained legal in the United States until 1865.

[0] https://www.historynet.com/emancipation-proclamation-text

The union was forced as much by economics as it was by human rights, unless all the northern states would also undo their abolitionist views.

China's Deng Xiaoping strategy of hide your strength and bide your time, that's a stall tactic to buy time (in that case the time between when something is actual and something is publicly known, a knowledge-time gap). The US placating China is also a stall tactic, hoping to buy time for a better scenario favoring the US and Taiwan more than China (for example a liberalized China, which was still a naive hope as recently as 10 years ago; that was always unlikely but it was better than driving China toward forced annexation sooner).

The schools used to have duck and cover drills to prepare for nuclear attacks. This may have made people too afraid of the word nuclear and thus nuclear power is not possible in the US. Now there are "stranger on campus" drills instead. I wonder how that is warping the minds of the present generation.

On average I feel rather unimpressed by that threat. It seems like a conditioning.

If you read my second statement, I do agree with you that great, unreasonable fear can be conditioned into people. This is what happened to the word "nuclear". The reasonable fear of nuclear weapons got put into children in the 1950's, but being children they just ended up fearing everything nuclear. And being normal humans almost all did not evaluate new evidence in adulthood and change their minds. These people are the Baby Boomers that have controlled society for a long time and have let coal plants exist for 50 years do huge environmental damage, while relatively clean nuclear power was abandoned.

P.S: The radiation from these bombs are not the problem, it is the nuclear winter that is.

[1] https://ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

No power has attempted to sink a carrier since 1945, there is ultimately limited data on how effective any anti-carrier weapon developed in the last 80 years would be in practice.

Saturation by long-range antiship missiles is also possible to work, if the Falkland War is any indication.

And then there are the "deorbit a tungsten telephone pole" kind of ideas that just might work on a carrier, have no defense and are within the realm of possibility for both China, Russia and basically every state with the capability to get a few tons into some low orbit.

Against sophisticated enemies, carriers are giant billboards with "shoot me" written on them.

Italian battleships were targeted & 3 were disabled.

Also the British tried to sink the Argentinian aircraft carrier during the Falkland War and it escaped preatty much just due to luck.

The waters of the strait are also shallow enough that submarines are not that effective.

Basically, it is certainly possible to pull of such an amphibious assault, and the US Navy's simulations recognize as much.

As for Japan, it is much too far from Taiwan to contribute. South Korea will not get involved for obvious reasons.

They don't have to immediately pull off an invasion. Tomorrow they could begin a draconian blockade, while strategically bombing the island and begin an assassination & disruption campaign by inserting special forces. They can do it (rather inexpensively) on an indefinite basis, as long as they care to. Nobody can stop that and they have zero concern for the humanitarian disaster it would cause, with their eye on the long-term goal. Taiwan wouldn't last very long in that simple and very obvious scenario, it would rapidly degrade their condition. The world (those standing opposed to China's move) would quickly capitulate, understanding full well that the alternative is all out war with China; the UN would be begging for a settlement peace within weeks (which would result in China de facto taking over Taiwan). Mostly all that would happen to China are some sanctions, which China would shrug off (along with some dramatic, harshly worded PR releases). At the end of it, China won't need to invade with a large amphibious assault, it'll enter Taiwan largely unopposed as part of the brokered peace settlement.

China is very rapidly building up its naval capabilities. It will be able to invade Taiwan this decade. That isn't a maybe, it's a certainty.

Even more effective for China is to simply invest a few billion Dollars into bribing politicians. Some would argue that this has already been done with the KMT. They can also put pressure on the owners of the first generation of factories in China, which tend to be related to KMT. They will give up Taiwan in order to keep their business.

Can’t or won’t? Certainly the US do a lot of damage to the mainland if they chose to engage in a hot total war. A nuclear barrage of Chinese military facilities and supply lines would shut down an amphibious assault. I imagine that the US can still do tremendous damage with conventional bombing and ballistics as well, though not without cost. Both of these are basically MAD scenarios.

Do you really want to entertain this ridiculous idea?

A nuclear assault on Chinese soil, would invite a nuclear retaliation on American soil.

Do you really want to lose Los Angeles or New York City, to a nuclear ICBM?

And if it comes that, then both sides should just launch all their nukes, and see who is left afterwards to pick up the pieces.

America is now a nuclear wasteland. And all because some people couldn’t swallow their pride, and realize that Taiwan is not their core interest.

The parent post said that America could not stop China from taking Taiwan. I want to know what they mean by this.

What do you think are the US core interests? Is maintaining and defending our allies not one? Would it be different if it was Australia or Canada? What about Alaska? Where would you draw the line?

In you opinion, was fighting Nazi Germany irrational too?

Yes. Of course. Xi invading Taiwan would involve killing Americans, including American soldiers. It’s an attack on America and on our ally. If they use nuclear weapons and we demur, it’s a failure of deterrence. America has given its word to come to Taiwan’s defence. If we don’t like the implications of that promise, we should withdraw it.

Keep in mind: a nuclear barrage (or ersatz nuclear, with nuclear-scale tonnage from non-nuclear warheads) of military assets is different from bombing Beijing. And being open to nuclear retaliation is different from attacking with nuclear weapons. Appeasement didn’t work for Hitler. I don’t see why we think this time would be different[1].

Nobody wants this. But a Chinese invasion of Taiwan with nuclear weapons would be clear escalation by Beijing. Hopefully, level heads prevail.

[1] Not equating Xi with Hitler. I don’t think Beijing seriously plans on invading Taiwan. But if Xi does, we’ve miscalculated somewhere. And these comparisons become more apt.

2. Did they give polite noncommittal answers or their actual thoughts?

In the workplace, you don't usually have coworkers interrogating other coworkers about their geopolitical views around the watercooler and basing their future professional interactions on those views.

I am interested in what military tactics and strategy a hypothetical non-traditional war with China might look like. Especially if China decided to strike-first with an art-of-war, covert and/or subversive type attack on society/ culture (and not military).

I guess my overall point is:

I'm more concerned with lack of parity in the non-traditional and non-military cultural warfare possibilities that a conflict with China might present.

Not so-much with overall military capabilities, even as military-tech approaches parity.

And that the US will once again find itself "fighting it's previous war."

Chinese military modernization is explicitly designed to counter US in Taiwan invasion scenario. They have no other security commitments, the goal is singular and funded by a budget that is equivalent to 87% of Pentagons by PPP. China doesn't have hundreds of bases, expensive pensions, legacy system to maintain. Last year alone they seem to have figured out most of the pressing turbojet issues as well as completed enough space infrastructure for full maritime surveillance persistence in SCS. These were the largest deficiencies western analysts had to doubt Chinese capabilities. Basically, any piece on Chinese military capabilities from 2+ years ago is out of date. That's how fast things are moving.

>social engineering and psyops

As far as I'm aware, there is no credible research to demonstrate Chinese conducts large influence operations in English abroad. It's mostly limited to mandarin targeting Chinese diaspora. That said, things will certainly be interesting if China actually decided to invest heavily in this capability. English fluency is still somewhat valuable resource in China, it's not being wasted to troll western net. But pool of English literacy is growing massively in recent years and there will be a surplus ready for weaponization.

I didn't mean to imply that they currently do. (Or don't. Idk.) Just that it's an area of major concern, where we'll be vulnerable as a country and lack parity.

But as you say, interesting possibilities.

2) >IMO The ballpoint anecdote has been severely misinterpreted...

I'm aware, but it's still a very relevant case-study. I'm not making fun of them- Manufacturing is hard.

You're correct, in that it was a lack of high precision, high quality manufacturing, and yes, they are catching up quickly...

But there's still a gap (for now) in this area, especially when 1) there is institutional knowledge required to make something correctly, and 2) said knowledge is non-public, a trade-secret, or similarly-restricted, and 3) no one has opened a factory to willingly transfer such knowledge to Chinese factory workers.

I believe one example is in industrial tooling, but I don't know if that's still true.

More abstractly:

When so much industrial knowledge in a country has come from external sources... Find out what they haven't had to learn on their own.

What capabilities will be missing or disadvantaged within their war-machine? Exploit them.

-Obviously China has its own ability to research and invent things (on its own), and I'm not implying that can't. But we're taking about competitive advantage and looking for weaknesses here.

The problem with China is straight-forward: time is on their side in all cases. They're a rising global power with expanding resources and capabilities (and a moral flexibility to do whatever they want, anytime they want), while the US can no longer afford its positioning militarily around the world (and that context will be far worse in another ten years). The US has already lost Asia to China, its bureaucrats are just too arrogant - still swimming in the past - to realize it (and I say that both as an American and as someone who thinks that outcome is bad for the world). China will rule Asia in terms of power balance before another 10-15 years passes by and the US will be forced to cede more of its post WW2 positioning there.

Have you seen what's going on in the US over the last few years? Of course you have, everyone has. That's not Trump, that's not blah blah blah (insert the fake excuses thrown around by pop media & 'journalists'). It's an eroding standard of living problem (that crashed off a cliff as the facade fell off with the 2009 crash) and everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about (healthcare, education, jobs, demographics, wages, household wealth, opioids, suicides, life expectancy, social chaos and strife that comes with many tens of millions of people being left adrift with no hope and they're all getting more angry and violent by the day on all political sides). The extraordinary mismanagement of the US by the clowns in DC over the last 20 years has tipped it over into shrink and recede mode (and that's just basic extrapolation, takes 30 seconds to calculate that forced outcome); the demands of the domestic population for social welfare improvement is getting violently loud and will get far louder this decade, which forces an eventual either or (this or that) decision for the politicians (this is how you get so many Republicans supporting $2,000 stimulus checks (an incomprehensible thing for that political side just 20 years ago), even some of them sense what's happening). In the short-term the US will print magic fiat (eat its wealth by debasing its currency) to pay for the costs of being a badly over-extended superpower, in the longer-term it has to recede because its finances are in an accelerating death spiral (Japan scenario). China doesn't have to do anything, it's pushing outward, and Asia is its backyard (whereas it's extremely expensive for the US to be positioned across Asia and put up a defensive front against China there).

If the US has "lost" Asia as a partner, can it maintain its supply chain dependence?

The US hasn't lost Asia as a partner and it's not going to in an absolute manner. The US is losing its hegemony over Asia, which it has had since WW2. Those are two very different things.

Can the US keep Asia as a partner? Yes, mostly, through accepting that it will have to be less of a dominant hegemony in Asia and more of an at-the-table partner with the other nations in Asia that are not very willing to capitulate to China (Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Vietnam, India, etc).

For example the US is intentionally flooding Vietnam with trade right now to build it up and working with them militarily to improve their positioning vs China. US imports from Vietnam are now equal to 23% of their economy; US imports from Vietnam will have increased by about 21% in 2020 (despite the pandemic). That will rapidly improve Vietnam in the same way it did China; in the next 20-30 years Vietnam will become a middle income nation comparable to Thailand or Malaysia. They're a quasi perma enemy of China, which is why they're so happy to be a strategic partner with the US (and why next to Israel the people of Vietnam like the US more than any other nation, accoring to Pew Research). The US can maintain supply chains with countries like Vietnam quite easily. The US will pull some of its dependency away from China and relocate it to other nations (whether Vietnam, India, Mexico, or similar).

The US can also simply increasingly accept its real context in Asia and cede more ground to China in exchange for maintaining trade with them (the EU is showing that it's happy to follow that path for example, it's plausible the US will partially capitulate in a similar manner). The US and China may continue to be quasi-enemies and competitors for global positioning, that trade with eachother, for a long time (and who knows what comes after Xi).

For their own self-defense, both South Korea and Japan should acquire nuclear weapons (if I were them); I wouldn't count on a receding US military superpower to come to the rescue, nor would I count on the thrashing-about-in-agony US population to take a self-interest in what China does in Asia (the growing stance in the US against foreign military adventurism will only increase by the year, as the US population demands an ever-increasing re-focus onto their well-being).

Ideally yes. Would love that. But almost never-never-never gonna happen.

Culturally, Japan does a much better job than most in teaching (and learning from) war history. Hiroshimaa and Nagasaki are still quite fresh in their minds. They're not Germany; Japan still identifies as, acknowledges being, and is deeply ashamed that they are the same nation/people that bombed Pearl Harbor and fought in WW2.

The power plant meltdowns also don't help, but is probably less culturally entrenched.

Only chance of changing that is maybe one-day for parity with N Korean capabilities, or an imminent major war with China.

It'd be... historically & culturally interesting, if Japan accepted US nukes or technology as assistance in a wartime emergency. Could potentially create one hell of a bond between allies, if played right. Or a whole lot of hate, if Japan's public opinion isn't won over first.

As for South Korea, and in the context of North Korea:

As long as N Korea is N Korea, I don't know if we want to just drop nukes into the equation, as is, unless we're talking about US-controlled weapons-sharing. With the downside of being a less effective threat due to direct US involvement, and culpability.

What would be ideal is:

Somehow make Korean reunification happen, under a democratic government that inherits NK's nuke program. And then advances it with US blessings and/or assistance (either openly or modeled on something like the Israeli program).

Japan won't like it, but it also might be enough to encourge them to overcome their aversion, Hiroshima/Nagasaki be damned.

It would require overcoming a constitutional ban, so not easy. But they make an increasing number of exceptions for weapons constitutionally limited to "defensive capabilities," which somehow now includes two aircraft carriers with F-35Bs.

And which China already hates.

This could also mean US food production capabilities.

There's an insane amount of agricultural (and other) land being purchased by China controlled interests, both in the US and worldwide. Reliance on domestic food production is obviously something they're very concerned about, especially with the history of agricultural disease outbreaks. I suspect the seizure of Chinese owned/controlled property under US jurisdiction (or areas of influence) would be a significant blow, with respect to that. (As archaic as starving the enemy might be- we're talking about war.)

As much as I hesitate to suggest a new govt database:

We need a system tracking all foreign ownership of US land. Including owned by companies with Chinese stakeholders.

An incredibly difficult task, given the majority of US land records are kept at the county level.

It might actually be easier to track it based on crop production, commodity trading, exports, or financial transactions, all of which all at least have some extant system for national data collection, but this is way over my head.

Yes, but it has to maintain it in a different way (The same way that nearly all other nations maintain trading partners).

When there's something unusual that it wants, instead of being able to negotiate via the threat of gunboat diplomacy (or by offering protection from gunboat diplomacy), it must come to the negotiating table with concessions on offer.

The political reality of the current US/Taiwan relationship is so absurd. We sell fighter jets to a country we don't even officially recognize. That's not some CIA insurrection level slush fund.

Which always reminds me that no matter what "inviable" international laws or standards the civilized world pretends to adhere to, that it's all a sham, and sovereign nations, especially the US, can find a way to legally justify whatever the hell it is they want to do.

Also, Taiwan itself is not unified. Around a third want to unify with the CCP.

I am from Taiwan. Where does the data for your sentence come from? As far as I know, the proportion of people who want to be unified with CCP is only 2.4%.

Reference: https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7804&id=6960

Though there's clearly a strong shift in the last two years.

Really hardly anyone in Taiwan wants to re-unify with the PRC, they have seen the genocide the fascist CCP is committing against the Uighur people in Xinjiang, if the CCP repeats this in Taiwan and exterminates or sterilizes millions of Taiwanese it would be devastating. Nobody wants to bear witness to genocide, but even more so, nobody wants to be a victim to genocide, so supporting re-unification would be senseless.

States {polls consistently found 70% to 80% of all residents in Taiwan opposed to unification through CCP's "One country, two systems"} which means 20-30% are for it?

I definitely don't know enough to know if people are pretending to want reunification or actually do.

Edit: according to https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7805&id=6962 (which has a finer breakdown) the number is 7.5%, but the jamestown.org article links to data also collected by NCCU (but maybe a different group), so I'm not sure what the distinction is.

A real life farce. They should have set up an embassy first thing. Maybe Biden will have the guts, but he’ll chicken out like everyone else most likely and continue the public farce.

This is no different today. The US military and civilian experts believe that if Taiwan declares independence, Beijing will use its military to take control of Taiwan, regardless of the US involvement. US presidents do not want several million people to die for the cause of Taiwan independence. Of course, most presidents do not care much about Chinese or Taiwanese deaths, but they do care that this will hurt the US economy and business interests; and depending on how things play out, thousands of Americans may also die, which is bad for reelection.

In other words, the US administrations do not want Taiwan to declare independence. They do, however, like to use Taiwan as a pawn in their games with China, just like they would use an aircraft carrier near the Chinese coast. They also like to use Taiwan as a pawn in the internal US political wars, for example by creating difficulties for the opposite party before that party takes over the White House.

Taiwan considers its self to be China. What are they going to declare themselves independent from?

1) US does not formally recognize Taiwan (doing so means ending diplomatic relations with China).

2) US is not altering the Taiwan relations act. No alliance, no binding security guarantees, strategic ambiguity continues.

3) Taiwan is not declaring independence.

Let them have a dose of their own medicine for a bit.

They don't mean anything on their own. But geopolitics is a game played in the background, calling in favors from other countries, telling them to buy less from your enemy and more from you or your allies, offering them loans, or straight up bribery. And if that country has also been treated with disdain by the superpower it's not so hard to see them accepting.

I thought this link implied 1 & 2, if not this is disappointing :(

Taiwan prefers to stay de facto independent for now, because declaring independence would mean war with China instantly.

Luckily, Taiwan can just continue with the status quo and the PRC will probably not invade it, especially when the Americans are hanging out in the Ryukyus so close by to the island.

Glad to see us moving towards normalization, but weird to wait until the last week of the administration to play that card.

How is this different than the status quo? AIT has always been the de-facto US representation in Taiwan up to now.

Sigh, it's just such a pity the clown shoes shit show of US politics this week knocked the story of 55 democracy activists in Hong Kong being rounded up.

Among arrested is at least one US citizen (purely US, no dual citizenship with HK). I suspect there will be more fallout from this.

I'd say the right way to define "democracy" is not as a system of governance; but rather as a worldview, as an ideology and as an effort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Pos...

Edit: see https://www.scmp.com/yp/discover/news/hong-kong/article/3065... which is from a newspaper in China (so even if it is biased, it would be biased towards pro-CCP views). As you can see, these activists want self-determination for Hong Kong, but do not want Hong Kong to leave or secede from China.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-usa-taiwan-china-id...

They will, they have no choice. The Biden Administration isn't in charge of the China policy, that's a US Government level comprehensive strategic shift that began well before Trump. The Pentagon overall is more powerful than the US Presidency, and all the agencies that matter are on board the China confrontation approach. There are strategic policies that persist regardless of administrations, for example that was the case when the US was dealing with the USSR, and it's going to be the case when dealing with China going forward. It doesn't matter who is elected President on this policy matter, the only thing that changes are the more subtle details (and some of the drama, as you noted).

He's boxing in the next administration.

Trump sucks up to people when he thinks it might do him some good. He ignored Khashoggi's killing to keep a good relationship with MBS, he said he "fell in love" with Kim Jong-un to try to get him to stop testing nuclear missiles, and he shut up about Taiwan and Hong Kong and Xinjiang because he wanted a better trade deal. (Shutting up about them might have been an unofficial part of the dealmaking -- threats behind closed doors.)

Some of it was clearly amateurish. Trump is a shallow man, and assumes others are as susceptible to flattery as he is. He didn't get far with Putin or Kim, but he actually didn't give away much -- US policy towards them is tougher now than it was four years ago. And the stuff with Saudi Arabia has worked out very well, though it does make my stomach turn a bit.

Now, though, the Trump administration is in the "nothing to lose by doing what we want, and nothing to gain by doing things we'd rather not". So they can piss off Xi, and do something nice for Taiwan.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-pompeo/pompeo-m...

Pompeo has 2024 presidential dream.

Or deep principles like yours, glorifying academic credentials. Must have been terrible when the presidency went from the Harvard Law alumni and professor to the guy who wouldn’t release his transcripts from a second-rate business school.

(To be clear, I don't mean this as a judgment of either strategy, just an answer to the question of why it matters.)

For what it's worth, even the US would struggle to invade Taiwan militarily.

I also have doubts that the 'mass invasion via a few possible beaches after 3 weeks of obvious preparation which allow Taiwan ample time to mobilize its reserves' is the only relevant invasion scenario. At the very least, paratroopers can play a major role, and I can think of a few other ideas to spice it up. These can be defended against if Taiwan is seriously motivated - that's the big question mark.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25707318

Among my Taiwanese friends, almost a third are married to Mainlanders (and even more have dated).

Even if this doesn't lead to reunification, at the very least it'll maintain the status quo.

If it is Taiwan v. China, Taiwan will lose. The only hope they have is support from someone with a strong enough navy that China can't blockade them.

But he isn't above partisanship.

This relatively minor decision is now politically difficult to reverse, and the current administration won't have to deal with any diplomatic fallout. And the next administration doesn't need to burn political capital. All while incrementally pushing forward America's foreign policy objectives of formalizing Taiwan as the independent country its been for decades.

Hard to say this is bad; hard to say this is good either. It’s different. Ball will be in the Biden administration court. At least it was spiked before hand.

In any case, this is great timing, as China suffers from internal turmoils in Hong Kong, Beijing (leadership conflicts), Xinjiang and Tibet. And currently is engaging in a conflict with India, Australia, US, UK, Canada. Quad alliance (Japan, India, US, Australia) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/25/what-is-the-quad-c... has been pretty active, and Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (senior lawmakers in democracies) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-05/lawmakers... have recently formed this year.

Taiwan would be a great formal addition to these alliances, as it could act as a land carrier sitting off the coast of China. With its recent effort underway to build homegrown submarines by 2025, it could repel most of the sea threats from China for a long time https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/12/02/taiwan-is-b....

I personally think a future where China annexes Taiwan would bring about a more stable and peaceful geopolitical relationship between China and the US because of three reasons.

1. The US is not threatened by China. The Pacific prevents any invasion of the America's, and China cannot blockade the US given its two coastlines and world class navy.

2. China is threatened by the US. It's ringed by US military bases and depends on oil shipping through the Indian Ocean.

3. China has no ideology of global expansion and conversion like the USSR, nor does it need more land and resources like the much smaller Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Taiwan (and frankly all of China's other disputes) are limited goals of a nationalist ideology from the 1940s and losing Taiwan won't trigger a dominoe effect of China annexing the rest of the world and threatening America or Europe.

In a future where Taiwan was annexed and the US has pulled it's bases back to Guam or Hawaii, I can't see any future flash points between the two nations. Rather, a much healthier and respectful relationship between two powerhouses that mind their own affairs instead of sticking weapons and provocations in each other's faces.

However, this line of reasoning requires accepting that the US should not act as a global defender of democracy worldwide regardless of cost or strategy, and that encouraging a democracy to spring up in the path of a unsettled conflict wasn't the wisest of choices.

Still, minority positions tend to be unpopular unless reality proves them to be true.

Vietnam and other countries (including Russia) are worried about China's territorial expansionism and annexing the South China Sea.

Public policy experts are worried about the failed policy of "appeasement" that was used in WW2. Basically territorial ambitions increase when concessions happen.

Taiwan is continues to be free to decide to unify with China by the ballet box though. If they have a free and fair election and decide to join China, the world will go along with it.

In the area the Russian population is dwindling and the Chinese population is increasing, so those watching the region are expecting China to 'salami slice' its way to control over that massive amount of land.

It would also bolster China's claim of being a 'near-Arctic state', so it's almost a foregone conclusion that they'll be moving to do this.

As for the worry about appeasement, that policy failed with Nazi Germany because the geopolitical balance of Europe required that they annex the land and agricultural capacity needed to become a major power. Any strategist could foresee that Germany would not have stopped at Austria and Czechoslovakia while leaving the farmlands of Poland and Eastern Europe. Appeasement was also to buy time for Britain to rearm after a devastating WW1. I do not believe this to be the case for China because there are no valuable agricultural lands to annex around them, and because modern technology has changed the nature of power projection where the winner is not the one with the bigger army but the one with the smarter army. Annexing economically unproductive land with unfriendly inhabitants is a very dumb move, unless it's holy land for the nationalist rhetoric of reunifying the Chinese nation and rejecting foreign pressure.

Lastly, China's neighbors have every right to be worried. But how does spending for their defense benefit your typical American citizen who's more interested in sending their kids to college than sending them to die for the maintenance of an overseas empire?

Now Taiwan is a vibrant democracy with the rule-of-law, free speech and world-leading industries the United States will stay allied to Taiwan. As they say: "In international relations, there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent interests".

In the past, extreme economic situations have been "improved" by wars.

Is there another, better plan? Does anyone on the Biden team or on planet earth have a plan for resolving the severe cultural and political divide between the US and China?

Or is the divide not as great as it seems?

What happens if they actually take Taiwan? Or try?

A serious military alliance of countries in that don’t want to be dominated by China (again) but have been happy to take Chinese money until now.

I'm not so sure about that.

Yes they have overwhelming assets but assaults via sea are very very complex. No one has done it on a large scale against a powerful adversary on their home turf in 60+ years (I don't include the US into Kuwait or Basra etc).

To do so against an advanced, well trained military (possibly with the US in the background/helping) would result in huge losses for China. The window to cross the straight is probably only three months or so of the year. No doubt they could try smash it from a distance, cut off supplies etc and force concessions but a full on invasion would be dam tricky. Cyber attacks and Spetsnaz style sabotage may also help, especially as Taiwan has had a lot of spy scandals. However the Taiwanese people I've had the pleasure of working with are clever, cunning and courageous - those guys might lose but they are gonna give you a bloody nose trying to get in. Plus then the insurgency that follows would make Iraq look like a school yard bun fight. They have had decades to think purely about how to defend their own soil and a huge amount of people with both military training and advanced technical skills - who knows what tricks they might have up their sleeve or in the basement (Yun Feng missile for example can reach most major Chinese cities and has a fairly small warhead yet they didn't order many of them...Hmmm I wonder why?...Possibly it's older nuke program which was very advanced or the very large "defensive" chemical and biological program etc.)

Ultimately this is about the Communist Party looking for a balance. It doesn't want to lose face by losing Taiwan too much but at the same time but it would get a dam bloody nose trying to cross the straight...and then trying to occupy such a country. The end result likely to be a weakening of the party. Never forget Communists have shown themselves to be more concerned about the survival of the party than the people. Them taking a massive coin-toss strategic risk is unlikely, unless they feel pressured into doing it.

There are lots of people saying China would definitely win, so here is an interesting counter example to that.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-wi...

Taiwan is an unenforceable and unself sufficient island well within Chinese strategic envelope. China, while imports heavily has _massive_ domestic resource extraction + industrial capabilities, i.e. China is not resource constrained like Japan. She does not need to venture outside to sustain a war economy. China on war economy can produce enough missiles and rocketry to make Taiwan Yemen, forever. There is quite literally, not a scenario where Taiwan and most of East Asian / ASEAN would not be perpetually crippled at China's whims if she is forced into North Korean / containment hermit geopolitics. Realistic China/Taiwan scenario, Chinese air trivially takes out Taiwanese military assets and gains air superiority, this is more or less accepted think tank reality since 2010s. China then destroys Taiwanese power generation. Without food / energy self sufficiency, limited strategic food reserves, Taiwan starts to starve in 3 months. Meanwhile, Chinese shore based rocketry can ensure no reinforcements / supplies ever lands on Taiwan proper, this is also think tank consensus - very few thinks USN could safely operate within Chinese shores anymore. Taiwan is worse off than Yemen who has land borders. China can do this today, and can maintain this indefinitely, all without ever landing a single boot on Taiwan proper, even if her people go back to eating rice and riding bicycles. Years of this and either Taiwan capitulates and is governed by puppet government or becomes dust. The only actor preventing this is USN.

>Ultimately this is about the Communist Party looking for a balance.

Beyond being a national project central to CCP legacy, Chinese security is not possible with an independant Taiwan. It's really that simple. There are strategic imperatives why Taiwan must be incorporated within Chinese sphere. The first best option is peaceful reunion, the second best option is forceful reunion, the third best option is turning Taiwan into dust. As long as Taiwan is independent, she is a massive threat, one that will be contained as soon as PRC is able to. Which is an force balance equation between China and US. When China makes her move, and IMO she will within 15-30 years, US has to decide if they want to risk reputation hit of being unable to provide security guarantee. This is why US military support for Taiwan is strategically ambiguous. Because US does not know they can aid Taiwan, while US can always contain China via Malacca or other SLOC chokepoints. 15-30 years from now even that is not guaranteed. This is why Pompeo is pushing for for friction, he wants confrontation sooner than later. Preferably after Taiwan loses semi dominance, and before Chinese military fully modernizes and break through containment choke points. This is 10-15 years from now.

E: reply too fast

@yyyk, this scenario is not optimal, but it's within possibility space if Chinese redlines / strategy is threatened (i.e. US base on Taiwan, Taiwan going nuke). The point is, it's possible today and will always be on the table going forward, especially if US presses for hot war containment before Chinese military modernizes. Which again, is a distinct possibility because it is within US long term interests. That's the critical window where everything goes to shit. As for bloc containing China, I have doubts, many countries, especially in the region benefit from multipolarity. Taiwan getting iced just means others in the region picking up their export markets. If China is in a position to challenge USN, it can challenge any bloc. If it comes down to turning Taiwan into Yemen, China will go hybrid warfare like Crimea, engineer scenario where Taiwan is aggressor for casus belli, i.e. Chinese ferry full of kids getting sunk by Taiwanese naval mine. Most in the region and IMO around the world just wants an excuse not to participate. Again like Crimea. Chinese actions in SCS is basically calibrated grayscale warfare, they've had lots of practice and success.

@yyyk2, no one is projected to have the ability counter-blockade China outside of USN unless there is massive coordinated coalition naval build up. Near record naval budget increases by the usual hypothetical containment allies (Japan/Korean/AU/India etc) will still be massively overshadowed by Chinese naval expansion plans for next 5 years. This is in context of Chinese military budget decreasing relative to GDP growth IIRC. TBF anyone outside of USN don't matter. IMO this is a China vs US battle. I'm curious what realist concerns if only because China taking over Taiwan by 2049 is been loudly broadcasted as national priority for 50+ years. Everyone saw this coming and hasn't really done anything about it, because fundamentally Taiwan outside of TSMC short term is not pressing to anyone's interests, and that is an unanticipated but fleeting condition. Not much is happening right now outside of posturing (QUAD, some planned exercises by UK, France/DE directing to ASEAN) while China is securing trade deals. Containing China is only significant to US interests. Everyone else is hedging, EU/East Asian/ASEAN hedges for good deals and US security subsidies, Africa/MENA would only lose since China's their biggest customer and MENA affairs directly affects EU domestic policy. but I don't see anyone else willing to hedge with blood and iron. The world doesn't care about Yemen and Crimea, nor HK/XJ/Tibet/SCS outside of platitudes and Chinese rhetoric on those issues were comparable than Taiwan but also tier less in order of importance. Conversely a contained hermit China can wreck all of East Asia / ASEAN, destabilize MENA which will reverberate throughout EU. In exchange for what? Resetting the power balance so US can solidify it hegemony more? IMO China executing plans on Taiwan is inevitable, and the only winner of dragging that out is US assuming they can contain China unscathed.

@Apocryphon, it's absolutely possible to engineer scenario where Taiwan initiated aggression and China is retaliating. The reason why US is hesitant to grant Taiwan unambiguous security guarantee is they can't rely on Taiwan not turning bold/stupid and initiating a confrontation that US doesn't want to get drawn in. It's in neither China nor US interests to have Taiwan determine her own future. As long as China can cobble together a casus belli, she gives everyone else and excuse to sit out, regardless of how believable the excuse is. Keep in mind ROC / Taiwan tried to blockade most of Chinese shores via "port closure" declarations for decades, and flew US funded U2s over PRC airspace. The civil war never ended, lots bygone historic excuses to leverage with new developments to muddle waters. I think if one evaluates actual interests, which I articulated paragraph above, most countries are looking for an excuse not to intervene.

Starving Taiwan into submission is at best case scenario a massive hit to China's foreign and economic relations (ensuring a block analog to NATO just to counter China) in order to get an economically devastated province, with possible internal stability hit since eventually Chinese citizens will know what it cost.

This isn't a good tradeoff for the CCP, unless they are so strong 15-30 years from now that they get the same dominance US had in 90s (in which case they probably can get Taiwan anyway without paying that price), or if there's an internal threat that must be appeased ASAP.

E: China can do your scenario physically, and probably avoid the world's wrath in the immediate military term. Nonetheless, the world will see a popular first-world society reduced to rubble, and other first-world societies will see themselves in the wreckage.

No matter the excuse, there's no way there won't be a mass reaction afterwards. Sure, other countries may well avoid taking direct part in the immediate hostilities, but soon after you'll see a counter-block if only due to realist concerns (after all, if China can get away with that the world is already multi-polar).

If war happens, I expect an attempt at a quick military win and slow starvation if and only if the ordinary military efforts outright fail; And the alternative being humiliating defeat which the CCP can't afford, and the CCP doesn't get some face saving way to climb down.

IMHO, at any other scenario it's better for the CCP to sacrifice men and win in an ordinary manner than to get much of the world to unite against it.

I think you massively underestimate the psychological effect of seeing a first-world country reduced to a third-world country if Taiwan doesn't surrender very quickly. Also, the realist concern is classic 'balance the strongest power' dynamic.

I don't think China has to worry about an outright official blockade, but you'll end up with a Cold War rerun and Chinese companies being unofficially driven off the West, SK and Japan working together, possible SK/Japan nukes at the very least. China played a lot of cards trying to keep other countries not ganged up against it, best not ruin it to get a devastated province. Simply put, any starvation scenario where Taiwan decides to fight will be a disaster for CCP too.

So I believe any CCP strategist understands it's better to sacrifice men and take Taiwan outright without turning it to Yemen (a preference which you stated as well). A quick enough operation will be ignored by the world for reasons you provided, and they may well be in a position to do that soon. The 'wait out months/years and publicly starve out Taiwan' is incredibly poor in comparison.

The reason I dismiss quick invasion is for all the reasons analyst cite why invading Taiwan would be hard. Landing operations on Taiwan scale has never been done before. It will massively outscope Normandy. I question if it's even feasible. Let alone quick. Especially with massively telescoped logistics movement that US/TW can rapidly react to. Whereas quick air superiority and naval blockade is the kind of campaign that can be disguised with annual exercises. The main reason cited for why PRC would want a quick invasion is to prevent US intervention on Taiwan proper... but US lost that option. So it's not a relevant factor. And it shows in actual Chinese military acquisitions very few additions to amphibious capabilities, massive blue water naval buildup. PRC's only concern so far seems to be circumventing US counter-blockade. There's almost no credible movement towards amphib capabilities outside of notional signalling exercises with ~100 amphib tanks total. PRC sent 900+ tanks to Russia for military exercises. I would not presume an invasion until China properly invests in amphib capabilities.

SK/Japan working together... I doubt with their history. Ditto with Japan nuclearizing against their constitution. If they did, there'd be no reason to host US bases. I don't actually think China has played a lot of cards so far, there's just a lack of coordination in the region because... everyone fucking hates each other. Japan/Korean/China hate triangle. SCS is a 6 party dispute. ASEAN has divided loyalties. There's only a vague consensus that the future is Asian, and US is useful to hedge against China, but not at the expense of sabotaging everyone's collective future. As for EU/Anglos, maybe. But at the end of the day, Taiwan is full of yellow people. 1st world countries stood by while secular, liberalizing brown countries got repressed back to poverty by US foreign intervention. My opinion is they'll stand at sidelines if China is sufficient local hegemon, especially if the realist want China to check against US. EU has their own foreign policy aspirations after all. Multipolarity means EU + China against US. Or at least EU not teaming up with US against China. EU + China has their own interest alignments. Both EU and China require maritime hydro carbon trade as existential matter. China having parity blue water navy as US to also secure trade routes is good for everyone who wants to continue to freeload. And unlike US, EU knows China has to provide this service indefinitely, and is reliable if core interests respected (like Taiwan). Ultimately, if west wants to divest from China, it's survivable. They account for 10% of Chinese GDP. If you told Xi today to take a 10% hit on GDP in exchange for Taiwan, he'd take that deal.

Of course peaceful is always preferable. It's just hard to see how that could be charted right now. My gut feeling is cracking down on HK is reset of one country two systems, 30 years is a long time to mold HK into a more enticing alternative than one country one system. I think Taiwan can get away with some sort of suzerainty option with understanding that it's only delaying the inevitable.

A. Siege type pressure when one lets food in (or food is passed in anyway) have extremely poor success rate since WW2. Note that Yemen itself wasn't conquered (given the terrain and people, any idea of conquering it was laughable in the first place). Eventually PLA will either go Yemen, attack directly, or stop. All options are bad or worse than just attacking without trying a siege.

B. SK and Japan will band if threat is deemed extreme enough. Or go nuke.

C. The typically discussed invasion scenario is very tilted towards what American Marines did in WW2. A smart PLA would instead be far more aggressive on exploiting its air superiority, upto mobilizing sea assets after the air attack or even doing a Crete 1941 style attack. There are things Taiwan can do to defend, but it hasn't yet and I am not sure it's going to happen.

Scarborough Shoal, 2012. All the major geopolitical problems with China can be traced to the strategic failure of this one event. It will define the next 20 years of US-China relations.

Everything is still the same, the One China Policy[1] hasn't changed: There's only One China and Taiwan belongs to China. Everything still going through non-official channel which is AIT. Nothing has changed.

Source: I live in Taiwan.

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[1]: https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-taiwan/

"...the United States recognized the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, acknowledging the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China."

The US _acknowledges_ the Chinese position, but it does not _recognize_ it. So the US official policy is explicitly _not_ "There's only One China and Taiwan belongs to China".

> The United States does not support Taiwan independence.

That speaks volumes on US' instance.

I lived long enough to see that Taiwan is mere a pawn to attack China. If dropping a nuclear bomb on Taiwan could set back China, US will do it in a heartbeat. This is how the world politics works. Always have been.

--

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang_Hsien-yi

Source: I live in America and pay too much attention to foreign policy commentators

Action speaks louder than words.

https://allthingsnuclear.org/gkulacki/what-is-the-secret-agr...

Nixon's Trip to China, The National Security Archive, Declassified, 2003:

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB106/

Record of Historic Richard Nixon-Zhou Enlai Talks in February 1972 Now Declassified, ~. [See listed documents linked individually, for ex: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nsa/publications/DOC_readers/kiss...]

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nsa/publications/DOC_readers/kiss...

The One China Policy: What Would Nixon Do? (2017)

https://thediplomat.com/2017/01/the-one-china-policy-what-wo...

Asia After Viet Nam, Richard Nixon, 1967 (pdf)

https://cdn.nixonlibrary.org/01/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/1...