Is China invading Taiwan inevitable and what will US defend it??

It's inevitable. May be tomorrow, may be after our grandchildren are all dead. No way to know, but Russia's latest misadventure has probably cooled their eagerness to do it.

 

Props to China for actually wargaming this out. Unlike Putin and his eggcrate tanks.

 

I think Taiwan becoming part of China proper is inevitable. The question is whether it will be peaceful or not. As time goes by, the probability of a peaceful union rises. China likely will politically become more democratic as time goes by.

 

China should wait until Trump is president again. Then give Trump a good trade deal he can crow about in exchange for looking the other way when they invade Taiwan.

 

Maybe Trump can get China and Taiwan bidding against each other?

 

Yeah, so? Neither is (was) destitute leading up to war.

 

I wish I shared your optimism. China isn't showing any signs of moving towards being more democratic. In fact they are drifting towards being a fascist state ruled by a "party" that has a single leader making decisions. You never say never.... but doesn't look good.

As for Taiwan, hopefully the USA has a President with back bone when China makes their move, so that the USA can militarily stop it.

 

A war with China will be a world war, so it will absolutely will be more costly.

My point was simply that China is doing it's due diligence in military planning, unlike Russia, which came in like an old drunken Boomer at a bike rally.

I'm certainly not rooting for them.

 

The long-term cost to the US of China expanding its footprint into Taiwan is also much greater than Russia expanding its footprint into Ukraine.

 

The Russian military has lagged behind in certain ways because it started later, but it is a huge military budget and I agree that it is likely being under reported. The USA military is still vastly superior, but I am not sure that the USA is willing to go all out like it would need to. The USA likes to "dabble".

 

The PRC has been buiding up their naval and air ability the last few decades not just for Taiwan but be able to project power in many places. I still think they are a few years from being able to credibly invade Taiwan and I believe that the PRC is willing to play the long game relying on soft power.

I also think seeing what is happening in Ukraine has given them a pause. I don't think they predicted that Russia would do so poorly, the Ukrainians would fight back so well, and more importantly how united NATO and the US allies are.

While things in the PRC aren't going good with the Xi regime getting far more authoritarian that has also undercut their soft power campaign to entice Taiwan. Particularly what has happened in Hong Kong with the CCP moving to exert more control and crack down and backtrack on agreements that were made during the handover have shown that the CCP can't be trusted with One Country Two Systems.

Another sign to hope is that there are reports that Xi's grip on power isn't as tight as it was. The Zero Infection COVID policy has come at great social and economic cost while not completely containing COVID. Putin's failures in Ukraine aren't reflecting well on Xi's embrace of him and is a large reason why even though CCP propaganda supports Putin they aren't really providing much support to Russia. Especially regarding relief from sanctions.

 

Americans have never known real defeat or (recently) real hardship and we lack the imagination to contemplate the possibilities.

This is the same mistake Japan made at Pearl Harbor - "punch them in the nose and they'll see how much it will cost and they'll get scared and give up". All it did was piss us off. Honestly, maybe it should have scared us back then, but it just didn't even register.

Counting on Americans to imagine the cost of defeat and become circumspect is a sucker's bet. It's not that we're super brave or anything, we just can't even imagine defeat.

Eventually someone will come along and kick our ass and create a national crisis of culture, bur until that happens...

 

In a conventional war the US beats the PRC. Any all out war with the PRC won't stay conventional.

 

CCP has made many comments in the past decades to move back to their Communism roots, even as far as closing their trade borders to go "full Communism". They tried to **** around with their tech giants last year and started back peddling when a trillion in market cap from those companies melted away. They also have tight currency controls that make the Yuan hard to hold out of Chinese hands (and also help cause the real estate bubble they're currently suffering from)

Xi getting his president for life third term as General Secretary later this year will likely cement their plan to circle the fascist/commy wagons unless there's another coup attempt that will spook the party into preemptively shaking things up.

I still don't think China will provoke an invasion for at least another 5 years. I mean Taiwan can still declare independence, but given a binary choice, half of its people don't want independence. Last I read, 80% prefer the current status quo even if they're slowly suffocated through China's soft power.

Maybe they'll spark advancements in carrier killing tech, 5th gen aircraft, superior drone tech, and some space/rocket tech in order to make some credible statement.

Even then it's hard to gauge value in an amphibious assault that'd have to be greater than D-Day with unknown odds that Taiwan will fight in the mountains to the bitter end.

Better off bribing the KMT to paralyze them slowly while using Taiwan as a prop to spark nationalism among the Chinese rather than mount a costly 6-12 month long quagmire that'll certainly have a Russia-like death toll.

Ofc, the US could prop up Taiwan for war in order to take China down a peg if we have default issues with our debt and currency. Nothing like a good war to make people forget a **** economy and a 30T debt burden that could plausibly grow by 20% in the next 5 years.

But even then, I'd hazard they'd try to wrangle India into some mess rather than bet solely on Taiwan.

 

The Chinese government is an abomination.