Promising the defense of Taiwan might be logical since bleeding edge semiconductors are like a limited resource, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone there. I mean if there are 10-15 stable years like HK, it wouldn't be the greatest but it wouldn't be terrible either. Old folks there still remember dirt poor Taiwan and the hardships they ate to reach success, but they aren't going to be the ones fighting for Taiwan's defense. Nor are the youth apparently... Birth rates are plummeting in SK and Taiwan, while costs of living is continuing to squeeze out Taiwanese graduates due to wage supression. It's gotten so bad that their vaunted healthcare system will see prolonged stress in personnel if they don't figure out how to replace the doctors that are retiring and at cost. Overall, the geopolitics in the next 5 yrs prob won't feel the same in the next 10. Too much demographic change, climate change, and a continuation of deglobalization in combination with rapid advances in AI and general computing. The Singularity might be a comin, but the violent social shifts are outpacing the novelty of wearing dorky glasses in order to move around digital avatars and monies... Things are happening too fast with extreme volatility
Except that many people in HK feel betrayed by the PRC and the promises they made. If the PRC had actually lived up to the promises it made Taiwan might’ve peacefully joined the PRC by now.
Yeah no kidding. I doubt anyone wants that a hk-style reunification upfront, even the kmt. Duly held elections via a democratic constitution are one thing. "Voting" for China is like voting for emperor Trump... That said, I'll have to go back to the analogy where a person/family is living with a neighbor (more like cult leader) brandishing guns at them in broad daylight with onlookers are telling the family to "stand up to the bullies". And should anything happen...wait for the police that will require at least six months to bring in the swat team. Taiwanese will look at those options and defer to the status quo and hope they can wait things out. But if China starts amassing troops despite risking conflict with a 4+ nation coalition, Taiwanese know they will be ****ed for a generation or two regardless of the conflict's outcome. So maybe you roll the dice and hope china's problems magnify while it's digesting a golden egg for at most a decade. Surely your family in Taiwan has considered that. The older ones are more pragmatic than the vocal younger folks who don't even have a year's worth of training to defend their homeland. Taiwan wants F35s yet don't even have enough pilots with the requisite flying times to fully man their fleet of F16s. Flowery words, like knowing, is half the battle.
I think it goes beyond bleeding edge semiconductors. Similar with Ukraine, why would Russia/China stop there? China has built up artificial islands in contested territory towards the Philippines too because controlling the Taiwan Strait still doesn't give you control of their neighborhood.
There are plenty of reasons to risk global economic collapse and WW3 via kinetic conflict to defend Taiwan, but I'm more interested in what reasons a chickenhawk, maga isolationist President would give to do so. A guy like that sold out HK protestors for multi-million dollar licensing and franchising deals for his princess. And this is on top of shitposting Lebron and woke NBA for the Durrell Murry scandal.
Interesting to see "how many?" It's like 1 dope in this thread who has been a slavish Putin bootlicker dating back years. "interesting"? it's about as interesting as Elon musk tweeting a 5 year old meme.
Well, that's neat about Russian nuclear submarine capabilities. About as useful as highlighting the fact the U.S. had the best submarine fleet in the world while waging war in Afghanistan though.
China continues to assist Putin and Russia. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are doing more than China to help out Vladimir Putin and Russia with their invasion and attempted subjugation of Ukraine. We have just reached the end of the monies we had to send defensive aid to Ukraine. Apparently, those GOP members of Congress never took world history in school, or else slept through it. There are very disturbing similarities between Putin and Adolf Hitler. From The Financial Times: Perhaps unsurprisingly, Chinese shipments to Russia of advanced machine tools have increased tenfold since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago. The Financial Times has more. https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/01/the-d-brief-january-03-2024/393073/
It really isn’t in the same tier as the USA. It is one of the 2-3 best in the world, but there is a real gap between #1 and #2.
