Numerous polls of the Taiwanese show that they would want to join the US if given the choice between independent statehood, joining the mainland, and joining the US.
Plus, the US gets a nice permanent military base and gets to monitor all future Chinese submarine activity.
If China attacks a US state, it would be like Yamamoto's "sleeping giant" moment. The US is trying to force China's hand while there is power asymmetry, and I can't think of a better checkmate move.
I could see Taiwan becoming a US territory, but I doubt as a nation they would really like that.
Either of these options woii I led probably be viewed by China as an act of war...
You mean by China? I would certainly agree. Even with most countries not acknowledging Taiwan nationhood I would expect a strong international reaction to any military action by China due to Taiwan's special place in international technology exports.
And anyway, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't see and attack of a Taiwanese US state as a Pearl Harbor because its non sensical. Taiwan has 100 million people. Theres no way that population transfers to create the bonds necessary to make Taiwan “American” could occur. Hawaii had been a US colony for 50 years and mainland Americans had moved in displacing the natives. What is nationhood for you? How is Taiwan in any way American? They have little in common with us, yet you would make them the largest US state?
Taiwan is Chinese. Their family bonds are deep, and they share a common language and culture. The ancestor shrines for most Taiwanese (being refugees from the mainland) are in China.
Itd be much better to recognize Taipei as China and Beijing as a de-facto, yet criminal, ruler like we did before Nixon.
Either way, Taipei is perfectly capable of defending itself. Allied with Korea and a re-militarized Japan, they’d be the most fearsome military power in the world.
I mean, imagine the scenario where Taiwan becomes a U.S. state and then China invades and takes it anyways. And suppose the U.S. can't take it back without all-out (possibly nuclear) war, so they back down and let China have it.
That's a possible outcome that would have to be contemplated if Taiwan were to join the U.S.
I would sure hope so with Taiwan we allow that, but I personally believe if we get to that point we've already lost and the world will look very very different. Unless we're talking about precautionary evacuations and even still doesn't send a lot of confidence.
Seems like TSMC is a great first target too, unless MAD stands.
When will China have enough internal capacity and knowledge? Before the US? I know the US has large old fabs like one in MN I think that are secure for government needs so minimally we have that + Intel.
I'm a big China hawk though and strongly believe in more direction pressure now, let alone squirming away from our bluster & protection commitments if China becomes even more aggressive.
Really, tell me, what is the argument for DC statehood that isn’t more fairly addresses by returning it to MD?
Second Puerto Rico is an oppressed colony, and statehood is not a gift but the final step of erasing their dream of independence. As a Latin American “¡Yanquis, pendejos, váyase de L. America!”
I disagree, but am of the personal opinion that our advantage shrinks each year we don't seriously confront CCP.
So there is loads of bad blood and pergaps easiest thing to happen is gor generations to change under status quo and for memory of these atrocities to fade into the background.
I agree on PR it's not as liberal at least socially as many would assume. But DC is 100% a very very liberal city.
Polling has moved our direction, right now a plurality outside the margin nationwide support DC statehood at least in the last polls I've seen asking it.
And personally as you can guess my obvious political worldview I also don't think DC statehood alone is even enough power to seriously tip the scales against all the Republican tactics and advantages with the many other small states with aging populations/young wealthy people moving out. DC would just tip the scale slightly more towards equal IMHO
Taiwan and Taiwanese people don’t feel this way at all.
But China could easily wreck Taiwan's infrastructure and industry without invading.
TSMC will not allow them to be built any other way.
Not only is it entirely possible to prevent Chinese capture but it's arguably possible for Taiwan to achieve this on their own with minimal to no US intervention. This will likely change in the future, but for the next decade their sovereignty is relatively assured.
To say amphibious invasions are difficult is itself a massive understatement. Taiwan is armed to the teeth and and has incredibly hostile terrain all along its coasts effectively making any attempt on the area a guaranteed bloodbath.
>the US gets
C'mon, this is not how geopolitics works. China could easily defend this land from US incursion and they aren't even letting Taiwan be independent let alone let US take it for themselves.
Well if the Yanks are smart, the second it becomes a US state you strongly encourage two way migration so there are a bunch of square-jawed, grass-fed, All American kids living there that the US press can get exited about. Jack, Diane, and Tyrone getting shot at by the PLA is going to be a Big Fucking Deal.
Heck, if I was Taiwan I’d stop spending money on defence and just start spending money giving free university tuition to Americans.
China's goal has been to maintain a nuclear deterrent (make it not worthwhile to strike China) rather than an offensive capability.
if nukes flew then China would likely fragment into many separate countries: its centralized command structure would be destroyed and local politics would be the rule. Look at China's history to see its future after a nuclear war:
Those trade restrictions just galvanize the Chinese to develop the capabilities themselves. And their system doesn't create a need for a big splashy foreign conflict to sell to the hogs for votes. They're more capable of making the smart play than we are.
It's hard to tell what you intend by your DDG link, but perhaps you are suggesting that, in the case of nuclear war, China will effectively revert to the Warring States Period of 2500 years ago. Is that really your intention? What would the US look like if it were returned to 2500 years ago, before the rise of the Anasazi and the Mound Builders, before the Olmec invented writing? A much more likely outcome than this sort of quasi time travel is that either a post-nuclear US or a post-nuclear China would look like nothing ever seen before in human history, more closely resembling the world in the immediate aftermath of the Chicxulub impact.
Which is a strength. China has further to fall than the US. That old history is still history. The US would cobble together into something more reminiscent of something later into history by virtue of a shorter memory span...whether or not that is beneficial in this hypothetical future is a different question.
It's true that people in the US don't know what happened there 2500 years ago, but people in China don't know much of what happened there 2500 years ago either (partly the fault of Qin Shi Huang), and in either place, there's no particular reason to expect it to happen again, other than metaphorical fuzzy thinking about falling and cobbling, and the general tendency of human societies to do things that human societies can do instead of things they can't.
Even if post-apocalyptic China were seized with a historical-reenactment fervor and Sima Qian were the new bestselling author, the material conditions of production today are quite different from those that prevailed in the Bronze Age. People won't suddenly forget how to use their shortwave radios, smelt iron, and make gunpowder just because it's radioactive outside. At least some surveillance satellites will surely remain in orbit. Semiarticulated trucks with tank escorts could still carry materiel to battlefronts orders of magnitude faster than porters with wheelbarrows or even the Grand Canal. The whole scenario is just nonsense.
Strong central government collapses -> country fractures into regions controlled by warlords -> new strong central government arises. China has seen that movie many, many times in its history.
China only loses its oil shipments if it can't secure shipping through the Indian ocean or build an overland alternative. It won't make a move until those are complete.
shortwave radios? With no electrical power, no batteries?
"smelt iron" with coal, maybe! Now you've got wrought iron, which is good for what, horseshoes? Hedge your bets and buy a couple of horses tomorrow. [Bad news: I can imagine your neighbors' queries: "Hey, Bing, what's with the sudden interest in horses, eh? You aren't worried about some crazy sort of apocalypse, are ya? Whaddaya gonna do - ride off into the sunset or sumthin'?" Good news: you can eat a horse!]
"Make gunpowder" - for what, other than to blow up any remaining local CCP leaders. But it would be easier and more satisfying to kill them by hand.
"surveillance satellites"? where do you download data? Why? Where are the encryption codes? Most CCP command structures would be smoked.
"Semi-articulated trucks with tank escorts" is a laugh - with no diesel/gas, no repair facilities and no roads.
"to battlefields"? What battlefields? Oh, of course, so they can fight the Chinese living in the next valley. But before they do that, how about getting something to eat? Maybe you could roll up to the local Kentucky Fried Chicken in your 'semi-articulated truck'!8-))
"The whole scenario is just nonsense." - finally you got one right! What you envision _is_ nonsense.
The point of my post was that for a post-apocalyptic China, geography is destiny. The country would be fragmented socially and politically out of necessity. The most likely political structure to result is one that supports a more primitive infrastructure. China would fall into a number of separate independent regions. The CCP might survive somewhere but more likely would be snuffed out by the people, who would not appreciate the war the CCP had brought upon them.
Similarly, when the strong central government in Mycenaean Greece collapsed in the Bronze Age Collapse, Greece fractured into "regions controlled by warlords." Then one of those warlords, Alexandros, conquered Persia, most of the Mediterranean, Turkey, much what is now Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and part of India. Then he died, and his empire fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then the Roman Republic conquered most of the same region (not coincidentally becoming a Greek-speaking empire in the process), plus part of Britain and most of Western Europe, and fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then the Holy Roman Empire arose and reunified a lot of those regions, at least in name (arguably, much like the later Zhou) and then fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then Napoleon arose and reunified a lot of those regions, including parts of Russia that Rome and the Holy Roman Empire had never reached, but that didn't last long, and the warlords retook control from Napoleon pretty quickly. Even the Bourbons got restored! Then Hitler arose and reunified a lot of those regions, but his "country" fractured into regions controlled by warlords even more quickly. Then the European Union arose and reunified a lot of those same regions again by winning the loyalty of local warlords like Charles de Gaulle, Paul-Henri Spaak, and Joseph Luns. Or, alternatively, NATO did. Or the UN.
And you can tell a similar story about Russia.
You could reasonably object that NATO, the EU, the UN, and the Holy Roman Empire aren't or weren't "strong central governments" as we know them today. Well, they weren't Westphalian states, it's true. But neither were any of the reigns of Chinese emperors we're talking about here. And, although if you go to overseas Chinese school you might be taught a simple linear succession of dynasties, the truth in China is much more complicated, just as the truth about western Europe is much more complicated than my linear version above.
What does that have to do with what Russia would do if the nukes started flying? Does the collapse of the Kievan Rus' in the face of the Golden Horde mean that Russia's command structure would collapse in the 20 minutes needed to launch a counterattack? The Scythian king Ateas, from what is now Russia, fought in his dotage and fell in battle with Philip of Macedon in 00339 BCE, and his empire collapsed. Should we thus infer that his successor Vladimir Putin will remain in power too long and make Russia weak, easy pickings for a new conqueror?
Such inferences are obviously ridiculous.
Nuclear retaliation might take 20 minutes. The diesel UPS will last that long.
What would the aftermath look like months or years later, though?
Big coal power plants might be targeted, but most solar panels will continue to work; those can run shortwave radios for decades, giving you transcontinental and intercontinental logistical coordination capabilities Duke Huan of Chen would have sold his soul for. Moreover, a Bitcoin transaction is a few hundred bytes; if a backup of your private keys survived on your phone, you can transmit money to anyone anywhere in the world who promises to send you a nice F-14 or two.
> "smelt iron" with what - coal maybe! Now you've got wrought iron, which is good for what,
Essentially all of the iron and steel in the world today is smelted with coal, just as most of it has been since the Song Dynasty switched their blast furnaces over from charcoal to fossil fuel 900 years ago. Modern minimills can of course produce higher-quality steel in electric arc furnaces, but they must start with iron. But there's a huge quantity of iron around; we aren't going back to using knives as money anytime soon.
> "Make gunpowder" - for what, other than to blow up any remaining local PRC leaders.
The tactics and strategy of the Warring States Period are inseparable from the weapons of the time. Even a small Haber-Bosch plant is sufficient to produce enough cordite to annihilate any army of antiquity or even medieval times. Any "warlord" who manages to organize such a thing in the months or years after a putative collapse would hail from the current power structure, which is to say, the Chinese Communist Party.
> "surveillance satellites"? where do you download data? Why?
The tactics and strategy of the Warring States Period are also inseparable from the reconnaissance technology of the time, which didn't even have cameras or telescopes, much less quadcopters, radio-controlled planes, helium balloons, bottle rockets, submarines, SR-71s, and surveillance satellites. No state which didn't have access to such things would be able to resist conquest by those that do. Even NOAA GOES imagery, which is transmitted unencrypted and routinely received by amateurs, would be a decisive strategic advantage over armies that lacked it.
> Most PRC command structures would be smoked.
It seems unlikely that the organization that defeated Japan alongside the Kuomintang, and then defeated the Kuomintang, is as incapable of contingency and succession planning as you seem to think.
> no diesel/gas, no repair facilities and no roads
You can blow holes in highways with atomic bombs; Tsar Bomba's fireball had a radius of 3.5 km, so it could probably interrupt a highway for a few kilometers. But you can't destroy a whole highway, much less all the highways across a whole country; not even the US has enough bombs. Similarly, you can't destroy all the diesel fuel or all the repair facilities in a whole country with just nukes.
What you can do is kill a lot of people. But you probably can't kill everybody in China without killing most of the people in allied countries as well: not just Taiwan, but Japan, Mongolia, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, and plausibly most of Europe as well. Even then, it's likely that hardened facilities would survive.
> The PRC might survive somewhere but more likely would be snuffed out by the people, who would not appreciate the war the PRC had brought upon them
Did this happen in the Battle of Britain, with unappreciative British citizens blaming the Queen and Winston Churchill for the war they had brought upon them? Did it happen in Pearl Harbor, with the Hawaiians booting out the US Navy that had brought such a bombing upon them? Did it happen in the US occupation of Japan, with the Japanese populace angrily ripping Emperor Hirohito and his generals limb from limb as punishment for bringing American nuclear war upon them? Did it happen after 9/11, with the American people snuffing out George W. Bush's government? It's really unusual for a population to side with foreign invaders and bombers against their own elites.
More to the point, "snuffing out" a group requires organization and discipline. An army can do it, and a police force might be able to, but for "the people" to do it, they need some kind of organizational structure, which prioritizes and coordinates the snuffing. Guess what the organizational structure of mainland China is?
I fail to see how "shortwave radios" would be particularly useful for the 20 minutes of "nuclear retaliation",
Bitcoin transactions require networked computers which, again, won't be around w/o power/batteries, a working network, etc.
Implementing the Haber-Bosch process requires very sophisticated engineering, machining and careful operation. Lots of trial and error is involved.
simply making "cordite" is only one step in producing an artillery shell. There's the gun, it's transport, the shell casing, the primer, the aiming mechanism, etc. You must train the gunner, etc.
That "organization that defeated Japan" you speak of would most likely not be present (would be destroyed),
No need to kill everyone in China. Just the "A Ship" and they're all in Beijing. Pollution is bad there already and would be even worse after a nuclear war!8-))
One person can "snuff out" a group.
Why do I get the feeling I'm talking to a child who is fairly well-educated but has a patchy understanding of the real world, someone better at history than at science? Maybe someone who games a bit? I think I'll stop this dialogue here.
Correct, the fact that nuclear retaliation takes a few minutes, not months or years, means that your hypothetical disintegration scenario is irrelevant to my original point: in the event of a full-blown war between the USA and PRC, there will be no semiconductor fabs in the USA, foreign-owned or otherwise.
Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting to explore your postulated post-apocalyptic recapitulation of the Spring and Autumn Period, and shortwave radios are among the things that render it impossible.
I understand that it can be confusing to talk about two different hypothetical situations that happen at different times in the same hypothetical timeline. That's why I separated them into two paragraphs, with a one-sentence paragraph separating them, in order to keep you from confusing them: "The diesel UPS will last that long. What would the aftermath look like months or years later, though? Big coal power plants might be targeted, but most solar panels will continue to work; those can run shortwave radios for decades."
Perhaps repeating the point, as I have above, will have helped you to understand it better. I know it's confusing! But I have faith in you, Bunky!
> Bitcoin transactions require networked computers which, again, won't be around w/o power/batteries, a working network, etc.
This is not correct. Signing a Bitcoin transaction requires a computer, which does not have to be networked or powered on continuously. A small solar panel to charge your USB power bank is plenty of power. Once you have signed the transaction you do need to get it to the Bitcoin network somehow. Because it's a few hundred bytes and contains no secret data, you can base64 encode it and send it by skywave CW Morse code at 10 millibaud if you have to. Not that that would be necessary in practice.
> they're all in Beijing. Pollution is bad there already
It seems that your knowledge of current events in China is nearly as profound as your knowledge of cryptocurrencies, political science, and metallurgy.
> Why do I get the feeling I'm talking to a child who is fairly well-educated but has a patchy understanding of the real world, someone better at history than at science? Maybe someone who games a bit?
Probably because, being the person who said, "The CCP might survive somewhere but more likely would be snuffed out by the people, who would not appreciate the war the CCP had brought upon them," and "'smelt iron' with coal, maybe! Now you've got wrought iron, which is good for what, horseshoes?", you have no basis on which to judge my understanding except ego defense. And, I suppose, you're insecure enough about your maturity to imagine that likening someone a child is some kind of rhetorical power move that might compensate for your total lack of relevant knowledge and epistemic humility.
I did play D&D once, though, 30 years ago. And I played Settlers about once a month in the 02001-02006 period. So you're not entirely wrong.
Putting the cart before the horse, that US could occupy this land before China defends it. Also, this is such a nerd bro theory, as if only you are clever enough to see the game being played...the US government could somehow completely fool their citizens into being bait for a war, moving to a disputed territory that inevitably will be a battleground, or again that anyone on the mainland will suddenly want to die for newly settled territory, conned into war so to speak. These square-jawed, grass-fed people are just very stupid, is your claim?
― Mark Twain
http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/smo... - - -
Related article: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/05/origin-expre...
Or it might be the guy who wrote http://canonical.org/%7Ekragen/sw/dev3/paperalgo, http://canonical.org/%7Ekragen/sw/urscheme/, http://canonical.org/~kragen/bytebeat/, https://github.com/kragen/dumpulse, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2933619, https://gitlab.com/kragen/bubbleos/blob/master/yeso, https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=695981 in the past, and within the last three months wrote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27171597, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26930408, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26884231, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26674832, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26672806, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26671656, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26654767, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26596892, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26587768, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26581742, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561319, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26547871, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26543937, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26580684, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26528534, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26525837, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26525109, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/qvaders, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26452393, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/skitch, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26449902, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/meta5ixrun.py, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26438596, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/mukanren.ml, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26418271, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/kmregion.h, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26299172, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/readprint.fs, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26289195, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26219950, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26219000, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26198567, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26231940, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26189525, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26195060.
I'm not going to link to particular comments in https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=giardini (it would be too easy to think I was cherry-picking the worst ones) but you can read through it yourself and see that the guy has a long history of almost nothing but incessant worthless trolling.
If you can't tell the difference...
But as his own internet posting history shows, he seems quick to anger and, while quite well-schooled in some respects, he is unable to recognize that there's something seriously inherently flawed in his thought processes. And before that flaw, whatever it is, can fully reveal itself, he goes off screaming "troll!".
I'm not in bad company, apparently kragen also said some very bad things about Eric Naggum, although kragen raged after Naggum died (wish he'd done the same for me, but...) And the comparison is unfair in that I'm neither so talented nor so demanding as Naggum was. And I love a good laugh.
Good News: this is the first such person I've met on HN so I think such is a rarity.
