Summary
Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated in his New Year’s speech that Taiwan’s “reunification” with China is inevitable.
China has escalated military activity around Taiwan, including frequent incursions near the island and sanctions on U.S.-linked companies over arms sales to Taipei.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te rejected Beijing’s claims, stating Taiwan’s future can only be decided by its people.
Lai also criticized China’s restrictions on travel and education exchanges with Taiwan, calling for dignified, reciprocal relations based on goodwill and equality.
That’s a joke, right? Taiwan is literally about 90 miles away from mainland China. The USA could park every ship we have and that still wouldn’t work. If China wants Taiwan, then they will get it even if Taiwan is largely destroyed doing it.
The USA already prevents the Chinese from getting the top processors from Taiwan, so blowing up the factory will hurt the USA much more than China. Not to mention kneecap Musk and the tech bros that have been supporting Trump.
No, it’s not a joke. And putting a small amount of thought into it makes clear that the US believes it can effectively defend Taiwan - it wouldn’t keep such volumes of weaponry there if it believed it would trivially fall into China’s hands.
The US’ Center for Strategic and International Studies has wargamed this 24 times for conventional warfare only and 15 times for consideration of the use of nuclear weapons. In both scenarios, they found they would likely be able to successfully preserve Taiwan’s autonomy.
I think you deeply underestimate just how difficult and expensive in manpower and materiel it is to perform a naval invasion, especially against a nation whose military is specialised for pretty much exclusively that purpose.
Naval superiority is naval superiority; if you can’t get your military to the other side of the strait, you can’t invade the island, regardless of distance. The actual question is whether Taiwan would be able to hold off an invasion for long enough for the US navy to reach and control the strait, which is reasonably likely given the US rents a large number of naval bases in the region for just this purpose.
I’m going to just go ahead and ignore your second paragraph, since it’s entirely unrelated to the US’s military capability wrt to Taiwan.
Haven’t both Taiwan and China both been stockpiling an essentially unlimited supply of long range anti-ship missiles for about a decade now? I can’t imagine China having a fun time even landing troops but it’d be equally hellish for any US ships attempting to exist in the general area.
The US surface ships can sit outside the Chinese medium range envelope and attack only the landing forces. They don’t need to hit Chinese mainland, that’s what the 71 submarines are for. The long range missiles are then easy to defeat because there aren’t enough to saturate the air defense.
I think you nearly overestimate the appetite of the USA government or people to engage in such a massive conflict over Taiwan. The new administration has made it clear support for Ukraine is on thin ice and a deal can be made with Russia to end the fighting. Why not with China as well?
How do you know? My impression is that any deal without security guarantees from the West will just be violated in about two years or so by Russia, and Russia would refuse to make a deal with such security guarantees for exactly that reason.
If Russia changes its mind and says it would be willing to accept such a deal, I would change my mind. Actually I still wouldn’t because Russia are the lyingest bastards I know, but whatever. It hasn’t happened. It would never happen.
Imperialists cannot be reasoned with without credible threats of violence. If it were otherwise, they wouldn’t be imperialist.
One of the primary reasons trump wants to reduce the US’ focus on Russia and Ukraine is to prioritise their position towards China. That’s not to say Trump might not decide against direct involvement; he’s famously erratic, but the semiconductor production of Taiwan is an critical economic dependency that can’t be replaced in the short term.
That’s 5 hours in the open, with every weapon system in the Pacific Ocean firing at you. Good luck?
There has been work to replicate the capabilities in Taiwan on US soil. While it hasn’t been going great, it has been progressing. At some point it is quite possible that Taiwan will no longer be as strategic a partner with America as they are now, which doesn’t bode well for their continued assistance from America. But if there comes a time that China will take Taiwan you can be guaranteed that everything possible will be done to reduce the risk of technology transfer.
But you have to factor in deliberate effort already to eliminate the CHIPS act by Congress. I’m sure it will get the axe in the new administration.
The rush had been increased because of the efforts Western governments like the USA have made to prevent China from getting the chips from Taiwan, that encourages the Chinese to develop their own capacity but also eliminated the hit they would take if processor production in Taiwan was crippled by conflict.
The actual ace in the hole protecting Taiwan is the fact that the Chinese want the Taiwanese to join willingly, but if the Chinese economy has continued trouble than Xi will be under pressure to demonstrate strength and that is where they could make a move on Taiwan.