Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Chinese leader would 'try to use other ways to do this.”
I think the best course of action for China is lower the tone and try to have some business with Taiwan (I don’t know if they have it now) and from there go up until both side become partners.
Well they basically tried that already. They tried to strike up a trade agreement with the then ruling conservative power that would give China significant economic and thus political influence. But the Taiwanese people were smart enough to see through that. There was a popular uprising, the legislative building got occupied by student protestors, the agreement was retracted and the then president lost the next election in a landslide.
China’s way of partnering is through domination, and under Xi it is no longer even a matter of opinion or interpretation. The Taiwanese know that well, while the rest of the world is readjusting after a half century of concessions and “trying to be good friends”.
China doesn’t believe in/wants/cares about a world order with all countries equal under the same international laws, and that’s what I personally find to be the scariest for the world’s stability in the long term (rather than the naive “democracies are good vs authoritarianisms are bad and hence we should align against CN/RU”).
Yet as much as I would wish for this, I don’t think it’s the way of thinking of those in charge.
Sounds reasonable, even under very generous assumptions regarding the expansion of the Chinese army, there’s no way they can take Taiwan within the next few decades (unless big, but unlikely, changes in alliances in the region), according to military strategists. And by that time, those generous assumptions might no longer be tolerable for the Chinese economy.
Well, there have been a lot of war games that currently show China losing but by a small margin. It’s likely that in less than a decade China would win by a small margin. According to many US generals.
So while your wrong, China almost certainly could take Taiwan in less than a decade, I would argue that there’s no chance in hell they would do it. Winning by a small margin here means millions if deaths if not nuclear war. This would be massacre that would make both Israel and Russia’s violence look down right peaceful.
And it’s not like China hasn’t shown it’s hand in what it would do. War is not China’s goal, a blockade is.
With the way the economy is going there, I can’t imagine that we can expect that China will remain as it is now in a few decades. The entire thing is ready to come tumbling down at any moment.
Are those games weighing Taiwan’s defense capabilities versus China alone? In practice China would be up against the USA, and Korea, and Japan, and the Philippines and a plausible economic and logistics alliance of most countries in the region. I am not a military strategist but the sheer numbers alone are not in favor of China, and that is ignoring the tactical challenges at play.
It includes allies. This is because of the tyranny of distance. US simply cannot power project enough to take on China with Taiwan alone.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/politics/taiwan-invasion-war-game-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
But these war games are actually biased towards USA. Pentagon’s own war games have China winning already.
So if we believe the US military, then China can already win. Though many argue US military says this just to get more funding.
I would err on the side of US just barely winning with all allies.
That said, I do not believe China would invade. It makes no sense. Anyone who claims this is could happen should have their credibility questioned. As China as I said already has shown its hand, it will blockade if it comes to it.
“Next few decades” seems way off. I think most analysts have it more at like within in a decade.
I should spend the time to assemble my sources to oppose yours once I get on a computer, but one thing I found telling was that China’s current landing capability for infantry is in the low thousands whereas they would need in the high hundred thousands for minimal strategic goals, and this is the easy part in terms of shipbuilding. If they expect to invade opposed, they would need a whole fleet with anti naval and air capabilities which they don’t have and does take decades to build.
Remember that “top U.S. general” who unequivocally and with 100% certainty told the U.S. that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction - which led to the longest “war”, for nothing, in U.S. history?
Yeah… good times.
Well that was a whole conspiracy that was never prosecuted and was a special event. I take your point but do think that it was a very unique period in history.
Name checks out.
