The biggest defense for Taiwan is the fact that it’s an island. I don’t thing that’s going to change any time soon.
Ukraine’s Sea Baby drones have been remarkably effective in the Black Sea. I don’t see why they wouldn’t be effective in the Taiwan Straight and I feel like Taiwan has the capability of mass producing similar drone boats.
Yes China has massive troop counts, but it doesn’t amount to much if those numbers can’t get across the Strait.
Note that Ryan MacBeth has also said that it would be impossible for Israel to do airstrikes on Iran.
That guy often speaks authoritatively about things he doesn’t know anything about.
He’s absolutely certain that China is going to invade Taiwan. China doesn’t currently landing ships and is putting a lot of money into the Belt and Roads initiative to establish land trade routes.
That’s what we call a clue!
The US defense analysis on China invading Taiwan states that it would likely result in a stalemate. Also it says the US should spend billions upon billions of dollars on Lockheed Martin missiles.
That’s what we call a clue!
The reality is while China does a lot of saber rattling over Taiwan, they likely don’t actually have the capability to take the island. Yes if you put troop counts on a spreadsheet it may look like China could take Taiwan at any time they please. But then when you consider that Taiwan is an island, and the troop counts engaged in the battle would be limited to the number they could supply across the Taiwan Straight (which would likely be contested by drone boats which have been very effective in the Black Sea) and the fact that amphibious landings are actually really hard to pull off (especially if you’re attempting to do it with appropriated civilian RORO cargo ships) the whole thing starts sounding very stupid. Of course everything is dependent on how willing the Taiwanese are in fighting off China. And as we’ve seen with Russia, just because an invasion plan is stupid it doesn’t necessarily mean an authoritarian disconnected from reality won’t try it.
But anyways, take the things Ryan MacBeth says with a big grain of salt. Defense analysts are often heavily influenced by the Military Industrial Complex, and they’ll tend to say China is going to invade Taiwan tomorrow unless many billions of dollars worth of missiles made by Lockheed Martin are procured.
Americans are always susceptible to any version of a story that indicates they aren’t complicit in wars for oil when they vote for politicians that bring down the price of gas. Venezuela, Iran, and Nigeria all have oil. Sure there could be reasons other than oil for attacking these countries, but that’s a hell of a coincidence, and Trump is straight up saying that he wants Venezuela’s oil.
That’s what we call a clue!
People can get arrogant enough to think that they won’t get caught.
Emmanuel Clase was a Major League pitcher making ~$5M per year. He got caught intentionally flubbing pitches for $5000. 5M a year gone now to get a few thousand dollars. Why would someone be that stupid?
Because they don’t think they’ll get caught.
It’s why things have to happen in a certain order. You can’t do the more aggressive economic actions against the US until after certain conditions are in place. First you need to cut dependency on the US for anything essential. Food and strategic resources like aluminum, steel, and energy. You also need a strong enough military to make any US military action costly for the US.
Once those conditions are met you can take further action. Hitting the US tech sector is more of a middle option. Manipulating the US bond market is the nuclear option.
Currently these options aren’t on the table since the US can kick out the legs of that table if you tried to play those cards. But many things are quietly changing around the world while Americans are obsessing over Epstein files, Trump playing battleship, and Hegseth and Rubio fucking around with tinpot South American dictators.
Something not often discussed is the possibility that the UK and France might not have been capable of stopping Hitler through military force at that time.
I mean even later even after building up a bit more, France got curb stomped and the UK barely got out of Dunkirk. And that happened while Germany was occupying Czechoslovakia and part of Poland which took significant military resources from fighting the UK and France. There’s a very real possibility that standing up to Hitler over Czechoslovakia would have gone even worse than standing up to Hitler over Poland. Sure the Soviets might have helped at that time, but their military wasn’t even capable of taking on Finland at that point.
At any rate at the present time, the world needs to build up it’s military power before standing up to Trump. We’re saying it’s because we’re fulfilling NATO obligations (like Trump told us to!) or getting ready to fight Russia maybe. But military build up is happening but it’s not going to happen overnight.
Just declare any simple script that does a wget on copyrighted information to be “AI”. AI is immune from copyright infringement it seems.
It’s possible the US might have some radar systems that can detect incoming nukes and they might even have some submarines in unknown locations capable of hitting back after someone has nuked them.
Sure and the ICJ calls for the arrest of leaders of sovereign countries. The only difference between the ICJ the US is the US has to capability actually arrest world leaders while the ICJ doesn’t. And the fact that a lot of people dislike Putin and Netanyahu, but apparently don’t have a problem with Maduro? Which is kinda weird, but at any rate if what’s considered permissible is based on who you like and who you don’t like, it’s not actually law.
So the ICJ made it permissible to arrest leaders of sovereign countries and now we’re seeing the consequences of the precedent they created.
Personally I think it’s a bad thing to arrest leaders of sovereign countries no matter who they are. It makes diplomacy more difficult and negotiations to end conflicts should be prioritized over ineffectual theatrics. It also allows military action to be whitewashed as laying down justice. If the ICJ can arrest world leaders, why can’t we?
The ICJ should probably be reformed, they’ve lost too much legitimacy and have actually given legitimacy to the actions of authoritarians.
Yup. Sadly the US has handed the 21st century to China without a fight.
I remember what some Hong Kong dude said to me once… “China is the future, and it’s a bleak future”.
And so long as the US is the wealthiest nation on Earth, what’s going to deter them?
I think the answer to your question is contained within the question. Americans are greedy people and a coordinated effort by China, Japan, and the UK could sink the US economy.
But I doubt that would even be necessary. Why kill someone intent on suicide? The US economy will likely collapse on it’s own if it continues on the path it’s on. I’m not talking about some recession like in 2008, I’m talking a collapse you’ve never experienced. Something similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Also if you were going down the military strike route, an aircraft carrier would be stupid. Trump has broadcast to the entire world what the achilles heal of the US is and it isn’t the aircraft carriers. It’s something that’s dug up from the ground and needs to be processed by refineries.
Trump is always playing 4D chess we just can’t understand!
Or maybe, just maybe, a guy convicted of 34 counts of fraud only knows how to scam people and doesn’t actually know how anything works in the world.
Yeah but everyone knows the official position is bullshit.
Do you understand the difference between De Jure and De Facto? Maybe look up what those means because you’re showing a lack of knowledge of how anything works in the world.
Taiwan is de jure a part of China but it is a de facto an independent country. China has an authoritarian government that gets butt hurt over every little thing. So the One China policy is all about them “saving face”.
Maybe read up on strategic ambiguity as well if you want to be more knowledgeable about the subject.
TLDR, Taiwan is a country. A lot of diplomacy is about piling on layers upon layers of bullshit, because bullshit is preferable to war. But unless you’re working for a country as a diplomat, there’s no need for bullshit… Taiwan is a country.
In the short term, yes. In the long term, everyone is moving away from the US. The US has declined significantly in the last year, and that decline will continue because while everyone is still saying the US is an ally, we all know the US is really an adversary now. It’s not going to be a big event that will register for brain rotted Americans that have no attention span. It’s something that will change year over year.
It’s just not in our best interests to openly antagonize Trump at the moment. Trump is an old man and he won’t live forever, but the impact of the things he’s done and the inaction of the American people means the US will not be trusted by any country for generations.
Oil is all about control and power. Many Americans vote based on gas prices and then do whatever mental gymnastics needed to pretend wars that “coincidentally” happen in countries with oils weren’t at all influenced by their voting habits.
MBS could wake up tomorrow and make some moves to raise the price of gas. So every world leader has to suck up to him no matter how many people that psychopath chops up with a bone saw. Because of extreme dependency on oil the entire economy can change based on the whims of a psychopath.
Our insane dependency on oil means our economy is under the control of psychopaths. In order for the GOP to have any chance of maintaining power, they need the gas prices to drop before November. Suck up to MBS, suck up to the oil companies, and get that Venezuelan oil to US refineries and get those gas prices down. The GOP will likely take a hit in the mid terms either way, but if they get the price of gas down, it will soften the blow.
Something about automobiles have turned a lot of people into little psychopaths that don’t care if people die (though they pretend to be against it LOL) so long as a tank of of gas is a little cheaper. GOP is bad for doing wars, but they’ll still vote GOP for cheaper gas while loudly proclaiming they’re against wars so they don’t feel complicit.
What do you mean allowed? There isn’t actually a world police force that’s going to arrest Trump or anything like that.
International Law is just a bunch of treaties that countries have agreed to follow. Countries don’t agree to treaties that prevent them from doing what they want to do. The reason why this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often is because political stability is preferable for capitalist systems. Trump only cares about the money he makes personally, so he takes bribes and now he’s prioritizing the interests of only the companies that pay him bribes over the economy in general. Global stability is good for the economy, but Trump only cares about personal profit.
I mean he is a generational talent at scamming people. Even more than that, I’d say he’s the most successful grifter of all time. Who else in all of history even compares to the level Trump has scammed the US?
John Blunt? Points for being a sword-maker named blunt that founded a joint stock company. But he just scammed the upper class in the UK. Trump has so much more thoroughly scammed the US, and even many non-Americans around the world.
Yet somehow this particular Anthony Perkins is more of a ghoul than the dead actor.
It’s super-woke to define woke.
Kinda like how the US, UK, and the Soviet Union were not aligned before the 1940s?
Alignments can change when there’s a common enemy. Sure those alignment changes may be temporary but they can last long enough to see a country bombed flat and the leaders dead in a bunker.
You’re obsessed over ideology but that’s mostly irrelevant in geopolitics. If it’s in the best interests of a bunch of countries to work together to destroy the US economy, those countries will work together regardless of ideology or internal politics. In WWII the UK had a government of national unity with both the Labour and Conservative in a coalition. Perhaps the US is incapable of having political parties working together for the common good of the country, but not every country has the same weaknesses the US has.
And countries can always go back to being adversaries for bullshit ideological reasons after the enemy is destroyed like the US and Soviet Union did after WWII. So animosity between countries can be put aside temporarily.
If Trump thinks he can be an existential threat to a large number of countries in the world, it’s a FAFO situation.