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0 pointstheptip3y ago0 comments

> China has said that they believe that, in the event of hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike US forces everywhere in the region

Do you have a source for this? I haven't heard this stated before, but I'm not an expert here.

Even taking this as true, I think it's a big leap to go from striking US military bases in Japan, to striking civilian infrastructure in those countries.

It seems quite clear to me that the opening salvo you are hypothesizing (attacking multiple military bases and civilian targets) would be an act of war against the USA and Japan. This would certainly provoke all-out war with the US, and they have a first-use policy that could entail a nuclear response.

Frankly the whole scenario above seems extremely unlikely to me, and I think Ukraine is the better example to model here. Essentially, China occupies Taiwan, and dares the US to strike in retaliation, knowing that their retaliation would be the thing that triggers armageddon, and betting that the US is not actually willing to escalate militarily over Taiwan. I predict that China would take an effort to avoid attacking any US military personnel stationed in Taiwan (I gather this is just an unofficial presence), because the rational play is to give the US as little excuse as possible to escalate in response.

In other words, China MUST offer the US a path to de-escalation/capitulation in order to take Taiwan without a war with the USA. It's much easier to take Taiwan without a full war with the USA (obviously, IMO).

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Apocryphon3y ago

The specifics of the top three economies in the world going to non-proxy war with one another, in the age of MAD, is incredibly hard to imagine.

adriancr3y ago

> China occupies Taiwan

They're not even remotely capable of doing that before US intervenes. Taiwan is a heavily fortified island with unfriendly geography and a massive high tech army.

theptipOP3y ago

Sure, I'm not making any claims on whether they can successfully do that, just that in this widely-studied geopolitical contest, it's the most likely move that they will attempt to achieve their publicly-stated goals. (And not some crazy all-out war on the US and its allies as GP was proposing.)

FWIW on the likelihood of this specific claim, my impression is that the Pentagon considers it likely that they will try to annex Taiwan at some point in the next decade, e.g. see yesterday's headlines from Blinken (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-17/blinken-s...).

I don't have any particular domain knowledge to judge how hard it would be for China to occupy Taiwan (or how much more military power China would need to tip the balance in its favor), but I'm interested in any hard analysis that you can share on the subject. The general reading I've seen has suggested that they would be able to do so in the next 10-20 years if current trends in military growth pan out.

CydeWeys3y ago

That's a big if there. There's no guarantee that the US intervenes, especially depending on who the president happens to be at the time.

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