This article about US and Japanese cooperation on the issue of Taiwanese independence from China seems to suggest that the only thing preventing a major military clash between China and the US is that Taiwan hasn’t declared independence yet.
Are we really in such an awful position diplomatically in the far East? What happens when Taiwan gets brave enough to tell the Chinese to bug off, China invades, and the US and Japan (and possibly others) have to back up all the decades of support they gave to Taiwan?
Frankly the idea of a clash with China scares me more than the war on terror.
If it makes you feel any better, consider the huge debt (financially and otherwise) the United States currently owes to China. Ain’t no way we’ll be doing anything to piss off our major trading partner any time soon.
If Taiwan gets uppity enough to decrare its own independence, the US will make loud harrumping noises about peace and democracy, then sit back while China steamrolls over the island.
Do a search; this topic has been covered endlessly.
Long story short: China does not, and likely will not within your lifetime, have a military capable of doing an amphibious assault across open water onto hostile territory. It is also not in anyone’s interest to get into a shooting war with their top trading partners.
It is, however, in the CCP’s domestic political interest to keep periodically making nationalistic remarks such as in the link. They do this every few months, and every time someone starts a thread like this.
OTOH, a state of war is pretty good excuse for repudiating a debt. And if there’s no war, within ten years the Chinese might be our trading competitors rather than partners.
Heh. Like the saying goes, if you owe the bank $10,000 that you can’t repay, you’ve got a problem. If you owe the bank $10,000,000 that you can’t repay, THEY’VE got a problem.
Yes they are; their Air Force is now up to about where the Soviets were in the 80s, and their Navy has several modern frigates.
Taiwan, meanwhile, has updated F-16s, not to mention a home-grown fighter that flies rings around what the Chinese have. Their pilots log 10-20 times more training hours. They have several nuclear attack subs. If the US sends a carrier group, it wouldn’t even be close.
Which is not to say they couldn’t try some sort of half-assed blockade in hopes of forcing a settlement.
I don’t think so for the fact half the worlds computer chips are made in Taiwan. This isn’t some shitty island near the Philippines, its a substantial investment for Western interests, especially US ones. I do believe we’d do what we could to help defend the islands.
I think it’s been pretty clear that the United States would fight if mainland China decided to invade Taiwan. This has been a consistent policy under every administration since 1949. The bad thing is that this might not be enough to deter China. I could see where the Chinese might decide it was worth a war with the US to reclaim Taiwan. And one reason China has consistently said would be cause for such an invasion would be Taiwan declaring itself “independent”. So we’ve got a situation where two of the most powerful nations in the world have put their diplomatic credibility on the line and a third nation is the one that controls the trigger.
China may be a major trading partner, but it’s not even close to being #1. It’s an important trading partner to be sure but it wouldn’t cause irreparable harm to the US economy.
And since it’s all imports, anyway, it’s likely much of that trade could be replaced. Heck, TAIWAN takes in two thirds the U.S. imports that China does.
You also should remember that there’s a certain amount of gamesmanship to these statements. We guarantee that we absolutely no doubt will fight if Taiwan is invaded, on the theory that a guarantee of war means the Chinese won’t try an invasion. The Chinese guarantee that they will absolutely no doubt fight if Taiwan declares independence, on the theory that a guarantee of war means the Taiwanese won’t try to declare independence.
There’s a certain amount of locking the steering wheel before a game of chicken. You lock your steering wheel, so the other guy knows that you have no ability to chose to chicken out, and so therefore either he chickens out or you both die. Since he doesn’t want to die, he therefore has to chicken out. Of course the problem comes when both players use this strategy of locking the steering wheel.
Where DO you get these half baked theories from? In THIS universe there are so many things wrong with this seemingly simple statement by you that it would take pages to shoot em all down.
As to the OP, this has been covered endlessly on this board. In fact, there is a new thread every time the subject is back in the news. As has been said, the short story is that its just China/US/Taiwan rattling the other guys cage. China CAN’T invade Taiwan. They want Taiwan back in the fold for obvious economic reasons. In addition, there are some serious cultural reasons China wants Taiwan back in the fold. Taiwan has no intention of COMING back into the fold, at least not on China’s current terms. They also have little or no intention to seriously pursue independance at this time (well, the majority of them don’t anyway). The US is playing a man in the middle game, catering to China and discouraging Taiwan from declaring full independance, while repressing any thoughts by China of invasion (not that they could do anything more than nuke Taiwan anyway…which kind of defeats the purpose, no?).
The US basically is after maintaining the status quo in the region indefinitely, though if China pushed it we’d support Taiwan. As China currently has about a snowballs chance in hell of taking on Taiwan alone in an invasion, taking on Taiwan AND the US is a certain no win situation. Status quo maintained. If Taiwan pushed things, we’d still support Taiwan though more reluctantly…even the Bush administration would be pissed as hell to be dragged into a shooting war with China because Taiwan decided NOW was the time for independance. As Taiwan doesn’t REALLY want war with China, nor do they want to piss off the US, the status quo is maintained.
We’ll probably all be old and grey (well, those of you who aren’t currently :)) and the situation will be essentially the same…unless China continues down the path to full capitalism and maybe goes democratic…in which case Taiwan may voluntarily re-join with the main land.
Did you think carefully before you posted that? Bush getting into a shooting war with China? In case you hadn’t noticed, China is a nuclear power. If Bush gave an order to start a shooting war with China, the Joint Cheifs of Staff would likely draw straws to decide which of them would kill Bush. Taiwan is not worth risking nuclear armageddon. A much more likely scenario if China invaded Taiwan would be that Bush would try and convince all the major world economic powers to cut off all trade with China and isolate them. Given a choice between that and the status quo, China would be nuts to invade Taiwan. It isn’t worth it.
1.A major world economy (top ten by some measures) and a vital trading partner.
2. A faithful ally to whom the US has made guarantees.
3. A democracy.
If they are not worth defending from a nuclear-armed aggresor, what sort of nations is? (I mean that seriously; please answer the question.) If you say “none,” you are essentially saying that there should be no interference when someone decides to be the aggressor. What if China decides to take back Mongolia? What if disputes over the Spratlys lead to attacks against Vietnam or the Phillipines? Hell, what if they want to take New Zealand? I don’t think a policy of “well, they have nukes. Gotta let 'em do what they want” makes much sense.
Do you seriously think that if the US shoots Chinese planes violating Taiwanese airspace, the Chinese response will be to nuke Seattle? They’re not psychopaths (unlike, say NK), and they know what the response would be.
Your economic sanctions route is naive. That might work for a year or two but there’s no way in hell US multinationals, let alone the EU, would forego trading with China that long. The embargo would be over in a heartbeat.
Did you do a reality check before YOU posted this? Its always been the US’s policy (i.e. it predates the dreaded Bush) to defend Taiwan if its attacked. Its not MY policy…its the US’s policy. The Joint Chiefs would not do ANYTHING if the prez ordered the US to war to defend an ally…nor would Congress. I’d say it would be the other way around in fact…the American people and Congress would probably be pretty pissed if Bush or anyone else left the Taiwanese hanging in the breeze if China attacked them. You REALLY need a reality check here.
Basically if it helps you think of it this way…if the US decided to cut and run every time a nuclear power decided to threaten an ally of the US simply because they HAVE nukes, we wouldn’t have many allies…no? Or think of it THIS way…perhaps China should be the one not to push open war with a US ally…after all, WE have nukes too, yes? In fact, perhaps thats why they HAVEN’T pushed war with Taiwan (well, that and the fact that they would have their heads handed too them if they did by the Taiwan military).
Turning it around, again, Taiwan isn’t worth CHINA worth risking nuclear war with the US over…no? So…the status quo is looking pretty good from my perspective atm.
I can guarentee you this…no matter who is in the oval office, be it Bush, Kerry or even Kucinich, if China attacks Taiwan we won’t “try and convince all the major world economic powers to cut off all trade with China and isolate them”…it will mean war, plain and simple. Whether it means NUCLEAR war is unclear to me (you seem convinced) but it will certainly mean a shooting war in the straight and probably a hell of a lot of dead Chinese. Luckily its all rhetoric and bullshit…so war is VERY unlikely.
Er, that SHOULD have been the Joint Cheifs won’t do anything TO BUSH (or any other president) if China attackes Taiwan and the prez orders the US to war…they would support him fully in this (as they should), and certainly won’t be drawing lots to kill him.
Not literally true. The four major semiconductor manufacturing areas are Japan, the US, Europe, and Asia. Asia is growing fast, but in 2004 it made less than 30% of the world’s semiconductor chips.
Asia includes Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, China, and Taiwan. Taiwan is huge, to be sure. China is still quite small. It uses more semiconductors than it produces.
But most people round here (Greater China) see it all as bluster and sabre-rattling aimed at Beijing’s domestic audience.
My feeling is the CCP has most to lose from a Taiwanese declaration of independence. Failure to militarily bring Taiwan “back” would not go down well among the population after decades of nationalistic propoganda on this subject. Success in bringing Taiwan back through violence would be counterproductive too, if the rest of the world imposed sanctions and the PRC economy went into reverse. Either way, the CCP falls.