Taiwan Elects Separatist President

Carriers are hulking floating targets. There is a reason why we had them hiding behind the Philippines when China was overflying Taiwan a year or so ago. As the saying goes there are two kinds of ships, targets and submarines. And even submarines are increasingly vulnerable.

 

If this were true, the United States Marine Corps would not be doing the biggest force design since before WWII to take on China in the SCS.

This scenario was been wargamed out by the US and it is often a coin flip who is able to come out as the winner between the US and China.

The headline everyone needs to remember is that China has a Go or No Go call to make before 2030, if we are lucky it slides up to 2029. China has a population bomb that will be going off by then and the CCP will likely be way too busy using the military to try to retain power during that, to be able to launch an attack against Taiwan.

 

Western analysts have been predicting the demographic-economic collapse of China for thirty years.

 

The fact that we are wargaming against their supposed superior fleet and still winning a coin flip shows exactly our power. China's advancement is more about localized warfare in the SCS as opposed to globally owning the seas. We have overwhelming superiority in many aspects of Naval and air warfare right now. Not only that, we also have the benefit of our network of bases around the world where we can replenish or can have ships re-supplied within a days notice at any point in the world. So as to a global 1v1 against China, they cannot hold a candle to us. If we are specifically talking about the SCS and saving Taiwan, of course we are at a disadvantage. I mean, look at our other wars we get into as proof to the decision making and strategy involved in taking our powerful military and fighting down to our opponents on their turf. Frankly, I don't want to be the police of any other country anyway. I don't want us to go to war for Taiwan, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq etc etc. We have our own problems at home. When you start to fight people on their own terms against their defense mechanisms, of course you are bound to lose sometimes.

I'd be interested in a link to see this by the way. Not doubting your information, Im honestly curious. Im former Navy on CVN-71 so while I don't have current knowledge of everything we have at our disposal, but as a former gunners mate I can say that we were officially listed as having A-B-C guns/missiles etc on board. We had more on the ship than what was reported. So when China boasts about something and you don't think we have any answer for it, we probably have a pretty good answer to it, we simply aren't privvy to the info yet.

 

Tell that to China as they are scrambling to create 6 more to add to their fleet. They are a localized fleet designed to fight in SCS only. They are not a global threat and have nowhere near the range as we do.

 

Your argument is about 10 years out of date. We no longer have the ability to project power into the SCS like you suggest. There are plenty of articles that cover this challenge. I recommend googling “Fighting China within the first island chain.”

You also might want to check out where China has built a Naval base.

 

I did not suggest such a thing. In fact, I even specifically mentioned that Chinas advancements are purely changes that help them protect the SCS but do nothing to help their global pressence, yet. Time will tell if they will actually surpass us globally.

"So as to a global 1v1 against China, they cannot hold a candle to us. If we are specifically talking about the SCS and saving Taiwan, of course we are at a disadvantage."

 

The last one is the only one they really care.

 

Well I guess I have nothing for that as I'm not a fan of meddling in other countries business. Duggars dad mentioned something and deleted it but I agree we war monger and regime change too much (my words not quoting duggar exactly). We should deal with our issues at home first.

 

It’s a bitter pill to swallow that were no longer feared as we used to be. We’re not even respected.

 

Let's not bring the football team into this discussion... lol

I feel like that is decision making and policy on both sides over capabilities and strength. With a much longer and more in depth convo on what and who we would still support, I wish we would simply deal with our own issues and keep our military at home or going on peaceful humanitarian aid missions as opposed to regime change everywhere.

 

I’ve long argued that we could close all of our hundreds of military installations all over the world, bring all of our boys and girls home, cut our military budget in half … and no ten countries combined could invade and subjugate us.

 

Im on board, although I'd strongly encourage enough military and defense spending as we cannot be stagnent either. However, by default we get to cut a good amount of that spending back by not being all over the world all the time.

 

Of course it’s a pipe dream. Way, WAY too many multitudes of jobs would be lost, not to mention jobs lost and economies devastated where we’ve established military presence.

 

Quit taking the hit for Biden... he is NOT respected, but I guarantee most our fighting men and woman are...

 

Did I transgress ? Thou shalt not speak ill of the military ? Biden didn’t invent Empire. And no one made the imperial Guards sign up yo do the Empire’s bidding.

 

This is not my area of expertise, do I have a few questions:

Does China even need a massive navy to invade Taiwan, which is only 150miles from their shore?

We have known of Xi's dream of reuniting Taiwan for years now. In regards to microchip processing, why haven't we invested in a chip foundry here in the US to protect this much-needed resource?

If China successfully retakes Taiwan, why wouldn't we just scuttle the TSMC and other foundries?

Also, this all seems to be a bit of a moot point as Biden just said yesterday that the US does NOT support Taiwan independence?

https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-us-does-not-support-taiwan-independence-2024-01-13/

 

Very briefly, Biden is simply saying he's not going to change the One China policy which has been the official policy of the United States (and most of the world) since approximately 1972. Our policy is that Taiwan is part of China but can only be reunited by consent and peacefully. Biden has been more emphatic than any prior US President since that time that we will come to the defense of Taiwan. The pre-existing US policy was termed strategic ambiguity, not committing one way or the other. He has actually said we will defend Taiwan.

In terms of why China needs a large Navy, they would need to protect their supply lines if they invaded Taiwan. But more than that, they want to dominate the whole region, all of the South China Sea and East China Sea up to the 9 Dash Line which they claim is Chinese territorial waters, as stated above. And they eventually would like to be a superpower on our level. But for now they want to dominate that area and they need a large Navy for that.

In terms of the economic impact and whether it would be in their interest, you are exactly correct. It would not be in China's interest either to collapse the world economy, which is what it would occur if Taiwan or invaded, especially if it was destroyed and our disabled. China is also very dependent on world trade. They would rather absorb Taiwan peacefully or by siege while maintaining it's productive capacity. But things don't always go as planned from either side.

I have always maintained that China might have been able to absorb Taiwan peacefully if they had actually abided by the terms that they promised when they took back Hong Kong from the British. They promised not to interfere for at least 50 years and to maintain two systems within one nation.

But they plotted to violate that promise even before the turnover in 1997 and progressively repressed Hong Kong to where the citizens now have no freedom or any different system.

That basically told the Taiwanese that there was no negotiating a way to integrate into China without losing their freedoms. If they had thought they could remain quasi-independent, they might have agreed to integrate into China politically. There are substantial parts of the population that still want to.