The reality is that no one can predict the future, but things are a bit skewed.
There is more physical tension and issues currently between the UK and Ireland than there is between China and Taiwan. Yet the latter gets reported more often.
For everything else, this should explain it
Yeah, but the UK ain’t hinting they’ll take over Ireland if things “deteriorate” not to their liking.
The US has been interested in a Pacific war for the last 10 years or so, since after Xi came to power.
Of course, a lot of it is posturing. If a new leader of a country doesn’t do what you want, you bluff and make them understand that they’re going to regret it.
So far, Xi has also been responding by posturing. It’s now a game of chicken. Whether war actually happens will largely depend on how much Xi eventually yields to the US, or how much Biden backs down.
Thankfully, recent developments suggest that Xi is somewhat backing down and trying to appease large US corporations.
The spate of “accidents” involving US navy ships a few years back were seen by some as failed false flag operations to try justify war with China.
The USS John McCain was the most notable example, how they got tboned at sea with crew killed by a giant merchant ship going barely backstroke speed is truly remarkable.
All it takes is a US destroyer to get into strife in the Taiwan straits during a freedom of navigation op and that would be game on and faster than people think, Gulf of Tonkin 2.0.
Do they really want nuclear war? Because war with China will be that.
Right on.
The neck of the woods I reside in is considered one of the world’s richest suburbs.
That said, after COVID, I don’t feel safe living here. People are so easily triggered. In addition, all of a sudden, we have lots of crimes - smash & grab, robbery of armor trucks, etc. We have high school shutdowns due to gun/bomb threats. Fentanyl overdose is prevalent. Our state is currently considering equipping schools with supplies due to gun injuries.
IMHO, I truly believe America is on the decline.
Maga types disagree with this. They think america sucks but everywhere else sucks more.
Yes.
Meanwhile, I am worried about how USA’s November election is gonna turn out.
OP, how long do you plan to be here?
If I were OP, my biggest safety concern would be traffic. There was a blissful year where cars and scooters were forced to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks and the government pretended to try to do something about the pedestrian hell that is Taiwan. Not that much progress was actually made, though some was, but it’s clear drivers’ personal preferences are more important than pedestrian safety. I’m far more worried about some tiny dick SUV driver running me over than a bomb from China.
Plenty of tiny dick drivers in the states too, but at least there’s more space to avoid them.
Seems challenging.
Lots of shipping goes through Taiwan. A lot of it is navigational safety, fuel, storms, etc.
China blockades Taiwan and Japan’s cost of living is going to skyrocket like the GPU shortage a couple of years back (except it will be food, not GPU, because at least you don’t need GPU to live).
And China will come for Japan next.
Yep. But even RTX benefits from the status quo - high defense spending in a prosperous environment is going to be better long term than a war that suppresses all other economic activity; they’ll get a boost short term in that case, but it’s going to cut down on overall returns long term.
I get the sense American corporations think in quarterly terms. They make mistakes all the time that gave them short term gains but caused huge long term loss.
The top post here doesn’t surprise me at all, was back in the US for a few months last fall and when people heard I live in Taiwan that was all they wanted to talk about: Aren’t you worried about the impending war? Apparently the US media is overflowing with these stories. Some upthread attribute this to an ‘itch’ to go to war, propaganda to drum up public support for war, etc. Personally I don’t buy that that accounts for more than a tiny sliver of the news coverage, agree with the posters pointing out that the US has a lot of other things on its plate and war with its largest trading partner makes very little sense (the same could be said from the other side btw, China provoking war with the US would be practically suicidal, economically and militarily). The much simpler explanation is that fearmonger stories drive clicks, and clicks are what currently drives the media.
It’s like Quora. They have no moderation team, all done by robots. But also they allow (or rather their prompt generators make) questions that are completely bigoted or racist, because they know outrage drives engagement, and engagement means ad revenue.
The USA is trying to decouple from China and get the sanctions to bite.
The USA is desperate to stop China’s rise to world economic top dog by whatever means possible. If that means war as the last option then so be it.
Taiwan is a useful potential proxy and or pretext for war, needed to sell the war to the US public, a stray weather balloon won’t cut it. Taiwan alone is not a reason for war it’s just not that important.
The rise of China is the underlying problem that the US feels it must resolve.
The US and China are long-term rivals, I don’t deny that eventually the conflict could culminate in a war, actually I agree that it’s likely, at some point.
The OP is talking about the impression given in the US media that war is imminent. I think that’s mostly media hype. And as others have pointed out, there would likely be ample warning before any attack, so it needn’t affect the OP’s decision about coming here.
So they feel that nuclear war is worth it if it means China stays poor and third world? That’s some evil reasoning.