Putin justifies his position by annexing lands from other countries. Whenever he faces opposition at home, invade a neighboring country and the Russian public stops caring if he arrested or poisoned some of his political opponents.
Putin would continue to do so to justify his position as long as he can get away with it, and eventually that will bring a war to the US’ door step. He has already gotten his way in Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, Crimea, and Donbas, he hasn’t stopped, and frankly he couldn’t and wouldn’t stop on his own. The sooner he hit a road block, the less threat he’d put on the US and our European allies.
The same will happen with Xi. There is no stopping after taking Taiwan.
Putin has been under Beijings control for decades - watch any speech through the 90s to now - they always match the words of Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping.
Putin is a puppet akin to Kim Jong Un - his only job is to transfer Russian power to Beijing, which he has successfully accomplished. That’s it. With that, Beijing gains a foreign army, navy, and enhanced nuclear power. Putin has moved pawns in place for years and in 2020 had the entire Russian government resign.
It’s a simple extrapolation from past examples of appeasement. I mean nobody knows what the exact number of tomorrow’s COVID will be, but we can get reasonable close by extrapolation from past examples. Xi has stated that his goal is to challenge US supremacy in the Pacific, and the US’ unipolar super power status. Taiwan is important to him because it’s the first required step to achieving that goal. Like @snowstorm said, Putin has echoed what Xi said nearly word for word in this matter.
Well, not exactly. Chinese empires* have a historical trend of pushing at boundaries. They are already agitating all of their maritime neighbors except South Korea. If the CCP under any leadership is able to take and hold Taiwan, it is reasonable to foresee trouble for Scarborough Shoal and the Senkakus. Yes, these islands are nominally controlled by US treaty allies, but does the US government have the will and strength to fight China for some small islands?
And then there are the other SCS claimants that don’t have defence agreements with the US. Once Kaohsiung becomes a PLAN port, why not turn their attention to the Paracels, or push Indonesian fishing boats and coast guards to their beaches?
Sure. We can’t know what will happen in the future. But if I had to make a prediction as to whether Taiwan will appease the CCP and be the end of their maritime ambitions, or will embolden them, I know which speculation I would bet on.
Edit: *I suppose all empires do, or they wouldn’t be empires!
But seriously, this is what it all boils down to, isn’t it? Taiwan has existed as a country this long at America’s pleasure, and will probably continue to do so as long as the political will and military power are there. So many geopolitical moving parts and variables though…I definitely don’t envy the job of military planners.
100 years what’s left of you will rue the day Bill Clinton sponsored China into the WTO and say
No one would have believed in the early years of the twenty first century that this country was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than ours and yet as mortal; that as our people busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised, as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency our people went to and fro about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their control over their country. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the other countries as sources of danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most we fancied there might be others in other countries, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of the Pacific, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this country with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth first century came the great disillusionment.
But I don’t think it is particularly surprising. Because the voice that got on Fox with Tucker was critical of Biden’s policy. Pretty standard stuff, that voice’s political leaning was a cherry on top.
I think it’s pretty surprising. Tucker is pretty much the only guy on MSM who will give a platform to guys like Dore, Greenwald, Taibbi, Mate, etc. etc. Tucker is really a standout at the moment.
Har har. Say what you want about Tucker. He’s an idiot, but, no one else is doing this. Put another way, no one else in MSM has the balls to stand behind what they believe in quite like that. Far far from it when you look at it in fact.
