A nuclear arsenal
[quote=“US$0.02”]A nuclear arsenal
Wolf wrote:
For those who mistake Taiwan or the Republic of China for a nation, remember, it is the United Nations who decides what constitutes nationhood in its terms.
Put it even simpler: Only frogs can be admitted. Taiwan is a toad. So although Taiwan seems to be a frog (which it is not), it cannot be admitted even if you think it too, like a frog, is an anuran.
[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]Wolf wrote:
For those who mistake Taiwan or the Republic of China for a nation, remember, it is the United Nations who decides what constitutes nationhood in its terms.
Put it even simpler: Only frogs can be admitted. Taiwan is a toad. So although Taiwan seems to be a frog (which it is not), it cannot be admitted even if you think it too, like a frog, is an anuran.[/quote]
Wolf, I’m not arguing with you, but I do want to ask you: What if the US recognized Taiwan and said that it considered Taiwan a country? What if a significant percentage of the world’s countries, including France, U.K., Germany and Japan, followed suit? In this case and assuming Taiwan still remained outside of the UN, would it still not be a country in your eyes? Is the UN, even though it can’t enforce its rules, the final word on what constitutes a country?
[quote=“US$0.02”] 5) China would not likely invade if it meant a scorched-earth policy for both sides of the strait. [/quote]But TW could take out only a few cities by the time the entire island would become a nuclear catastrophe. Beijing wouldn’t mind losing a couple cities like Fu-zhou in exchange for eliminating the ‘renegade province of China’.
Nukes won’t help Taiwan.
Would you really trust Taiwan’s military to properly administer and manage a nuclear arsenal? :shock:
Why would Taiwan aim for minor cities? (Did the Reds aim at the desert outside Nevada or for New York and LA?) You think they’re protecting all of their mainland investments?
[quote=“HakkaSonic”]Why would Taiwan aim for minor cities? (Did the Reds aim at the desert outside Nevada or for New York and LA?) You think they’re protecting all of their mainland investments?[/quote]I mentioned Fu-zhou because it is the closest commercial city, you :x . Need a geography lesson?
Since you’d like to hypothesize and debate about the best places to strike so as to exterminate the most Chinese people, of course Shanghai and Guang-zhou would be next, assuming the Taiwanese military could actually target correctly. Since most people here can’t even stand in a straight line at 7-11, they’d probably hit Nevada. Or, hopefully, Canada, if the missles had range.
Either that or they’d be like the navy’s torpedoes and get washed up on a beach somewhere.
[quote]Wolf wrote:
Quote:
Read the UN charter. Taiwan is not a nation. Only nations can be in the UN. End of story. It’s that simple.
For those who mistake Taiwan or the Republic of China for a nation, remember, it is the United Nations who decides what constitutes nationhood in its terms.
Put it even simpler: Only frogs can be admitted. Taiwan is a toad. So although Taiwan seems to be a frog (which it is not), it cannot be admitted even if you think it too, like a frog, is an anuran.[/quote]
Just because the UN can define what a nation is for their purposes does not mean Taiwan is not a nation.
Brian
Would you really trust Taiwan’s military to properly administer and manage a nuclear arsenal? :shock:[/quote]
No more or less than I trust current US administration.
No more or less than I trust the current US administration.
Would Beijing mind losing Beijing??
I don’t remember if this has been mentioned yet, but: why doesn’t Taiwan send peacekeepers to Iraq?
nytimes.com/2003/09/25/inter … 5MONG.html
[quote=“New York Times”]Slightly more than a decade after the departure of the last Soviet troops here, democracy is not an abstraction for Mongolia. Last summer, Tibetan Buddhist priests working at a monastery here disinterred the remains of about 600 lamas, or high priests, each buried with his hands tied behind his back and a bullet hole in the skull. They were killed in 1937 by Mongolian Communists in an effort by Stalin to stamp out Mongolia’s historic religion.
“Words are not enough to fight with terrorism,” Prime Minister Nambaryn Enkhbayar of Mongolia said in an interview last week, fresh from welcoming delegates from 118 countries classified as new or restored democracies.
Mongolia is rapidly embracing the United States in an effort to develop a balance to its historically dangerous neighbors, China and Russia. Twice the size of Texas, but with only 2.4 million people, this land of nomadic herders has a deep, if rarely voiced, fear of becoming another Tibet. After centuries of Chinese rule, Mongolia won independence only in 1921 with Soviet support.
The Mongolian efforts appear to be paying dividends. “They were one of the first nations to sign up to send peacekeepers to Iraq,” Pamela J. H. Slutz, the American ambassador here, said in an interview. “That has created enormous good will in Washington. For us it was also a prime example of the utility and success of our military assistance program.”[/quote]
These guys get it.
For that matter, why doesn’t Taiwan seek diplomatic recognition from Mongolia? As a country which “fear{s} … becoming another Tibet”, I would think they would be glad to recognize the “renegade province”.
For that matter, Taiwan even made it into the article as the closer:
[quote=“New York Times”]Two weeks ago, as the last Mongolian soldiers arrived in Iraq, Mongolia, whose trade with the United States was only $180 million last year, formally proposed to Washington a free trade pact.
“Negotiations could be concluded in one weekend,” Mr. Saunders {head of an American group promoting business ties with Mongolia} said over a pineapple pizza lunch at the California Restaurant, one of the latest American cultural imitations here. “It would have not any economic impact on the U.S. In one year, the U.S. trades less with Mongolia than what it trades with Taiwan in 12 hours.”[/quote]
Would Beijing mind losing Beijing??[/quote]
Even if Taiwan had nuclear weapons, they don’t have a missile capable of reaching Beijing.
Taiwan had an intermittent nuclear weapons program from the 1960s to the 1980s. The program was stopped and restarted at least twice and possibly three times (I can’t remember the exact number). U.S. pressure was responsible for at least one of the stoppages.
U.S. pressure stopped the program in the 1980s. Former AIT director James Lilley (also an ambassador in both China and South Korea) has spoken about it publicly a number of times and said that infiltration of Taiwan’s nuclear program was among the most successful operations undertaken by the U.S.
HS, yeah, I once did some research on the topic. It was quite interesting. The best article in English on Taiwan’s program can be found in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists by Albright and Gay.
When India and then Pakistan detonated nuclear devices the UN and the US imposed crippling sanctions on both countries. Pakistan lost massive weapons procurements from the US and the support that pre-existing weapons systems need to function properly.
Luckily for both of those Nations they were not heavily dependent on exports to the US for revenue. They also had the right of appeal to the UN because they were real nations and recognized as such.
Taiwan would go broke in about a year if those kinds of sanctions were imposed here. Hundreds upon hundreds of billions of US dollars gone. Not to mention the massive market shares that companies in Taiwan currently hold.
Another reason why Taiwan should not detonate a nuke is that it would make all of Taiwan a much more vulnerable target for nuclear attack. China would have to use it’s nukes to protect itself from Taiwan’s nukes.
Taiwan probably has a nuclear weapon or two as well as delivery systems. If Taiwan wants to join the nuclear club it has to detonate one of them. For ICBMs all that Taiwan need do is form a real trade and defense pact with India.
Nukes are not a viable option.
Money is where Taiwan has the advantage, Taiwan must use it if it wants to get in the UN. Madame Chiang Kai Shek has the ability and the motivation to facilitate such a move.
Here’s the article: Taiwan: Nuclear Nightmare Averted
It appears the U.S. stopped the program at least twice.
A nuclear-armed Taiwan facing a nuclear-armed China would be a frightening prospect. Yet Taiwan today has no nuclear weapons and seems to have no plans to develop them-but only because the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) pushed Taiwan hard, particularly in the mid-1970s. Fortunately, Taiwan did not dig in its heels.At that time, U.S. intelligence agencies considered Taiwan a likely proliferant. But tough international scrutiny, spearheaded by the United States, led to the most controversial parts of Taiwan’s secret nuclear program being cut back. When Taiwan did not abandon its nuclear ambitions altogether, another effort was stopped in the late 1980s.
[quote]Madame Chiang Kai Shek has the ability and the motivation to facilitate such a move.
[/quote]
Chiang is 103 years old or something like that, and more or less a vegetable.