[quote=“sofun”][quote=“redpolko”]
Why do you think a US tired of foreign wars would want to start a new one? What vital national interest would be at stake,especially since the US has already conceded that Taiwan belongs to the PRC?[/quote]
US wouldn’t be the one starting a war.
US did not already concede that Taiwan belonged to the PRC. US actually denies such assumption about US’s position. This you should know already.
By the way it’s not a war. Just operation. Taiwan is not a sovereign state and there is no sovereign to declare war on.[/quote]
You ask, “What vital national interest would be at stake?”
Here are the answers given to you by Susan Thornton, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. Department of State, on May 21, 2015, Remarks at the Brookings Institution [quote]Taiwan: A Vital Partner in East Asia state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2015/05/242705.htm[/quote]
Cute, but with about a billion competing Romanization systems out their for Taiyu, you’d think she would have chosen one.[/quote]
Well despite that, you pointed out the other highlight of her speech. IMO, the messaging effect is extremely strong.
By the way the occasion was a actually dinner event held for the US Department of State to meet the people of Taiwan, or vice versa. She was being a good diplomat.
I don’t understand why so many of you feel so sure the US would not intervene in the defence of Taiwan. It is a contentious point but by no means certain. Failure to defend Taiwan would be a violation of several agreements and a betrayal as great, if not greater than, the United Kingdom letting Singapore fall to Imperial Japan. Not only is there a precedent as recent as the 2008 election and numerous security agreements in place, but it’s absolutely key to the United States’ Asia-Pacific strategy that China be contained. That said, China’s development of area-denial military hardware (obviously designed to prevent US’ intervention) is making it increasingly painful for the US’ to potentially intervene, even though the US is still decades ahead militarily. Overall, the effects on the US’ hegemony and strategic world vision would be catastrophic should Taiwan be taken- who trusts a hegemon who can’t keep its’ word, who gets bullied by an enemy ostensibly orders of magnitude weaker and worse in every way?
Taiwan is not going to pass quietly or easily into Chinese hands. This is a make or break issue for both the CCP and the US (and Japan, and Korea, and Australia etc)… Some experts think this might be the match that lights WW3. It also depends on China: Which is more important, ideological integrity or avoiding the catastrophic economic problems that would come with US-Chinese aggression? The best option for everybody who isn’t the CCP is a free, peaceful, democratic China, but I for one wonder if that’ll happen in my lifetime.
It’s a question of interpretation. Where does it explicitly say the US has to come to Taiwan’s defense in an armed conflict? What if Taiwan is seen as provoking a Chinese attack through its actions? Would you bet the future of this country on the likelihood that the US will probably interpret its commitment to Taiwan in this way?
It is a matter of US interpretation of whether US is provoked or not. US has laid down the redline " any resort to force or any other forms of coercion. " in the TRA. China is doing everything it can to shape an international discourse asking US to clarify whether US will intervene.
I have said many times in another post, that the Chinese people will topple a regime that starts a war with US. If they see US troops on Taiwan, they will not attack Taiwan but rather they’ll feel relieved.
The TRA does not commit the US to action. It could just condemn China and sell weapons and call that that. I also doubt if the Chinese people are even capable of overthrowing the CPC, or whether they’d want to. Considering the way they look at the world, putting US boots on Taiwan would be a great way to piss off the Chinese people due to a “foreign invasion of sovereignty” and get them clamoring for action against the imperialists.
No. People’s Daily is for gullible people and designed exactly to condition the thinking of gullible people.
The People’s Daily is not a little girl’s diary where a human being records what she really thinks.
These kinds of things do require certain talents and/or intuition. You can’t rely on crafted, edited sources.
Don’t forget I was educated to become a Chinese nationalist and I can feel and think like them simply by switching my POVs. Yes it is intuitive. You can ask any Chinese dissidents like those of the Falung Gong, Wuer Kaixi and Wang Dan etc. They can do it intuitively too.
How many times do you interact with real Chinese every week, speaking Chinese? How consistent have you been following China’s thinking? And for how many years?
Do you mingle with the Chinese?
A lot of western think tanks, especially Washington based, are full of blow hards and bluffers. I have met some of these people and they are a drag. US/UK based think tanks are more about putting a pseudo-benevolent spin on hard edged US military decisions, (see PNAC in the Bush era, and the CFR/Haas/Brzezinski crowd in the Obama years.) There are some exceptions, but they are about white-washing pre-arranged wars and +ve publicity then any genuine attempt to understand China or the Middle-East.
I don’t agree with everything Sofun says but I would take his views over a self-appointed “expert” 7 times out of ten.
It represents exactly what the CCP wants its people to think, and what it wants to show it is thinking. That is the nature of propaganda.
This would be a catastrophe for Pax Americana. It would be tantamount in the eyes of its allies to the US giving up on the world it built. A scary future indeed when your neighbour is a technocratic Stalinist and the big man in the room turns Buddhist.
Personally I believe the US has too much riding on the issue to let it slide easily. The CCP’s regime legitimacy may not entirely hinge on this issue forever, but the US cannot ever allow China to be its equal. It would be a rapid decline into disgrace and the complete dismantling of the American vision of the world. In some ways I guess I hope for the apocalyptic brinkmanship rather than a quiet submission.
Good (albiet somewhat shallow) reading on the topic, a little article written by a professor I admire greatly. The discussion is pretty solid too, with some other academics weighing in. lowyinterpreter.org/post/201 … aiwan.aspx
It was a serious answer. Sofun probably wouldn’t be allowed in the DC/London policy-wonk circle-jerk because his views don’t fit in with pre-arranged US/UK MIC policy. However, there may be some ‘radicals’ on the fringes. Times are changing. Robert David Steele is an example of a CIA whitehat.