I honestly think Chinas window for starting a war is the next few years. If we get past that, with Japan rearming, Taiwan military reforms, Aukus, US bases in Philippines and Palau and the china economy on the decline, China simply won’t be able to afford a war.
That’s why I’m very negative on the upcoming McCarthy visit. Time is becoming in Taiwans favor, when before Covid it looked the other way.
Xi is going to continue to keep making mistakes and Taiwan just needs to keep a low profile while doing it
Yeah, I can see that. We could add more, such as the US is presently retiring old assets faster than they are fielding new ones, or China’s demographic destiny
Yeah, thanks largely to mistakes by the Chinese, in the medium term things look good for Taiwan. I’m skeptical about the military reforms here, though. Anyways, as usual I agree with your fundamental point, just adding that given a few more decades of developments we can’t know that the end of the 2040s won’t be a more dangerous time.
And keep hoping that he doesn’t make the mistake of a move on Taiwan, of course. Even if it fails, it won’t be pleasant for us
Keep in mind he said he has a “gut feeling” we will have a war in 2025. Praise the Lawd God Almighty we generally expect a little more evidence than “gut feelings” on the part of generals when it comes to war. Though the US media certainly lapped that one up — maybe one of seven articles with a headline about that made sure to make it clear that his opinion was not representative of Washington’s policy or stance on the matter.
Probably much like last time. A lot of hot air, send some ships/planes/missiles around the island. They might send more or stay longer, but qualitatively at this time I would predict a very similar response to a very similar visit.
That might be more than a tad! Live fire exercises including missiles, and encircling the island with ships and planes, while the speaker is here, could be considered as not just threatening Taiwan.
I guess they might send the boats while he’s here, but not the same level of exercises as last time, and then do the other stuff after?
They only really go ballistic when make them lose face in front of own people, that’s why can’t see the logic for these speaker visits. I guess they are more about US domestic politics than Taiwan though
