Welcome to the Decade of Concern
scholars-stage.blogspot.com
Welcome to the Decade of Concern
1–10 of 59 posts
Re: Welcome to the Decade of Concern
#2Meta comment: Scholar's Stage is the most interesting blog I've encountered in years and its RSS feed is worth subscribing to.
One hopes China doesn't invade Taiwan, as one hopes a pandemic doesn't happen; if China does, a lot of the general audience, accessible material about what is likely to occur will have been published at Scholar's Stage.
Re: Welcome to the Decade of Concern
#3Having no prior knowledge of national security planning and outlook, this was a great read.
Using real time strategy games a reference point for the uninitiated was a nice touch.
Re: Welcome to the Decade of Concern
#4Nuclear weapons are Taiwan's only defence against their asymmetry with China. Unfortunately, that ship sailed in the 1980s.
Re: Welcome to the Decade of Concern
#5Meta comment: Scholar's Stage is the most interesting blog I've encountered in years and its RSS feed is worth subscribing to. One hopes China doesn't invade Taiwan, as one hopes a pandemic doesn't happen; if China does, a lot of the general audience, accessible material about what is likely to occur will have been published at Scholar's Stage.
> Meta comment: Scholar's Stage is the most interesting blog I've encountered in years and its RSS feed is worth subscribing to.
thanks for the rec... after poking around for 30m, i have to agree that it's worth subbing to. :)
Re: Welcome to the Decade of Concern
#6Is taiwan the Sudètes of someone ? What happens if taiwan just gets invaded, like crimea was, and no one balks ?
Re: Welcome to the Decade of Concern
#7Meta comment: Scholar's Stage is the most interesting blog I've encountered in years and its RSS feed is worth subscribing to. One hopes China doesn't invade Taiwan, as one hopes a pandemic doesn't happen; if China does, a lot of the general audience, accessible material about what is likely to occur will have been published at Scholar's Stage.
Greer writes well on variety of topics and well worth sub/reading. But I would not rely on him for current developments for US/TW/CN topics. He was one of the last holdouts along with Ian Easton of TW can triumph alone crowd, changing his position only recently, years after general consensus from credible thinktanks suggested otherwise. I think he lives in TW and has blinders on - having held his positions so far past expiration date. His writing on the subject since, rather his recent regurgitation of US thinktanks and opinion pieces are more in line with reality. It's nice to see him sober up, but never know when his opinions will drift back into wish fulfilment.
Re: Welcome to the Decade of Concern
#8Hmm, wish countries would poll their citizens with regards to wanting a war... I wonder how many would happen?
Re: Welcome to the Decade of Concern
#9Is taiwan the Sudètes of someone ? What happens if taiwan just gets invaded, like crimea was, and no one balks ?
There have been unsubstantiated rumors for years that the Taiwanese military has outfitted TSMC fabs with explosives that can be rigged to go off in the event of a mainland invasion in order to deny China access to TSMC capabilities.
The rumor doesn't actually need to be true in order to act as a deterrent -- it just needs to be leaked to Chinese officials and considered credible. It also assumes that access to TSMC is a strong motivation for an invasion, which may or may not be true.
In any case, the answer to your question depends on whether this is true, and whether the explosives are actually used. If the fabs are destroyed, it'll set the world back by at least a decade.
So if you thought the chip shortage was bad today...
On the other hand, if it's not true (or if it is, but the fabs aren't destroyed for whatever reason), and operations continue despite an invasion, I can definitely imagine a scenario where the rest of the world just sort of shrugs and goes with it. Kind of a horrifying thought, but what are the alternatives? Attack China? They have nukes. Everyone will condemn China, sure. Then China will get upset and claim that we're all "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people" [1], and that'll be the end of it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurting_the_feelings_of_the_Ch...
Re: Welcome to the Decade of Concern
#10Is taiwan the Sudètes of someone ? What happens if taiwan just gets invaded, like crimea was, and no one balks ?
There have been unsubstantiated rumors for years that the Taiwanese military has outfitted TSMC fabs with explosives that can be rigged to go off in the event of a mainland invasion in order to deny China access to TSMC capabilities. The rumor doesn't actually need to be true in order to act as a deterrent -- it just needs to be leaked to Chinese officials and considered credible. It also assumes that access to TSMC…
The chinese leadership/official position is that Taiwan is part of China. They don't want to invade and retake it because they want TSMC's chips, they want to retake it because they think it's a rebellious province that needs to be brought to heel.