121–130 of 538 posts
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This would absolutely never happen, but if we were serious about completely removing the possibility of a Chinese mainland invasion of Taiwan, we could just publicly give Taiwan some nukes. It would be a global political shitstorm, but even mainland China would not be stupid enough to invade after that. Nuclear proliferation may be bad for all sorts of reasons, but MAD really does appear to work. Also Taiwan already…
> we could just publicly give Taiwan some nukes US would never do that, it would violate Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Some non-nuclear NATO countries do host US nuclear weapons, but they are legally and physically under US control. In an actual nuclear war, the US would release these nuclear weapons to their allies – at which point the US would have indeed violated the treaty, but in a nuclear war who cares? So in…
The US unlikely to be enormously bothered about violating treaties if it finds doing so in its interest.
> Given the extreme risk of such a move
What exactly is China going to do? Try to break the US-led world order? They're doing that already!
I visited this museum in 2016. It was incredible to see this on Chinese soil. Hong Kong had a mere 20 years of being truly Hong Kong, free of the UK and generally free of China. Now it is just more China.
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If Beijing ever martyrs the protestors like tianeman again I don't think the world will take kindly to that at all. I even think russia would join an american coalition. China has no strong allies that wouldn't prefer to spare themselves in the event of worldwide intervention and they can't fight off the entire developed world alone no matter how far they came in recent decades.
You are too optimistic. The US got too involved in too many wars for the wrong reasons and we got weary of them. China sees this as a weakness (admittedly). If the US does not flinch, no one else will and we won’t and no one else will. We know terrible things are happening en masse in Xinjiang, Iran does terrible things to dissidents, north Korea does terrible things. China and N Korea have nukes. Iran is close. In t…
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Western countries irrevocably recognizing Taiwan would be a start.
We are playing the long game, eventually the warmongering Chinese leaders will be gone.
There's that word again.
What do you do when all the authorities, and all the news-sources, and everybody you know calls it "misinformation"?
Who's the bad guy here?
It's enough to make you crazy.
I mean have you met the average person? He believes whatever he's told. And with great enthusiasm.
And he hates whoever he's told to hate.
Crazy.
For those who do not remember they would arrest a member of say the Politburo and then all pictures of him with other leaders would be airbrushed out, sometimes even in library books. It was as if he was no longer ever born.
The power balance between the US, UK, and China in 1984 was far more in favor of the US and the UK than it is now and they still caved to Chinese demands vis a vis Hong Kong. Given the state of global power balance now, there is not a chance in hell that any of the West will do anything (except maybe words) to support the Hong Kong.
In 1984 China was part of the warsaw pact and well allied. Who will stand up to chinas defence in the face of an american coalition today? Russia would honestly probably join the american coaliton.
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Tariffs? We tried a trade war, and it had some economic effect, but no lasting political effect. We probably don't want to get involved in another land war in Asia, if we can avoid it. We could try asking them nicely, but beyond that I feel like it's up to the people of China to decide their own fate.
A land war against China over Hong Kong would be ridiculous. They have the entire country as a base. The western countries would have to fly/sail everything in. Not to mention the legal situation. It's their soil already. It would be an invasion. Against another superpower no less. Really bad idea. And China can hurt the city enough by just turning the water off. It will only hurt the people of Hong Kong more. No, th…
Indeed. It's a complete non-starter.
If the West wants to beat China they must be more subtle and crafty than a direct military invasion: the 2nd Cold War will be mainly fought using diplomacy, trade, economics, technology and spying. Not direct military conflict, apart from maybe a few proxy wars.
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> we could just publicly give Taiwan some nukes US would never do that, it would violate Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Some non-nuclear NATO countries do host US nuclear weapons, but they are legally and physically under US control. In an actual nuclear war, the US would release these nuclear weapons to their allies – at which point the US would have indeed violated the treaty, but in a nuclear war who cares? So in…
> US would never do that, it would violate Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The US unlikely to be enormously bothered about violating treaties if it finds doing so in its interest. > Given the extreme risk of such a move What exactly is China going to do? Try to break the US-led world order? They're doing that already!
The US cares greatly about the NPT because it wants a world in which only a small number of countries have nuclear weapons, not a world in which dozens of them do.
NPT limits nuclear weapons to 5 countries only - China, France, Russia, UK, US. Four nuclear states refuse to give up their weapons as the treaty demands (and hence refuse to join it) - India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan. But a world with 9 nuclear weapons states is preferable to one with 90
> What exactly is China going to do?
Attack Taiwan? China would likely try to call the US nuclear bluff with a massive conventional attack. The ensuing loss of human life and economic damage would be enormous.