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Taiwan is a vital island that is under serious threat

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11–20 of 321 posts

Re: Taiwan is a vital island that is under serious threat

#11

Probably a completely idiotic suggestion, but why can't the US secretly provide Taiwan with a few nukes if things really heat up as a very last measure to deter China.

What would be idiotic is to do that secretly. The whole point of nukes is that the enemy (and its public opinion) knows you have them and intend to use them if necessary.

Re: Taiwan is a vital island that is under serious threat

#12

Probably a completely idiotic suggestion, but why can't the US secretly provide Taiwan with a few nukes if things really heat up as a very last measure to deter China.

Well, the biggest reason is that Taiwan already has domestic nuclear refinement capabilities and likely could make a nuke themselves in a couples months if they needed to.

They don't need to do that quite yet though, as despite the media panic, an invasion of Taiwan is years, is not decades away from being attempted.

China is a real threat, but it's more over the long term, than any immediate concerns.

Re: Taiwan is a vital island that is under serious threat

#13
post #7

What I don't get is that to invade Taiwan, China needs a large amount of ships and cargo planes, both of which seem very vulnerable to modern missiles (as the Russian army found out in Ukraine). Do the chinese have a solution for that?

The only reason PRC would invade Taiwan is if Washington started installing ICBM silos there. In which case they would just knock out that infrastructure with long-range strikes.

Re: Taiwan is a vital island that is under serious threat

#14
post #11

Probably a completely idiotic suggestion, but why can't the US secretly provide Taiwan with a few nukes if things really heat up as a very last measure to deter China.

What would be idiotic is to do that secretly. The whole point of nukes is that the enemy (and its public opinion) knows you have them and intend to use them if necessary.

Taiwan will reveal them at the very last moment when war is imminent.

If war is still preventable showing the nukes will just escalate things.

Re: Taiwan is a vital island that is under serious threat

#16
post #7

What I don't get is that to invade Taiwan, China needs a large amount of ships and cargo planes, both of which seem very vulnerable to modern missiles (as the Russian army found out in Ukraine). Do the chinese have a solution for that?

A naval blockade with sea mines and submarines. Taiwan imports 70% of its food and 100% of its fossil fuels.

Taiwan has major political factions that already favor closer ties with China. Put under stress, Taiwan may be more inclined to reunify than most western spectators would like to assume.

Re: Taiwan is a vital island that is under serious threat

#17
post #7

What I don't get is that to invade Taiwan, China needs a large amount of ships and cargo planes, both of which seem very vulnerable to modern missiles (as the Russian army found out in Ukraine). Do the chinese have a solution for that?

Systems firing missiles are also vulnerable to missiles. That's not a sarcastic response, with maybe the exception of very short-range stuff - Javelin, Konkurs, etc. Those would be vulnerable to thermal smoke counter-measures too.

Re: Taiwan is a vital island that is under serious threat

#18
post #8
post #3

All they need to do is look at what happened in Hong Kong. If China did not do what they did in Hong Kong, Taiwan may be headed to some kind on unification. Now, they would be crazy to even entertain that thought. This issue lies directly on China and no one else. If I had a say in Taiwan, I would announce it is now a independent Country.

> All they need to do is look at what happened in Hong Kong. Maybe I am diving too much into the weeds here, but my understanding with HK is when the UK left and setup autonomous region with China in 1984, China/UK agree to leave the gov unchanged for 50 years after 1997 [0]. This interim government that was setup is controlled by CCP members. My understanding is the Taiwan gov has always been completely separate fro…

Taiwan govt ruled China and lost to the Communists in the civil war. Both countries see Taiwan as part of a greater China

Re: Taiwan is a vital island that is under serious threat

#19
post #3

All they need to do is look at what happened in Hong Kong. If China did not do what they did in Hong Kong, Taiwan may be headed to some kind on unification. Now, they would be crazy to even entertain that thought. This issue lies directly on China and no one else. If I had a say in Taiwan, I would announce it is now a independent Country.

The Taiwanese concept of "unification" is not what you're thinking of.

The Taiwanese faction supporting unification (usually the KMT) does not envision a world where Taiwan is/becomes a province of the PRC, they envision a world where the ROC governs all current PRC provinces, that is where they are in the seat of power in Beijing. I.e. this is something going in the opposite direction.

The opposing faction rejects these ambitions and wants Taiwan to go its own way.

EDIT: Since it's not necessarily military intervention.

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