Lifting Self-Imposed Restrictions on the U.S.-Taiwan Relationship

211–212 of 212 posts

Re: Lifting Self-Imposed Restrictions on the U.S.-Taiwan Relationship

#211

Post by njarboe » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 12:56 AM UTC

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #210

njarboe wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 13,000 nuclear weapons ready to deploed at a moments notice in the world [1]. I agree that humans would not likely go extinct, but a full exchange of all of these weapons would probably cause a global extinction event, less extreme than the one the killed off the dinosaurs, but a very serious one that would be easily seen in the geologic record. I think that global annihilation is a good descriptor of…

I'm aware of the possibility that is nuclear winter. OTOH, some volcano(es) could have a big burp anytime, and produce the same. (As they did several times, in the past.)

True, and super eruptions are a serious threat. The last big one was called the Toba eruption about 75,000 year ago. It may have dropped the human population to 3-10 thousand people based on a genetic bottleneck that appeared at around that time[1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

Re: Lifting Self-Imposed Restrictions on the U.S.-Taiwan Relationship

#212

Post by fmajid » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 8:20 PM UTC

perennate wrote: post #196

fmajid wrote: post #190

Taiwan is the center of the world semiconductor industry and far more critical to the US than Saudi Arabia. It would also be exceedingly difficult to defend from China. There is no point in provoking China into a war we would lose (because China’s military budget has been focused on preventing that for the last 6 decades, whereas ours is scattered across too many objectives) until we have a plan that can succeed.

There is no point in provoking China into a war because it would lead to a nuclear war which would end humanity as we know it. Everyone would lose in any all-on war between two nuclear powers. China has been far more provoking than the US, with Xi Jinping continuing to maintain a 2049 deadline for taking back Taiwan, with force if needed, not to mention cracking down on the pro-democracy party in Hong Kong, which has…

That's my point, a threat of the US escalating to nuclear war to defend Taiwan is not credible. Therefore there must be conventional means of ensuring a conventional attack on Taiwan cannot succeed.

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