I don't think a lot of people in this thread seem to understand the gravity of what this would mean (perhaps because many here didn't live through the Cold War)

I don't think a lot of people in this thread seem to understand the gravity of what this would mean (perhaps because many here didn't live through the Cold War), but this would not be Crimea all over again - it would be a standoff between two nuclear armed powers. The US at one time (up until 1980) actually had an explicit mutual defense pact with Taiwan, guaranteeing that either would go to war if the other were attacked. The policy since then has been 'deliberate ambiguity' [1] but it's generally understood that there would be some kind of intervention. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_deliberate_ambiguity#Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_deliberate_ambiguity...