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Losing Taiwan Means Losing Japan (2020)
- charliea0 4y agoI feel like this is a bit over-stated, but Taiwan does project a great deal of naval power into the surrounding waters. Also, though this article reads a bit like HoI4 analysis. I think you need to more carefully consider all of the nations agency and motivation rather than consider them victory points to be won or lost.
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago"Losing". As if Taiwan and Japan are owned by the USA. The title itself speaks loudly about the mindset of the author and the American ruling class, but reveals also the truth. Taiwan is an ex military dictatorship born as a puppet state for the USA to counter communist China.
- CoastalCoder 4y agoThe term "losing" doesn't have such a specific connotation for me. E.g., losing a friend to a drunk driver.
- deft-code 4y agoI read the article the feeling got was "losing" was used similar to losing a district in an election. Not ownership of the district, but definitely a decrease of the party's (owned) influence and power due to that districts allegiance. Another more mundane analogy, a sports team can lose a player in the say way.
- jeswin 4y ago> Taiwan is an ex military dictatorship born as a puppet state for the USA to counter communist China. It is immaterial what Taiwan was born as. It is a self-governing, free country, and the only thing that matters should be the wishes of the people who live there. And that overwhelmingly is to not be a part of communist China.
- FooBarWidget 4y agoIf only we are consistent in applying this standard. Are Hawaiian, native American, Puerto Rican, Ryuku etc independence activists' wish also important or is only Taiwan's wish important? If only Taiwan, then we do truly believe in this standard or is it just a moral cover for geopolitical interest?
- SonicScrub 4y agoThis is kind of a silly comment. Of course the US interest in Taiwan has to do with geopolitical interest rather than a moral standing. That doesn't stop me (or anyone else) from believing that the Taiwanese should be entitled to self-determination. Or the Hawaiians, Indigenous peoples, or Puerto Ricans for that matter. If support for that aim happens to come from the US then that's fine by me. Moral consistency from a national government is not something I require or expect.
- sabarn01 4y agoTaiwan has been independent in fact for a long time. Changning the status quo seems to require more justification. If large majorities of Taiwanese want to join China than that is their prerogative.
- pessimizer 4y agoOr Eastern Ukraine for that matter. If there were actually concern about the self-determination of people who lived there, they would have been asked. We don't ask, because we know what the answer would be.
- mthoms 4y agoWell they were asked. They voted to be part of an independent Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_re... Should they be asked again? Maybe. But it’s impossible to do fairly at the present time.
- xtian 4y ago
- Fauntleroy 4y agoAll such statements have the comical subtext of suggesting Chinese "ownership" of Taiwan would be a better scenario.
- pastacacioepepe 4y agoTaiwan is part of China. The USA also hypocritically recognize that.
- Fauntleroy 4y agoI wonder how the residents of Taiwan feel about this.
- pastacacioepepe 4y agoHow do the Catalonians feel about being part of Spain, or the russophone Ukrainians about being part of Ukraine? Not great. Do you care? If the answer is no, then what you are concerned about is not Taiwanese independence.
- SonicScrub 4y agoA people should have a right to self-determination. I can believe that just fine regardless of which people it's applied to. The current focus is in this discussion is about Taiwan, so naturally discussions about Taiwanese self-determination are going to be the focus in this thread. Maybe we'll get a thread about Catalonia sometime. When that happens we can discuss that. For now, let's bound our conversation to the article topic please, and stop trying to derail discussion with whataboutism.
- pessimizer 4y ago> let's bound our conversation to the article topic please, and stop trying to derail discussion with whataboutism. There's been no actual discussion about the self-determination of the Taiwanese, because the Taiwanese have not been asked whether they want to be separated from China, and any indication that they don't has been scrupulously ignored.
- mezentius 4y agoSure, and China used to be a sclerotic caste-based bureaucracy ruled by a hereditary elite. Things change. Taiwan isn't ruled by Chiang Kai-shek anymore; it's a sovereign, democratic society with a flourishing economy and a sense of identity distinctive from that of mainland China.
- Leary 4y agoChinese society was neither caste-based or ruled by a hereditary elite.
- echelon 4y agoControl over Taiwan means far more than just semiconductors. US naval strategy is based on Taiwan. With Taiwan in the fold, China's trade can be effectively blockaded should the situation deteriorate to war. It's a last ditch measure, for sure, but a valuable card to hold nonetheless. China is building more pipeline and rail to de-risk this, but ultimately they want full access to the Pacific. Taiwan and South China Sea militarization give them this. Taiwan going to China turns the tides of Western influence in Asia. Many nations friendly to the West would "switch sides", including close Western allies like Japan and South Korea. This would have tremendous impact to the West's economy, jobs, cost of goods, cost of energy, etc. Taiwan is perhaps one of the most important subjects that will define this century. There's a reason all eyes are on it.
- xtian 4y agoWhy should the West have more influence from the other side of the world than the largest economy in the region?
- praestigiare 4y agoI don't think the parent was discussing who should have influence, just the consequences of it.
- kupopuffs 4y agoIt's not about what should be right. When the squeeze for survival comes, might makes right
- ericmay 4y agoWhy not? Can we apply the same logic for China's influence in Africa, for example? Does geographic location matter more than, say, trade volume? Given that there isn't anything between the US and China (or Taiwan) except the ocean does that not give credence to the US being a partner in that area since it's a Pacific nation? If we're talking about the west, US, Japan, South Korea are either close or exceed Taiwan's trade with China, and that only includes western nations that are part of the Pacific Ocean directly (and doesn't include Canada, Australia, or New Zealand either).
- 77pt77 4y agoNo. The USA doesn't own Japan to begin with so it can't lose it. China would never succeed in invading Japan.
- yellowapple 4y agoI don't own my friends, but I'd nonetheless hate to lose them.
- pastacacioepepe 4y agoThe meaning of "to lose" obviously changes depending on the context. You can't apply the meaning it has when talking about friendship whn you're talking about geopolitics. I'd expect a bit more of literary finesse from a writer on a website called "The Scholar's Stage".
- freejazz 4y agoTIL today: countries can't be friendly with each other
- krapp 4y agoNations don't have friends, they have interests. Leaders may act friendly towards one another, and policies may seem friendly when interests correlate, but no nation sends their young men and women off to die on foreign soil for the power of friendship alone.
- purpleblue 4y agoChina has already stated that they fully intend for Taiwan to revert back to Chinese control by 2050. It will be pretty interesting over the next 30 years to see how the geopolitics evolve around this, I hope I live long enough to see it.
- theandrewbailey 4y agoChina has been promising reunification with Taiwan since ever. They've made it into an eternal political issue for the CCP's own benefit. It's anyone guess as to whether they will ever try to change or act on that.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- qzw 4y agoChina was fully committed to zero Covid until protests started happening, then it was scrapped in no time flat. And 2050 is just conveniently far enough away for it sound politically serious and yet have basically no need for actual immediate action.
- beebmam 4y agoIt's common to see a correlation and assume causation. There are many other reasons for the abandonment of zero covid. The WHO claims that zero covid was no longer working before it was scrapped.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago2050 (2049 actually) is the 100yr anniversary of the CCP's takever of China and the founding of the PRC. That's why it's the target date, they want to complete reunification before then. However, there is some speculation that the CCP observed from the 1989 Tienneman massacre that the West takes roughly 20yrs to forget stuff like that, so the CCP actually wants to reunify Taiwan by 2030, so it will be forgotten by 2050. Hence the rapid military buildup happening now.
- eatonphil 4y agoIs there a similar analysis for the impact on (Republic of) Korea? From the article: > In truth, it is an argument to retreat from East Asia. That argument can be made, but I would prefer to see it made openly. I guess the points basically include RoK.
- NickC25 4y agoHonestly, it probably doesn't even need to be said due to how obvious it is. If we (the "west") loses Japan, we've essentially waived our claims to South Korea as well. We'll have lost legitimacy and lost our word to protect (Taiwan) what is a epicenter of global technological development (semiconductors). Japan and South Korea (and to a lesser, but significant extent, AUS&NZ) will look at the west's inability to protect Taiwan, and say "well, looks like we'd better buddy up to China, because they're the big dogs now". And that will be that. We'd better fucking help Taiwan.
- rayiner 4y agoOr we could just let Asian relational politics run it’s course.
- mcphage 4y agoWhose interests would that benefit?
- rayiner 4y agoAsians?
- arroz 4y agoWhat asians?
- remarkEon 4y agoI think you'll have to be more specific than that. If your hangup is that this is yet another instance of Westerners attempting to decide the fate of a people on the otherside of the planet from them, I think we can grant that there isn't a stellar track record there. Still, ideal scenarios of perfect sovereignty don't exist in the real world and I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect e.g. Japan to ask for continued American involvement.
- _8j50 4y agoThe question really is if the US will continue to fight by proxy like with Ukraine or take an active role. The CCP has been preparing for a long time. They know the real battle is one of public opinion and policy making in the US. The big resounding lesson from Ukraine is that an invasion must be swift and overwheling with careful logistical planning as well as PR and anti-sanction measures. The worst possible thing China can do is attack a US target like a ship or a plane. It will be like pearl harbor, losing all that precious intel network capacity in the US along with US voter's opinions. All of Europe and Asia can combine forced and will still likely lose against the US military in any conflict. But even the smallest nation can win if they manage to change americans' opinions.
- pessimizer 4y ago> will still likely lose against the US military in any conflict. The US couldn't beat Vietnam or Afghanistan.
- freejazz 4y agoThis comment is painfully obtuse
- pessimizer 4y agoIs this a mean way of saying "true," or did the US win in Vietnam and Afghanistan?
- midoridensha 4y agoThe US didn't "lose": it didn't suffer a military defeat forcing any kind of surrender, it simply gave up and went home. "Losing" a war, in this context, means you surrender to the enemy, or at least quit and sign some kind of treaty to end hostilities formally. The US has never done that. The US has never lost on the battlefield. With Vietnam, it was too unpopular and was fighting with one hand tied behind its back anyway. With Afghanistan, it won military, but gave up on trying to prop up the Afghani government and pulled out.
- Imtiredofpassw 4y agoROC and PRC economies are so strictly intertwined that I won't ever be able to take seriously these analysis focused only on geographical maps and military budgets. PRC needs this strategic economic partner, they won't bring the devastating effects of war on the same industries that they work with.
- twblalock 4y agoA lot of people thought Xi would not crack down on tech companies either, because it would hurt the economy, but he did anyway. The Chinese government's top priority is the supremacy of the party. They will invade Taiwan no matter what kind of economic damage it would do, if they believe it will strengthen Xi and the party in the long run.
- Apocryphon 4y agoXi's crackdown on tech companies doesn't appear to be some sort of huge disruption that would lead to an existential crisis. Meanwhile, the PRC launching a hugely expensive preemptive war, risking untold amounts of diplomatic condemnation, economic sanctions, and chaos to international supply chains could very well break the entire global economy. It'd be burning down your neighborhood to spite your face.
- code_biologist 4y agoIt'd be burning down your neighborhood to preserve CCP legitimacy and control of China, which seems to be a reasonable tradeoff from Xi's perspective.
- Apocryphon 4y agoNot if it destroys all of the developmental progress they've made since Deng! Blowing up world trade is highly detrimental to a country's standard of living.
- deleted 4y ago
- remarkEon 4y agoThis article is from February 2020, so it should be contextualized in the fact that it was written prior to the Ukraine War. Greer's most recent Taiwan essay is here: https://scholars-stage.org/we-can-only-kick-taiwan-down-the-road-so-far/ https://scholars-stage.org/we-can-only-kick-taiwan-down-the-...
- SkyMarshal 4y agoThose are two very different articles. Yours is all about Taiwan and US policy, but the OP is all about Japan. OP explains and shows how China taking Taiwan could enable the PLAN to strangle Japan's major shipping lanes, crash the Japanese economy, shut down the industry Japan needs for resupply in a war against China, and potentially even cause a famine in Japan. None of that has changed since it was published.
- remarkEon 4y agoSure. I'm merely pointing out a timeline here. Edit: I don't mean to dismiss your argument that things with regard to Japan have not changed since then. Reasonable people can disagree on if that's true or not (I think you're mostly right).
- dirtyid 4y agoThis piece was also written during Tanner Greer's "Taiwan can win a war with china" period, he's gotten considerably less stupid / ignorant now. Even during 2020, PRC didn't need Taiwan to completely destroy Japan. IRBMs to energy import terminal and other critical infra can turn JP into Yemen over night. So it wouldn't even matter if JP shipping reroutes, simple reality as PRC antishipping, and various space infra improvces, the A2AD bubble will cover JP, making JP shipping perenially vunerable to PRC attack going forward. Taiwan doesn't substantially improve JPs home island defense, most of which are closer to PLA mainland basing anyways. If anything Taiwan island can still be kept in check by Ryukyu islands. Then and now, worst case scenario for JP is US loses so much assets in TW scenario it can no longer defend JP. The TLDR should be even fighing potentially pyrrhic battle over TW may lose JP. TBH almost anything Greer wrote pre 2021 that has assumptions based on military balance / capabilities is not worth taking seriously.
- 99_00 4y agoThe war in Ukraine should make it clear to everyone that China is militarily weak compared to a country outfitted with current generation western arms. Ukraine didn't even have a modern air force, but they were able to beat back Russia. Militarily, there should be no reason for the world not to step up and support Taiwan China's military is rated as weaker than Russia's. It is modeled after Russias. It has much less combat experience. An invasion of Taiwan is much more difficult than an invasion of Ukraine. Economically, the world needs to continue to decouple from China. Unfortunately they aren't our friends.
- jemmyw 4y agoThis chap does presentations on military logistics with a side of Aussie humour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH5TlcMo_m4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH5TlcMo_m4 and tackled China. In short, you're probably not correct. China has had a better military than Russia for some time. They've been building up, they have more money, more discipline, improving or better technology, an actual build up plan that makes sense, less corruption. On the other hand you're right that if they invade Taiwan it won't just be a one sided war where they waltz in. A big difference though is that many people suspect Russia had very bad pre-war intel, driven by corruption, that led them to believe they had a lot more support and local allies on the ground than they did. I do not think that China will make a similar mistake - they will invade when they think they can win. The best thing the west can do is make sure they never think they can win.
- Apocryphon 4y agoChina has also not fought an actual war since their tussle with the Vietnamese in 1979, so really hard to say how the modern PLA would actually perform in a conflict. Seems rather overambitious to go from zero to D-Day-esque massive naval operation.
- Balgair 4y agoBig Schlieffen Plan vibes coming out of China at Taiwan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan Curiously, Clausewitz (drink!) knew better and yet it still didn't stop Germany from their love of plans and order. Even with a world of techno-gadgetry, I don't see the Taiwan Plan will go any different than Schlieffen's. Friction always wins
- alliao 4y agoTaiwan is conveniently located to be pirate land in a way, choking off both China and Japan. The bad actors in both countries can easily sustain Taiwan and siphoning off resources from their own motherlands... an independent and impartial Taiwan is in everyone's interest; even more so for those within the region, whether they realise it or not. I think it'd be centuries after dismantling of CCP before they can fully realise their full potential, such waste.
- marstall 4y agoELI5 Why can't Japan just route its ships around Taiwan, into the open ocean?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoI don't understand why either. Shipping goods on these routes get more expensive and longer and the market adjusts.
- kube-system 4y agoIsn't that what the article concludes? > I am sure someone in Japan must have calculated the likely economic costs of rerouting Japan-bound traffic this way (or in a more extreme circumstance, replacing Middle Eastern energy supplies with North American ones) but I have not yet seen any actual numbers. But given alternate sea lane possibilities, I doubt clearing Japanese shipping out of Taiwanese waters entirely would be enough to threaten Japan with “famine.”
- dirtyid 4y agoI remember reading a decade old analysis for this scenario and JP shipping costs went up like ~10%, or some fairly marginal number. For years (like 2005-2015), entire JP shipping was threatened because PRC successfully took over TW narrative specifically overlooking the obvious to build up the PRC threat. Now to be fair, within the last 5 years, PLA capabilities have gotten to the point where the threat is legitimate, irrespective of TW ownership. PLAN ships now regularly operate east of TW so reroutes would have to be further, meanwhile PLA rocket force can destroy JP critical infra purely from the mainland and turn island nation reliant on calorie or energy imports to Yemen. The TLDR is currently US/JP military has capability to ward off an maritime invasion, but no capability to actually "defend" TW, or JP, or SKR from existing as developed economies. Ergo best avoid the fight, because if JP has to politically pick between preventing a TW invasion by hosting US forces, or become Yemen (let's face it PRC still has grudges), then that's likely how US/JP security alliance may fracture. Alternatively, US loses so much hardware it can no longer support JP long term even if wanted to. It isn't so much losing TW means losing JP as merely fighting large war over TW could lose JP.
- tpmx 4y agoTaiwan is about to be the next Ukraine, along with China being the next Russia. I think this conflict can still be stopped with non-physical violence though.
- nwatson 4y agoThe West should give incentives to China to forego Taiwan for Siberia.
- tpmx 4y agoCreative thinking.
- midoridensha 4y agoPerhaps China would like to retake Vladivostok...
- opportune 4y agoThe whole concept of a conventional war between China and Japan is pretty ridiculous. This article is quite a stretch from the actual implication which is that “shipments to Japan will have to take a longer route if they’re not allowed in the Taiwan Strait” which is already something that seems relatively unlikely.
- swagasaurus-rex 4y agoIt does mention submarines, of which shipping traffic going around the far side of the Philippines would be exposed to. More so because of the depth of the water.
- opportune 4y agoIf China is using submarines to prevent Japanese shipments outside of their territorial water, the conflict has already gone hot and ICBMs are in the air.
- kneebonian 4y ago> the conflict has already gone hot and ICBMs are in the air. I see this reasoning a lot and it feels like an artifact of cold-war MAD thinking. The scenario in which I feel nukes are likely from China is the one from fallout where on the losing end of a global war, the last remnants of the CCP launch an attack as a last ditch effort, I think it is unlikely an nation state (excepting Israel) would use strategic nuclear weapons except as a last ditch resort. Tactically maybe, but not strategically, because everyone wants something, the reasoning in the Cold war was "there are only two powers so you must make sure you are as big and scary as the other guy so they don't try anything". In contrast China seems to simply want to become a world superpower and rule the world not destroy it, in the coldwar we had two diametrically oppossed ideologies competing in a battle for survival that both insisted the other could not be allowed to exist. Now things are very different. That's the thing is that China doesn't want to rule over a wasteland. If another war goes hot it will take a long time before it goes strategically nuclear because everyone knows that once that genies out of the bottle it allows your enemies to retaliate in kind. Even Putin who most people think is insane, and completely unhinged hasn't even used nuclear weapons despite suffering significant losses, being at a technological disadvantage and giving up ground every day. He might use them tactically but unless he's hiding in a bunker in Moscow as the Ukrainian armed forces are bearing down on him I think he is unlikely to decide to drop the nukes on Kyiv.
- m3kw9 4y agoWhen a piece of land the size of and location of Taiwan is in play you bet there are a lot of massive implications and unseen ones to most people are at play here. Not just tangible effects like economic and location but all sorts of derivative effects short medium and long term politically
- brightball 4y agoDidn't I read somewhere that both Ukraine and Taiwan are all about the global semiconductor supply chain? Ukraine controlling the supply of neon gas needed for lasers and Taiwan controlling the knowledge and talent pool used for innovation?
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoHmm. One of the most frightening things I ever read pointed out that Hitler conquered Denmark (home of Niels Bohr) and Norway (source of the only industrial heavy water supply) before opening the large-scale war by invading France. In hindsight, that's terrifying. (I don't know to what degree those reasons played into choosing those two moves.) The parent is giving me somewhat similar vibes...
- bigbillheck 4y ago> I don't know to what degree those reasons played into choosing those two moves. Have you seen a map of Denmark and where it sits in Europe with regards to Germany?
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoSure. Now tell me about Norway.
- bigbillheck 4y agoEasy target with lots of coastline to support attacks on Britain.
- brightball 4y agoRead it here actually… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30457490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30457490
- simonh 4y agoChina is incredibly vulnerable to a seaborn blockade itself. It’s navy is a bad joke next to the US and they are highly dependent on energy and food imports. Russia can weather sanctions because although its economy is a mess, it’s quite diversified and they produce their own food and energy. They can drop down to a stable subsistence mode. China is almost entirely dependent on energy imports. On paper they’re also self sufficient in food, but that food production depends on massive fertiliser imports, and inputs of hydrocarbons to make fertilisers. If China was subject to the same sanctions as Russia, they’d be on their knees in a few months due to energy shortages. A year of it would tear China apart as food production would collapse. They have no stable subsistence level they can safely degrade to absent massive imports of survival commodities. The Chinese know this.
- ManuelKiessling 4y agoI mean this without the slightest hint of doubt, really just curious: Source?
- simonh 4y agoMy wife is a Chinese so I’ve been interested in Chinese news, economics and geopolitics for 20 years now. I also have friends who have lived there for years, including one who’s father in law is, I’ll just say well connected*. I can’t give you one source, I read almost everything about China I come across. * His perspective on the internal politics of zero covid isn’t anything I’ve seen reported anywhere so I can’t corroborate it in any way, but it’s jaw dropping. Basically his position is that the extreme swings in policy implementation by the regions is a deliberate attempt to discredit Hu. Since Hu has deeply identified covid policy with himself personally, and all the regional party factions absolutely hate his guts (which I know is true), they’re deliberately blowing it large style on covid policy. One clue this might be correct is national news now doesn’t mention Hu in relation to covid any more, but regional news often still does.
- real_jiakai 4y agoWho is Hu? Chinese president is Xi instead of Hu.
- Kukumber 4y ago"loosing Taiwan"? what do they mean? do they admit owning Taiwan?
- eecc 4y agoSo, I take it that the US war in the Middle East is over isn't it? /s