4 ms·
... I dunno, not going to war over something like that, maybe?
by jjulius 2y ago
... I dunno, not going to war over something like that, maybe?
- ceejayoz 2y agoYeah, that's the "just give Hitler Czechoslovakia and hope he's satisfied" approach. It hasn't historically worked that well.
- jjulius 2y ago"Not going to war" starts with "don't invade another country".
- ceejayoz 2y agoChina gets to "don't invade another country" with regards to Taiwan. If China chooses to invade, the US is left with a choice of how to intervene. "No war" isn't on the table any more, even if the US choice is "don't get involved in the war and let our ally get clobbered".
- petre 2y agoExcept China doesn't consider Taiwan another country and goes to lenghty efforts to prevent anyone else from doing just that.
- llamaimperative 2y agoSo to allow nuclear armed states to invade whoever they want, got it.
- jjulius 2y agoAh, thank you for adhering to general internet commenting guidelines, where we insert words into others mouths that aren't the most generous interpretation of what they could be saying. No, I certainly wouldn't have stepped back further, as another respondent said, and argued that China should leave Taiwan alone, nope - I definitely insinuated that nuclear-armed states should invade folk at their own whim and we should do nothing about it. Yep, you're right, that's definitely where I was going with it. Edit: To make things perfectly clear, "not going to war" starts with "don't invade another country". I'm not sure how that isn't obvious.
- llamaimperative 2y agoThe premise of the conversation is China deciding to invade Taiwan. "Would prefer if they didn't" is a sensible position to hold and not an actual contribution to the conversation.
- jjulius 2y agoNo, the premise of the conversation is "sleepwalking towards war". Sleepwalking involves doing things that you're not aware you're doing, which could have dire consequences. The alternative is to wake up and be conscious of moving things in the right direction. Sensible positions worth holding are valid contributions to conversations.
- llamaimperative 2y agoOkay then we can conclude here: everyone agrees that we should avoid sleepwalking into war. Fruitful! Highly informative as to what decisions need to be made henceforth.
- jjulius 2y agoNot sure why you feel the need to gatekeep the kinds of responses we can give to your question - you asked, and I sure wasn't the only one with that answer. But maybe you're right - maybe we should cherry pick what we discuss, you never know if Xi will stumble upon this very HN thread and realize that he needs to change course thanks to our highly informative discussion.
- llamaimperative 2y agoNo one here thinks Xi should go invade Taiwan.