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The current government is going to weaken Western alliances. China is going to take Taiwan. Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons p
by matthewdgreen 2y ago
The current government is going to weaken Western alliances. China is going to take Taiwan. Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. The entire Middle East is going to nuclearize, with Iran first and then Saudi Arabia (the Trump white house was trying to arrange this last term, I suppose they'll succeed this time.) You cannot have a world where every single nation has nuclear weapons mounted on ICBMs and not have a war in the medium term.
- monero-xmr 2y agoHong Kong was very different than Taiwan would be. Taiwan will be a bloodbath as an armed, diehard anti-communist population fights to the death. And if China just wants to blow it all to bits, what was the point? They want to dominate the country and its people, not own a smoldering ruin.
- actionfromafar 2y agoThat notion didn't stop Russia from scorching Ukraine, can't see why it would stop China.
- tim333 2y agoThe issue Russia does have with Ukraine is it has to keep it's ships and planes away from Ukrainian areas or they get shot down. That'd be a problem for invading Taiwan.
- cma 2y agoThere have been wargames where it has been simulated with China using its entire commercial fishing fleet as the amphibious assault force. It wouldn't be easily stoppable.
- aardvarkr 2y agoWhy and how would a fishing fleet be unstoppable? Why is that better than actual landing vehicles?
- nradov 2y agoIt's not better. But if China is willing to take enormous losses, then they can push a lot of troops across the Taiwan Strait in requisitioned civilian boats. Essentially the maritime equivalent of a human wave assault.
- tim333 2y agoI'm guessing Taiwan would only have so many anti-ship missiles so if you have more ships than that you wouldn't be able to get them all.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoRussia isn’t as smart as China.
- Apocryphon 2y agoNot being connected by land, thus having to force a naval invasion, is a big deterrent.
- markus_zhang 2y agoI doubt there would be any meaningful resistance, TBH.
- monero-xmr 2y agoI could not disagree harder. I know a decent number of Taiwanese people and their hatred of communists is like my ex-Soviet friends: very very deep
- BurningFrog 2y agoTaiwan is mostly the descendants of refugees from the 1949 Communist takeover!
- dougfelt 2y agoNo, most are descended from Taiwanese who were there before the mainlanders arrived.
- markus_zhang 2y agoI know many who work in the mainland. I don't really think there is going to be a war though, maybe a super short one. It is mostly the consequences that puts CCP on check. But maybe in a few years they won't care anymore.
- HWR_14 2y agoUnless its existence and defiance of China was a sore point. Then an uninhabited ruin might be appealing.
- Dalewyn 2y ago>Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. Japan would need to amend their constitution for that, and that is simply not happening. They have failed to amend their constitution for much more mundane objectives, let alone nukes.
- teractiveodular 2y agoThat would absolutely happen if China invaded Taiwan and the US stood by twiddling its fingers. Remember, Sweden and Finland were staunchly against NATO membership until Russia invaded Ukraine.
- naniwaduni 2y agoNational attitudes have a remarkable ability to shift in response to neighbors getting invaded, as we learned a couple of years ago.
- BurningFrog 2y agoJapan could of course do it in secret, like others have.
- zaik 2y agoIn a complete disregard for the rule of law? Which other democratic countries with anti-nuclear constitution had a secret nuclear program?
- tehjoker 2y agoIsrael, though I don't think they have it in their constitution (they don't have a constitution).
- jltsiren 2y agoJapan, among many other countries, subscribes to the idea that the milder law prevails. If an action was illegal but it was made legal after the fact, then it was legal. Similarly, an unconstitutional action can be made constitutional after the fact. Constitutions are not supposed to be absolute constraints. They are not supposed to prevent a country from doing what is reasonable or necessary, as long as people are willing to accept that it was reasonable and necessary.
- whatsupdog 2y ago[flagged]
- mopsi 2y agoBlatantly untrue. Russia got all it wanted: Ukraine seeked NATO membership in 2008, Russia threw a temper tantrum, the US, France and Germany bailed out of the invitation, and Russia invaded Ukraine a few years later without having to risk with getting hit with NATO nukes in retaliation.
- TOMDM 2y agoThe only ones normalising war are the ones carrying water for Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine with rampant conspiracism fed by a healthy dose of Russian propoganda. Even Putin doesn't parrot the Russian propoganda, the only ones still eating that out of the trough are Americans. Putin when interviewed by Tucker just talked of the history of the Soviet Union, and the strength and cultural ties of that block. NATO expansionism as a justification for Russia's annexation of Ukraine is an excuse reserved only for those dumb enough to believe Russian propoganda.
- jaco6 2y ago[dead]
- lamontcg 2y ago> North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. Getting a ballistic missile to hit the continental US is the first of many problems they'll need to solve before I start losing any sleep. They also need to be able to hit a location accurately. And they need a hypersonic reentry vehicle capable of delivering a nuclear payload without disintegrating the bomb or prematurely burning up the explosives in it. Those are incredibly difficult problems, and each one keeps getting worse.
- openasocket 2y agoNorth Korea has successfully tested multiple missile launches on a lofted trajectory that demonstrated an intercontinental range. I believe both the hwasong 17 and 18 are capable of hitting the continental United States. Rentry vehicles have been demonstrated multiple times. Accuracy is a bit more of a concern, but with a thermonuclear weapon missing a city by 10 miles is still more than enough to cause millions of casualties. The DPRK is absolutely a totalitarian, backwards, hermit kingdom. But we underestimate them at our peril.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoJesus, I hadn't realized they had come so far. Apparently NK gained the ability to hit the entire continental US with Hwasong 15. The latest iterations are suspected of being designed to contain MRVs or MIRVs, which would completely overwhelm US missile defenses. It is insane that we let them go down this road.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoEven they know that if one launched from their end they would all cease to exist within minutes.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoThis is a deterrent until Kim Jong Un loses his marbles or receives a terminal diagnosis, or until some military commander makes a serious mistake. Now multiply this same risk times fifty or sixty and you’ll see why the major project of the 20th century was limiting the number of countries with nukes.
- elzbardico 2y ago[flagged]
- aardvarkr 2y agoHuh? What did the current administration do to force Russia to invade a sovereign nation? How did this administration topple Assad? Laughable that you think it’s ISIS running the show. How did the current administration convince Hamas to launch a war against Israel? Gtfo with your “liberal Pearl clutching” lmao you’re a joke
- elzbardico 2y ago[flagged]
- defrost 2y ago> Everyone who is not drunk on Propaganda > people like you are unable of critical thinking. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- DonHopkins 2y ago>...Minsky agreements... He must be a manfunctioning AI bot. ;)
- gnkyfrg 2y ago[dead]
- option 2y agoThe Ukraine lesson is simple - you are not independent if you don’t have nuclear weapons. If you want to be safe you should either have nuclear weapons or be in NATO. This is a massive fail of world’s security and it is definitely not Trump’s fault. Blame horribly incompetent policies of Merkel, Obama, and Biden who are simply afraid of putin
- boredatoms 2y agoIf the US goes untrustworthy, every non-poor country on earth will have to start a program
- Ekaros 2y agoOn other hand world where everyone does not have nuclear weapon has been absolutely proven to be utter total failure. We should try one with everyone having nuclear weapons to see if it prevents more wars. Maybe fear of death in the aggressor nations would prevent their evils.
- autoexec 2y agoFailure where everyone does not have nuclear weapons looks very different from failure where everyone does. A scenario where everyone has nuclear weapons can only ever fail one time, because after that humanity will not survive to try anything else to "see if it prevents more wars". It depends on how you define success I guess. The very fact that we're alive to have the option of giving everyone nukes just to see what happens means we've already found a measure of success. If everyone has nukes and they use them it means no more humans, which means no more wars, which I guess can also be seen as a success. World peace at last.