What is so attractive to attempt the greatest amphibious assault in human history just to get an island with a bunch of people who will hate you and have nowhere to run away.

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maxglute 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Political reunification, i.e. land > people, see PRC saying "keep the island not the people". At this point no amphibious assault needed, just blockading TW and turning into gaza via mainland munitions now that starving masses is normalized is an option too.

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aussieguy1234 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

That type of blockade is typically regarded as an act of war equal to dropping bombs. So that in itself could trigger a war.

	▲	maxglute 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		PRC-TW/ROC is already ongoing civil war that never ended in ratification, so legally it doesn't really matter. It's no different than ROC doing port closure policy for decades.
	▲	Scarblac 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It is a way to fight the war that doesn't require amphibious landings.

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gscott 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Taking the island gives China a large military advantage controlling access to Japan.

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petesergeant 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

How do you turn an island into Gaza when the US is providing weapons to it, and not to the other side? Ukraine seems like it would be a better example.

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maxglute 4 days ago | parent [-]

US+co essentially incapable of resupplying TW if PRC motivated to stranglehold blockade. TW is 15 times smaller than UKR, the quality of ISR and amount of munitions PRC can pour onto anywhere in the island and adjacent waters is also orders of magnitude more than RU and resupply via water and air is basically transparent vs myriad of obfuscated land routes UKR has, PRC can trivially locked down TW airstrips and ports from purely mainland platforms. Short distances involved = extremely rapid responses, as in not enough time to unload supplies - low single digit minutes from higher end PRC missiles... doesn't even need navy to enforce a kinetic blockade. TW also 98% dependant on energy imports, 70% on calories. Better example is Cuba, if US wanted to blockade Cuba or depopulate the island, there isn't anything anyone can do about it, i.e. PRC take out some power infra (refrigeration) and water treatment plants and island basically becomes Gaza in days. Ironically, if that happens the only actor with the logistics capability to sustain island with population of TW is PRC - US airlift capacity smaller than Berlin airlift and that was... for 2m vs 24m mouths. Which is why IMO all those new fancy landing barges likely going to be used for "humanitarian" relief - realistically no one in/out of region has the surplus to arbitrarily ramp up supplies for island of 24m... except PRC since that's ~1% of PRC population, almost rounding error vs covid0 mobilization.

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SJC_Hacker 4 days ago | parent [-]

There isn’t anything could do about the US invading Cuba because no one has much of a blue water navy outside the US itself.

Now granted, China is getting there but their navy is still mostly brown water (by design). And in any Taiwan / SCS conflict they would have an advantage because they can use their land assets, especially air force and land based anti ship rockets, on top of their navy.

The US land bases in the region are few or dependent on the grace of the host countries. Depending on political situation they might not Ok strikes against China if a conflict occurs for fear of being drawn into the war and angering China if the US loses. The only one Id be 100% on is Japan, they’d fight China to the last.

	▲	maxglute 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		My gist is more no current bluewater Navy, including US is scaled to fight attrition battle in a near parity peer sized adversary's backyard. On paper this applies to current USN vs WestPac. Axis JP+DE during WW2, peak USSR were both ~1/2 of US comprehensive power, i.e. gdp ppp, % of global output, domestic industry output. PRC vs US closer to ~1-2x, with some metrics such as ship or munition building... order of magnitude more. In some gaps, US not even peak JP or USSR in relative terms. Even the month long 90s Iraq curbstomp required generational tech gab (french designers leaked/compromised IADs), 5 carriers and favourable regional basing (vs westpac), unsustainably high tempo sorties... when US militarily hasn't declined to current state in terms of capitalization... and Iraq then is charitably 1/100th the size of PRC. Unless there is unrevealed tech gap that still enables asymmetric curb stomp with a much smaller force - perhaps somehow none of Chinese hardware works, which at this point likely means completely dismantling PRC kill chain, i.e. what PRC intends to do vs US. TLDR is the potential regional balance is increasingly lop sided in favour of PRC with gap widening, i.e. US+co can't preposition hardware at relevant rate. PRC hinted their cruise missile gigafactory has capacity to exhaust/target entire current US+co hardware inventory + stockpiles with few months production. A few more months enough to comprehensively shatter critical infra of US partners in 1IC. Hence why JP likely won't fight, because ultimately they're just a larger TW, also dependant on energy and calorie imports, and main islands also entirely within umbrella of PRC mainland fires. Mainland China is much better postured to operation Starvation JP than US from Marianas (25% further, and still needed logistics from CONUS) was during WW2. And if JP gives PRC excuse to fight them then PRC will (LBH be somewhat eager) to fight to the last JPnese. If JP doesn't, then they... well survive, maybe even still keep US protection. Most likely they'll only lose Senkaku when regional dynamics reconfigure. IMO current sign of JP not fighting is stronger than JP will fight... i.e. not opening main islands to distributed AGILE basing - US basically said they need JP in TW scenario, but they need to disperse all across JP not just Okinawa and Ryukyu's for survivability and JP action so far (since Trump1) is to not. It doesn't matter what JP politicians say for security theatre, IMO JP not committed until they start heavily militarizing main islands.

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Qwertious 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

1) politics 2) breaking the US's submarine detection on the pacific, so now they can essentially slip unlimited undetected submarines into the pacific (and therefore the atlantic/indian) 3) being harder to navally blockade 4) disrupt the West's military chip advantage

	▲	petesergeant 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> breaking the US's submarine detection on the pacific This doesn’t really hold up when looking at a map that includes Okinawa and Batanes.

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Lu2025 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The thing about autocracies, there is nobody to stop an obviously wrong decision (for example, Russian invasion of Ukraine).

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basilgohar 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, because in Western democracies we were very successful at stopping invasions such as Iraq x2, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, etc.

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Nevermark 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

The fact that democracies make mistakes, isn't an argument against dictators having more carte blanche to make mistakes.

Any form of government is going to make mistakes.

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LinXitoW 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

By your very own logic, I could argue that dictators have more carte blanche to make correct choices, where democracies are mired down by compromises and too many cooks in the kitchen.

	▲	bluGill 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		The possibility exists, but the reality is very different.

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FpUser 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>"The fact that democracies make mistakes..."

Going to war and killing people is "a mistake". Let me rephrase it for you:

The fact that democracies are the same murderous criminal fucks when it suits their goals as are dictators. Yes the have more problem having their population to approve it but do they give a flying fuck?

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keybored 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

These wars weren’t mistakes. The ruling class wanted them and got them.

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necovek 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is nobody to admit a bad decision and reverse course on it?

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jopsen 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Think of all the wars we didn't have :)

Democracies aren't perfect, but they can change, admit mistakes and adapt.

	▲	blackoil 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think it is other way round. In a democracy ideas are ingrained in public psyche for support. Be it Muslims/Jews/Christians good/bad, immigrants evil, abortion bad all become part of a large percentage of people's belief and changing that requires equally herculean efforts. In autocracy, people are generally kept aloof of such decisions so you can always switch enemies from Eurasia to Eastasia and no one cares. In case of China, the value of Taiwan/Arunachal/... is mostly egoistical, based on some notion that Qing China boundaries must be restored. If tomorrow a new leadership comes and makes EU kind of setup with Taiwan, people will have no say and most won't care.

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4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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refurb 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean Vietnam was stopped? And Afghanistan? Korea the US never started.