#taiwan strait

[beta-lactam-allergic]

#taiwan #people's republic of china #taiwan strait #abc news

[inatungulates]

Taiwan humpback dolphin Sousa chinensis taiwanensis

Observed by brennafraiser, CC BY-NC

#Sousa chinensis taiwanensis #Taiwan humpback dolphin #Cetacea #Delphinidae #cetacean #dolphin #Asia #Taiwan #Pacific Ocean #South China Sea #Taiwan Strait

[eelhound]

"[Van] Jackson 

Since the 1970s, America had repeated military buildups in response to perceived threats. Whether it’s the Soviet military buildup, or the War on Terror, there have been multiple periods where we do these large-scale buildups. This is why America’s military is so ginormous. We have done that under conditions where we don’t raise taxes in four different instances since the 1970s, and because we don’t raise taxes and spend so much on the military, we have to bring in large amounts of foreign capital to finance it. And so, you create global imbalances when you’re the giant sucking machine sucking foreign capital into your economy.

The result of that is not just global imbalances, which produce things like the Asian financial crisis, but it also produces imbalances in our own economy, too. It creates real estate bubbles. So, this is a giant volatility machine to the global economic order and the financial pipes that bring the capital to us. We know it’s a giant volatility machine. It’s driven by high risk financial instruments and speculation, and all of this is pretty destabilizing, in a financial and creating bubbles sense, but it also creates a system where all of these developing economies in Asia have to suppress labor rights to be competitive in the export market because their models of development rely on exports. This system that we perpetuate in the name of supporting military primacy, and military primacy is supposed to in turn support the system, prevents domestic redistribution and balanced capital labor relations in these other Asian economies and countries.

And so, not only are we creating conditions where labor rights get repressed, and imbalances in other countries, it creates systems of kleptocracy and oligarchy, which is rampant in Asia — not everywhere, but it’s pretty prominent. It’s structural violence, and structural violence is what gives way to greater political insecurity, and makes countries need Chinese capital. Chinese capital spreading around Asia is one of the things American foreign policy is so worried about, but we’re creating conditions that we don’t like, and then we do things that worsen those conditions.

[Nathan J.] Robinson 

Yes, it seems ultimately kind of self-defeating, even though we might say that what lies beneath the rhetoric of freedom and openness is the desire to pursue dominance and hegemony, or what the U.S. would call 'U.S. interests.' Ultimately, I think one of the conclusions of your work is that our current approach is not actually leading towards a world where the United States gets everything it wants, but, in fact, is putting not only other people but also ourselves in quite a bit of danger. 

Jackson 

Yes, the thing that Washington has to wake up to, and that I’m worried that it will not because it has incentives not to, is that the requirements of peace and primacy are deeply at odds with each other. Peace requires a certain degree of economic interdependence, regional cohesion, inclusivity in various ways, and above all, military restraint. Primacy requires the opposite of all of that. It requires the formation of rivalry and geoeconomic blocs. It requires containment against your rising rival, arms racing, and weapons proliferation.

It’s patently obvious that by pursuing primacy, we’re making ourselves the enemy of what remains of the Asian peace. It’s that insistence on primacy, coated rhetorically as openness, that is undermining the sources of the Asian peace. The preservation of stability the past 44 years is something that we somewhat take for granted in Washington, and we shouldn’t because it’s eroding rapidly, and Trump was simply a very vibrant data point along a larger trend line. And so, we’re not on a good track."

- Van Jackson being interviewed by Nathan J. Robinson, from "Why This Foreign Policy Expert Thinks Americans Dangerously Misunderstand China." Current Affairs, 16 May 2023.

#van jackson #nathan j. robinson #quote #quotations #diplomacy #foreign policy #international relations #taiwan strait #asia #china #us imperialism #economics #foreign capital #capitalism #us military #arms race #military industrial complex #structural violence

[taiwantalk]

#taiwantalk #Chinese nuclear submarine missing and fate of all onboard uncertain #Taiwan strait

[kneedeepincynade]

Accuse your enemy of what you are guilty, a nazi propaganda tactics that the Americans live by

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

⚠️ NEL MENTRE GLI IMPERIALISTI STATUNITENSI ACCUSANO LA CINA DI "SPIONAGGIO" SENZA ALCUNA PROVA, UN ALTRO RC-135V VIENE INVIATO NELLO STRETTO DI TAIWN ⚠️

🇺🇸 Nel mentre gli imperialisti statunitensi continuano a diffamare la Cina e Cuba con notizie fasulle sul tema dello "spionaggio", un altro RC-135V ha effettuato un volo nello Stretto di Taiwan, probabilmente - come riferisce China Army - per osservare il movimento del Gruppo d'Attacco della Portaerei Shandong, che ha effettuato un'esercitazione militare nella Baia di Bohai 🌟

🔍 Provocazioni degli USA contro la Cina nel 2023:

一 24/02: il Comando Orientale dell'EPL intercetta un P-8A nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, e invia un Caccia di Superiorità Aerea J-11, armato con Missili Aria-Aria, per scortare l'Aereo USA al di fuori della Zona Cinese 🔥

二 23/03: gli USA inviano il Cacciatorpediniere Milius nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, nell'Area delle Isole Paracel, al fine di provocare la Cina😡

三 28/04: gli USA inviano un P-8A nello Stretto di Taiwan, per provocare la Pace nella Zona 😏

四 26/05: Il Comando dell'EPL intercetta un RC-135V nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, pericolosamente vicino alla Città di Shantou, e invia un Caccia Multiruolo J-16 per scortarlo fuori dalla Zona Cinese 🔥

五 07/06: gli USA inviano un RC-135U per spiare la Cina, operando all'incontro tra lo Stretto di Taiwan e il Mar Cinese Meridionale 😡

🐰 Queste sono notizie certe, DOCUMENTATE, non le menzogne senza fonti, tipiche del disgustoso sistema USA «Lancia accuse senza fornire le prove» sul Tema di Cuba. Le tigri di carta americane devono costruire artificialmente ogni sciocchezza anti-Cinese sullo «spionaggio a Cuba» per giustificare ulteriori operazioni aggressive nei confronti della Cina 🤮

🇨🇳 丢掉幻想，准备斗争 ⭐️

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

⚠️ AS US IMPERIALISTS ACCUSE CHINA OF "SPYING" WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE, ANOTHER RC-135V IS SENT INTO THE TAIWN STRAIT ⚠️

🇺🇸 While the US imperialists continue to smear China and Cuba with fake news on the subject of "espionage", another RC-135V flew into the Taiwan Strait, probably - as China Army reports - to observe the movement of the Carrier Strike Group Shandong, which conducted a military exercise in Bohai Bay 🌟

🔍 US provocations against China in 2023:

一 24/02: PLA Eastern Command intercepts a P-8A in the South China Sea, and sends a J-11 Air Superiority Fighter, armed with Air-to-Air Missiles, to escort US aircraft out of the Chinese zone 🔥

二 23/03: US sends Destroyer Milius to South China Sea, Paracel Islands Area, in order to provoke China😡

三 28/04: US sends a P-8A into the Taiwan Strait to cause peace in the area

四 26/05: The PLA Command intercepts an RC-135V in the South China Sea, perilously close to Shantou City, and sends a J-16 Multirole Fighter to escort it out of the Chinese Zone 🔥

五 07/06: US sends RC-135U to spy on China, operating at the junction of the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea 😡

🐰 This is certain, DOCUMENTED news, not the unsourced lies typical of the disgusting US system «Launch accusations without providing evidence» on the Cuba issue. American paper tigers must artificially construct any anti-Chinese nonsense about «espionage in Cuba » to justify further aggressive operations against China 🤮

🇨🇳 丢掉幻想，准备斗争 ⭐️

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

#socialism #china #italian #translated #china news #communism #collettivoshaoshan #marxism leninism #xi jinping #marxist leninist #marxismo #marxist #marxism #multipolar world #multipolarity #taiwan war #taiwan government #taiwan strait #taiwan #taiwan news #american imperialism #western imperialism #new cold war #asia news #news #tensions #cuba #socialismo #socialist #chinese communist party

[theculturedmarxist]

At the Richard Nixon Foundation’s Grand Strategy Summit last month, former US national security adviser Ambassador Robert O’Brien suggested that the US might destroy Taiwan’s semiconductor factories in the event of a Chinese invasion, as reported by Army Technology. 

“If China takes Taiwan and takes those factories intact – which I don’t think we would ever allow – they have a monopoly over chips the way OPEC has a monopoly or even more than the way OPEC has a monopoly over oil,” O’Brien said. 

In addition, as reported by Bloomberg in October, the US may be planning to evacuate the island’s semiconductor engineers in the event of a Chinese invasion. The source says unnamed US officials said that accelerated preparations had been made for an action plan to evacuate such skilled personnel to the US in the worst-case scenario.

China’s satellite coverage in the Western Pacific has doubled since 2018, the Pentagon reported last week in its annual assessment of the Chinese military. That gives China the ability to detect American surface ships with an array of sensors that can guide its 2,000 land-based missiles to moving targets, including US aircraft carriers.

The Defense Department’s November 29 report “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” reflects a grimly realistic rethinking of China’s military capacity in its home theater.

China hawk Elbridge Colby, a prominent advocate of a Western Pacific military buildup to deny China access to its adjacent seas, tweeted on November 6, “Senior flag officers are saying we’re on a trajectory to get crushed in a war with China, which would likely be the most important war since WWII, God forbid.”

The strategic takeaway is that the United States cannot win a firefight close to China’s coast, and can’t defend Taiwan whether it wants to or not. That view in the Joe Biden administration’s Department of Defense (DOD) persuaded the president to discuss “guardrails” against military confrontation in his November summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Republican hawks appear to have come to the same conclusion. The United States will enact a scorched-earth policy in Taiwan, destroying its semiconductor industry, if the PRC seizes the island, former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien told a conference at the Richard Nixon Foundation on November 10, reports army-technology.com. 

“If China takes Taiwan and takes those factories intact – which I don’t think we would ever allow – they have a monopoly over chips the way OPEC has a monopoly, or even more than the way OPEC has a monopoly over oil,” O’Brien said. 

A much-read paper by two Army War College professors published this year proposes that “the United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain.”

[A bunch of technical information about Chinese satellite coverage and the development and deployment of its electronic arms and other military capabilities]

A noteworthy observation in the new Pentagon report is that China now has only 30,000 marines, compared with a US Marine Corps of about 200,000 including reserves. Only 200 Chinese marines are deployed outside the country, at China’s sole overseas base in Djibouti. China has about 14,000 special forces versus an American count of about 75,000. This isn’t consistent with the report’s claim that China wants to “project power globally.”

#us imperialism #china #us china relations #taiwan #taiwan strait #us military #us navy #ww3 #microprocessors

[gwydionmisha]

#China #Taiwan #Taiwan Strait #News

[sheltiechicago]

Xiamen, China

More than 1,000 people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait compete in dragon boat races held in the Fujian province

Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

#xinhua #rex #shutterstock #photographer #xiamen #china #sport #taiwan strait #dragon boat races #fujian province #culture

[head-post]

Taiwan spotted six Chinese warplanes, six naval vessels

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence tracked six Chinese warplanes and six naval vessels in the Taiwan area between 6 a.m. Thursday and 6 a.m. Friday, Taiwan media reported.

Of the six PLA planes, four crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait in the southwestern area of the national air defence identification (ADI) zone, while one crossed the line in the northeastern area of the ADI zone.

Taiwan responded by monitoring PLA operations with aircraft, naval ships, and surface-to-air missile systems. Taiwan’s defence ministry has detected 164 Chinese warplanes and 110 Chinese naval vessels this month.

Since September 2020, China has increasingly used grey zone tactics, gradually increasing the number of military aircraft and naval vessels around Taiwan. Grey zone tactics are defined as “an effort or series of efforts beyond standing deterrence and assurances that seek to achieve security objectives without resorting to the direct and significant use of force.”

Read more HERE

#world news #world politics #news #china #china news #chinese news #china politics #chinese politics #taiwan #taiwan news #warplane #navy #taiwan strait

[paulthepoke]

This Week in Prophecy: International Court of Justice, Erdogan in Action, Russia & Alaska, Taiwan Strait

This Week in Prophecy: International Court of Justice, Erdogan in Action, Russia & Alaska, Taiwan Strait

Zechariah 2:8 For the LORD of armies says this: “After glory He has sent me against the nations that plunder you, for the one who touches you, touches the apple of His eye. Israel has been on trial at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague this past week. Israel has been charged with genocide against the people of the Gaza Strip by South Africa. The ICJ is the highest court of the…

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#Alaska #china #Ebrahim Raisi #Gaza Strip #genocide #Hamas #ICJ #IDF #International Court of Justice #Iran #Israel #NATO #President Recep Erdogan #Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu #Russia #State Department #Taiwan Strait #Turkey #United Nations Relief and Works Agency #United States #UNWRA #Vladimir Putin

[spookyypies]

hungry and taiwan

I am working on this uni assignemt and i am SO hungry. but since im in a new library today, and it is a nightmare to get down to food eating areas... i cant eat!

usually i am in my unis library, i know my way around and im always like 30 seconds away from somwhere that i can eat in. but not here... so far from the ground... the chicken ;pasta in my bag is CALLING ME!!

anyways my assignemnt is on the taiwan strait... why do they never clarify what acronyms stand for? how am i meant ti know what SAMs stand for? i though that was sams chicken?

i have promised myself to stay here at least until 6pm... but im dyibg a death.

also the people im here with r working SO hard... stressing me out... i dint wanna be the first to leave!

anyways wish me luck on this assig... i NEED to do well!

have a lovley evening

#spookypies #hungry #taiwan strait

[knowledgevariabledarcy]

#taiwan drama #taiwan design expo #taiwan girl #taiwan gay #taiwan strait #Youtube

[eelhound]

"[Van] Jackson

And analytically, the Taiwan Strait is the powder keg these days, and is basically a security dilemma.

[Nathan J.] Robinson 

Could you explain what that is?

Jackson 

Security dilemma is a concept in international relations, and describes a situation where you take steps to improve your security, but those steps end up reducing everybody’s security, even yours, because the other guy that you’re trying to secure yourself against is perceiving what you’re doing as a greater insecurity to them. So, let’s say you have defensive intentions — you’re just trying to protect what you got. But they see that as a greater threat to them because you’re amassing arms or making threats or whatever it is, and so they have to respond in kind. And so, you’re both acting rationally and from defensive motivations, but you’re both implicated in a structure and a situation of interactivity that leaves everybody less secure. And this is the rational logic of arms racing because what’s the point of arms racing when you have enough nukes to destroy the world, which we do? Why do you keep arms racing that?

If you’re trapped in a security dilemma situation, then you can still think that you’re the good guy just trying to protect what’s yours, but you’re actually making everything worse. It’s an essential concept. It explains a lot about the Cold War event, and is the situation across the Taiwan Strait. It’s hard to find anybody arguing otherwise, with serious analysis. But if that’s true, this is an essential thing to grasp: if we’re in a security dilemma — scholars have weighed in very authoritatively here — the policy prescription for getting out of it, and the best way to manage it, is carrots over sticks. It is forms of peaceful signaling, restraint, accommodation, and compromise. You have to communicate in word and deed, persistently over time, that your intentions are defensive. Arms racing is the opposite of what is supposed to happen, and what commits you to the tragedy.

That’s why it’s a security dilemma. To escape the dilemma, it’s got to be carrots over sticks. And since that situation is a dilemma, we have to follow the logical policy of prescriptions to get out of it and to manage it stably, but we’re not doing that. Why? Because China’s 10 feet tall. It’s the big bad. They’re sending over balloons, we got a balloon gap, and it’s time to balloon race.

Robinson 

That’s a great concept. Yes, we need a billion dollar appropriation for balloons. Clearly, we need to ramp up our balloon industry.

Jackson 

The balloon industrial complex!"

- Van Jackson being interviewed by Nathan J. Robinson, from "Why This Foreign Policy Expert Thinks Americans Dangerously Misunderstand China." Current Affairs, 16 May 2023.

#van jackson #nathan j. robinson #quote #quotations #diplomacy #cooperation #peacemaking #security dilemma #foreign policy #international relations #us imperialism #china #military industrial complex #us military #arms race #chinese balloon #taiwan strait #cold war #capitalism

[marvelousmovies]

USS John Finn - DDG 113 - Taiwan Strait Transit (2021)

#youtube #navy #US navy #U.S. Navy #Destroyer #taiwan #Taiwan strait #DDG 113 #John Finn #USS John Finn #Navy ship #ships

[kneedeepincynade]

What's the USA national sport? American football? Baseball? No! It's hypocrisy! And today they are showing their championship again

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

⚠️ L'IPOCRISIA E L'ARROGANZA DEGLI IMPERIALISTI STATUNITENSI NON HANNO FINE ⚠️

🇺🇸 Gli imperialisti statunitensi, dopo aver lanciato numerose provocazioni anti-Cinesi, e aver foraggiato il separatismo pro-US del DPP di Tsai Ing-wen, si stupiscono che il Comando dell'Esercito Popolare di Liberazione non voglia dialogare con Lloyd Austin, Segretario alla Difesa degli Stati Uniti 🤡

🤬 Oggi, gli imperialisti statunitensi schiumano di rabbia e si lamentano a gran voce, ma Lloyd Austin in primis dovrebbe riflettere sul comportamento degli USA in relazione alla Questione di Taiwan ⭐️

🇺🇸 Il 22/10/2022, a margine dell'Associazione dei Ministri della Difesa delle Nazioni del Sud-Est Asiatico in Cambogia, Lloyd Austin incontrò il Generale Wei Fenghe, all'epoca Ministro della Difesa della Repubblica Popolare Cinese 🇨🇳

🇨🇳 Il Generale ricordò a Austin che "La Questione di Taiwan è il fulcro degli interessi-chiave della Cina, nonché la prima Linea Rossa nelle Relazioni Sino-Statunitensi, che non può essere oltrepassata. Esercito Popolare di Liberazione è in grado di garantire l'Unificazione del Paese. La Cina risponderà a qualsiasi ulteriore passo degli USA su Taiwan con forti contromisure" ⭐️

🇺🇸 Gli USA, nonostante la presa di posizione della Cina, decisero comunque di continuare a portare avanti l'avventurismo anti-Cinese, sfociato nell'illegale incontro tra Tsai Ing-wen e Kevin McCarthy, e ora hanno anche il coraggio di lamentarsi e piangere perché non ricevono risposte dal Comando Cinese? 🤡

🇺🇸 L'arroganza statunitense non conosce limiti 😡

⚪️ COPATE DI MENO AMERICANI BORGHESI 🚩

🇨🇳 丢掉幻想，准备斗争 🇨🇳

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

⚠️ THE HYPOCRISY AND ARROGANCE OF US IMPERIALISTS HAVE NO END ⚠️

🇺🇸 The US imperialists, after launching numerous anti-Chinese provocations, and having bankrolled the pro-US separatism of Tsai Ing-wen's DPP, are amazed that the People's Liberation Army Command does not want to talk to Lloyd Austin, Secretary to US Defense 🤡

🤬 Today, US imperialists are foaming with rage and loudly complaining, but Lloyd Austin above all should reflect on US behavior in relation to the Taiwan question ⭐️

🇺🇸 On 10/22/2022, on the sidelines of the Association of Defense Ministers of Southeast Asian Nations in Cambodia, Lloyd Austin met with General Wei Fenghe, then Minister of Defense of the People's Republic of China 🇨🇳

🇨🇳 The General reminded Austin that "The Taiwan issue is the focus of China's key interests, as well as the first Red Line in Sino-US relations, which cannot be crossed. The People's Liberation Army is able to guarantee the "Unification of the country. China will respond to any further US steps on Taiwan with strong countermeasures" ⭐️

🇺🇸 The USA, despite China's stance, nevertheless decided to continue to carry on anti-Chinese adventurism, which resulted in the illegal meeting between Tsai Ing-wen and Kevin McCarthy, and now they also have the courage to complain and cry because they don't get answers from the Chinese Command? 🤡

🇺🇸 US arrogance knows no bounds 😡

🔍 For those who want to learn more, you can refer to these posts from the Shaoshan Collective:

🐲 Taiwan is an integral part of Chinese territory - History of Taiwan, from the Celestial Empire to the present 🀄️

🔺 Relations between the USA and the puppet regime of Taiwan, historical notes: I, II, III ⚔️

🔺US Armed Taiwan Puppet Regime: I, II, III, IV ⚔️

🔺US Interference in China's Internal Affairs - Nancy Pelosi's Journey, Trampling the Rule of Law and Renouncing Past Commitments, Mike Pompeo's Pro-Separatism Ransom: I, II, III, IV, V, VI 🇺🇸

🔺Taiwan Relations Act, the basis of US interference in China's internal affairs: I, II, III 🧾

⚪️ COPE LESS BOURGEOAMERICANS 🚩

🇨🇳 丢掉幻想，准备斗争 🇨🇳

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

#socialism #china #italian #translated #china news #communism #collettivoshaoshan #xi jinping #marxism leninism #marxist leninist #marxismo #marxist #marxism #multipolar world #multipolarity #taiwan government #taiwan strait #taiwan war #taiwan #taiwan news #news #chinese communist party #socialismo #socialist #lloyd austin #Wei Fenghe #tsai ing wen #kevin mccarthy #people liberation army #asia news

[theculturedmarxist]

As predicted, Beijing did not respond well to Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

It imposed new trade restrictions while embarking on a series of days-long military drills encircling the island, which at one point saw four Chinese missiles sail over its territory. Yesterday, Beijing sanctioned Pelosi and her family and cut off dialogue with Washington on military matters and climate change, potentially setting back international efforts to deal with what is the most serious and urgent threat to global security.

Pelosi’s provocative visit had come in the face of numerous warnings from experts like Lyle Goldstein. A researcher on Chinese and Russian strategic military development who taught at the US Naval War College for twenty years, Goldstein spoke with Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic shortly after Pelosi’s visit.

Goldstein explains the fraught significance of Taiwan to China’s leaders, the risk of nuclear war, and why the United States could very well lose a war with China over the island.

Why was Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan considered so provocative by China?

Lyle Goldstein

A lot of people already are genuinely surprised, even me a little bit. I thought that Beijing might just send a hundred aircraft into the zone or something, but the reaction seems to be large-scale and involves a variety of unprecedented moves.

But if you read Chinese and see what I’ve been seeing the past five years, this is not surprising. I’d say for at least five years or more, we’ve been in a slow-rolling crisis, where the issue of Taiwan in particular, and US-China relations in general, has been escalating to a very dangerous level. China views this is as one more blow against the One China policy framework, and they don’t like the trend lines. A lot of people say, “Newt Gingrich went there in in 1997, there’s precedent, what’s the big deal?” But that’s not at all how China sees it. Their approach is, in 1997, they hardly had a navy to speak of and couldn’t do anything. They feel like they have the power now to adjust the situation.

Hong Kong has caused many Chinese leaders and the PLA [People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military] to consign the “one country, two systems” framework, which I think was useful for all sides, to the dustbin of history — concluding that peaceful integration or unification is impossible, and that force is the only solution. That’s a very dark view, but I’m afraid it’s become more and more pervasive.

We would be hard-pressed under any conditions to change China’s mind on that view, but we seem to be doing the opposite, compounding all their fears and sending higher and higher–level visitors. People don’t realize: we sent two senators — and that’s not a minor position in the US government — to Taiwan two months ago, and China did bang its fists and use vitriolic language. But it doesn’t appear in the mainstream media.

On Twitter, I’ve made it a personal mission to document all the threats that China has issued over Taiwan. You at least see one a week. It goes something like this: “The PLA has the will and capability to ensure national unification.” Over the last year, this statement has appeared dozens of times, but it’s willfully ignored by the Western press, because they can’t understand it or they dismiss it or wish to ignore it.

In a nuclear-armed world, to just outright ignore the warnings of the other side is reckless beyond belief, and potentially catastrophic.

Branko Marcetic

Why is Taiwan such a redline for China?

Lyle Goldstein

I think reasonable people, even historians, have disagreement on this. I don’t want to pretend this is a simple right and wrong. How do countries attain their shape? A vast cauldron of mostly gnarly warfare, to put it mildly, that’s caused most countries to have their current shape.

China has had roughly this shape for a couple of thousand years, and for that reason the Chinese are very sensitive to issues of territorial integrity. Of course, layer on that the period of European predations — and most people don’t realize, but the United States was quite involved in that. From about 1850 to about 1920, almost a century, you had the US Navy patrolling the Yangtze, which involved gunboats operating together with the British Navy, and we were policing China. This was a form of imperialism, and if the natives got restless, then the gunboats would circle up. There are myriad instances of the US acting together with Japan and Britain to suppress rebellions.

The predations of Europe were followed by the ultimate predation of Japan, which conquered a lot of China. Where did it begin? In Taiwan, and China remembers that dearly. For Western readers not well acquainted with Japan’s conquest of Taiwan in 1894–95, ghastly atrocities were perpetrated. It was kind of a precursor to World War II, where the Japanese mercilessly slaughtered people in Taiwan during the initial period of colonization.

The Chinese have a particular animus toward Japan, because there was never really a reckoning for all the crimes committed, there were no reparations. But it started in Taiwan, and that’s why it becomes a focal point of Chinese nationalism, which is, to a large extent, built on anti-Japanese sentiment. And I always note to Chinese audiences, they have the United States to thank partly for saving China from Japan. So it’s not a one-sided story.

In 1683, the Qing Dynasty took over Taiwan. There were already a lot of Chinese on the island, and it became integrated into the Chinese empire, and later became its own province. That’s almost a century before the American Revolution, and many years before the United States even thought about Hawaii or California, Taiwan was part of China. So it’s a strong claim.

It wasn’t just in 1972, with the Shanghai Communiqué, that the United States endorsed the idea that Taiwan was part of China. I’d urge Americans and all people around the world to read the statements by Franklin Roosevelt in the Cairo Declaration and Harry Truman in his speech of January 1950, where he states very clearly that Taiwan is part of China that was taken by imperial Japan.

Branko Marcetic

If tensions boiled over and there was a US-China war over Taiwan, how would it actually go?

Lyle Goldstein

I worked at the US Naval War College for twenty years researching Chinese naval development, Chinese military development, so I’m well versed on all their systems. There’s quite a significant chance that the United States would lose a war over Taiwan.

The obvious reason is geographical. China is fighting a war, as they put it, right on their front doorstep, and can bring all their immense military power to bear — not just the manpower and logistics power China has great strengths in, but we’re talking combat aircraft, helicopters, and every kind of ship you can imagine. Every point of China is essentially one day’s sail to Taiwan.

Compare that with the United States. We do have immense military power, but we cannot bring it into the field, and even if we could, could it be supported? Even submarines, which are our ace in the hole — the one force that can get to battlefield and fight strongly against an invasion — couldn’t be supported. They’d quickly run out of torpedoes, as submarines don’t have a large magazine, so in navy speak, they’d be “Winchestered,” meaning out of ammo and useless, and forced to sail the twenty or thirty days back to the rear to refill and refit supply, and then another twenty or thirty days to go back. So even the force that’s most prepared to go into the fight can’t sustain it.

The situation is much more dire when talking about what the air force or army could bring into the fight, which is nearly zero. Let’s not forget, the air force is totally dependent on runways. And while there have been some air force engineers scraping around in Tinian [one of the Northern Mariana Islands, 1,800 miles off China’s coast] — from where we launched the Enola Gay to drop the atomic bomb — as soon as we started playing with air forces there, they’d be right on it. I can give you the citation where they say, “Just add it to the target list.”

And all the runways in proximity would be destroyed: I’m talking about Guam, Okinawa, and further afield. China now has the ability to target Hawaii and Alaska. I’m talking about day one, or at least day seven of a conflict. I briefed an air force general, saying, “Sir, are you aware the assets you’re keeping in Alaska would likely be targeted in the first week or two of a war with China?” He was surprised, but he shouldn’t be. Turnabout is fair play, and they’d strike these targets.

This is a long way of saying, the amount of firepower and the ability to sustain it is not there on the US side, and why, repeatedly, it’s been shown in the open press that China nearly always wins the war games. That’s a bad sign. We have to grapple with reality, and the reality is China wields immense military cards in the Taiwan scenario.

A lot of people point to the Ukraine war. Taiwan is fifteen times smaller than Ukraine. One of Russia’s major problems is that it’s spread its forces too thin and the firepower is dispersed, because Ukraine is a huge country. In Taiwan’s case, the firepower would be much more concentrated in a small area, and half of Taiwan is mountains, so it’s an even smaller area. China’s military budget is also about five times the size of Russia’s, and Taiwan is more easily cut off from arms shipments. You don’t want to be in Taiwan when this unfolds.

Branko Marcetic

What is the risk of nuclear escalation over Taiwan?

Lyle Goldstein

So many people ignore that possibility, and it’s completely irresponsible. If I were to blame Pelosi for anything, it’s that, in the nuclear age, this kind of posturing is ridiculous and should be condemned widely.

One can think of many ways that a nuclear scenario would unfold. One that keeps me up at night these days is that, in the field of US-China military studies, we don’t talk a lot about tactical nuclear weapons, but Chinese strategists talk about this a lot these days, especially because they were a feature of the US-Soviet rivalry.

The Chinese noticed we were putting tactical nuclear weapons back on US submarines and wrote about it extensively. They said, “This looks a lot the kind of weapon the United States could deploy in Taiwan scenario.” And they say, “If the United States is going to go this route, then other countries will” — an obvious reference to the fact that China is developing similar weapons and will be ready for that day. I have no confirmation of them deploying battlefield nuclear weapons — it’s just my suspicion, and they have threatened to do so, and I have a lot more evidence to show.

What it means is that, if war begins between the two, if either side starts to lose — let’s say ours does, they sink a carrier and it looks like the invasion is succeeding — does one of our submarines sitting thousands or hundreds of miles away, launch a battlefield nuclear weapon that hits the invasion force, and they respond in kind against Guam or Hawaii? It could go the opposite way: if China invades and the invasion is stalling or losing, and American forces are surging into the area, do they say, “We can’t afford to lose this the way that Vladimir Putin seemed to be in the initial stages”? We have to wonder, in the nuclear era, at that point would China resort to some kind of nuclear use to warn the others away. I do fear China could use the nuclear card against Japan.

One more thing: China is very energetically developing their nuclear forces. That’s sad — I don’t think it had to be this way, because China previously was quite proud of its low-level nuclear deterrent. But they think the likelihood of war with the US is quite high, particularly over Taiwan, and they want to match the US strength for strength.

Nuclear war could also happen by accident. A lot of US analysts are talking about how China increasingly colocates nuclear warheads with conventional warheads — they fly on the same missile even. So how do we know if Chinese missiles flying at Guam or Hawaii, as they might in this scenario, aren’t carrying a nuclear weapon? You have minutes to decide what to do.

The buildup of missile defenses has also spurred more and more exotic weaponry. There’s a move toward hypersonic weaponry, and the Chinese are, like the Russians, obsessed with how to penetrate missile defenses. One way is to destroy the missile defense radars in the opening salvo. So there are all kinds of disturbing escalation incentives built in here.

Branko Marcetic

The China-US relationship presumably doesn’t have the kinds of Cold War–era safeguards and mechanisms for de-escalation and conflict avoidance.

Lyle Goldstein

A Chinese analyst told me, the US and China have never had a Cuban Missile Crisis. That was a very stark moment. Both sides looked into the apocalypse, literally, and there’s no question in my mind, the world could’ve been destroyed in that moment. The more we learn about it, the more horrifying it is.

I interviewed a Russian submarine captain who literally had his finger on the trigger of a nuclear-armed torpedo that was designed to hit the US amphibious group off the coast of Cuba, and the US Navy did not even know that Russia had deployed tactical nuclear weapons in the crisis. We were operating totally in the blind on that trigger for nuclear war. And the same is true probably in Taiwan. We don’t know completely what weapons they have, and they don’t know completely what weapons we have. Both sides are keeping some cards behind their backs.

Branko Marcetic

There was a 1966 study about US war planning for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the 1950s, where officials agreed they would quickly resort to nuclear strikes on China. Is this something that US strategists and military leaders would be discussing today too?

Lyle Goldstein

I think that was an important revelation, and it shows you something about this scenario. People who know the history of the 1950s know that, at the highest levels, the president was thinking about ordering nuclear strikes on China because of these Taiwan-related issues. I say related because it was mostly about these offshore islands. Dwight D. Eisenhower and other American leaders thankfully realized this was crazy, that you’re going to use nuclear weapons to defend these little rocks.

But it didn’t stop there. We know that we deployed nuclear weapons to Taiwan; I think they were there for seven or eight years, these Matador tactical missiles. At some level, brilliant: that’s how you defend Taiwan, since you can’t possibly put enough firepower there to sink the whole Chinese fleet and prevent them from invading, so you use nuclear weapons.

Thankfully, they came out as part of the whole Kissinger diplomacy. But it shows the fundamental principle here, which is that the United States in this scenario can’t possibly bring enough firepower to win unless it resorts to nuclear weapons. That was understood in the 1950s, and nothing really has changed.

I’ve seen idle speculation in the military press that no country would ever think of sinking a US carrier, which is five thousand Americans, and would entail nuclear retaliation for sure. Well, what if China got it in its head to sink two or three or five carriers. I don’t even want to think about that, but it’s quite possible.

One of the worst scenarios I’ve considered over the years is what if China severely damages a carrier, and the carrier is sinking, and we have to rescue the three or four thousand people who are swimming somewhere in the East China Sea. You’re going to have to put together a task force of fifteen or twenty ships to pull off this rescue mission. But of course, in modern naval warfare, when the enemy knows where all the ships are collecting, they’re easily targeted. That’s a scenario to lose at least half the US navy.

Let’s turn it around: what if the United States sinks a Chinese carrier. Could that entail nuclear escalation? Increasingly, when you talk about these kinds of losses, China might. We don’t know where the nuclear threshold is. A major war has never been fought between nuclear powers. Often when I deal with US military leaders, I say what was said during the Cuban missile crisis: “You and I have fought the same number of nuclear wars, so please don’t tell me you know what’s going to happen.”

Branko Marcetic

What can or should we learn from the crisis, and ultimately war in Ukraine, that we can apply to these currently rising tensions with China?

Lyle Goldstein

I get this question all the time, but in a different form: How can the Ukraine war can inform us about defending Taiwan properly? Like if we had sent all these weapons to Ukraine five years ago, then Russia would’ve never considered it. I don’t think that’s true, and, in fact, I think piling in the weapons during November, December, and January partly triggered the conflict. The same thing could occur in the Taiwan context. You’re just waving a red flag in front of a bull. You’re trying to foreclose their options in a military sense and therefore pushing the security dilemma to the breaking point.

The primary lesson that needs to be learned is that you cannot just willy-nilly transgress upon the redlines of great powers. To me, it’s incredibly stark. I circulated Putin’s discourse on redlines, starting around 2020, around Naval War College, where I worked, because I saw my job as saying to my colleagues, “Whatever happens, you’d better understand Russia’s redlines.” Because it was very clear we were getting close to those lines. And we more or less blew right by them, ignored them, said, “This is posturing, this is unacceptable, you can’t say that.” That kind of approach is beyond foolish, it’s catastrophic for the people of Eastern Europe and Ukraine and Russia.

That does lead to the spheres of influence argument. I argued in my book in 2015 that spheres of influence are the only way forward to manage conflict with China and Russia. They’re not something you can accept or not accept, they are just a fact of the world. And so you have to align your policies to accept that, because when you fight against it, you’re swimming against the tide, and it leads to horrible disasters like Ukraine.

There are some specific lessons from a military point of view. I agree Javelins and Stingers and things like that are somewhat useful for Taiwan, though I warn that piling these weapons in could trigger what you’re trying to prevent. Should Taiwan invest in counter-drone technology? Sure. One could work through numerous lessons, but I don’t have a lot of hope that Taiwan could possibly even begin to match Chinese military power. They’ve just now exceeded 2 percent in defense spending, but to really match China somehow, they would have to go well over 10 percent of GDP and continue that for a decade. At that point, they might have a chance. Otherwise, I don’t see any real possibility.

So the real lesson for Taiwan is not a massive buildup — I think they’d have to go full North Korea and dig and pour concrete everywhere, and more or less destroy the island to save it. The main lesson is diplomacy, of course. So many opportunities were missed to avert the war in Ukraine. To state the obvious, if they had simply declared that Ukraine would be a neutral state, how hard would that have been? There are plenty of examples of neutral countries that are very happy and are very well armed. That was a completely feasible option, but it just didn’t fit with our ideology. The idea that we might climb down, that we might compromise — that’s showing weakness, so we can never do that.

Taiwan has all kinds of diplomatic positions. We should be encouraging those. In December 2015, the leaders of Taiwan and China had an excellent, friendly meeting. They have a lot in common. There are so many ties across the Strait. Millions of mainlanders have come across to Taiwan and seen how beautiful the island is and how clean the air is and how well-governed it is. That’s the best way to approach cross-Strait relations. There are all kinds of compromises to be made, people-to-people exchanges, military confidence-building measures. All of that should’ve happened with Ukraine and Russia, but no, we insisted on confrontational approach, and now we have a ghastly war.

Branko Marcetic

NATO recently named China a security challenge for the first time, at the same time that it invited several Asia-Pacific countries for the first time to speak at its summit. How significant of a shift is this? Does it represent some kind of fundamental expansion of NATO’s mission?

Lyle Goldstein

I’ve been observing NATO’s lean to the east for several years now, and I remember watching the British and French send carriers and submarines across. I gave a lecture in Germany a couple years ago, and people in the German navy asked me point blank: “We’re eager to send a ship to the South China Sea, would that help?” And I said, “No, it’s kind of crazy for Germany to insert itself in this. It’s going to do more harm than good for sure.” They didn’t like my answer. “We were hoping you’d be rah-rah and think it’s great.”

That little story encapsulates this dynamic, which is really disturbing. NATO already didn’t have the best reputation in China, for various reasons going back years. Though ten to fifteen years ago, NATO had a reasonable working relationship with China, and the European Union had set up some really good defense exchanges and contacts with China. That was very helpful, and I had urged that Europe act as a cushion for the US-China rivalry and be a friend of the court to both sides, tell each to chill out a little. Help China to mitigate its worst nationalist tendencies, but also help the US contain its seemingly endless desire for rivalry.

I thought Europe was playing thar role pretty effectively until 2016 or so. Then things seemed to start to change, and European discourse on China radically moved to the right and became very anti-China to the point, I’d argue, of even surpassing US rhetoric on China. I found this very disturbing. I could give you endless examples of this, but if you read the Economist magazine, it’s become extremely hawkish on China over the years. In the European mind, they more or less associate Russia and China together, as authoritarianism writ large, though the Russian and Chinese regimes are very different, so lumping them together I think is misplaced.

I remember, in 2017, as the Korean crisis was unfolding, a squadron of French ships came across, and Chinese coverage of that was very upset. It was the Europeans who were leading the carving up of China in the nineteenth century, and China fought multiple wars against France and against Britain. So the idea that you’re going to have these European navies sailing around, it triggers this anger.

The other phenomenon here is NATO’s search for missions. God bless the Ukraine war, because this has given a lot of new life to NATO and given NATO bureaucrats something to do, though I think Turkey’s diplomacy and playing footsie with Russia should make people realize the alliance isn’t as together and cohesive as some would hope. On some level, there’s a silver lining to that — Europe should focus on Europe, and take its nose out of Asian affairs. To put it less charitably: What have you been doing? Was this lurch toward Asia why they seem to have been caught unawares in the war with Russia?

There’s also the cheerleader effect, which is very powerful in Washington, when whatever the United States does, we always hope and expect this round of applause from the Europeans. This has been very destructive, in my view. Would the United States really have spent twenty years in Afghanistan without this cheerleader effect from NATO? Half the argumentation for the last ten years of the mission in Afghanistan was, “Well, we can’t possibly pull out because what would NATO say? We can’t leave our allies in the lurch.”

I’m critical of NATO’s stance here. I think Europeans have surrendered their diplomatic cards, which were substantial, and China has become more skeptical of Europe. And this is sad, because I really thought Europe could help bring about a new, more peaceful world order.

Branko Marcetic

How alarmed should we be by China seeking to expand its foreign bases and strengthen its military?

Lyle Goldstein

First, I always point out to people, the United States has something like eight hundred military facilities abroad, and China has one. It’s sort of like, call me when China gets 799 more. In other words, we’re really not at a place where we should seriously worry about this. What I’ve seen doesn’t really bother me.

Look at their base in Africa. That’s really their only foreign base. Those little reef bases in the South China Sea really can’t be called foreign bases. Regarding the African base, there are some things that are a little concerning, like when it was being built, it has really deep bunkers — it’s built to take punishment.

But other than that, look, this base is in Djibouti. Three miles away, you have a pretty large American base. Around the corner from there is a French base, and around the corner from there is a little Japanese base, and it goes on and on. Everyone and their mother has a base in Djibouti. If China had really nefarious designs on Africa, they probably wouldn’t put their base right there, next to all these other bases, where we can easily monitor what they’re doing.

If I had to summarize Chinese policy in Africa, they do a lot of peacekeeping, and that’s difficult — and they deserve a lot of credit for peacekeeping. Number two, there are a lot of Chinese nationals and businesses in Africa, and I think they’re concerned that they may have to do what in the navy we call an NEO — a noncombatant evacuation operation — and that can be a high-risk operation.

My view is we’re basically in a cold war with China, and they’re acting like we are now. They’re starting to adopt strategic positioning in case they have to struggle and strike the United States. There’s a rumor that we’ll see a base in West Africa. China has legitimate interests in all these places, but would that base bother me? A little bit. I’m not thrilled to see China have a base on the Atlantic. That’s a major step.

But most of the major blame for China wanting to dip their toe in the Atlantic there — I studied a series of Chinese official articles called China’s Atlantic Strategy. One of the things they said very clearly was, “The Atlantic is absolutely critical to the United States, and the United States is coming to our backyard and poking around in the South China Sea, so we have to go to their backyard.”

Branko Marcetic

Western discourse on the war in Ukraine, and this now seems to be being transplanted to China and Taiwan, has tended to be dominated by appeals to progressive values around defending democracy and self-determination. But there is not much acknowledgment of the risk of military and nuclear escalation.

Lyle Goldstein

For progressives around the world, their first take is absolutely, “This is good versus evil, and we have to step up and do what it takes and be the greatest generation.” I’m not sure why they’re not able to appreciate how the subsequent steps are so tragic, and there’s not much thinking about the costs. We seem to be in a period now like the 1940s and ’50s with these proxy wars, like the Korean War, which has been compared to the Ukraine war.

In the 1950s, we had statesmen like Eisenhower, and arguably even figures like Richard Nixon, who had fought in World War II and seen huge numbers of people die with their own eyes. They’d been there and were able to put aside this crusading mentality and realize they had better protect the peace, what peace there was. The United States made a lot of mistakes in the Cold War, but it was able to not go over the edge. And maybe Russia also had that kind of baked-in appreciation for the costs of war that just seems to be totally missing today.

I’m watching a lot of Russian media now. The level of frustration there is immense. They’re more or less calling for American blood, one way or another. Their view of it is that this war is being run out of the Pentagon, and a lot of Russians and Ukrainians are dying, but the Americans are just kind of laughing about it. This is not sustainable, and could really explode. I’m absolutely sure that a lot of smart Russian strategists are thinking about how they can make life very painful and kill lots of Americans in various ways, and that’s a bad thing.

Most journalists that I encounter and people who are educated, they don’t think through steps three and four. They just have a gut reaction — it mostly plays into this good-and-evil narrative — and they just assume blithely that we haven’t had a nuclear weapon used since 1945, so we understand no one is going to go there, and anything else is okay. It’s very sad, that’s for sure.

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