Until she lands back in the mainland US then no. Nothing has been averted.
Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis
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Until she lands back in the mainland US then no. Nothing has been averted.
It's in plain sight for everyone to observe and realize that status quo in the strait has nothing to do with DPP TIers, or Taiwan, but everything to do with US. So framing up the problem with the proper reference points would let everyone figure it out and be clear-eyed that it's pointless and foolish to leave status quo at the mercy, stunts and whims of corrupt career US politicians, especially those geriatric waxworks in US congress and senate, because they don't want it, they don't need it, as it's against their political interests. This is the first cut, so let's see who draws the first blood. Hoping against hope, I for one sincerely wish the hag and the her posse committee don't chicken out, but one can only hope so much from career weasel politicians, what they look for is a safe comfortable bully pulpit where they can say tough words and play LARPing. China needs to build up her just cause and moral weight for the real deal real soon if this episode sizzles down to a fart.
For the sake of hundreds of millions of lives, may she never leave.
At this point China should do a false flag if she turns around and gets cold feet at last minute....
Took PTO this week just for this, hope to get this show on the road and not end up like that one time I took a whole week off to play Cyberpunk just to see it get delayed once again
You do realize you have time to retract your bet right?
Nope. It's high time to figure out a plan to march to your own drumbeats, not theirs.
Lethe
Captain
Forgive me if I make some blatantly obvious statements here, I'm just thinking aloud, putting my own thoughts in order re: Taiwan.
The status quo whereby Taiwan is not a declared or recognised sovereign state, but in practice enjoys most of the characteristics thereof, reflects a trilateral balance of power and interests between the PRC, ROC and USA. No party has been entirely satisfied with that status quo, but each has preferred it to the alternatives on offer.
In recent years, however, the set of interests and considerations that have previously supported this trilateral status quo have been progressively undermined by each party to the triangle.
The PRC's growing military strength increasingly tempts Beijing to fulfil its ideological commitments and "resolve" the issue of Taiwan by force, while ongoing economic development, including reorientation of the economy to one based upon domestic consumption, leads PRC officials to look upon the costs of such a path with less horror than before.
Under the DPP, the ROC's commitment to the status quo is also undermined, in that a powerful faction within the DPP is ideologically opposed to the foundational idea that supports the status quo, i.e. that Taiwan is indeed part of China. Alarmed by changes in the material balance of power between the ROC and PRC, and emboldened by commitments and expressions of support from putative allies, the ROC under the DPP is thus increasingly tempted to move from de facto to de jure independence.
The USA's commitment to the status quo is fundamentally premised on its desire to maintain a working relationship with the PRC. This was originally a strategic imperative, seeking to exploit the Sino-Soviet split to undermine Washington's principal strategic adversary at the time, the Soviet Union. Following the end of the Cold War, the strategic imperative for maintaining a working relationship with the PRC collapsed, but the relationship continued to be supported on Washington's end by an increasingly strong economic imperative. American corporations, always intimately connected with power in Washington, sought both access to China's vast domestic market, and also to exploit China as a low-cost manufacturing hub to enhance their own profits. As China's economic and technological development has proceeded, China's own corporations have progressively "climbed the value chain" to increasingly challenge Western commercial leadership of sensitive fields, exemplified most clearly by the saga of Huawei and 5G telecommunications infrastructure. The trend over time in Washington has been increasingly to see China as less of an opportunity, and more as a threat, to the point that the relationship today can be described, uncontroversially, as nakedly adversarial. Washington's diminishing commitment to maintaining a working relationship with the PRC increasingly tempts it to undermine the status quo with respect to Taiwan, as for example by abandoning "strategic ambiguity" as a check on the ROC.
Mainstream western discourse takes it as read that the PRC is chiefly if not solely responsible for undermining the status quo with respect to Taiwan. As illustrated, the material conditions that support the triangular status quo are in fact being undermined at all levels. Indeed, I believe that a compelling case can be made that it is the interaction of the USA-ROC axis that is most profoundly destabilising to the peaceful status quo that has prevailed these past decades. An increasingly ambivalent if not antagonistic or indeed nihilistic Washington establishment increasingly emboldens the DPP to make good on its ideological commitments, in turn occasioning increasingly sharp rhetoric from the PRC that results in further deterioration of relations and ratcheting of tensions under the classic paradigm of the "security dilemma".
The status quo whereby Taiwan is not a declared or recognised sovereign state, but in practice enjoys most of the characteristics thereof, reflects a trilateral balance of power and interests between the PRC, ROC and USA. No party has been entirely satisfied with that status quo, but each has preferred it to the alternatives on offer.
In recent years, however, the set of interests and considerations that have previously supported this trilateral status quo have been progressively undermined by each party to the triangle.
The PRC's growing military strength increasingly tempts Beijing to fulfil its ideological commitments and "resolve" the issue of Taiwan by force, while ongoing economic development, including reorientation of the economy to one based upon domestic consumption, leads PRC officials to look upon the costs of such a path with less horror than before.
Under the DPP, the ROC's commitment to the status quo is also undermined, in that a powerful faction within the DPP is ideologically opposed to the foundational idea that supports the status quo, i.e. that Taiwan is indeed part of China. Alarmed by changes in the material balance of power between the ROC and PRC, and emboldened by commitments and expressions of support from putative allies, the ROC under the DPP is thus increasingly tempted to move from de facto to de jure independence.
The USA's commitment to the status quo is fundamentally premised on its desire to maintain a working relationship with the PRC. This was originally a strategic imperative, seeking to exploit the Sino-Soviet split to undermine Washington's principal strategic adversary at the time, the Soviet Union. Following the end of the Cold War, the strategic imperative for maintaining a working relationship with the PRC collapsed, but the relationship continued to be supported on Washington's end by an increasingly strong economic imperative. American corporations, always intimately connected with power in Washington, sought both access to China's vast domestic market, and also to exploit China as a low-cost manufacturing hub to enhance their own profits. As China's economic and technological development has proceeded, China's own corporations have progressively "climbed the value chain" to increasingly challenge Western commercial leadership of sensitive fields, exemplified most clearly by the saga of Huawei and 5G telecommunications infrastructure. The trend over time in Washington has been increasingly to see China as less of an opportunity, and more as a threat, to the point that the relationship today can be described, uncontroversially, as nakedly adversarial. Washington's diminishing commitment to maintaining a working relationship with the PRC increasingly tempts it to undermine the status quo with respect to Taiwan, as for example by abandoning "strategic ambiguity" as a check on the ROC.
Mainstream western discourse takes it as read that the PRC is chiefly if not solely responsible for undermining the status quo with respect to Taiwan. As illustrated, the material conditions that support the triangular status quo are in fact being undermined at all levels. Indeed, I believe that a compelling case can be made that it is the interaction of the USA-ROC axis that is most profoundly destabilising to the peaceful status quo that has prevailed these past decades. An increasingly ambivalent if not antagonistic or indeed nihilistic Washington establishment increasingly emboldens the DPP to make good on its ideological commitments, in turn occasioning increasingly sharp rhetoric from the PRC that results in further deterioration of relations and ratcheting of tensions under the classic paradigm of the "security dilemma".
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At this point, Taiwan itself is just begging for relevancy in Sino-US ever changing power matrix in keeping and maintaining the status quo. US obviously don't want to prolong the peace afforded under status quo to let China grow even more in strength and power. So what does China do then? Just repeat the peaceful status quo over and over again? Sounds really empty and useless to me.
Then, what would you suggest? To start a emptive war? Or to starve TW with its logistic supplies?
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