Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis

MortyandRick said:

Lol…. Is that true? you got to be joking. Planning coups take a lot of preparation and work, and the US plans a lot of them in conjunction with western media. Doesn’t that Take a higher level of coordination?

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What makes you think planning coups takes coordination? It takes two kinds of people to make a coup work: the corrupt and the gullible. The corrupt can be bought and the gullible told bedtime stories about McDemocracy. The US has both money and a bill of goods.

Patchwork_Chimera said:

Or, perhaps, the United States Government isn't quite as put together as you seem to think they are lol. If you ever end up doing work for them on a regular basis, you're in for quite the culture shock lol. Everything's pretty much held together by duct tape and plasticized explosives. Massive lapses in coordination and judgement not only can happen, but *do* happen. Frequently, in fact. Not at this scale or anything, but the typical human-nature-driven office nonsense doesn't just go away because your paycheck requires you to sell both body *and* soul this time.

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At the lower levels I can see your perspective, but true power doesnt even rest in the POTUS and likely hasnt been since post JFK etc... The United States didnt become world hegemon by accident or "failing upwards", look at events in history like WWII, cold war, etc always when it counts in terms of highest level biggest picture hegemonistic stuff the US managed to get it right, score the big points, and then it can afford to be bit more dysfunctional at the lower levels... case in point when you managed to become world hegemon and even after the gold bars ran out from Brentwoods era you managed to leverage the military might to coerce OPEC to accept mafia protection monies whilsts using oil as the strategic bottleneck and EROEI chokepoint resource to collect tax on the rest of the workd a la petrodollar hegemony etc then you can afford to live beyond your means (trade deficits, quantitative easing, stimulus printing etc) and domestic or local goverance mistakes are less fatal, so who cares if US is dyfunctional at the lower levels as long as they managed to bag it at the highest most strategic levels...

9dashline said:

The United States didnt become world hegemony by accident or "failing upwards"

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No, that's actually exactly what happened.

Patchwork_Chimera said:

Or, perhaps, the United States Government isn't quite as put together as you seem to think they are lol. If you ever end up doing work for them on a regular basis, you're in for quite the culture shock lol. Everything's pretty much held together by duct tape and plasticized explosives. Massive lapses in coordination and judgement not only can happen, but *do* happen. Frequently, in fact. Not at this scale or anything, but the typical human-nature-driven office nonsense doesn't just go away because your paycheck requires you to sell both body *and* soul this time.

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I agree that every government certainly has dysfunction, but in this case, realistically if Biden really wanted to put a stop to Pelosi's trip, as commander in chief he could have ordered the US military to not provide any support, escort or cover for Pelosi's plane -- or even outright ordered the US military's transport aircraft to not transport her at all for the trip. Such declarations may have been sufficient to cause Pelosi to place additional pressure that her trip would be a bad idea.

Of course, doing so would very much be politically untenable for Biden domestically, so such a course of action likely wasn't realistic.

With what happened, it isn't so much that Biden supported Pelosi's trip or even necessarily "enabled" her on this endeavour, but he certainly did not exert every form of power and leverage that his office offers to prevent her from going.

Biden has trouble keeping just Manchin and Sinema in line. I’m haveing trouble seeing him being able to reign Pelosi - who is a particularly powerful Speaker and is headstrong - in as well. I think he values domestic approval much more than anything else, and publicly reigning her in with his more overt powers would not be a good look at all.

Blitzo said:

I agree that every government certainly has dysfunction

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Some governments have a common cold, others have terminal lung cancer.

Patchwork_Chimera said:

Everyday government operations are far more expansive than a single CIA enemy government "presto chango" group lol. Planning just about anything takes a lot of work, and there are a lot of ***people*** who do it as a result. These people are just that - people. Miscommunications happen, egos exist, insubordination or incompetence happens, and for as generally competent as (at least in my experience with the IC oriented bits) they are overall, they're not immune from leaving their proverbial fly open every now and again. I'd be quite willing to bet that there was no grand, orchestrated conspiracy behind Pelosi's visit, and that it was much more likely due to Pelosi's own ego, Biden and friends' inadequate political capital to stop her (After all, nothing's free.), and (this one I'm certain of) a DOD that was pretty much just handed the problem and told to make the best of it, good luck.

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I'm ambivalent about the two possibilities. Do we know whether Pelosi can or not order the use of a USAF plane for an overseas trip without WH authorization? If not, then I would incline to agree with 9dashline's view.

ZeEa5KPul said:

No, that's actually exactly what happened.

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Let's face it, we are animals, just biological machines, with no more free will than any other primate.

Everything is predicated on what came before, preprogramed so to speak, and we had no say in any of that.

Sure, we have consciousness, awareness, we're here talking, but we're all just bots (someone is no more responsible for their success as someone is for their failures).

Me, i'm here for the ride! <insert that purple Smilie devil face one>


Has the blockade started yet?

I'm somewhat surprised by the media reaction to Pelosi's visit. I expected a lot of Jai Democracy, but there's actually been quite a bit of criticism and questioning whether it was a good idea or served any useful purpose. Has this increased my respect for Western media by a single iota? Not even remotely. However, it does bear mentioning.

The more I think about China's response, the more I admirable I find it. Not only has it been a bonanza on a practical level - comprehensively testing and simulating an invasion of Taiwan is invaluable military experience, it has impressed upon Taiwanese separatists and their foreign supporters the utter helplessness of their situation. If there was anything beyond self-enrichment and aggrandizement to Pelosi's visit - which I grant is a dubious proposition at best - then encouraging and affirming Taiwanese "sovereignty" was it. It was supposed to help Taiwan feel in charge.

Then along comes the PLA with these exercises and asks a simple

Reckon the drills would be the top story on tonigh's news bulletin on CCTV? 6 more hours until the news.