do you think they might modify their first use policy at the onset of the war with taiwan?
Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario
- Thread starter tphuang
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Slight off-top, but "more of a burden than an asset" is quite a harsh judgment (which I agree with) on Moscow's inability to properly aim its naval/air/navair buildup - and, ultimately, judge the global situation it is in.
That is not the reason. US is willing to take suicidal actions against China because China is an existential threat while Russia is not.
No matter how Russia wins, US will still keep its integrity for the foreseeable future. In the past, US lost in Korea and Vietnam to economically smaller China, and they went out of that just fine. They even lost to taliban. Losing wars is ok for US, but modern China due to being the world's largest market and trade bloc holder will not just defeat US on the battlefield, but chase them all the way to the US mainland, even if not through literal invasion, at least using economic sanctions. And that will cause complete social collapse.
China needs no first use so they can blast the shit out of US invaders with precision missiles without fears of starting a nuclear war.
China needs to keep nukes opaque to not make for example India start going on crazy procurement sprees that eliminates Chinese ability to pull off a clean first strike.
Neither are reasons why US wants war. They want war because they know they will be persecuted for their misdeeds sooner or later, that China has global reach, there is nowhere to hide, and it will only get worse with time.
Besides, between 2 oligarchies, US and Russia, there can always be negotiations, "spheres of interest" demarcated and so on. Hence the Russian insistence on "multipolarity", a statement that is now silenced after the pro-oligarch faction was purged through the Ukraine war.
The implication is that US will be allowed to maintain their own sphere of interest if Russia was given a say.
However, the communists does not speak of multipolarity but rather of liberation, so you can be sure that given enough time, China would not even allow US to have the Monroe doctrine.
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That guy is full of it.
He still thinks china is going to do the 1 million men swim across Taiwan straits. I can't take seriously anyone that thinks this way.
even in 1950 when China conquered Hainan away from Taiwan, it wasn't a simple 100k man swim across the Qiongzhou strait. PLA used an ingenious strategy to offbalance Taiwanese forces and not only took Hainan but inflicted disproportionate attrition with a numerically and technologically inferior force.
people might be surprised by how quickly Taiwan collapses after suffering vastly disproportionate casualties. If they not only lost Hainan, but also lost attritionally in Hainan, against 1950 PLA, what hope do they have against 2022 PLA?
Nuclear deterrent is absolutely key. You need to remember the people making the decisions in the west today grew up fearing Soviet nuclear annihilation growing up, in the deepest, most primal lizard part of our brains. The reason US gives Russia this wide of a berth despite military setbacks on the ground is due to that fear. Imagine being in grade school and having to do nuclear bomb drills because you don't know when Armageddon might come. All of the powerful "special interests" had similar experiences growing up in the 1950s and 60s. UK/France/Germany too, Fulda Gap meant tanks on their doorsteps.
For all our talks about expanding conventional arsenal and being able to hit a bit of Alaska/West Coast to give Americans pause, Soviets already achieved that 60 years ago, not only with numbers but also their willingness to use it.
China has a long ways to go in both regards, so American reluctance in direct intervention against Russia is not necessarily evidence of similar reluctance against China.
solarz
Brigadier
AR was never about the state of ROC military, it has always been about the willingness of the US to fight China in a direct armed conflict.
The ancient Chinese put great value on the moral justification of launching a war, and there is wisdom in that. If the US enters battle with China over Taiwan, I don't believe for a second that the American people will continue to support the war if bombs started falling on their own cities. Americans only support wars that are fought in other countries, they will not be willing to die for a tiny island on the other side of the world.
solarz
Brigadier
I agree with what you wrote except the last paragraph. If anything, the Americans are far less willing to fight against the Chinese than the Russians.
Russia is much weaker than China despite their nuclear arsenal. As such, the US has a lot of options to inflict pain. Notice how the crisis that led to the current war came on the footsteps of seven years of damaging sanctions. In contrast, China has been deftly deflecting every punch the US has been throwing so far, in a metaphorical contest of Taichi vs Boxing.
They won't be dying for a tiny island. They'll be dying for the continuation of US hegemony which is in the interest of Americans to continue to perpetuate on this world. That's their moral justification.
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