Considering how messed up Pentagon weapons programs have been, I doubt the US military will ever recover its edge.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
"In a notable update, the U.S. Department of State has again made changes to the wording on the official page detailing the U.S.-Taiwan bilateral relationship. The portion that said “we do not support Taiwan independence” has now been taken out. It’s important to remember that the overarching U.S. policy on Taiwan and the U.S. acknowledgment of China as the legal government in China while not recognizing their sovereignty over Taiwan has yet to change."
True, but it also added US supporting peace solutions “acceptable to the people in both sides of the Strait”
“both sides” means now Washington recognises that Beijing has a say, too, unlike previous assumption that ONLY Taiwanese people having the right to decide the future of Taiwan
Which is a clever and deceptive way of delaying reunification as much as possible without giving China the excuse to launch the campaign in order to buy time.
It's very clear. They dropped the "we do not support Taiwan independence" part, that's all I need to know, all the other stuff is just fluff.
In the end it doesn't matter because the PLA has always been factoring in US intervention. The only thing that this wording change achieves is that we, the public, can now for sure say that the PLA will strike US assets the moment it gets the greenlight for AR
In the end it doesn't matter because the PLA has always been factoring in US intervention. The only thing that this wording change achieves is that we, the public, can now for sure say that the PLA will strike US assets the moment it gets the greenlight for AR
I think what is important for China is not the back and forth in US policy, but to make US completely irrelevant and powerless in the region. become so rich, powerful that no one in their right mind in the US will think of intervention.
Yup, kicking the can down the road for as long as possible without clearly committing US troops to the defence of Taiwan; nonetheless, maximising uncertainty for Beijing. It is clever way of maintaining strategic ambiguity, compared to Biden Administration’s quasi-strategic clarity. However, this could change as U.S.-China trade tensions heat up.
You guys are making this a little more complicated than it really is!
Trump's approach to negotiations tends to be pretty straight forward: he usually presents 2-3 options, 1 that more or less represents what he wishes to achieve, and 1-2 alternatives that are completely unacceptable, if not outright extreme to the counterparty.
This has been Trump's modus operandi since his Art of the Deal days, and is in fact more or less the approach he recommended in said book.
To put it quite simply: the US State Department updated their verbiage on Taiwan so Trump can threaten to support de jure independence for Taiwan as a source of (perceived) leverage in negotiations with Xi (in all likelihood for a grand bargain that Trump believes will significantly contribute to his presidential legacy).
State's updated verbiage is just fluff in preparation for the upcoming face to face meeting between Trump and Xi.
