Depending on your perspective, nuclearizing Taipei is either an impactful, if not the sole meaningful mechanism for deterring war across the Taiwan Strait, or an immediate and guaranteed casus belli.
It will literally be impossible for Taiwan to conceal a nuclear weapons programme and also integrate this with a delivery vehicle, without China finding out before this is ready.
So there will be some time for Taiwan to shut down it down, before any war starts.
We were pretty close to that a few months ago in de facto terms, and it didn't even take much, if really any initiative on the part of China.
That was the US government imposing 100%+ import tariffs on goods from China. So US companies could still obtain critical inputs and products. And in many cases, it was still worth paying these tariffs.
In comparison, if it is the Chinese government imposing a trade embargo on the USA, that won't be an option.
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And to expand on my comment of "a war of some sort", if Taiwan pursues nuclear weapons.
Also two can play the proxy game.
Suppose China was to supply weapons to the Middle East, to be used against the Israeli military, and with the objective of:
1. Ending the Gaza Genocide. Millions of Palestinians have already spent decades in that giant open-air prison controlled by the Israeli military
2. End Israel's decades long colonisation project to eliminate the Palestinians in the West Bank, take their land, and replace them with Jewish settler colonists
My view is that such an action would be very popular globally, with the sole exception of the USA.
You just have to look at the UN votes or opinion polls.
And militarily, Israel and the US would be "cooked"
But again, this is a last resort type of action, if China sees a war with the US as inevitable.
Hence my view is that the USA can successfully be deterred.
Even if we're to overlook uncertainties on the kinetic side of things for the sake of discourse, significant risks remain in terms of potential sanctions and broader economic consequences.
You're operating under the assumption that those countries will be in a position to make informed, independent and rational decisions (from the get go), on where they stand vis-a-vis Washington and Beijing, should things get kinetic across the Taiwan Strait.
I encourage you to consider where Berlin has stood with regard to the Russo-Ukrainian War, since 2022, especially within the context of who was in fact responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, and how effectively losing access to affordable Russian natural gas has impacted the German economy.
Berlin operated on the assumption that after Russia was subject to "the mother of all sanctions", that the Russian economy would collapse and the Russians would have to back down and come back begging for forgiveness. Then the gas would flow again.
We're talking about all the major political parties in Berlin (and the West more broadly) fantasising that this would happen.
Needless to say, this isn't what happened.
In comparison, there is widespread recognition that China is a different beast, especially after the US "lost" the recent trade war due to the Rare Earths embargo. Notable differences include:
1. China does have 10x the population and GDP of Russia
2. China's manufacturing sector is also larger than the combined West
3. China is the largest trading partner for most countries in the world
Virtually no one currently serving within the US government or military, at any reasonable level of seniority or influence, thinks or believes multipolarity to be inevitable, never mind something to accept or embrace. Even those who recognize such an outcome to be more plausible than not won't dare say so candidly in public, for fairly obvious reasons (at least from an American standpoint).
Granted, people like television personality turned SecDef Pete Hegseth do on occasion acknowledge or even arguably exaggerate China's A2/AD capabilities, in particular against USN CVNs:
Nevertheless, the good SecDef and his cohorts have and will continue to do what they can to preserve Pax Americana:
All this might sound strange to you, but Americans tend to be unusually optimistic people, and it's a double edged sword. While unwarranted optimism has been essential to many American triumphs and success stories in politics, technology, culture and industry, there's no denying that present American elites tend to be out of touch with the reach and limits of both our hard power and soft power.
Regardless, these efforts will continue so long as the likes of SecDef Hegseth retain their almost uniquely American optimism, and keep on telling both others and themselves that preserving the geopolitical status quo in Taiwan, as well as the broader, but diminishing "rules based order" led solely by Washington is achievable:
TBH, to the American political class, in particular members of Congress, multipolarity is basically an euphemism for slavery. The impositions of military and industrial realities be damned.
You should ask that Patchwork Chimera character what happens when an IC SME says too many (seemingly) "nice things" about China or its military, especially in a way that may be misinterpreted as "defeatism," or empathy for, never mind alignment with "the enemy."
Vladimir Lenin reportedly once stated:
Xi Jinping not only seems to agree with such sentiments, but may see an inflection point on the horizon:
As I said, it will take time for views in the US government to change.
Arguably, the US losing the current round of the trade war to China, has shocked many members of the US government into reality.
