It's a good, if horrifying, book; you should read it. But no, the point of doublethink isn't that people don't know that they're doing it; it's that they betray themselves and support the Party.
,,Beijing’s calculus vis-à-vis the use of force against Taipei can change, so the world must continually monitor the situation and remain alert to warnings and indicators.
Part of this monitoring must include scrutinizing Chinese assessments of Russia’s performance in Ukraine in the coming weeks, months and years.''
The invasion of Taiwan would require a massive amphibious assault across a sea full of hostile submarines. You couldn't hide all the ships required from satellites. And China's economy depends heavily on trade with the west-aligned world.
Russia didn't hide their military buildup, they just lied and gaslit the world via their various disinformation channels into believing that Putin would have to be insane to actually invade.
Yeah he puts these videos on Youtube designed to make him look bad on first blush, but then you think it over and what he responds to crappy questions makes perfect sense, so because it occurs to you the viewer "spontaneously" it makes these thoughts more convincing. But that's a double-bluff you see, in some cases quadruple-bluffs, I think I even saw one sextuple-bluff, even-numbered bluffs.
Yup. It's crazy how many of these are out in the wild. I mostly notice Chinese ones from my time there or ones highlighted by friends. But the Russian disinfo coming out in the lead up was insane.
I'm all for freedom of press but state sanctioned media is such a fucking blight.
The most vociferous against Russia today are the ones that predicted Putin is not a gambler and would not attack. These are not Putin's puppets. These are the people considered well respected International relations people.
To call everything and everyone Putin's propaganda and disinformation is simplistic. Hindsight is 2020, it always feels like we missed the obvious signs.
There are still people who believe that today. It all depends on what you want to believe. People believe that Russia was forced into this, people believe that Ukranians secretly long to be liberated and saved. People will believe the most crazy stuff.
Zelenskyy himself was telling people to calm down with the invasion rhetoric, indicating that there is no evidence of an imminent invasion, and that the rhetoric is counter productive.
Personally, I thought Putin would establish a stronghold in the Donbas and gradually improve position from there. This full on assault of the entire country is shocking and seems wildly aggressive and overly ambitious.
They partook in an invasion with it maybe? Do you think Ukrainians scuttled their own ships for fun or because they wanted to slow down whatever role Russia's navy can have with access to ports?
"You couldn't hide all the ships" implies that would stop or deter them from moving in if they wanted to. Russia's navy getting to the Black Sea no questions asked has shown you can make obviously aggressive military repositioning without repercussion (unless the West gets more proactive with sanctions after this).
You're missing my point entirely and making some weird, unrelated argument.
I'm no military mind but indeed, they wouldn't have been quite as effective in shelling the country if they only had access to the sea rather than sharing virtually half the land's frontier.
It goes both ways. The current supply chain crisis already demonstrated how reliant EVERYONE is on Chinese manufacturing. No politician would dare to sanction China when it means immediate runaway inflation.
China is 15-25% of the trade for those countries, but the west-aligned countries represent 80% of China's trade. A coordinated trade war would be vastly more devastating for China than the rest of the world.
I don't say this gleefully - I hope it never happens.
Every electronic thing made has parts from China. I can't build a car in Germany and export to America without having done trade with China first. Who cares if I could still get Irish butter if I can't get replacement parts for my MRI machine?
Pardon my ignorance, but isn't it the case that a lot of stuff coming from China is stuff produced in China, but using western technology? If that's correct, moving production outside of China would be so hard I can't imagine it, but not entirely impossible. It would be a huge crisis that would be eventually, heroically fixed.
Another problem is the access to resources like rare metals, that China stockpiles.
When I worked at Garmin, they made all of the aviation electronics in house on production lines in Kansas due to FAA requirements. I don’t know how deep the “must be made in USA” requirements go though.
Do you think those parts aren't currently being made elsewhere? South Korea is a powerhouse. The loss of China would be a capacity problem, sure. But market economies (aka price incentives) are terrifically good at solving capacity problems.
But for some reason, China is massively expanding its navy, with lots of amphibious ships along with advanced weaponry that would be a serious problem for the US.
China would very much prefer that Taiwan ask to reunite with the mainland. Forcing them back one day might be in the cards but setting the conditions to where Taiwan sees being part of China as being the better option than relying on the United States for its safety is what China would like to happen. Finding ways to drive wedges between the US and Taiwan is a part of this strategy.
US has no interest in being beholden to TSMC in the long-term. once that dependency is removed the only reason from a realist perspective to support Taiwan is to provoke Chinese violence, which hopefully never happens.
I'd counter with your opinion being exceedingly naive.. "thriving" is quite generous considering their economy and reliance on foreign powers. And culturally they're making the same mistake as Hong Kong in alienating mainlanders.
don't think we have reconcilable opinions on US motivations but hey I'll gladly be wrong as long as there's no war
Taiwan has an HDI of .916 and a Gini of 34. China has an HDI of .761 and a Gini of 47. That's quite a gap.
Also, they're only "reliant" on foreign powers insofar as they're under threat. Sri Lanka is not "reliant" on foreign powers because India is not threatening them.
Presumably by agreeing to the terms of the treaty and by being accepted by existing members. It's the North Atlantic Treaty organization, not the North Atlantic Organization
It probably isn't so much the spilling of blood that it isn't interested in rather than the chances of wholesale evaporation but otherwise your point stands.
> The Mediterranean is technically part of the North Atlantic.
I'm not sure this is true. What actually happened is that NATO countries realized expanding NATO is in their interest so they ignored the "north atlantic" part of the treaty. While I doubt taiwan will be invited any time soon it wouldn't surprise me at all if Japan or even South Korea is.
Turkey is explicitly in the geographic area covered by NATO, though (I would assume North Atlantic, North America, Mediterranean, Europe, Turkey and Algerian Departments of France Treaty Organization or NANAMETADFTO was considered too long of a name).
By just being accepted by NATO countries to do so?
Countries can do what they want. There isn't some magic spell, that forces countries to do thing, just because of some semantic game about whether a country is recongized or not.
Taiwan could simply join NATO anyway, if they get approved.
"USIP was established by Congress in 1984 as an independent institution devoted to the nonviolent prevention and mitigation of deadly conflict abroad."
In 2011 they almost lost their funding. Although, with budget of 39mln and 300 staff they are pretty lean operation it seems.
Their staff seem to be mostly active in the Middle East, Africa and East Asia.
But this war in Ukraine showed one simple truth: if you arm the population, the invasion can only destroy the infrastructure. You can't win over people's minds by killing their loved ones, their neighboors. And you can't keep it under control if every citizen has a gun. You install a puppet government, they will be dead within a week.
This is the only way to protect Taiwan. Give them guns and ammo. And teach them that killing invaders is the only way to keep their freedom and not fall under the totalitarian communist regime of China.
They have guns, the two parties warred before. In fact, there was never a formal peace agreement so the war is technically still going on.
The asymmetry is in the economics. Taiwan can realistically be strangled by China. This has seemed like the plan from Beijing. Once politically weak, you can take over with sock puppets.
Taiwan cannot be strangled as long as the rest of the world is willing to trade with them. A naval blockade of Taiwan would not be tolerated by the west, and the first US-flagged ship that gets sunk would start real war.
I'm not sure how likely it is to when the incumbent empire and the aspiring one are both armed to the tits, neither of which will give up on their claim or their military. Even without confrontation they'll both keep force projecting. I think we just gotta hope there's mutual resistance to any physical escalation, either direct or by proxy, and that the competition remains economical and technological. Turns out even tying the economies to the hip is not an insurance against fighting when those ties turn into weapons in an escalation.
Governments don't have power if the people just drift out of their power. That's one way. Alternatively, one or the other could go the way of Rome (400 and later). I don't think that's likely, but it's possible.
Or, most likely (of the options I've suggested), the next leaders care more about peace than the current ones.
This is a repeat of the same misleading narrative that Putin is trying to push. Ukraine is not "NATO vs Russia", it's "The Ukranians vs Putin".
Similarly, the Taiwan conflict is not "US vs China". It's "the people of Taiwan vs the CCP" (possibly "vs the people of China" though it's hard to say in a country without democracy). There's no question about how the Taiwanese feel; they vote on it every few years in free elections. Americans are mere supporting cast. We have our opinions, but if the Taiwanese all voted to embrace Xi, we'd shake our heads and walk away.
The status quo favors Taiwan. Xi knows this, but without actually going through the process of building a huge navy and launching a military invasion, the de-facto result is that Taiwan continues to be an independent nation. Another couple generations and even China will forget about the big island across the sea. I'm fine with that.
It's rather a repeat of Dalio's idea with regards to the cycle of empires or "world orders", but feel free to read into it what you want, NATO or otherwise. I just meant that I don't see how some form of implicit tension won't exist for as long as there are two competing superpowers flexing military and economic might, and I hope the tension never resolves thru military means.
Isn't their capacity to maintain an ongoing assault about available meat sacks, ammunition, food and oil - none of which they lack - rather than money?
There have been mentions that they're already short on food for their soldiers. Wonder if that's an actual thing, and if so, then how badly short they are?
Especially with that old phrase "an army marches on it's stomach" coming to mind. :)
The lack of food among the Russian invading forces (if real) is due to them outrunning their logistics, not a general food shortage in Russia. Russia’s army is not designed to operate more than about 50-100km from their rail network.
The Israeli's have managed to hold territory by force. The difference is that worldwide support was in favor of them instead of the Palestinians.
I would say that you cannot hold a region by force alone unless you commit to multiple generations of occupation AND manage to maintain when superpowers oppose it.
> But this war in Ukraine showed one simple truth: if you arm the population, the invasion can only destroy the infrastructure.
There are no simple conclusions about what is happening right now in Ukraine, and it is a fool's errand to declare any kind of conclusion 10 days into an invasion which already displaced millions of people and in which almost every major Ukrainian city is under siege teetering on the edge.
Russia's economy destroyed? Ukraine successfully resisted the invasion? All Russia can do is destroy infrastructure?
All those jumping to conclusions regarding the Ukraine situation remind me of Bush standing in front of a Mission Accomplished banner after 20 days of the Iraq invasion.
>the Ukraine situation remind me of Bush standing in front of a Mission Accomplished banner after 20 days of the Iraq invasion.
So your response to others jumping to conclusions is to do so yourself? Your analogy doesn't make a lot of sense either, Bush was the invader claiming victory, not the local population saying they would resist until death(which seems to be fairly accurate in the case of Ukraine so far.)
It's such a weird situation right now everybody went from virus and vaccine expert to geopolitical expert within 10 min.
It took the West like a year of sanctions and aerial bombardment, then 3 weeks of "Shock and awe" to take over an Arab nations. If there is one thing modern day arabs are known for is they cant do modern warfare.
Now take Ukraine its like 40% bigger than Iraq so i think its save to say it should take Russia like 5 weeks to beat the West without sanctions on Ukraine without months of Aerial bombardment. If at the end of this months no peace deal is agreed on between Russia and the Ukraine then it's should be seen as a hick up.
But it might also become a multi year invasion every thing is possible in war.
> If there is one thing modern day arabs are known for is they cant do modern warfare.
> It's such a weird situation right now everybody went from virus and vaccine expert to geopolitical expert within 10 min.
While this sentiment resonates with me, and probably many Americans, I'm not entirely sure that it would resonate with Taiwanese culture. Even if it did, any attempt to arm Taiwanese citizens is likely to draw a lot of opposition from China.
The "population" hasn't been armed. A small amount of people in some areas were armed. And fighting age men have been conscripted. If the goal of the invasion was to destroy infrastructure, that would have happened last week. Armed population or not.
Taiwan is completely different from Ukraine culturally, and I don't think simply blanket arming people is a solution there either. Big difference being that the Ukrainian standard of living, even under Zelensky has been bad. If you are simply surviving, taking up arms is a much easier sell. If you are comfortable and well off, you have a lot more to lose. If Xi is smart, which he is- he will attempt to take over Taiwan via political means. I don't think he will attempt to repeat the Hong Kong approach with an entire country, when he already has pro Chinese political entities within Taiwan.
> teach them that killing invaders is the only way to keep their freedom and not fall under the totalitarian
First you need to convince people that the value of freedom is actually worth the cost. Based on what I've seen for the past two years, many people do not value freedom, even in the United States. They'd rather be comfortable than free. The cost of freedom is often everything for those that actually choose it. The benefits are only realized by the next generation.
It's been mind boggling to see anti 2A people in my social circle cheer for normal Ukrainian citizens arming themselves with "weapons of war" that "wouldn't do anything against a country with drones and nukes." I hope a silver lining of this conflict is remembering that protecting your life and your family's lives with firearms is an inalienable right.
I'm someone you would describe as "anti 2A". I still think the "defense against home invasion" style argument is mostly nonsense. It's super rare, and I don't think the benefits of guns outweigh the downsides for that kind of self defense. (Having been a victim of exactly such a crime, I'm glad neither I nor the burglar had a gun.)
However, seeing Ukrainians take up arms to fight an invasion has caused me to re-evaluate my position in general, and I actually think an armed population is likely better than the alternative. I'm sure Finland isn't unhappy that they're heavily armed right now.
Is it? How do you define super rare? I live in a low crime US suburb and still personally know 3 homes that have been invaded: friend's next door neighbor, a house 200ft away, and the literal across the street neighbor.
Home invasion means forcefully breaking into someone's house where there are people in it. It's very different than a burglary. Burglaries are common, but the former is rare.
The danger of owning a firearm, especially if it is always armed for such an occurrence, is more dangerous to the household than the risk of home invasion (which again, is rare). It is an idea that people defend using the concept of "safety", but in reality is motivated by fear or hypermasculinity as the main cause.
You don't seem very open to changing your perspective, but if you care to peruse a subreddit dedicated to reporting defensive gun use in the news, it contains a ton of stories that you've likely never encountered[0]. You may disagree with many of them, but some are absolutely defensible, like an ex-boyfriend breaking into woman's apartment and beating her until she is able to shoot him[1][2] (from the front page of that subreddit).
My point is, become familiar with the frequency that these reports happen before you make the claim that it's rare.
I get the feeling you have that problem in reverse. All defensive gun use is very rare. Certainly, rarer than the opposite (offensive gun use). Combined with suicide risk and accidental deaths or injuries, it is rarely justifiable. Study on this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848468/
The numbers regarding defensive gun use is very likely to end up being a classic example of commercial interests affect scientific research. Nearly all of the high numbers come from a handful of sources that have connections with the firearm industry. There are many methodology problems with their numbers too.
> You don't seem very open to changing your perspective, but if you care to peruse a subreddit dedicated to reporting defensive gun use in the news, it contains a ton of stories that you've likely never encountered[0].
Of course there are cases of defensive gun use. But there are also cases of idiotic gun use:
> Deputies with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office arrested three people after one man was shot. Investigators said the shooting victim was shot after an argument about the victim’s alleged littering.
> A Utah father was taken into custody after police said he told his 4-year-old child to fire at officers following a dispute over an order at the McDonald's drive-thru in Midvale.
Right across the US border Canada manages to have a safe society without everyone packing heat. And it's not like gun ownership is unheard of in Canada, given it's 7th in per capita ownership:
You seem to not understand that gun owners train how to use firearms, and a proper one will practice high levels of gun safety in a home. Sure, there's going to be morons who own them and make the news. But it's not a toy or for fun. Just as they find out.
No worries, the “hyper-masculine” men with badges will come save you. I have no problem with you wanting to take your chances and let someone with evil intent to have their way with you or your loved ones. Just don’t try and take the ability to defend, from others, because you have a problem with masculinity.
There's one study that showed that even carrying a gun on your person increases your likely hoot of being shot:
> Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P < .05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P < .05).
Okay... that doesn't change a thing though. People still have the right to defend themselves. I don't care if someone is stupid with a weapon. You can find occurrences of a weapon, tool, vehicles, any object, being used improperly and in an unsafe manner that can cause harm or death.
All you illustrate is that being a responsible gun owner is important (which is not debated whatsoever in any firearms community.) The vast majority of law abiding gun owners are responsible with their weapons.
> Okay... that doesn't change a thing though. People still have the right to defend themselves.
The numbers seem to indicate that having a gun is actually more detrimental, on a 'net' basis, to one's well-being than not having a gun. Having a gun is more dangerous for you and yours:
> But about 30 careful studies show more guns are linked to more crimes: murders, rapes, and others. Far less research shows that guns help.
> We use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.
> Results. We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval = 1.009, 1.019).
Riding a car will greatly increase the odds of your death. So what?
Also all the studies you've cited don't prove causality, they prove correlation. Maybe it's the other way around? Maybe living in a more dangerous place increases the likelihood of people owning guns?
> Riding a car will greatly increase the odds of your death. So what?
If you don't want you or a family member to become a firearms statistic don't own a gun, especially since owning one doesn't seem to be useful against strangers:
> Results. We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval = 1.009, 1.019).
It's not that hard to arm a society when war breaks out. That is the same mentality that countries like Switzerland has. The "2A argument" is quite a bit different, and has very few similarities with what is going on at the start of a war.
If you give out guns to people who never used them, they won't be as effective. Also I think you're underestimating the logistic difficulty of storing and transporting tens of millions of weapons (and ammunition) before blitzkrieg cuts you off. You could have a storage in each city, but you still need to move the guns to smaller towns and villages, as well as enemy spies could sabotage such transports...
You're trying to rationalize the situation in the US, not looking at it objectively. You can quickly train people to use a firearm, including long before fighting starts. You will need to store a vast amount of military equipment anyways. Storage is highly unlikely to be an issue.
>You can quickly train people to use a firearm, including long before fighting starts.
1. It took months to vaccinate the US population. Training them to use guns would most certainly take longer.
2. Your previous comments seem to suggest you're anti-2A. What's your position here then? Are you against gun ownership, but think that if some enemy wants to invade us, there's going to be enough advance warning that we can train and arm everyone?
You need close to 100% vaccination rates for vaccines to really work. Not so much for creating a makeshift army.
This is an example of framing of the issue, and in this case it is deeply misleading. Nearly everyone wants what makes us safe. The problem is that certain groups in America have transformed that into something dangerous while disguising it as a form of safety. At some point, society will move away from this kind of thinking regardless of how it is perceived today.
Dude, I don't live in the US and I know little about american problems with guns, so no, your guess is a big miss. I'm not trying to rationalize anything, apparently you're the one being heavily biased here, to rush into such conclusions.
Switzerland is a special case, as everyone who took up military service will be periodically trained until their 40s and keep their arms and equipment at home. In case of mobilization, only ammunition needs to be given out.
That does run counter to the "arming a society is easy" take, as specially in Switzerland it's a pretty safe bet that most households do possess weapons, are even required to by law you could say
It's not super rare. We see how it plays out all the time. Protestors protest, government comes down on them hard - mass arrests, mass killings, mass civil destruction of liberties.
We literally saw a version of this in Canada a month ago, where actually peaceful protesters were declared terrorists and got arrested and their money seized.
It's not always about some other country's government coming on you hard, your own can be just as rotten.
> It's been mind boggling to see anti 2A people in my social circle cheer for normal Ukrainian citizens arming themselves with "weapons of war" that "wouldn't do anything against a country with drones and nukes."
The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a Luftwaffe is a good guy with a Luftwaffe and a bunch of SAMs. A bunch of randos with AKs have little chance against the Russian-equivalent of Hellfire missiles IMHO. It's just that the Ukraine military seems to have been underestimated.
If there is political will and logistical support, a mainstream army can keep an insurgency down as shown by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The main recourse coupe to wait out the patience of the 'occupier' (which is what the Taliban did).
Whether Russia/Putin has the will and/or resources is another question.
> I hope a silver lining of this conflict is remembering that protecting your life and your family's lives with firearms is an inalienable right.
Even with the threat of Russian invasion, especially after 2014 and Crimea, Ukraine seems to disagree, as licenses are still needed for gun ownership:
It has been a week. I'm not sure we can be assured small arms to locals will do much at all.
What has happened in Ukraine seems to be that Ukraine's military was more capable / motivated and Russia's military MUCH LESS capable / motivated than anyone expected.
The situation in Taiwan is different. There are polls in the past indicating non-negligible amount of Taiwanese (I forgot the numbers, but IIRC it is closer to 50-50 split than only a small fraction) support “merging back” to China. (That was before 2019 Hong Kong incident though.)
Much of these analyses are useless unless you put domestic politics into calculation.
If Xi wants to invade Taiwan, 90% is based on his power fight within the party, not the geopolitics.
One crucial part of Xi's ruling is that Xi has not appointed his successor yet. Xi wants to stay. Does invading Taiwan help or hurt him to stay longer? That's his calculation.
Many high officials have strong financial interest against this. In Xi's eyes they are corrupted. But there are too many of them and Xi need some of their support. That's why anti-corruption campaign is crucial to achieve party's (Xi's) political goals.
Your original point that the West's influence, through geopolitics, mattered very little, and internal party power struggles determined Taiwan's fate is inaccurate. It doesn't matter if Xi is directly aware of geopolitics or if its impact, through proxies, shape his decision, it's still geopolitical consequences that largely protects Taiwan.
Rivals are partially against an invasion because it harms them financially, or harms their family's interests. This is amplified by their desire to not give Xi a victory, but if the deterrent didn't exist, surely there could be no plausible push back.
I suspect china is looking at this and thinking a number of things:
1) It needs to control banking infra (it has a messaging system similar to swift already)
2) Putin is acting even more boldly than normal (I suspect it was assuming that he would try and fully annex donbas & Luhansk and a bit more, then wait another few years to try again)
3) The Russian bear that is it's land army really isn't that great. The modernisation hasn't stretched to tactics or maintenance.
4) Russia shares a decent land border with china, might need to think again about the security there.
Sure Xi and Putin are "best buddies" but real politik > than friendship for dictators.
China's not Russia, and Taiwan is not Ukraine, but there are still some important messages being sent:
1. The West's main tool still seems to be economic sanctions. Even unprecedented sanctions didn't prevent or halt Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and good luck sanctioning China.
2. The West is too scared to get involved militarily in ways that could actually prevent an invasion from succeeding, even when its adversary is fumbling and vulnerable. So that's something China probably doesn't have to worry about now, if it wants to go to war over Taiwan.
Russia benefits from disruption and chaos: it causes fuel prices to spike. China benefits from stability: it ensures people can and want to buy all the stuff they manufacture.
Russia asserts the right of strong nations to meddle in any nation that can't resist them. China asserts the right of every nation to territorial integrity and freedom from internal meddling by, e.g., democracy and human rights activists. (To be fair, Putin also hates these people, but clearly thinks Russia itself should be free to meddle in other nations' internal affairs.)
They are drawn together by their opposition to the West and in particular the US, and by their contiguity, but they aren't otherwise natural allies.
One thing is sure: if China still wants to invade Taiwan, they certainly have postponed their plans by a few years, maybe a decade, maybe even more.
The attempted invasion of Ukraine by Russia just reminded people that the best war plans don't survive the first contact with the enemy (apparently stated by the Prussian general Moltke), or in the more folksy words of Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
In 2014, Russia achieved a military miracle: they took over Crimea so quickly and without loss of blood, that they delivered a "fait accompli". Oh, how much would China like to replicate that in Taiwan. And that's what they were preparing for.
But now, in 2022, the latest example of an attempted invasion shows that things can still go astray. Why? No doubt China will analyze everything and try to see if they are in danger of experiencing the same problems. But the overall learned lesson will still be that no matter how much you plan, you can still encounter huge obstacles when you start a war.
And the world response in terms of economic sanctions was unbelievable. Definitely, not something China wants.
If anything the prospect of WW3 because of a Chinese miscalculation vis-a-vis Taiwan went down considerably.
One thing is sure: if China still wants to invade Taiwan, they certainly have postponed their plans by a few years, maybe a decade, maybe even more.
How can you be so certain? This reminds me of people saying just 14 days ago "I don't think Putin is going to invade."
Taiwan is not Ukraine, indeed -- Taiwan would be easier to capture because it is an island. There aren't land borders across which supplies and weapons can be brought. They would have to come by ship or plane, which are easier to defeat. It would be easier, militarily, to take Taiwan. China certainly has the will, and it has learned that the worst it would face would be some sanctions.
Some sanctions? The entire Russian economy has disappeared overnight. The only reason it has not been felt yet is due to inertia. There are still just about enough goods in the pipes to support things for weeks or months. But once computers start breaking, planes start breaking, shelves start to empty, and nothing is arriving to replace them, shit is going to hit the fan.
Or have they been? "Unplugged" is a good metaphor, for they currently control the vast majority of energy to all of Europe[1]. We're turning Russia into a gigantic version of North Korea, and with the same major ally, China. What happens if Russia diverts its gas sales to China -- it's Europe that'll be unplugged.
Certainly recent events have concentrated minds regarding energy security in Europe, and likely self sufficiency (or at least better sources) will be achieved, much as food security was after ww2.
If China is the only available customer, how much do you think China will pay? They will have Russia by the balls. They will pay pennies on the Ruble.
Europe will piss and moan for a while as prices go up, but Europe is rich enough to route around this problem.
I agree though, we're turning Russia into a giant North Korea. What that means for the world, I don't know. In fact, I would say they're getting cut off worse than North Korea. Some of these companies canceling Russia probably operate (with permission) in North Korea.
To counter this claim, I'd ask you to consider which of two similarly sized invasions was easier to achieve: D-Day and the invasion of Western Europe, or Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of Eastern Europe. You may also consider why the Nazis never made it to Great Britain, and why Great Britain has been insulated from the Great Wars of Europe more often than it has taken part in the conflicts.
> To counter this claim, I'd ask you to consider which of two similarly sized invasions was easier to achieve: D-Day and the invasion of Western Europe, or Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of Eastern Europe. You may also consider why the Nazis never made it to Great Britain, and why Great Britain has been insulated from the Great Wars of Europe more often than it has taken part in the conflicts.
It seems that this paragraph is meant to suggest that Barbarossa was easier than D-Day, but this might not be the best example, since Barbarossa failed and D-Day succeeded. (Of course, a lot of things could have gone differently that could have made the outcomes very different, but I still find this example a little unconvincing.)
Perhaps it would have been simply best to note that island nations are generally insulated from invasion in ways that continental nations are not. Great Britain had the long term national security to forge an empire while the continental nations of Europe were engaged in endless back-and-forth wars (often at the instigation of Great Britain). Japan had centuries of peaceful self-imposed isolation while the continental nations of China and Indochina were engaged in endless wars, which was utilized to build up an empire while safely protected by the Sea of Japan. Being an island nation is an immense geostrategic advantage that is apparently not completely obvious to all observers of history.
UK could be resupplied across the Atlantic by world's preeminenant industrial producer while German power projection of era couldn't comprehensively cripple GBR. German Blitz+blockade didn't achieve strategic goals of destroying GBR industries while also being distracted by land war. TW has even less food/resource security and entirely within range of PRC weapon platforms, who has more industrial capacity than US during peak of WW2 production. Also consider UK managed to hold onto Falklands. It's really about industrial capacity to wage attritional war - TW has an initial defensive bonus but massive resupply penalty. If PRC gains air superiority and deter outside intervention, taking over island is only matter of time. Merchant fleet assets alone is enough to ferry 100,000s anywhere on TW if PRC wants to human wave / million man swim in days. Dunkirk moved 350k bodies on 800 ships in a week. PRC has 50-80k fishing boats that can make the journey. It's hard to overstate PRC industrial advantage relative to TW.
> Japan had centuries of peaceful self-imposed isolation while the continental nations of China and Indochina were engaged in endless wars, which was utilized to build up an empire while safely protected by the Sea of Japan.
While Japan had a stable border, it also had many periods of feudal lords fighting each other. Also, the reason Japan became an Empire was that it received and internalized Western knowledges much earlier than many other countries (starting with Rangaku "Dutch learnings" in the 17th century), and later was forced to open its ports by Western powers, which resulted in disagreement over the nation's course, a series of bloody civil wars, and the Meiji Restoration, which made the emperor an iron-fisted ruler of a modern nation.
It's not exactly a story of an island enjoying isolated peace and suddenly emerging as a superpower. Korea was a country that enjoyed almost total isolation during the same period (16-19th centuries) and look where it got them.
The worst thing, that you don't mention: China has a much stronger economy than Russia. Currently we're cutting Russia from almost everything, but still (as silently as we can) buy its gas - because it would be very hard for us to stop buying it.
Cutting off China? That would hurt both sides to the point I doubt it's even possible... But then again I wouldn't expect cutting Russia the way we did was possible. Still, even individuals boycotting China would probably hurt more than Taiwan is worth?
Chinese people are more likely to rage at the government if the economy goes bad. I don't know why that is considering the media is much more locked up than Russia's has been until now, but you can see local fury every once in a while where the government is forced to concede because of angry mobs
only if you are self sufficient and not facing a opponent that has more that enough fire power to carpet bomb the entire island from a distance or more soldiers than you have bullets.
I don't think an island invasion would be easier than a land invasion, but I agree that "China definitely won't invade Taiwan right now" is overly optimistic. It's probably not in their best interests, but Russia invading Ukraine wasn't in Russia's best interests either and they did it anyways.
MANPADS, ATGM, and drones like the Bayraktar have now been shown to be much more effective than the same cost investment into aircraft, tanks and artillery. In addition the united international condemnation and sanctions have been greater than I think everyone imagined. China may conclude that Russian strategic goals would have been better served by maintaining their credible threat of invasion rather than actually invading, and adjust their strategy accordingly. But Russia is not China ...
>In 2014, Russia achieved a military miracle: they took over Crimea so quickly and without loss of blood, that they delivered a "fait accompli". Oh, how much would China like to replicate that in Taiwan. And that's what they were preparing for.
That only seems like a miracle because you need to do more research into what Crimea actually is.
Crimea was never actually part of Ukraine, only a paper "gift" to Ukranian SSR way back when, negligible amounts of ethnic Ukrainians live there. Nearly the entire jurisdiction is employed supporting the mostly russian tourist industry, or actual russian military, their Black Sea fleet.
There were simply no other outcomes possible. It was a defacto Russian territory, with a token Ukranian security force against an entire Russian Black Sea fleet, and tens of thousands sailors and marines. It seems that even Ukraine itself didn't wholeheartedly consider Crimea it's own territory, essentially no resistance whatsoever.
You mean never before 1954. After the collapse of USSR, in 1994 Russia agreed to respect Ukraine's independence with its current (back then) borders, signed in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.
> Such utter nonsense. Who did Russia take it from?
The more full Russian nationalist argument is something like “Crimea was never part of Ukraine until Crimea was arbitrarily joined to the Ukraine SSR by the Soviet government, disregarding both the historical Russianness of Crimea and the historical invalidity of Ukraine as a nation.”
No one actually denies that Ukraine controlled Crimea since Stalin gave it to them until 2014, they just deny the appropriateness of Stalin’s action and therefore all subsequent control of Crimes by Ukraine.
I legitimately don't understand where all these "Ukraine is obviously winning" takes are coming from.
If Ukraine was doing well, it wouldn't be giving out weapons to civilians [0], forming penal battalions [1], or lie about receiving NATO planes. [2]
If Ukraine was doing well, it wouldn't be inflating death counts to be larger than the US involvement in Afghanistan, a 20 year period of time. [3,4]
If Ukraine was doing well, they wouldn't need to make up a story about the Ghosts of Kyiv. [5,6]
I am utterly utterly perplexed. Where is any semblance of proof that Russia is doing badly? They seem to be encircling the capital and winning city after city. It's only two weeks in. Did we expect better after the early adrenaline rush? Do they benefit from being told this? Are we just being setup to be told this is a Pyrrhic victory for the Russians?
I legitimately don't understand how people keep interpreting "this doesn't seem to be going how Russia hoped it would" as "Ukraine is obviously winning". Those aren't the same thing at all.
I'm fairly sure the Ghost of Kyiv came from a DCS (digital combat simulator) player originally and is actually based on this short DCS movie called 'The Ghost' which has very similar core details.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM8tXUz2q0c
Also some of the original footage uploaded that was purported to be of the Ghost of Kyiv was from DCS and I believe was even admitted as such by the uploader but like most rumours it has since taken a life of it's own and the exploits become increasingly more exaggerated over time.
Who's "they" in this case? The ukranian people? The ukranian government? The sources you suggest seem to suggest the former rather than the latter. If that's the case, I'm not really sure how that's indicative of not "obviously winning".
> I legitimately don't understand where all these "Ukraine is obviously winning" takes are coming from.
Because it appears to be doing far better than expected. That doesn't mean they'll win, but it at least allows for a sliver of hope. Personally, I'm guessing they'll eventually lose a lot of territory without direct Western military intervention, but maybe there will still be Ukrainian rump state left in the West after this, which will still be an achievement if not a "win."
> If Ukraine was doing well, it wouldn't be giving out weapons to civilians [0]...
Ukraine might be doing as well as it is, because of things like that. That's not proof that it's doing well or poorly, but rather it's putting all its resources into an existential fight.
> If Ukraine was doing well, they wouldn't need to make up a story about the Ghosts of Kyiv.
You're being waaay too hard on them. They're ten days into the literal fight for their lives, and if some social media rumor gives them a bit more morale amidst the fog of war, who cares?
> Are we just being setup to be told this is a Pyrrhic victory for the Russians?
That's a bit too conspiratorial. That's a likely outcome, because even after "unprecedented" action Ukraine's allies are unwilling to do enough to clearly tip the scales, but I doubt there's some plan to "setup to be told [that]."
If, broadly speaking, the western media says that Russia won a Pyrrhic victory will I be right in saying this was an intentional setup or will it be that I simply got lucky?
Depends on the chances of pyrrhic victories in general. You score no points for predicting the most probable outcome. To reverse this, would you be right if you said that Russia won and Russian media agreed?
Your (2) source does not match what you said. The Ukraine did no lie about the planes, the EU did:
> The three nations were said to be forming the core of the EU effort—announced Monday by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell—as they are believed to be the only bloc members with flight-ready Russian-made aircraft.
a major front in a modern war is digital propaganda. You have to keep your own peoples moral up and sap the will of the enemy, next you have to convince the rest of the world that your cause is just, winable and that they should suport you and demonize your enemy.
Russia has failed on this front as their propaganda has been so transparently bad.
they accused Ukraine of being run by Nazis, when their president and prime minister are both Jewish. they accused them of running death camps for Russian and all sort of other ridiculous slander so unbelievable the no one believes it.
Ukraine has done all things considered pretty well outside of the examples you mentioned.
As for arming civilians what do you expect a militarily inferior country to do when facing a stronger enemy and the rest of the world seems to afraid to send meaningful military aid. Its a battle for their survival. If I lived there I would be lining up to get gun too.
the winning narrative is coming form them not being steam rolled like last time and them holding ground. Or from russian soldiers surrendering and going AWOL.
> One thing is sure: if China still wants to invade Taiwan, they certainly have postponed their plans by a few years, maybe a decade, maybe even more.
Not necessarily. CPC is still waiting to see what the US and NATO do in response to the Russian invasion, and especially Putin's threats of nuclear escalation.
If China perceives that all the West will do is sanctions on Russia, but no direct military intervention to prevent a democratic country from being taken over by force, then China will deduce that nuclear saber rattling is enough to ensure the US won't intervene in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
That may lead them to accelerate their plans to do just that, to accomplish it during a time that 1) Western leadership is easily deterred by nuclear threats, 2) the Chinese Navy has more ships than the US Navy, and 3) US and NATO are divided into fighting a 2-front war.
CPC is also waiting to see the full extent of sanctions on and potential decoupling with Russia, how far the West will go in that regard. If CPC believes they could survive the same, again they'll be encouraged to accelerate their Taiwain plans.
The jury's still out, but it's not a given that events have already decelerated CPC's intent to invade Taiwan. That's still up in the air.
We're still buying millions of dollars worth of oil from Russia daily because our government is afraid of blowback from further energy price inflation.
Economic sanctions on China would absolutely cripple us. I don't doubt that, if they were committed to the idea, the CPC would likely be willing to ride out whatever we actually cobble together in response. They've been pushing heavily for self reliance in every industry for quite awhile now.
They haven't had too much of an issue with what Americans would consider insane lockdown measures during COVID.
Given the trade surplus they have been running for years- well over $3 trillion worth total held in their foreign exchange reserves- I suspect they know (or believe) they would weather the sanctions better than we would.
See: Disney, Apple, Nike and dozens of other large corporations all cut off Russia over Ukraine, yet maintain healthy relationships with China despite all of the horrors reportedly committed against the Uyghur Muslims.
The most extreme scenario is decoupling Asia, Europe, and North America from China. As in, they all shift their manufacturing elsewhere and block all imports from China. That would of course drastically harm the West, at least temporarily, but it would be far more devastating to China and the mass uprisings could end CPC.
Not really. PRC war/political plans for TW has always assumed worst case scenario of US intervention. Any TW plan is a US deterrence plan foremost, which if successful opens up various options for TW from blockade to full out invasion. TW can be dismantled at leisure as long as PRC can deter US.
The real question is whether PRC will take "half measure" options off the table and skip straight to leveling the island. UKR military improvements since 2014 thanks to western support is basically the porcupine model US has been pushing on TW. As was expanding US/NATO security architecture to trigger current "fighting to the last Ukrainian" strategy. Which has has pushed RU from "special operations" that would have spared most of the population to scorched earth. We'll have to see if UKR/TW thinks that's worth it once frank appraisal occurs when/if this war ends. This could very be a decade long war that turns most of Ukraine into Yemen. Except much harder for TW as an island not self sufficient in anything to support a prolonged insurgency.
In the meantime, PRC has learned that US/NATO will not interdict directly when you have 6000 nukes instead of just 300. That most of major non-west resource exporters have remained neutral. There's also opportunity a prolonged war will divide US attention across Atlantic again. Better to push sooner when US military has not pivoted and TW is still at UKR 2014 levels of ill preparedness - many of potentially lessons and developments that could push TW scenario sooner instead of delay it.
Right the other way. It would be the perfect timing for China. Do you think the west can afford sanctioning the shit out of China now? They can't even sanction Russia properly. Do you think China prefer to wait that the west figured their shit out to depend less on other countries? Plus now Russia, Belarus, depends so much from China... and I bet many other countries are thinking of getting the fuck away from the west financial system, considering how weak that make them, especially now that there's real alternative market / system emerging independently from the west.
Most of all, Taiwan is a very strategic country, because of microchips production. Considering the sanctions (Apple, Intel, AMD, Samsung, Microsoft, Lenovo, Dell, probably more, are not selling in Russia anymore) Imagine the leverage that Taiwan would give to China, and the solution it would be for Russia.
I would be very surprised that Taiwan is not next. Everything is pushing in that direction.
Edit: As other mentioned, the outcome in Ukraine is certainly a big factor, but even if Russia fails somehow, I'm not sure that it wouldn't even make it more important for China to get Taiwan...
> I would be very surprised that Taiwan is not next.
Just wanna establish some clear understanding on what you mean by "next".
Would you be very surprised if Taiwan is not invaded within 3 months? 6 months? or 12 months?
Or what you mean is that you would be surprised that there can even be another invasion elsewhere after the invasion of Ukraine and before the invasion of Taiwan?
depends on how this plays out. If the west gets it act together and helps Ukraine it may be postponed indefinitely. If they start making side deals with Russia and ignoring Ukraine while they start taking major losses 6 months to 2 years. If full scale war breaks out between Russia and NATO 3 months (we will be to busy to do anything about it or they will think that). If nuclear war starts it to chaotic to tell, but if say its a limited exchange and both make it out unbombed and they aren't all dying of radition poisoning from the fallout whenever they want.
One significant omission from this comparison: the Ukraine:Russia population ratio (~0.285) is almost TWENTY TIMES as large as the Taiwan:PRC ratio (~0.0163). The Ukraine:Russia ratio is almost as large as the ratio between the Confederacy's non-slave population and the Union's population at the time the US Civil War broke out; and I suspect that some overly optimistic Russian military planners did not properly account for this. So, although it is harder for the PRC to invade Taiwan than it is for Russia to invade Ukraine for a number of reasons, I expect it to be more difficult for Russia to keep most of Ukraine pacified even if they do achieve their primary military objectives.
Meh, I'm getting very tired of these types of articles. Why is it so hard to simply admit that it's really hard if not impossible to predict complex things like this?
The types of people that write these articles also believed at one time:
- China becoming capitalist would cause it to become a liberal democracy
- Globalization would be amazing for everyone everywhere
- The Afghan army would be able to stand up to the Taliban
- Russia would not invade the Ukraine, but on the off chance they did, they'd roll right over the country in no time at all.
The fact is when it comes to this kind of stuff, we just don't know and we probably never will. That's just the nature of complexity. You miss one minor detail or some tiny assumption or some "unknown unknown" is off and the whole intellectual scaffolding comes down.
I don't need an analysis to know that China already has planned its invasion, but waiting for the right time.
Russia, China (CCP), Iran, Belarus, Venezuela, Cuba...the modern axis of evil. What do they have in common? Communism: the most deadly and hypocritical ideology in human history.
For those unfamiliar with Belarus: the leader Lukashenko is a communist that wishes the revival of the Soviet Union.
For those unfamiliar with communism, it's basically a few power hungry leaders that tell the people they'll build a fair and equitable utopia, but end up with absolute power, and killing or torturing all opposition.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 282 ms ] threadhttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/US...
,,Beijing’s calculus vis-à-vis the use of force against Taipei can change, so the world must continually monitor the situation and remain alert to warnings and indicators.
Part of this monitoring must include scrutinizing Chinese assessments of Russia’s performance in Ukraine in the coming weeks, months and years.''
It is very worrying to me that China tones down the invasion in their media (if that is indeed true, I don't follow Chinese media myself).
Better to let people know what war really is. Unless you want it.
This weekend China has refused to show Premiership Football because of protests at matches against the Russian invasion[1].
Right now the English FA and clubs are just ignoring that but it's a big market. How long will they ignore that revenue stream?
Already the way Disney, Netflix, Apple, NBA and Hollywood cozy up to the CCP is pretty worrying.
1. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/football/china-blocks-broadc...
Yup. It's crazy how many of these are out in the wild. I mostly notice Chinese ones from my time there or ones highlighted by friends. But the Russian disinfo coming out in the lead up was insane.
I'm all for freedom of press but state sanctioned media is such a fucking blight.
To call everything and everyone Putin's propaganda and disinformation is simplistic. Hindsight is 2020, it always feels like we missed the obvious signs.
And, judging by the faces on the videos that I saw, many members of his cabinet and top generals were thinking the same.
I hadn’t heard of that before.
For trolling you’d do something flashier but much easier, like fighter flyovers or a missile launch.
Personally, I thought Putin would establish a stronghold in the Donbas and gradually improve position from there. This full on assault of the entire country is shocking and seems wildly aggressive and overly ambitious.
"You couldn't hide all the ships" implies that would stop or deter them from moving in if they wanted to. Russia's navy getting to the Black Sea no questions asked has shown you can make obviously aggressive military repositioning without repercussion (unless the West gets more proactive with sanctions after this).
I'm no military mind but indeed, they wouldn't have been quite as effective in shelling the country if they only had access to the sea rather than sharing virtually half the land's frontier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...
China is 15-25% of the trade for those countries, but the west-aligned countries represent 80% of China's trade. A coordinated trade war would be vastly more devastating for China than the rest of the world.
I don't say this gleefully - I hope it never happens.
Another problem is the access to resources like rare metals, that China stockpiles.
- A thriving Chinese democracy showing the mainland that no, they are not intrinsically incompatible with freedom.
- The credibility of the US as an ally to other Asian countries.
- Taiwan's strategic location.
don't think we have reconcilable opinions on US motivations but hey I'll gladly be wrong as long as there's no war
https://www.statista.com/statistics/727592/gross-domestic-pr...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263775/gross-domestic-pr...
> and reliance on foreign powers
?
Maybe I phrased things poorly but the point is that mainlanders do not see much to envy. how do you propose that changes exactly?
This is a classic case of citation needed.
It's easy enough to do for the reverse, i.e. that the Taiwanese are not overly enthused by the prospect of "reunification":
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2021/12/30/2...
Also, they're only "reliant" on foreign powers insofar as they're under threat. Sri Lanka is not "reliant" on foreign powers because India is not threatening them.
If that is the strategy, then it is failing.
Taiwan is more anti-unification than it has ever been, and the people there already consider themselves to be an independent country.
The ruling party of Taiwan has already made statements that they already consider themselves to be independent from China.
But no, most of Europe isn't interested in spilling blood over Taiwan, just like it isn't interested in spilling blood over Ukraine.
I'm not sure this is true. What actually happened is that NATO countries realized expanding NATO is in their interest so they ignored the "north atlantic" part of the treaty. While I doubt taiwan will be invited any time soon it wouldn't surprise me at all if Japan or even South Korea is.
Taiwan is thousands of miles outside of it.
Countries can do what they want. There isn't some magic spell, that forces countries to do thing, just because of some semantic game about whether a country is recongized or not.
Taiwan could simply join NATO anyway, if they get approved.
"USIP was established by Congress in 1984 as an independent institution devoted to the nonviolent prevention and mitigation of deadly conflict abroad."
In 2011 they almost lost their funding. Although, with budget of 39mln and 300 staff they are pretty lean operation it seems.
Their staff seem to be mostly active in the Middle East, Africa and East Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Institute_of_Pea...
This is the only way to protect Taiwan. Give them guns and ammo. And teach them that killing invaders is the only way to keep their freedom and not fall under the totalitarian communist regime of China.
The asymmetry is in the economics. Taiwan can realistically be strangled by China. This has seemed like the plan from Beijing. Once politically weak, you can take over with sock puppets.
I'm not sure how likely it is to when the incumbent empire and the aspiring one are both armed to the tits, neither of which will give up on their claim or their military. Even without confrontation they'll both keep force projecting. I think we just gotta hope there's mutual resistance to any physical escalation, either direct or by proxy, and that the competition remains economical and technological. Turns out even tying the economies to the hip is not an insurance against fighting when those ties turn into weapons in an escalation.
Or, most likely (of the options I've suggested), the next leaders care more about peace than the current ones.
The stalemate will probably last a long time.
Similarly, the Taiwan conflict is not "US vs China". It's "the people of Taiwan vs the CCP" (possibly "vs the people of China" though it's hard to say in a country without democracy). There's no question about how the Taiwanese feel; they vote on it every few years in free elections. Americans are mere supporting cast. We have our opinions, but if the Taiwanese all voted to embrace Xi, we'd shake our heads and walk away.
The status quo favors Taiwan. Xi knows this, but without actually going through the process of building a huge navy and launching a military invasion, the de-facto result is that Taiwan continues to be an independent nation. Another couple generations and even China will forget about the big island across the sea. I'm fine with that.
You can't extrapolate such a far fetched conclusion from one data point on how string the Ukraunian resistance seems in the first weeks of a war.
There have been mentions that they're already short on food for their soldiers. Wonder if that's an actual thing, and if so, then how badly short they are?
Especially with that old phrase "an army marches on it's stomach" coming to mind. :)
I would say that you cannot hold a region by force alone unless you commit to multiple generations of occupation AND manage to maintain when superpowers oppose it.
what? My impression is that "worldwide support" was in favor of the Palestinians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
There are no simple conclusions about what is happening right now in Ukraine, and it is a fool's errand to declare any kind of conclusion 10 days into an invasion which already displaced millions of people and in which almost every major Ukrainian city is under siege teetering on the edge.
Russia's economy destroyed? Ukraine successfully resisted the invasion? All Russia can do is destroy infrastructure?
All those jumping to conclusions regarding the Ukraine situation remind me of Bush standing in front of a Mission Accomplished banner after 20 days of the Iraq invasion.
So your response to others jumping to conclusions is to do so yourself? Your analogy doesn't make a lot of sense either, Bush was the invader claiming victory, not the local population saying they would resist until death(which seems to be fairly accurate in the case of Ukraine so far.)
It took the West like a year of sanctions and aerial bombardment, then 3 weeks of "Shock and awe" to take over an Arab nations. If there is one thing modern day arabs are known for is they cant do modern warfare.
Now take Ukraine its like 40% bigger than Iraq so i think its save to say it should take Russia like 5 weeks to beat the West without sanctions on Ukraine without months of Aerial bombardment. If at the end of this months no peace deal is agreed on between Russia and the Ukraine then it's should be seen as a hick up.
But it might also become a multi year invasion every thing is possible in war.
Taiwan is completely different from Ukraine culturally, and I don't think simply blanket arming people is a solution there either. Big difference being that the Ukrainian standard of living, even under Zelensky has been bad. If you are simply surviving, taking up arms is a much easier sell. If you are comfortable and well off, you have a lot more to lose. If Xi is smart, which he is- he will attempt to take over Taiwan via political means. I don't think he will attempt to repeat the Hong Kong approach with an entire country, when he already has pro Chinese political entities within Taiwan.
> teach them that killing invaders is the only way to keep their freedom and not fall under the totalitarian
First you need to convince people that the value of freedom is actually worth the cost. Based on what I've seen for the past two years, many people do not value freedom, even in the United States. They'd rather be comfortable than free. The cost of freedom is often everything for those that actually choose it. The benefits are only realized by the next generation.
I suspect this is a universal truth.
Freedom is the vehicle that maintains these things.
But that, apparently, requires education to remember.
Given the amount of covid alarmism even now, I'm not so sure. There are people out there protesting to re-instate mask mandates.
People like being governed. Life is hard on your own.
However, seeing Ukrainians take up arms to fight an invasion has caused me to re-evaluate my position in general, and I actually think an armed population is likely better than the alternative. I'm sure Finland isn't unhappy that they're heavily armed right now.
Is it? How do you define super rare? I live in a low crime US suburb and still personally know 3 homes that have been invaded: friend's next door neighbor, a house 200ft away, and the literal across the street neighbor.
The police are the cleanup crew, those first 5-10 minutes you’re on your own.
My point is, become familiar with the frequency that these reports happen before you make the claim that it's rare.
0. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm....
In the relatively small amount of research on this subject that is not influenced by commercial interests, the numbers suggest that defensive gun use is very rare: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00917...
Of course there are cases of defensive gun use. But there are also cases of idiotic gun use:
> Deputies with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office arrested three people after one man was shot. Investigators said the shooting victim was shot after an argument about the victim’s alleged littering.
* https://www.wkrg.com/northwest-florida/escambia-county/man-s...
> Houston man accused of shooting restaurant workers over BBQ sauce
* https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/02/26/houston-...
> A Utah father was taken into custody after police said he told his 4-year-old child to fire at officers following a dispute over an order at the McDonald's drive-thru in Midvale.
* https://kutv.com/news/local/suspect-in-custody-after-shootin...
Examples taken from:
* https://twitter.com/well_regulated_
Right across the US border Canada manages to have a safe society without everyone packing heat. And it's not like gun ownership is unheard of in Canada, given it's 7th in per capita ownership:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
For tracking mass shootings, the US has a separate Wikipedia page for each calendar year:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
Meanwhile the list of massacres (not even all being shootings) fits on one page for Canada:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Canada
The idea that firearms make one safer, either at home:
* https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M13-1301?articleid=1...
or in public:
* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/
does not seem to be borne out by the statistical data.
No worries, the “hyper-masculine” men with badges will come save you. I have no problem with you wanting to take your chances and let someone with evil intent to have their way with you or your loved ones. Just don’t try and take the ability to defend, from others, because you have a problem with masculinity.
Firearms in the home actually increase your odds of death:
> Access to firearms is associated with risk for completed suicide and being the victim of homicide.
* https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M13-1301?articleid=1...
Specific examples of domestic violence against women:
* https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000522/guns-domestic-violenc...
There's one study that showed that even carrying a gun on your person increases your likely hoot of being shot:
> Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P < .05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P < .05).
* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/
Generally, the idea that firearms make one safer in the home does not seem to be borne out by the statistical data.
All you illustrate is that being a responsible gun owner is important (which is not debated whatsoever in any firearms community.) The vast majority of law abiding gun owners are responsible with their weapons.
The numbers seem to indicate that having a gun is actually more detrimental, on a 'net' basis, to one's well-being than not having a gun. Having a gun is more dangerous for you and yours:
> But about 30 careful studies show more guns are linked to more crimes: murders, rapes, and others. Far less research shows that guns help.
* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-...
> We use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.
* https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thr...
> Results. We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval = 1.009, 1.019).
* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4167105/
Also all the studies you've cited don't prove causality, they prove correlation. Maybe it's the other way around? Maybe living in a more dangerous place increases the likelihood of people owning guns?
If you don't want you or a family member to become a firearms statistic don't own a gun, especially since owning one doesn't seem to be useful against strangers:
> Results. We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval = 1.009, 1.019).
* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4167105/
1. It took months to vaccinate the US population. Training them to use guns would most certainly take longer.
2. Your previous comments seem to suggest you're anti-2A. What's your position here then? Are you against gun ownership, but think that if some enemy wants to invade us, there's going to be enough advance warning that we can train and arm everyone?
>Storage is highly unlikely to be an issue.
And what about transportation?
This is an example of framing of the issue, and in this case it is deeply misleading. Nearly everyone wants what makes us safe. The problem is that certain groups in America have transformed that into something dangerous while disguising it as a form of safety. At some point, society will move away from this kind of thinking regardless of how it is perceived today.
That does run counter to the "arming a society is easy" take, as specially in Switzerland it's a pretty safe bet that most households do possess weapons, are even required to by law you could say
a) They don't have any ammo. So, i dunno.. throw your gun at an intruder...?
b) Ammo in any case is hard to procure
c) If you do your annual military training, the ammo handed out is checked/counted, and woe is you if you can't explain any missing ammo
d) You're seen as a near-sociopath weirdo if you brag about "weapons and ammo i have at home"
Citation: Spent my first 30 years in CH.
We literally saw a version of this in Canada a month ago, where actually peaceful protesters were declared terrorists and got arrested and their money seized.
It's not always about some other country's government coming on you hard, your own can be just as rotten.
The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a Luftwaffe is a good guy with a Luftwaffe and a bunch of SAMs. A bunch of randos with AKs have little chance against the Russian-equivalent of Hellfire missiles IMHO. It's just that the Ukraine military seems to have been underestimated.
Further, Russian SEAD seems to suck:
* https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defe...
and their logistics, once they start getting far from their railheads, seems to deteriorate quite quickly:
* https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-...
If there is political will and logistical support, a mainstream army can keep an insurgency down as shown by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The main recourse coupe to wait out the patience of the 'occupier' (which is what the Taliban did).
Whether Russia/Putin has the will and/or resources is another question.
> I hope a silver lining of this conflict is remembering that protecting your life and your family's lives with firearms is an inalienable right.
Even with the threat of Russian invasion, especially after 2014 and Crimea, Ukraine seems to disagree, as licenses are still needed for gun ownership:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Ukraine
Though UA has mandatory military service to an extent:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Ukraine
What has happened in Ukraine seems to be that Ukraine's military was more capable / motivated and Russia's military MUCH LESS capable / motivated than anyone expected.
If Xi wants to invade Taiwan, 90% is based on his power fight within the party, not the geopolitics.
One crucial part of Xi's ruling is that Xi has not appointed his successor yet. Xi wants to stay. Does invading Taiwan help or hurt him to stay longer? That's his calculation.
Citation? Which part of the communist party does NOT want Taiwan back if it could get it without massive geopolitical consequences?
Rivals are partially against an invasion because it harms them financially, or harms their family's interests. This is amplified by their desire to not give Xi a victory, but if the deterrent didn't exist, surely there could be no plausible push back.
Also the bottom line: is it wise to have deals with someone that's not accountable to their own people?
What about Xi being replaced by someone with a different personality? While it's about a country's interests, there's another kind of stability.
1) It needs to control banking infra (it has a messaging system similar to swift already)
2) Putin is acting even more boldly than normal (I suspect it was assuming that he would try and fully annex donbas & Luhansk and a bit more, then wait another few years to try again)
3) The Russian bear that is it's land army really isn't that great. The modernisation hasn't stretched to tactics or maintenance.
4) Russia shares a decent land border with china, might need to think again about the security there.
Sure Xi and Putin are "best buddies" but real politik > than friendship for dictators.
Not just for dictators
1. The West's main tool still seems to be economic sanctions. Even unprecedented sanctions didn't prevent or halt Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and good luck sanctioning China.
2. The West is too scared to get involved militarily in ways that could actually prevent an invasion from succeeding, even when its adversary is fumbling and vulnerable. So that's something China probably doesn't have to worry about now, if it wants to go to war over Taiwan.
If China invades Taiwan, will Apple and Disney exit China as they did with Russia?
Russia asserts the right of strong nations to meddle in any nation that can't resist them. China asserts the right of every nation to territorial integrity and freedom from internal meddling by, e.g., democracy and human rights activists. (To be fair, Putin also hates these people, but clearly thinks Russia itself should be free to meddle in other nations' internal affairs.)
They are drawn together by their opposition to the West and in particular the US, and by their contiguity, but they aren't otherwise natural allies.
The attempted invasion of Ukraine by Russia just reminded people that the best war plans don't survive the first contact with the enemy (apparently stated by the Prussian general Moltke), or in the more folksy words of Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
In 2014, Russia achieved a military miracle: they took over Crimea so quickly and without loss of blood, that they delivered a "fait accompli". Oh, how much would China like to replicate that in Taiwan. And that's what they were preparing for.
But now, in 2022, the latest example of an attempted invasion shows that things can still go astray. Why? No doubt China will analyze everything and try to see if they are in danger of experiencing the same problems. But the overall learned lesson will still be that no matter how much you plan, you can still encounter huge obstacles when you start a war.
And the world response in terms of economic sanctions was unbelievable. Definitely, not something China wants.
If anything the prospect of WW3 because of a Chinese miscalculation vis-a-vis Taiwan went down considerably.
Taiwan is not Ukraine, indeed -- Taiwan would be easier to capture because it is an island. There aren't land borders across which supplies and weapons can be brought. They would have to come by ship or plane, which are easier to defeat. It would be easier, militarily, to take Taiwan. China certainly has the will, and it has learned that the worst it would face would be some sanctions.
Some sanctions? The entire Russian economy has disappeared overnight. The only reason it has not been felt yet is due to inertia. There are still just about enough goods in the pipes to support things for weeks or months. But once computers start breaking, planes start breaking, shelves start to empty, and nothing is arriving to replace them, shit is going to hit the fan.
1. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g5701h.ct003365/?r=0.025,0.336,...
Certainly recent events have concentrated minds regarding energy security in Europe, and likely self sufficiency (or at least better sources) will be achieved, much as food security was after ww2.
Europe will piss and moan for a while as prices go up, but Europe is rich enough to route around this problem.
I agree though, we're turning Russia into a giant North Korea. What that means for the world, I don't know. In fact, I would say they're getting cut off worse than North Korea. Some of these companies canceling Russia probably operate (with permission) in North Korea.
It seems that this paragraph is meant to suggest that Barbarossa was easier than D-Day, but this might not be the best example, since Barbarossa failed and D-Day succeeded. (Of course, a lot of things could have gone differently that could have made the outcomes very different, but I still find this example a little unconvincing.)
> Japan had centuries of peaceful self-imposed isolation while the continental nations of China and Indochina were engaged in endless wars, which was utilized to build up an empire while safely protected by the Sea of Japan.
While Japan had a stable border, it also had many periods of feudal lords fighting each other. Also, the reason Japan became an Empire was that it received and internalized Western knowledges much earlier than many other countries (starting with Rangaku "Dutch learnings" in the 17th century), and later was forced to open its ports by Western powers, which resulted in disagreement over the nation's course, a series of bloody civil wars, and the Meiji Restoration, which made the emperor an iron-fisted ruler of a modern nation.
It's not exactly a story of an island enjoying isolated peace and suddenly emerging as a superpower. Korea was a country that enjoyed almost total isolation during the same period (16-19th centuries) and look where it got them.
Cutting off China? That would hurt both sides to the point I doubt it's even possible... But then again I wouldn't expect cutting Russia the way we did was possible. Still, even individuals boycotting China would probably hurt more than Taiwan is worth?
That makes no sense. Being an island is good for you if you are the defender. For it to be a plus to China, China will first have to capture it.
> the worst it would face would be some sanctions CCP lends its legitimacy on economy. That is one thing most vulnerable.
That only seems like a miracle because you need to do more research into what Crimea actually is.
Crimea was never actually part of Ukraine, only a paper "gift" to Ukranian SSR way back when, negligible amounts of ethnic Ukrainians live there. Nearly the entire jurisdiction is employed supporting the mostly russian tourist industry, or actual russian military, their Black Sea fleet.
There were simply no other outcomes possible. It was a defacto Russian territory, with a token Ukranian security force against an entire Russian Black Sea fleet, and tens of thousands sailors and marines. It seems that even Ukraine itself didn't wholeheartedly consider Crimea it's own territory, essentially no resistance whatsoever.
You mean never before 1954. After the collapse of USSR, in 1994 Russia agreed to respect Ukraine's independence with its current (back then) borders, signed in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.
Such utter nonsense. Who did Russia take it from?
> Such utter nonsense. Who did Russia take it from?
The more full Russian nationalist argument is something like “Crimea was never part of Ukraine until Crimea was arbitrarily joined to the Ukraine SSR by the Soviet government, disregarding both the historical Russianness of Crimea and the historical invalidity of Ukraine as a nation.”
No one actually denies that Ukraine controlled Crimea since Stalin gave it to them until 2014, they just deny the appropriateness of Stalin’s action and therefore all subsequent control of Crimes by Ukraine.
If Ukraine was doing well, it wouldn't be giving out weapons to civilians [0], forming penal battalions [1], or lie about receiving NATO planes. [2]
If Ukraine was doing well, it wouldn't be inflating death counts to be larger than the US involvement in Afghanistan, a 20 year period of time. [3,4]
If Ukraine was doing well, they wouldn't need to make up a story about the Ghosts of Kyiv. [5,6]
I am utterly utterly perplexed. Where is any semblance of proof that Russia is doing badly? They seem to be encircling the capital and winning city after city. It's only two weeks in. Did we expect better after the early adrenaline rush? Do they benefit from being told this? Are we just being setup to be told this is a Pyrrhic victory for the Russians?
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/26/ukraine-russ... [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-releases-prisoners-combat-e... [2]: https://www.newsweek.com/eu-ukraine-fighter-jet-promise-fall... [3]: https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/news-oon-kst-gertv-boyovyh-do... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80... [5]: https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-ukraines-ghost-of-kyiv-figh... [6]: https://twitter.com/KFCBarstool/status/1497366093362520065?s...
Was the Ghost of Kyiv story made up by the Ukrainians even? How do we know that?
Also, Ukraine is doing well, considering their situation.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220225201409/https://www.5.ua/...
Also some of the original footage uploaded that was purported to be of the Ghost of Kyiv was from DCS and I believe was even admitted as such by the uploader but like most rumours it has since taken a life of it's own and the exploits become increasingly more exaggerated over time.
>[5]: https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-ukraines-ghost-of-kyiv-figh... [6]: https://twitter.com/KFCBarstool/status/1497366093362520065?s...
Who's "they" in this case? The ukranian people? The ukranian government? The sources you suggest seem to suggest the former rather than the latter. If that's the case, I'm not really sure how that's indicative of not "obviously winning".
Because it appears to be doing far better than expected. That doesn't mean they'll win, but it at least allows for a sliver of hope. Personally, I'm guessing they'll eventually lose a lot of territory without direct Western military intervention, but maybe there will still be Ukrainian rump state left in the West after this, which will still be an achievement if not a "win."
> If Ukraine was doing well, it wouldn't be giving out weapons to civilians [0]...
Ukraine might be doing as well as it is, because of things like that. That's not proof that it's doing well or poorly, but rather it's putting all its resources into an existential fight.
> If Ukraine was doing well, they wouldn't need to make up a story about the Ghosts of Kyiv.
You're being waaay too hard on them. They're ten days into the literal fight for their lives, and if some social media rumor gives them a bit more morale amidst the fog of war, who cares?
> Are we just being setup to be told this is a Pyrrhic victory for the Russians?
That's a bit too conspiratorial. That's a likely outcome, because even after "unprecedented" action Ukraine's allies are unwilling to do enough to clearly tip the scales, but I doubt there's some plan to "setup to be told [that]."
> The three nations were said to be forming the core of the EU effort—announced Monday by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell—as they are believed to be the only bloc members with flight-ready Russian-made aircraft.
I’m hesitant to read your other sources now
Russia has failed on this front as their propaganda has been so transparently bad.
they accused Ukraine of being run by Nazis, when their president and prime minister are both Jewish. they accused them of running death camps for Russian and all sort of other ridiculous slander so unbelievable the no one believes it.
Ukraine has done all things considered pretty well outside of the examples you mentioned.
As for arming civilians what do you expect a militarily inferior country to do when facing a stronger enemy and the rest of the world seems to afraid to send meaningful military aid. Its a battle for their survival. If I lived there I would be lining up to get gun too.
the winning narrative is coming form them not being steam rolled like last time and them holding ground. Or from russian soldiers surrendering and going AWOL.
Not necessarily. CPC is still waiting to see what the US and NATO do in response to the Russian invasion, and especially Putin's threats of nuclear escalation.
If China perceives that all the West will do is sanctions on Russia, but no direct military intervention to prevent a democratic country from being taken over by force, then China will deduce that nuclear saber rattling is enough to ensure the US won't intervene in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
That may lead them to accelerate their plans to do just that, to accomplish it during a time that 1) Western leadership is easily deterred by nuclear threats, 2) the Chinese Navy has more ships than the US Navy, and 3) US and NATO are divided into fighting a 2-front war.
CPC is also waiting to see the full extent of sanctions on and potential decoupling with Russia, how far the West will go in that regard. If CPC believes they could survive the same, again they'll be encouraged to accelerate their Taiwain plans.
The jury's still out, but it's not a given that events have already decelerated CPC's intent to invade Taiwan. That's still up in the air.
Economic sanctions on China would absolutely cripple us. I don't doubt that, if they were committed to the idea, the CPC would likely be willing to ride out whatever we actually cobble together in response. They've been pushing heavily for self reliance in every industry for quite awhile now.
Given the trade surplus they have been running for years- well over $3 trillion worth total held in their foreign exchange reserves- I suspect they know (or believe) they would weather the sanctions better than we would.
See: Disney, Apple, Nike and dozens of other large corporations all cut off Russia over Ukraine, yet maintain healthy relationships with China despite all of the horrors reportedly committed against the Uyghur Muslims.
The real question is whether PRC will take "half measure" options off the table and skip straight to leveling the island. UKR military improvements since 2014 thanks to western support is basically the porcupine model US has been pushing on TW. As was expanding US/NATO security architecture to trigger current "fighting to the last Ukrainian" strategy. Which has has pushed RU from "special operations" that would have spared most of the population to scorched earth. We'll have to see if UKR/TW thinks that's worth it once frank appraisal occurs when/if this war ends. This could very be a decade long war that turns most of Ukraine into Yemen. Except much harder for TW as an island not self sufficient in anything to support a prolonged insurgency.
In the meantime, PRC has learned that US/NATO will not interdict directly when you have 6000 nukes instead of just 300. That most of major non-west resource exporters have remained neutral. There's also opportunity a prolonged war will divide US attention across Atlantic again. Better to push sooner when US military has not pivoted and TW is still at UKR 2014 levels of ill preparedness - many of potentially lessons and developments that could push TW scenario sooner instead of delay it.
Or how Mike Tyson puts it: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
>or in the more folksy words of Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Most of all, Taiwan is a very strategic country, because of microchips production. Considering the sanctions (Apple, Intel, AMD, Samsung, Microsoft, Lenovo, Dell, probably more, are not selling in Russia anymore) Imagine the leverage that Taiwan would give to China, and the solution it would be for Russia.
I would be very surprised that Taiwan is not next. Everything is pushing in that direction.
Edit: As other mentioned, the outcome in Ukraine is certainly a big factor, but even if Russia fails somehow, I'm not sure that it wouldn't even make it more important for China to get Taiwan...
Just wanna establish some clear understanding on what you mean by "next".
Would you be very surprised if Taiwan is not invaded within 3 months? 6 months? or 12 months?
Or what you mean is that you would be surprised that there can even be another invasion elsewhere after the invasion of Ukraine and before the invasion of Taiwan?
The types of people that write these articles also believed at one time:
- China becoming capitalist would cause it to become a liberal democracy
- Globalization would be amazing for everyone everywhere
- The Afghan army would be able to stand up to the Taliban
- Russia would not invade the Ukraine, but on the off chance they did, they'd roll right over the country in no time at all.
The fact is when it comes to this kind of stuff, we just don't know and we probably never will. That's just the nature of complexity. You miss one minor detail or some tiny assumption or some "unknown unknown" is off and the whole intellectual scaffolding comes down.
Is this really a popular analogy?
Russia, China (CCP), Iran, Belarus, Venezuela, Cuba...the modern axis of evil. What do they have in common? Communism: the most deadly and hypocritical ideology in human history.
For those unfamiliar with Belarus: the leader Lukashenko is a communist that wishes the revival of the Soviet Union.
For those unfamiliar with communism, it's basically a few power hungry leaders that tell the people they'll build a fair and equitable utopia, but end up with absolute power, and killing or torturing all opposition.