Your nuts. Defend Taiwan with our young kids blood and guts. No way. Taiwan is part of China. If Taiwan wants to talk autonomy or some other arrangement with China; fine with me. But we should bud out of this dance china and Taiwan has been dancing to since the dyspora. You go and your kids and kin to bleed but keep me and my kin out. Get a gun and join their revolution. Here in the states I'm fighting my own revolution for my dwindling rights. Again: YOUR NUTS! Let's work on our system which needs radical change imho.
Beautifully stated, Daniel. The advocates of so-called "strategic clarity" don't want to deter Beijing, they want to provoke Beijing. They cannot possibly think reversing a policy that has resulted in a peaceful status quo for nearly a half-century in the face of an unresolved territorial dispute is going to promote peace.
Say what you will about the American foreign policy establishment (I say many things about them, mostly curse-words) but strategic ambiguity is a masterful policy. It achieves the best possible outcome for the U.S., China, and Taiwan. Abandoning it would be another step towards World War III.
I largely agree, but want to pick a bone on one point:
> "Strategic clarity would also lock the U.S. into fighting a major war that is unrelated to vital U.S. interests."
While a war over Taiwan would be a disaster, I don't think it's right to say that the U.S. has no vital interests in Taiwan. TSMC has become the one of the world's largest supplier of semiconductors, including to the United States. If Taiwan were invaded, particularly by a powerful and authoritarian country like China, it's likely that our access to semiconductors would be meaningfully reduced. (Ironically, not unlike how the U.S. has been punishing China by reducing their access to semiconductors designed by American companies.) So it is absolutely a U.S. interest to keep Taiwan able to trade freely with the world.
In a dark turn of fate, great power competition has made Taiwan a victim of its own success. Were it *not* the world's major supplier of semiconductors, both the U.S. and China would be far more likely to let it go, which in turn would reduce tension of Taiwan's fate. But as a production site of a strategic commodity, it's more valuable to *both* the U.S. and China. This contributes to both countries' jockeying for control over it, which in turn raises the risk of escalation into warfare which would be devastating to Taiwan and its residents regardless of the victor.
Your nuts. Defend Taiwan with our young kids blood and guts. No way. Taiwan is part of China. If Taiwan wants to talk autonomy or some other arrangement with China; fine with me. But we should bud out of this dance china and Taiwan has been dancing to since the dyspora. You go and your kids and kin to bleed but keep me and my kin out. Get a gun and join their revolution. Here in the states I'm fighting my own revolution for my dwindling rights. Again: YOUR NUTS! Let's work on our system which needs radical change imho.
Beautifully stated, Daniel. The advocates of so-called "strategic clarity" don't want to deter Beijing, they want to provoke Beijing. They cannot possibly think reversing a policy that has resulted in a peaceful status quo for nearly a half-century in the face of an unresolved territorial dispute is going to promote peace.
Say what you will about the American foreign policy establishment (I say many things about them, mostly curse-words) but strategic ambiguity is a masterful policy. It achieves the best possible outcome for the U.S., China, and Taiwan. Abandoning it would be another step towards World War III.
It's not strategic ambiguity or clarity that is the problem. It's neocons who see every problem as being ever always only solvable by force.
Those same neocons are all for "strategic ambiguity" when, for instance, they wanted to bait Iraq into invading Kuwait so that they could jump in.
I largely agree, but want to pick a bone on one point:
> "Strategic clarity would also lock the U.S. into fighting a major war that is unrelated to vital U.S. interests."
While a war over Taiwan would be a disaster, I don't think it's right to say that the U.S. has no vital interests in Taiwan. TSMC has become the one of the world's largest supplier of semiconductors, including to the United States. If Taiwan were invaded, particularly by a powerful and authoritarian country like China, it's likely that our access to semiconductors would be meaningfully reduced. (Ironically, not unlike how the U.S. has been punishing China by reducing their access to semiconductors designed by American companies.) So it is absolutely a U.S. interest to keep Taiwan able to trade freely with the world.
In a dark turn of fate, great power competition has made Taiwan a victim of its own success. Were it *not* the world's major supplier of semiconductors, both the U.S. and China would be far more likely to let it go, which in turn would reduce tension of Taiwan's fate. But as a production site of a strategic commodity, it's more valuable to *both* the U.S. and China. This contributes to both countries' jockeying for control over it, which in turn raises the risk of escalation into warfare which would be devastating to Taiwan and its residents regardless of the victor.
We all need each other so let's trade not f&^%%$ kill each other.