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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Nobody is going to start a global nuclear war over Taiwan. The country is far too close to mainland China for the US to perpetually stand-off China from taking the island in the case of war. It's futile almost no matter the strength gap between the US and China. China could have successfully taken Taiwan 15 years ago for the same reason, despite there being a huge military gap back then.

There's no scenario where China doesn't get Taiwan, unfortunately for the people there. The only question is what that's going to look like. The rest of the world will do nothing about it, other than wave their hands around frantically. When it happens (during Xi's lifetime), it's going to set a particularly terrible precedent that will encourage Russia to do more of the same in eastern Europe. If China then decides Mongolia too is part of greater China, who can really stop that? Nobody.

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It's not like a World War has ever broken out over a 'trivial' incident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Au...

What does that have to do with global nuclear war?

It has to do with global nuclear war because saying that one will not break out over 'x' ignores the fact that there's historical evidence for unimaginable carnage being triggered from seemingly minor events. Many scenarios put forward by military thinkers on what might trigger a nuclear war involve escalation – it's not limited to a country deciding to just fire off some rockets.

Isn't the sentiment over WWI that it was only a matter of time and casus belli? If not an assassination then a border skirmish or something else.

I mean, part of the motivation of getting rid of nukes is that 'it's only a matter of time' before someone decides to use them. Nuclear weapons have been around for less than 100 years, so it's not a lot of time to draw conclusions from about how likely Nuclear War is over N years.

Nukes have been used already in war. So I fully agree and would welcome a global disarmament.

There's no scenario where China doesn't get Taiwan, unfortunately for the people there.

People have been saying that for 69 years. I'm not saying it's a disturbing possibility, or that people shouldn't be preparing for it. But it's not as likely as you seem to think.

There's no comparison to the Crimea situation. Crimea was overwhelmingly pro-Russian, and had a strong independence streak (see: the sovereignty referendum of 1994). An amphibious invasion against a largely hostile population is an entirely different matter, and would not be pretty, even for a large power like China. There's also the small matter of the US navy and Air Force.

I also don't think the US (or Japan) are keen on moving the focus of Chinas expansion from Taiwan to the Senkakus, which is what would happen next.

There's a lot of factors at play, it's a larger issue than just comparing two mismatched militaries.

> When it happens (during Xi's lifetime), it's going to set a particularly terrible precedent that will encourage Russia to do more of the same in eastern Europe.

It may provide a distraction for further Russian expansion, but Russia clearly doesn't need any new foreign precedent to justify invading it's neighbors.

> If China then decides Mongolia too is part of greater China, who can really stop that? Nobody.

China taking Taiwan might not start a major power war (though given the history of such wars, I wouldn't dismiss it as easily as you do), but Mongolia is much more likely to (with Russia as the opposing major power.)

> but Mongolia is much more likely to (with Russia as the opposing major power.)

Russia gets expansion in Europe. China gets expansion in Asia. They agree to try to stay out of each others way. It certainly wouldn't be unusual, historically speaking, for very powerful authoritarian regimes to reach agreement on annexations of territory.

...or to break those agreements. I imagine the memory of Operation Barbarossa hasn't faded much in Russia. It's hard to imagine them trusting China to move their military into a buffer state without moving further.

It might be a question of whether it matters, given the vast territory they already share (which if I'm not mistaken is already nearly the length of the Russia-Mongolia border).

Granted, for a long time now Russia has harbored paranoia about their vast empty East, and that China might one day want to push into it. Russia is depopulating and China is overflowing with people. The comedy of the situation, is Russia having used the ethnic Russian setup premise to seize territory in Ukraine - China could use the same argument in various territories in Eastern Russia.

That said, I don't see Russia being willing to fight over Mongolia. China is already far too powerful and economically capable for them to do that. Russia could never come close to managing to hold off China in Mongolia, I think they know that. And I don't think Russia would be willing to go nuclear over Mongolia, which is what it would take to stop China if they wanted to annex the country.

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