Well, my opinion is that the US government, and the US public, is unwilling and has been demonstrably unable to muster any kind of support for significant military force over any issue that is complex and intangible, for the last 15 years. Name one recent strategic issue aside from Iraq/Afghanistan that the US and allies haven't backed down from (involving military force)? If it doesn't involve weapons of mass destruction, an imminent danger, or American lives being threatened, our collective attention span doesn't care to cash in our chips. And unlike oil, semiconductors don't hit big conservative wallets and their motivations.
I don't think America (in the popular sense) knows or cares what Taiwan is, to be honest. We can't even get our shit together to defend our supply of toilet paper and cloth masks. So I have strong doubts that a conflict over such a technical / intangible issue would rile up America's political will enough to convince people to go to war. And especially not with this administration's political skills.
Americans would be directly affected by a conflict. Where do all of these electronics come from?
People here are talking like Intel fabs have all ceased to exist or something. They haven't. It's really Europe that needs to panic about China/Taiwan (where there are NO firms that can manufacture semiconductors at scale), but, they aren't of course.
The military.
The Chinese didn't get to their current position via chip superiority. They got there by being a low cost producer of a whole pile of other things. Clearly chip superiority wasn't everything to them.
In fact also by definition most countries don't have chip superiority. Not the UK (home of ARM), not Japan, not Germany, not Canada, not Australia (who happens to be a medical powerhouse). Yet they all have dynamic successful economies.
It's a big world out there. Being master of one trade doesn't make you the master of them all.
When I say chip superiority, I'm implying China will move to starve the US of modern chip fab capacity. That's huge. The US needs them for military, intelligence and productivity purposes.
Under a normal president, sure. Under this one, who can’t decide if he hates China or loves Xi? All fucking bets are off
[0] https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-aircraft-carriers-south...
All negotiations with Xi the PERSON will get nowhere if you go around insulting and humiliate him publicly. Instead, you have intense private discussions and then smile for the camera and say polite exaggerations or lies. This is politics as usual under ANY administration. The results of those private discussions are shown in public actions against the COUNTRY for failing to act as desired.
Trump says nice things about Xi while passing the most restrictive legislation against China that we've seen in decade. Make things against Xi personal and the chances of war skyrocket. His sensitivity and crackdowns about Winnie the Pooh jokes shows that Xi isn't exactly the most stable dictator where his public image is concerned.
The fact that bills concerning China make it through both Democrat-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate (especially as they can't seem to agree on almost anything else) speak volumes as to the importance of what's going on.
Exactly what do you mean by “nuclear options” here?