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Comment by senttoschool | Hacker News Reader

FFS, I hope the third world war is not coming.

Also, the US must know that it cannot win in any conflict with China regarding Taiwan right?

Taiwan is idealogical to China. Taiwan is merely a pawn in the game for the US. The US will bow out of a war for Taiwan within years but China will never give up - even if the war lasts 100 years.

Lee Kuan Yew (first Singapore PM) said it best: https://youtu.be/q_gr3dtBaic?t=682

Therefore, it's in everyone's best interest to maintain status quo and not to disturb the delicate balance of China/Taiwan/US. The Obama administration got it right. The Trump and Biden administrations have not. Nancy Pelosi flying to Taiwan looks great for her career, but terrible for everyone else.

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> Also, the US must know that it cannot win in any conflict with China regarding Taiwan right?

Depends on your definition of "win".

The US can reduce China to a glowing crater - at the price of being reduced to a glowing crater itself. That's probably not "win" in your book (nor in mine).

The US cannot conquer mainland China.

Can the US defeat an attempted mainland invasion of Taiwan? Maybe. The answer would be no if they shared a land border, but they don't. That 90 miles of water makes an invasion much more difficult and vulnerable. And China has no experience with amphibious assaults. The US would take losses in such a case, but would they win? I'm not sure anybody knows.

> Taiwan is idealogical to China. Taiwan is merely a pawn in the game for the US. The US will bow out of a war for Taiwan within years but China will never give up - even if the war lasts 100 years.

Taiwan is at least somewhat ideological for the US. We believe in the right of self-determination (going clear back to the Declaration of Independence), and we believe that Taiwan should have that right.

It's ideological for China because Xi made it so. I'm not an expert, but I don't think it was ideological for China under, say, Deng. Well, Xi won't live another 100 years. Will it still be ideological for the next guy?

I sometimes wonder if the real issue is that Taiwan represents the incompleteness of the revolution. It's like if the Romanovs had escaped Russia and lived in exile. It would have been a constant thorn in the side of the soviet government. It's not just about the territory, it's about erasing the past.

With that said, no matter how ideologically important it is to China, I don't see how they're in a position to fight a protracted conflict. They would need it to be a sudden move, a _fait accompli_ by the time the west gets up in the morning. The fact is that China is a massive importer of food and other resources by sea and the US navy can blockade anything it wants.

PRC/TW is an unfinished civil war prolonged by US. Ultimately that's all there is to it. Civil wars end when one side defeats the other or some kind of mutual formal settlement. PRC won't settle for anything other than unification. Reunifying against US who sustains the divide in the first is just as signficiant.

Entire US can blockade PRC is old/irrelevant narrative now. The basis is US can unilaterally blockades with little cost to itself. Thats no long true. PRC has established mutual homeland vunerability on CONUS - they can conventionally degrade US critical infra via long range strikes which is just blockade further down the extraction chain. TLDR is resource autarky means nothing wihtout security. US gained shale/energy autarky but lost security relative to PRC. Hence US less likely to blockade PRC to disrupt PRC mainland if PRC can exact proportional cost on CONUS at scale - something US adversairies historically could not do. Which makes TW fair accompli even more irrelevant - PRC's ultimate strategic goal is to displace US military out of east asia / her back yard. They benefit and are designing a military around a protracted war with US+co (JP/SKR/PH). Basically bulk of PRC/PLA modernization is designed to fight US because TW is a freebie if US military challenged to point where it can't intervene in IndoPac at all.

Another way to look at Pelosi’s visit is that had the US not shown such a strong stance of support China would have already attempted an invasion, and it certainly looks like had Russia succeeded in their initial invasion plans China would have followed suite. Deterrence is a major diplomatic card to use to avoid open conflict and maintain the status quo.

There was no indication that China would go to war now. But the Pelosi visit made war more likely in the next few years.

And as mentioned, war would benefit no one except defense stocks. Certainly not American tax payers like myself.

So if America isn’t going to win the war, everyone will pay a heavy price, then why disturb the balance? This is a rhetorical question.

War must benefit the Chinese in some way if they are considering it.

This is what people are missing, defeating US / degrading US prescence in East Asia / PRC backyard that put and sustains PRC-TW civil war in stasis is the ultimate PRC strategic vision. I think fundementally PRC (and US) planners understand that historically outside hegemons are not displaced via politics but kinetic war. US isn't going to relinquish East Asian security architecture without a fight - bulk of PLA modernization is directed towards that fight.

China may be making plans if wars come their way. They'd be stupidly negligent not to do so. But they will be avoiding war for at least another decade unless forced into one. That will be foolishly and mistakenly construed as weakness by the West.

But in fact, China is steadily progressing on its way. It's an arithmetical certainty that in a few years, China will take over the 'Number One ' slot. Why would China have a war with anybody? That would only slow them down. And sooner or later, Taiwan will see which way will be more advantageous for them and will merge with China peacefully. (As with West and East Germany in the 1990s).

On the other hand, It's the US that can only slow the Chinese down by going to war to prevent the US losing the 'Number One' slot. How can it be 'exceptional' if it's not 'Number One'? And to initiate a war with China, there has to be some sort of casus-belli. Taiwan currently is a reasonably good candidate for this, as was done with Ukraine from about 2014 on.

The problem the US has with China is that China has more manufacturing capacity and more men of military-age than the whole of the West combined. To ensure victory in a war with China, the US needed to have started the conflict back around 2020 when the US was stronger and China was weaker. The US has missed that bus. It is too late. It can not win against China now.

What exactly did Nancy Pelosi gain? It's not like she wasn't going to be re-elected. I perceived that more as a favor to her party than as a career-booster.

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