If China wants to wage war over Taiwan, the situation is easier if all US military is occupied in the war elsewhere in the world.
The US already depleted a lot of its ammunition stockpiles by supporting Ukraine. If the US starts a war with Iran, US military capacity would be further strained.
From the Chinese perspective that might give a good time to fight over Taiwan when a lot of the capacity of the US military is not available to defend Taiwan.
Agree. They probably lose a nuclear war against the US, too, ending with US forces occupying all their seaports or at least imposing such an effective naval blockade that they might as well be occupying the ports.
In the grand scheme of things, that would not matter much.
If China wants to fully reintegrate Taiwan, it can today, or else simply at lastest in a few years.
I guess if China is not doing that in the near future, the main reason will be that (i) there is simply no big enough value in it and/or (ii) there is significant value for the government to have the Taiwan issue as a story for its citizen to focus on/sort of rally-behind-the-flag effect. But less so the effect of US deterrence.
The problem is that using Taiwan as an area for citizens to focus on is that Chinese citizens expect their government to take steps to reintegrate Taiwan. Careers inside the CCP are built on taking steps to reintegrate Taiwan.
If the Chinese start to believe that Taiwan can be taken in a short time frame and Xi does not take it, that’s not good for his reelection bid in four years. He needs to tell a narrative about why he didn’t move to take it that’s compatible with what people in the CCP want to hear. “We didn’t take Taiwan because China is too weak and the US is too strong” might not be a narrative that Xi wants to tell.
If China wants to wage war over Taiwan, the situation is easier if all US military is occupied in the war elsewhere in the world.
The US already depleted a lot of its ammunition stockpiles by supporting Ukraine. If the US starts a war with Iran, US military capacity would be further strained.
From the Chinese perspective that might give a good time to fight over Taiwan when a lot of the capacity of the US military is not available to defend Taiwan.
J. Kyle Bass gave a talk that made me update in the direction of China being serious about taking step to take over Taiwan in the near future:
They probably will lose a conventional war against the US. This is my current assessment after a moderate amount of research into the topic.
Agree. They probably lose a nuclear war against the US, too, ending with US forces occupying all their seaports or at least imposing such an effective naval blockade that they might as well be occupying the ports.
I guess both countries would lose a nuclear war, if for a weird reason we’d really have one between US and CN
In the grand scheme of things, that would not matter much. If China wants to fully reintegrate Taiwan, it can today, or else simply at lastest in a few years. I guess if China is not doing that in the near future, the main reason will be that (i) there is simply no big enough value in it and/or (ii) there is significant value for the government to have the Taiwan issue as a story for its citizen to focus on/sort of rally-behind-the-flag effect. But less so the effect of US deterrence.
The problem is that using Taiwan as an area for citizens to focus on is that Chinese citizens expect their government to take steps to reintegrate Taiwan. Careers inside the CCP are built on taking steps to reintegrate Taiwan.
If the Chinese start to believe that Taiwan can be taken in a short time frame and Xi does not take it, that’s not good for his reelection bid in four years. He needs to tell a narrative about why he didn’t move to take it that’s compatible with what people in the CCP want to hear. “We didn’t take Taiwan because China is too weak and the US is too strong” might not be a narrative that Xi wants to tell.