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Comment by ncr100

2 days ago

Practically, what kind of country does this?

Rhetorically, what kind of country does this?

Culturally, what kind of country does this?

8 comments

ncr100

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pfannkuchen  2 days ago

Isn’t Taiwan legitimately a threat to the CCP, though? Not in the sense that Taiwan the country can do anything to China the country, but Taiwan’s government used to be China’s government, right? It’s like an exiled royal family. And since Taiwan has the government type that the west supports, if the Chinese people at some point become sufficiently unhappy with the CCP, the Taiwanese government could appear as an alternative and it has a historical claim to do so and the west could back them (with a morally coherent and therefore defensible to its own people story for doing so). If I was CCP leadership I probably wouldn’t feel good about Taiwan either. This is also probably the real reason why the USA supports them, by the way. It isn’t about defending democracy, or industry there or whatever. It’s like if Russia was protecting the Confederate government that had fled to Puerto Rico. America probably wouldn’t like that. It’s weird that we have such a hard time looking at things from other people’s perspective, and instead project some moral framework on top of everything and whoever violates it is “bad” or whatever.

  • monerozcash  2 days ago

    I think you're mistaken if you assume that many of the US people whose opinions matter, senators and the likes, are not supportive of defending Taiwan for boring ideological reasons along the lines of "it's a democracy". I don't doubt that there are some people who share the line of thinking you propose, but I would realistically expect them to be in the minority.

    • pfannkuchen  1 day ago

      Well I don’t mean to suggest that random senators feel this way, I agree with you that they probably don’t. I mean the groups that actually make policy based on realpolitik interests probably feel this way, because it is the thing that actually makes sense (and while morally bad sounding to admit is totally coherent with historical great power competition). Who that is I’m not totally sure. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking that the people running the show are evil but smart, as opposed to good but stupid.

__patchbit__  2 days ago

Cowardly bully, they've removed seventy percent of seated military leadership in the latest purge. Communist Party zombies in China need a heart to heart check.