Comment by fatherwavelet
18 days ago
It seems obvious to me this quickly escalates to a US nuclear first strike with the B2-Spirit on China manufacturing infrastructure.
It is economic MAD.
Or China can wait 20-30 years and the US will no longer care about Taiwan or have the resources to have much presence in the eastern hemisphere.
I think the saber rattling over Taiwan is just to get the US to spend themselves further into oblivion in the short term. We are in the war already and the saber rattling is an incredibly effective, asymmetric financial weapon. It builds up the Chinese military kinetic capacity long term while weakening the US military kinetic capacity long term by forcing the US to prepare for something that is never going to happen.
When China takes Taiwan it will be without firing a shot. I would bet the house on that because it kind of has to be that way to win the war and not just a self destructive battle.
China is achieving its objectives brilliantly. The US is increasingly isolated and this is the process of retreating into the western hemisphere. NATO is being destroyed without firing a shot.
From my perspective, the US is foot-gunning itself into geopolitical irrelevance through the destruction of its soft power and undermining the NATO alliance. For all its many, many faults, the CCP's actions around establishing itself as the Asian regional superpower are patient, strategic and consistent over the long term. They're playing it far too smart to get into a shooting war with the US, and I'm in agreement that they'll probably end up consolidating Taiwan peacefully in a decade or so.