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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2083 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 22, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Artillery shells or tanks still won't do anything against missiles. Sure, China can keep shooting missiles but they have no chance of mounting an invasion if their navy is at the bottom of the ocean.

Taiwan is something like 80-90% reliant on food/energy imports. Unlike China, they have no overland substitution routes. After a few months of blockade they'll run into very serious problems, regardless of whether China has amphibious capability remaining.

They don't really need to though? I mean I think the main reason China hasn't tried to take Taiwan is that it recognizes it would end up destroying Taiwan and that it can just wait for US influence to continue declining due to internal issues.

When it comes to actual capability it wouldn't be a problem for them. The Houthi's are still disrupting shipping lanes in the red sea despite American Navy presence and it's a big problem for the US. Iran can produce missiles for far cheaper than the missiles the navy uses to intercept them. Operating a navy that far from home has massive increases in cost due to logistics in resupplying etc. Would be the same with Taiwan. China can churn out missiles for far cheaper and can lob them from it's home turf while the US has to supply an island or a navy on the other side of the world. It's like a long range war of attrition / siege. If the US tried to actually put boots on the ground in China to counter production it would be laughably stupid even ignoring the threat of nuclear escalation. The US military is a lot less of a deterrent to China than the economic consequences of trade disruption. Which is probably why China is pushing overland trade routes so hard and otherwise just waiting.

They don't really need to though? I mean I think the main reason China hasn't tried to take Taiwan is that it recognizes it would end up destroying Taiwan and that it can just wait for US influence to continue declining due to internal issues.

Yes, which is why supplying Ukraine with what it needs (artillery & tanks) has next to no effect on being able to intervene in potential China - Taiwan conflict.

They need anti-air, until they can regularly shoot down Russian aviation at range they will get glide bombed into oblivion. This is something Taiwan will also need an impossible amount of. Both conflicts are not winnable at current levels of production and cost of production.

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