This is an interesting viewpoint but somewhat at variance with my understanding. I have only started taking notice in the last few years though and I'm not studying military strategy and operations full time.
In a war in Taiwan, the US and its allies would have very long supply lines, and China very short lines. The US has to prevent an invasion in force or it loses Taiwan.*
If China can invest Taiwan with a few million troops, then the US must either destroy Taiwan, permanently losing its manufacturing capacity and making itself a pariah, or let China keep it, retain some of Taiwan's capacity through trade, and work to make China into (even more of) a pariah. The US cannot re-take the island once China is invested there without destroying it.
I don't think that Japan in WWII is a relevant analogy.
Japan in WWII had IIRC about a quarter of the manufacturing capacity of the US. China's is near parity, or larger.
Japan had and has no domestic fossil fuels (well, negligible). China is nearly self-sufficient in energy. Its current energy shortage is entirely self-inflicted, due to a desire to look "green".
The US has a long track record of obstructing the democratic process in its neighbours in Central and South America. Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, ... the list does not stop there. The US routinely ignores international law when the law is inconvenient. There is no moral high ground here.
I agree with the rest of your observations. China is over the demographic cliff and its "allies" are the likes of North Korea, Rwanda or Ivory Coast. They are lukewarm allies at best.
China has always claimed Taiwan to be a renegade province, and recent actions by international bodies (the UN acceding to China's demands to remove Taiwan from lists of countries, and similar) may encourage it to think that now is the time to strike. I had believed China's leadership to be pragmatic. In 30-50 years Taiwan will be irrelevant except symbollically because Taiwan is further off the same demographic cliff as China. The US would probably let it go without fuss then.
> The US has a long track record of obstructing the democratic process in its neighbours in Central and South America. Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, ... the list does not stop there. The US routinely ignores international law when the law is inconvenient. There is no moral high ground here.
USA in 1970-1980 had even worse moral record, which wasn't enough for Europe and Asia to not consider it the moral leader. Similarly, if today's USA actions aren't at moral high ground, China's are definitely a moral ditch, so the comparison still stands.
China is unlikely to command bigger share of world resources than USSR did at its height.
In a war in Taiwan, the US and its allies would have very long supply lines, and China very short lines. The US has to prevent an invasion in force or it loses Taiwan.*
If China can invest Taiwan with a few million troops, then the US must either destroy Taiwan, permanently losing its manufacturing capacity and making itself a pariah, or let China keep it, retain some of Taiwan's capacity through trade, and work to make China into (even more of) a pariah. The US cannot re-take the island once China is invested there without destroying it.
I don't think that Japan in WWII is a relevant analogy.
Japan in WWII had IIRC about a quarter of the manufacturing capacity of the US. China's is near parity, or larger.
Japan had and has no domestic fossil fuels (well, negligible). China is nearly self-sufficient in energy. Its current energy shortage is entirely self-inflicted, due to a desire to look "green".
The US has a long track record of obstructing the democratic process in its neighbours in Central and South America. Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, ... the list does not stop there. The US routinely ignores international law when the law is inconvenient. There is no moral high ground here.
I agree with the rest of your observations. China is over the demographic cliff and its "allies" are the likes of North Korea, Rwanda or Ivory Coast. They are lukewarm allies at best.
China has always claimed Taiwan to be a renegade province, and recent actions by international bodies (the UN acceding to China's demands to remove Taiwan from lists of countries, and similar) may encourage it to think that now is the time to strike. I had believed China's leadership to be pragmatic. In 30-50 years Taiwan will be irrelevant except symbollically because Taiwan is further off the same demographic cliff as China. The US would probably let it go without fuss then.
* The economic value that is embedded in Taiwan.