US ‘can’t win’ war over Taiwan: Biden ‘ought to be very care

Page 1 of 1 [ 12 posts ] 

Pepe
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Jun 2013
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 26,635
Location: Australia

30 May 2022, 6:39 am

Quote:
US ‘can’t win’ war over Taiwan: Biden ‘ought to be very careful’ what he says next
13 hours ago

US President Joe Biden “ought to be very careful” what he says next over Taiwan because China takes the situation very seriously, says Curtin University Political Analyst Prof Joe Siracusa.

It comes as President Biden last week said America would intervene and defend Taiwan if the Chinese military were to invade the island nation.

“In the crunch, the United States can only count on Japan and Australia to defend Taiwan – which is not defensible because we can’t win that war anyway,” Prof Siracusa told Sky News Australia.

“In a sense, the president has moved the policy and he ought to be very careful of what he says next because the Chinese take it very seriously.”


https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/u ... erallPos=9



SkinnedWolf
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Mar 2022
Age: 25
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 1,538
Location: China

30 May 2022, 7:03 am

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/23/us-would-defend-taiwan-if-attacked-by-china-says-joe-biden

Quote:
“America is committed to a one-China policy but that does not mean China has the jurisdiction to use force to take Taiwan,” Biden said, adding: “My expectation is that will not happen.”
...
In August, a senior Biden administration official was forced to point out that US policy on Taiwan had not changed after the president appeared to suggest the US would defend the island if it were attacked, a deviation from a long-held US position of “strategic ambiguity”.


_________________
With the help of translation software.

Cover your eyes, if you like. It will serve no purpose.

You might expect to be able to crush them in your hand, into wolf-bone fragments.
Dance with me, funeralxempire. Into night's circle we fly, until the fire enjoys us.


MaxE
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Sep 2013
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,224
Location: Mid-Atlantic US

30 May 2022, 8:04 am

This is a highly complicated situation and none of us knows what any world leader ought to say or do.

However I can't help thinking that we are in a more precarious situation, with respect to World Peace, than we would be had Donald Trump not been US President for four years.


_________________
My WP story


SkinnedWolf
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Mar 2022
Age: 25
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 1,538
Location: China

30 May 2022, 8:15 am

Regardless, politicians on the Taiwan side were excited by the news. This undoubtedly spurred the radical independent faction.

And once the radical independent faction is in control, and make an independent formal statement, mainland China will "definitely" take military action. Otherwise, the current regime in mainland China will immediately lose its legitimacy. There won't be any leeway here.
This is something most people don't want to see. But politicians can transfer themselves after acquiring political capital.


_________________
With the help of translation software.

Cover your eyes, if you like. It will serve no purpose.

You might expect to be able to crush them in your hand, into wolf-bone fragments.
Dance with me, funeralxempire. Into night's circle we fly, until the fire enjoys us.


MaxE
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Sep 2013
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,224
Location: Mid-Atlantic US

30 May 2022, 8:22 am

SkinnedWolf wrote:
Regardless, politicians on the Taiwan side were excited by the news. This undoubtedly spurred the radical independent faction.

And once the radical independent faction is in control, and make an independent formal statement, mainland China will "definitely" take military action. Otherwise, the current regime in mainland China will immediately lose its legitimacy. There won't be any leeway here.
This is a situation no one wants to see.

I don't want to get sucked into a rabbit hole on this, but I am confident the US Foreign Policy/Defense/Intelligence community knows and understands all of this at least as well as anybody on this forum.


_________________
My WP story


SkinnedWolf
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Mar 2022
Age: 25
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 1,538
Location: China

30 May 2022, 8:24 am

MaxE wrote:
SkinnedWolf wrote:
Regardless, politicians on the Taiwan side were excited by the news. This undoubtedly spurred the radical independent faction.

And once the radical independent faction is in control, and make an independent formal statement, mainland China will "definitely" take military action. Otherwise, the current regime in mainland China will immediately lose its legitimacy. There won't be any leeway here.
This is a situation no one wants to see.

I don't want to get sucked into a rabbit hole on this, but I am confident the US Foreign Policy/Defense/Intelligence community knows and understands all of this at least as well as anybody on this forum.

Then I hope they can also convey what they understand to Biden.
Half the world's population could be in disaster because of him.

Propaganda about the threat of Chinese force is interesting. But certain issues are a dangerous edge.


_________________
With the help of translation software.

Cover your eyes, if you like. It will serve no purpose.

You might expect to be able to crush them in your hand, into wolf-bone fragments.
Dance with me, funeralxempire. Into night's circle we fly, until the fire enjoys us.


SkinnedWolf
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Mar 2022
Age: 25
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 1,538
Location: China

30 May 2022, 8:56 am

Not So Deft On Taiwan
By Joseph R. Biden Jr.
May 2, 2001

Quote:
Words matter, in diplomacy and in law.

Last week President Bush was asked if the United States had an obligation to defend Taiwan if it was attacked by China. He replied, "Yes, we do, and the Chinese must understand that. Yes, I would."

The interviewer asked, "With the full force of the American military?"

President Bush replied, "Whatever it took" to help Taiwan defend itself.

A few hours later, the president appeared to back off this startling new commitment, stressing that he would continue to abide by the "one China" policy followed by each of the past five administrations.

Where once the United States had a policy of "strategic ambiguity" -- under which we reserved the right to use force to defend Taiwan but kept mum about the circumstances in which we might, or might not, intervene in a war across the Taiwan Strait -- we now appear to have a policy of ambiguous strategic ambiguity. It is not an improvement.
...
What is the appropriate role for the United States? The president's national security adviser last Wednesday claimed that "the Taiwan Relations Act makes very clear that the U.S. has an obligation that Taiwan's peaceful way of life is not upset by force."

No. Not exactly. The United States has not been obligated to defend Taiwan since we abrogated the 1954 Mutual Defense Treaty signed by President Eisenhower and ratified by the Senate. The Taiwan Relations Act articulates, as a matter of policy, that any attempt to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means would constitute "a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area" and would be, "of grave concern to the United States."
...
But in this case, his inattention to detail has damaged U.S. credibility with our allies and sown confusion throughout the Pacific Rim.

Words matter.

The writer, a U.S. senator from Delaware, is the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.


https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/591990-should-the-nation-be-concerned-about-bidens-cognitive-abilities/
Quote:
Of course, raising legitimate questions is not the same thing as providing honest, complete answers. There is so much at stake in any administration, and it is so important for any president of the United States to be at the top of his or her game in order to guide us through crises, that it certainly makes sense for a simple cognitive or neuro-psychiatric assessment to be part of a routine presidential physical — regardless of age, but especially for those over the age of 75.
Any president who is not fully disclosing his health is following a long-unfortunate tradition.


_________________
With the help of translation software.

Cover your eyes, if you like. It will serve no purpose.

You might expect to be able to crush them in your hand, into wolf-bone fragments.
Dance with me, funeralxempire. Into night's circle we fly, until the fire enjoys us.


lostonearth35
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 5 Jan 2010
Age: 50
Gender: Female
Posts: 11,784
Location: Lost on Earth, waddya think?

01 Jun 2022, 1:24 pm

The US won't even solve problems in its own country, so how can it win?



SkinnedWolf
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Mar 2022
Age: 25
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 1,538
Location: China

01 Jun 2022, 4:05 pm

lostonearth35 wrote:
The US won't even solve problems in its own country, so how can it win?

China won't even solve problems in its own country. It is more likely that this war will not happen at all.
But it seems to be good for Russia that it happened?


_________________
With the help of translation software.

Cover your eyes, if you like. It will serve no purpose.

You might expect to be able to crush them in your hand, into wolf-bone fragments.
Dance with me, funeralxempire. Into night's circle we fly, until the fire enjoys us.


ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,242
Location: Long Island, New York

02 Jun 2022, 12:32 am

’We're going to lose fast': U.S. Air Force held a war game that started with a Chinese biological attack

Quote:
Last fall, the U.S. Air Force simulated a conflict set more than a decade in the future that began with a Chinese biological-weapon attack that swept through U.S. bases and warships in the Indo-Pacific region. Then a major Chinese military exercise was used as cover for the deployment of a massive invasion force. The simulation culminated with Chinese missile strikes raining down on U.S. bases and warships in the region, and a lightning air and amphibious assault on the island of Taiwan.

The highly classified war game, which has not been previously made public, took place less than a year after the coronavirus, reportedly originating in a Chinese market, spread to the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, taking one of the U.S. Navy’s most significant assets out of commission.

What many Americans don’t realize is that years of classified Pentagon war games strongly suggest that the U.S. military would lose that war.

“More than a decade ago, our war games indicated that the Chinese were doing a good job of investing in military capabilities that would make our preferred model of expeditionary warfare, where we push forces forward and operate out of relatively safe bases and sanctuaries, increasingly difficult,” Air Force Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, told Yahoo News in an exclusive interview. By 2018, the People’s Liberation Army had fielded many of those forces in large numbers, to include massive arsenals of precision-guided surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles, a space-based constellation of navigation and targeting satellites and the largest navy in the world.

“At that point the trend in our war games was not just that we were losing, but we were losing faster,” Hinote said. “After the 2018 war game I distinctly remember one of our gurus of war gaming standing in front of the Air Force secretary and chief of staff, and telling them that we should never play this war game scenario [of a Chinese attack on Taiwan] again, because we know what is going to happen. The definitive answer if the U.S. military doesn’t change course is that we’re going to lose fast. In that case, an American president would likely be presented with almost a fait accompli.”

Inevitably, the deteriorating security of Taiwan will be a major focus of the new task force. “By the way, three of China’s standing war plans are built around a Taiwan scenario,” Hinote said. “They’re planning for this. Taiwan is what they think about all the time.”

In the early 2000s, China experts and military analysts at the RAND Corporation were given a trove of classified U.S. intelligence on Beijing’s military plans and weapons programs, and were asked to war-game a confrontation 10 years into the future. China was in the midst of an unprecedented economic growth spurt that saw its GDP increase annually by double digits, with commensurate steep increases in its defense spending. Equally worrisome, the PLA had clearly studied U.S. military operations over the course of two wars against Iraq. Both operations relied on a methodical, months-long buildup of forces to uncontested bases in the region, followed by U.S. aircraft dominating the skies and then carrying out devastating attacks on the enemy’s command-and-control systems.

China’s answer was a well-funded strategy that the Pentagon refers to as “anti-access, area denial” (A2/AD), meaning it would prevent an adversary like the U.S. from being able to carry out the sort of significant military buildup it carried during the two Iraq wars. The PLA’s military plans rely on space-based and airborne surveillance and reconnaissance platforms; massive precision-guided missile arsenals; submarines; militarized man-made islands in the South China Sea; and a host of conventional air and naval forces to hold U.S. and allied bases, ports and warships in the region at risk. Because it lies only 90 miles from Taiwan, China needs only to hold U.S. forces at bay for a matter of weeks to achieve its strategic objective of capturing Taiwan.

“Whenever we war-gamed a Taiwan scenario over the years, our Blue Team routinely got its ass handed to it, because in that scenario time is a precious commodity and it plays to China’s strength in terms of proximity and capabilities,” said David Ochmanek, a senior RAND Corporation analyst and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development. “That kind of lopsided defeat is a visceral experience for U.S. officers on the Blue Team, and as such the war games have been a great consciousness-raising device. But the U.S. military is still not keeping pace with Chinese advances. For that reason, I don’t think we’re much better off than a decade ago when we started taking this challenge more seriously.”

Part of the problem is that China advanced its A2/AD strategy while the Pentagon was largely distracted fighting counterterrorism and counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for two decades. Beijing is also laser-focused on Taiwan and regional hegemony, while the U.S. military must project power and prepare for potential conflict scenarios all around the globe, giving the Pentagon what Ochmanek calls an “attention deficit disorder.” Finally, there is the complacency of the perennial winner that makes it hard for senior U.S. military officers to believe that another nation would dare to take them on.

By 2017 the Pentagon, led by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, started to take notice.

“When we were developing the National Defense Strategy in 2017, the trend lines looked very bad vis-à-vis China, and got a lot worse as you projected into the future,” said Elbridge Colby, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development. “Yet despite that fact there were, and I think still are, a lot of people who resisted the idea that war with China is even possible, let alone losable. That’s why both strategic level and more operational war games were so important. They help show how these things are possible — but also how we can redress the problem.”

In 2018 the Defense Department issued a seminal National Defense Strategy identifying great-power competition with China and Russia, and not terrorism, as the primary challenge to the U.S. After the lopsided Blue Team defeat in the Air Force’s annual war game in 2018, senior officers and defense officials began giving a classified “Overmatch Brief” to select members of Congress.

In the most recent war game, the Pentagon tested the impact of potential capabilities and military concepts that are still on the drawing board in many cases. The Blue Team, which represented U.S. forces, adopted a more defensive and dispersed posture less reliant on large, vulnerable bases, ports and aircraft carriers in a conflict with the Red Team, which represented China.

The strategy strongly favored large numbers of long-range, mobile strike systems, to include anti-ship cruise missile batteries, mobile rocket artillery systems, unmanned mini-submarines, mines and robust surface-to-air missile batteries for air defense. A premium was put on surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for both early warning and accurate intelligence to enable quicker decisions by U.S. policymakers, and a more capable command-and-control system to coordinate the actions of more dispersed forces.

“We created a force that had resiliency at its core, and the Red Team looked at that force and knew that it would take a tremendous amount of firepower to knock it out,” said Hinote. The biggest insight of the war game, he said, was revealed when he talked afterward with the Red Team leader, who played the role of the PLA’s top general.

“The Red Team leader is the most experienced and aggressive officer in these war games across the Defense Department, and when he initially looked at the resiliency of our defensive posture both in Taiwan and the region, he said, ‘No, I’m not going to attack,’” recalled Hinote. “If we can design a force that creates that level of uncertainty and causes Chinese leaders to question whether they can accomplish their goals militarily, I think that’s what deterrence looks like in the future.”

Despite loud alarms raised by the war games, the Pentagon has been slow to adjust its long-term spending plans or to invest in the kinds of military capabilities necessary to defend Taiwan or contested island chains in the South China Sea. Instead, older weapons systems like massive warships, short-range tactical fighter aircraft and heavy tank battalions continue to enjoy support from loyal constituencies both inside the Pentagon and in Congress.

On a sober note, Hinote pointed out that the Blue Team force posture tested in the recent war game is still not the one reflected in current Defense Department spending plans. “We’re beginning to understand what kind of U.S. military force it’s going to take to achieve the National Defense Strategy’s goals,” he said. “But that’s not the force we’re planning and building today.”


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


Pepe
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Jun 2013
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 26,635
Location: Australia

02 Jun 2022, 12:48 am

^ EEP! 8O
We are goners! :skull:

Could someone ask Xi not to attack until after I die? :mrgreen:



SkinnedWolf
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Mar 2022
Age: 25
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 1,538
Location: China

02 Jun 2022, 7:09 am

^Do you live on Taiwan Island? :scratch:

By the way, "being able to unify by force" and "being able to survive the next sanctions" are the prerequisite for "peaceful unity".
Image


_________________
With the help of translation software.

Cover your eyes, if you like. It will serve no purpose.

You might expect to be able to crush them in your hand, into wolf-bone fragments.
Dance with me, funeralxempire. Into night's circle we fly, until the fire enjoys us.