In a world of guided missiles everywhere… invasions probably won’t go so well.
Check out the latest Julian Dorey podcast with Andrew Bustamante, damn insightful, especially about Taiwan and China.
she cute
I mean, yeah, why wouldn’t they?
Should we just let China carpetbomb Taiwan instead?
And act just like Israel?
The US is wrong to support Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
The US is right to help Taiwan defend itself against assimilation by the CCP.
Genocide and imperialism are bad. Supporting the victims of them to defend themselves is good. Not so hard to understand, is it?
If China had the chance, they would love to act like Israel is acting towards palestinians, yes.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When US President Joe Biden recently signed off on a $80m grant to Taiwan for the purchase of American military equipment, China said it “deplores and opposes” what Washington had done.
It is sending a clear message of strategic clarity to Beijing that we stand together," says Wang Ting-yu, a ruling party legislator with close ties to Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, and to US Congressional chiefs.
He says the $80m is the tip of what could be a very large iceberg, and notes that in July President Biden used discretionary powers to approve the sale of military services and equipment worth $500m to Taiwan.
But Dr Lai says it’s possible to make educated guesses: Javelin and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles - highly effective weapons that forces can learn to use quickly.
A war-gaming exercise conducted by a think-tank last year found that in a conflict with China, Taiwan’s navy and air force would be wiped out in the first 96 hours of battle.
The focus will switch to ground troops, infantry and artillery - repelling an invasion on the beaches and, if necessary, fighting the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the towns and cities, and from bases deep in the island’s jungle-covered mountains.
The original article contains 1,687 words, the summary contains 202 words. Saved 88%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Give them a bunch of nukes and biological weapons and after they arrive send a message to the PRC
“Just a fyi, we sent them a 100 but they only received 80. Be a real shame if Taiwanese operators had planted them in randomly selected cities on the mainland.”
It will be hilarious way to end the world.
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There’s a theory that Taiwan could achieve mass destruction with just regular cruise missiles, no need for actual WMDs.
The destruction of Three Gorges Dam would kill millions of people from the resulting flood. Be a tough target and air defense would be a nightmare, but it is still within Taiwan’s cruise missile range.
There’s been no acknowledgement ever of this plan, but it’s pretty obvious.
Aaaand… Música, maestro!
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The ultimate end of the world song. Just as the canisters release Covid-20 through 30 plus airbourne HIV
Covid-20 would mean it started in 2020.
Guaranteed that poster thinks they are very perceptive and see through the all the bs.
BBC found out about it. It aint that quiet.
So the US is funding Taiwan, Ukraine, and [checks notes] …Israel? Makes perfect sense to me
Proxies against Russia, Iran and China.
Iran feels like just Russia Proxy with an extra step tbh.
Quietly? They have been doing so for at least 40 years. Everybody knew and knows.
It’s in the BBC ffs how quiet can it be?
Let’s hope this is enough of a deterrent…
The best weapons are ones that make it so you never need to use them.
So quietly that no one knows about it
I realize that you think you are being clever, but actually that’s precisely the point. They want the CCP to know about it otherwise it’s pointless as a deterrent.
I understand it entirely. It’s posturing.
They seem to be mocking this journalist, not the US.
…and Israel, for that matter.
At least Taiwan isn’t an apartheid state.
That’s quite an old article though
Where is that legalized race segregation even hinted at in that article?
Also, an editorial is not really sufficient to make that argument. Editorials are like opinion articles.
How is Israel an apartheid state? Don’t they have an active Arab population?
Thanks for the article. I’ll have to read this later. It looks like it answers all my questions on that topic.
Well Taiwan can either go with the US or China. They’ve been wanting to stay independent from China for a while now so I don’t think it’s much of a surprise.
Almost all countries other than USA, Russia, and China have to pick a side.
I’m highly biased but that seems like an easy choice, geography notwithstanding.
I mean Russia is pretty close to needing to pick a side.
Well, their economy isn’t collapsing any time soon. And they managed to destroy modern military systems supplied by NATO.
Their gdp is production of weapons right now. After they lose no one is going to want these weapons and they have been produced for the trash.
My point is it’s not real growth.
Hasn’t their economy already shrunk by 5% since the war began?
Seems like they’re going to become a vassal state of China.
I’ve been saying for the last couple of months that Xi is in a perfect position to reclaim the Vladivostok oblast. The native population is over 40% Han, not just Chinese, the type of Chinese the CCP gives a shit about. He could easily appear strong internally, and reclaim former Chinese territory that the Russians invaded in 1901, under the excuse of “a special military operation to defend the ethnic Chinese people in the region.” I seriously doubt that any other country other than Russia would even bat an eye, and Russia would be impotent to defend itself.
This would also give China a port that is outside of the first chain of islands that the US has set up
China been dreaming of this for decades.
That’s what I thought too, but Tankies are insistent that Taiwan is the only goal.
Yeah but nukes.
China probably has more working nukes than Russia. Maintenance hasn’t been their strong suit, making them a liability. I wouldn’t be surprised if 9/10 aren’t working, or will malfunction on launch, causing Russia to nuke themselves, and the best part is they don’t even know which ones actually got maintained.
He’s going to have to do something, they’re going to have their own economic issues to deal with…
I mean yeah, but the EU is also an available Option
So US then?
When it comes to military, EU is basically NATO which is led by USA.
Europe could stand against Russia without American support. probably not China though. china couldn’t attack any American aligned state without facing humiliation though
It is, but I wouldn’t count on our potential to wage an effective modern war in functional cooperation with the many countries in the EU. Especially when it is a war taking place out of Europe and not a defensive action.
A militaristic endeavor would surely be held up and manipulated by opposing countries within the alliance, just like it is now with economic decisions.
So if Iran goes full monty and China invades Taiwan while Russia is grinding down its population on the Ukrainian front, we’d have WW3 on our hands I reckon.
nah because no country is allowed to be a part of the russo-ukranian war as ukraine is neutral.
That war is already underway, we just won’t be calling it that until after…
We won’t be calling it that until the US has a draft.
Drafts have not won recent wars. Wars are not PVP.
The US has made an effort to maintain a highly trained and extremely specialized fighting force. It can take over a year of training in certain specialities before you even get to the last school house.
There’s a focus on making advanced weapon systems easy to use through human factors analysis and that’s slowly transitioning into killbots that do everything but pull the trigger and need a human in the loop to authorize the kill.
During WWII there was a massive increase in manufacturing which was beyond the enemies reach. If you got drafted to do anything it’d likely be work in a plant making drones or something logistical such as transporting drones.
When ww3 starts I hope I’m on the ice cream boat
Yes the US tries to make soldiers the operators of weaponry, not the weapons themselves as in earlier times. Treasure spent on weaponry stokes the military industrial complex. Benefits to dead veterans families, not so much. Also civilian deaths undermine public support for whatever bullshit they are doing.
Also, spending money on a weapon is money that goes to a shareholder. Spending money on training doesn’t.
The war in Ukraine is a drafted/conscripted army versus a drafted/conscripted army. They are (to varying degrees) led and bolstered by volunteer career soldiers, but the vast majority of the boots on the ground have little to no experience.
In times of “peace”, drafts and compulsory service are largely pointless. You are mostly just increasing churn and ensuring that accumulated knowledge is lost. And your “peaceful operations” likely have a small enough footprint that you can make do with volunteers.
Against a near-peer or even just a conscript army with sheer numbers? You need to increase the amount of cannon fodder. And just the number of guns that can do the “easy” stuff while you rely on the highly trained soldiers to do the “hard” stuff.
When World War 3 finally kicks off (… and assuming it isn’t over in the time it takes an ICBM to fly halfway around the planet): I don’t know if “civilized” nations will actually activate a draft because it will lead to mass unrest. But I am also not sure if they’ll have a choice.
And just as a counter argument to weapons being increasingly high tech with a focus on skilled use: The US Military’s M5 is a good yellow flag. It is specifically designed with multiple ammunition types with the higher power round significantly degrading the life of the weapon and expected to only be issued for near peer conflicts. But that also speaks to the lessons learned from Ukraine and similar conflicts where… when the war really kicks off, you don’t have to worry about your weapons or soldiers lasting years. They will be damaged and killed in battles and need to be replaced.
Cannon fodder?
To quote Patton
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
It’s a good thing this near-peer BS is thrown around about armies that can barely keep their troops fed in their own countries where we have the logistics to feed our troops around the world.
I’m sure there will always be a roll for infantry. The problem of the last few wars has been using infantry to hold ground and as a police force.
You don’t win a conflict by holding on to a hill of dirt. You win by removing your enemies ability or will to fight.
Ukraine is a bad example as they’re playing by other people’s rules. Europe and the West won’t provide them weapons if they use them in Russia. Russia won’t give up ground if Ukraine cannot reach inside of Russia to remove their will or ability to fight.
It’s trench warfare stalemate a la WWI all over again.
If there is a WWIII it’ll be marked by hybrid war, hacking, air defense reacting to missle and drone attacks and the deployment of decentralized weapons.
It’s not a stretch to imagine hundreds of thousands of civilians could be killed by killware in a hacking attack without a single traditional weapon system being involved.
People aren’t going to line up in pretty little lines fire salvos at each other. If anyone starts digging a fucking trench let them have that ground. They are no immediate threat to the factories, production, and training centers. Let them dig in. Send a bomb run later to clear them out when they come out to play.
It’s not a stretch to imagine hundreds of thousands of civilians could be killed by killware in a hacking attack without a single traditional weapon system being involved.
Sure. Stuxnet was practically proof of concept.
So, because some guy in the 40s had a pithy remark, a war that shows strong indications of playing out similar to WW1 and the Eastern Front of WW2 against similarly armed foes is not at all representative of future wars?
Also, unless we are willing to completely raze cities (both captured friendly and enemy), there will always be some form of “trench warfare”. That is what we saw in Fallujah and are seeing in Ukraine. It is just that, rather than run from one trench line to the other, it is pushing from a treeline into a city or from one block to another. And bombardments are only viable while you have munitions and/or air superiority. Both of which are limited resources as wars continue… which we are seeing in Ukraine.
Because of external factors, Ukraine is on a very “weird” time table. But everything that is happening is consistent with a prolonged war. Even the US only has so many stockpiled resources and can only make so many new bombs and vehicles at a time. Especially if supply lines are fucked and the entire world is scrambling to build their own.
If you want to go trench by trench or door by door go ahead.
The future of war is not dirt. But instead information.
If Australian warnings for Perl Harbor had been heeded we wouldn’t have had to build so many boats. We built 9000 boats in WWII and we’ll build more than that many drones in WWIII.
But what good are drones without information? Without targets? Without information what to they do?
Targets, tactics is only one kind of information. Real time surveillance, biometrics, the ability to strike command and control. To cut the head off the snake is worth more than clearing a city.
If you need to clear a city, you need infantry.
Did we go island hoping all the way to Japan and then go door to door? Or did we break the enemies will to fight and force a surrender?
Is it always worth going door to door and holding worthless land? Trading bodies and bullets for what? Dirt?
What would it be worth however to cripple the enemies Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, and Intelligence? Do we really need to take land in future wars as much as force a surrender out of idiots that want to start shit.
There’s a terrific documentary about how the Air Force planned to win a nuclear war before ICBMs. It’s called the power of decision. It’s not about going door to door or trench by trench however. It’s about a different kind of war where you win by removing your enemies ability to fight in a flash. Unfortunately similar can be done today in cyberspace without the assurance of MAD or the early warning of an ICMB launch.
Not really a world war until 10 countries are actively involved with 2 of them USA and China.
Right now usa is passive and china is not involved.
I could see it being called a proxy world war. There’s enough concentration of where support is coming from.
I think that’s just called a Cold War. We didn’t invade Vietnam because we actually give a shit about Vietnamese people, it was a proxy war with the USSR
That and they were the major exporter of opium at the time.
We’re in the lend and lease phase right now
Great what a time to be alive! /s
And all of that because the US can’t tell Israel to stop bombing civilians in Gaza.
Way too broad a brush, mate.
broken fucking record
Not because that wtf
Oh yes, exactly because of that! It may seem farfetched to come to that conclusion, but only if you look at things as isolated happenings instead of in a more global geopolitical scope.
Turkey, Iran and Egypt are eager to enter the stage. Their only repellent is the US’ firm stance with Israel. But how long can this Mexican standoff be in place?
Israel has already cut Gaza in half and now they are going to increase the killings in the northern half in which still 1.1 million citizens live. The number of casualties will increase dramatically and the videos and images will ignite the region. One of the eager neighbors mentioned above might enter the stage, they might even jointly enter all at the same time.
What happens if Turkey, a NATO member, enters Israel? What are the implications of this?
China is smelling US weakness and can’t wait for something like that to happen. They will immediately proceed with their plan of annexing Taiwan.
If that happens, Russia will mobilize with full force and there you have it - WW3.
All because America couldn’t say to Israel to lift it’s finger from the trigger.
This is a very large logic train and you can’t demonstrate A->B let alone A->Z. Basically confirmation bias.
I can’t demonstrate geostrategic happenings? Of course I can’t. Can you?
I don’t make claims I can’t demonstrate and demand people take me on faith for my tinfoil nonsense
I don’t think turkey will enter Israel at all. Maybe Egypt if US insisted on moving Gazaians to Sinai.
Also why Russia will mobilize? They have no incentive to face NATO now. Maybe weakening the west in the long run.
Russia is facing NATO right now, just not directly, but by proxy. In case of a major disruption within NATO, they could try to use the opportunity to increase their defending position by taking the 3 small baltic countries.
I see.
I thought you mean nuking NATO.
Russia tried to hurt NATO by punching the guy next to him, and in return is getting beaten to a pulp by the guy that got hit while NATO laughs and supplies knuckledusters to their wrongly attacked neighbour. Russia is a clown state that’s done nothing but embarrass themselves for 18 months straight
Russia made a mistake by invading Ukraine, but they are far from “being beaten to a pulp”.
Egypt is not going to enter, they hate hamas and their own Muslim brotherhood.
They’ll to defend their land.
This is their prime minister statement.
Amid rising pressure on Egypt to admit Palestinian refugees, the country’s prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, said it remained committed to protecting its land and sovereignty regardless of the cost. “We are prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to ensure that no one encroaches upon our territory,” Madbouly told a gathering in Sinai of military leaders, local tribal leaders, members of parliament and other politicians.
China cannot simply invade Taiwan in a moment whenever opportunity strikes, it would need significant and obvious preparation and buildup, because they would be contemplating a naval invasion on an almost unprecedented scale.
Russia probably will mobilize however far it’s government feels it safely can regardless of China; NATO isn’t going to directly invade Russia itself because of it’s nuclear arsenal, and isn’t terribly likely to actually send a serious number of troops to Ukraine for the same reason, so what it primarily has to worry about is western sanctions and military equipment, and of course the efforts of the Ukrainians themselves, which it already has to deal with regardless of what China is doing.
Israel for it’s part is also a nuclear armed state, so actual full scale war being declared upon it by it’s neighbors is unlikely. Support for terrorist or resistance groups, sure, maybe some sanctions, and definitely a lot strongly worded condemnation, but I’d very much doubt that the leadership of those countries cares enough about the Palestinians to declare a possibility suicidal war over it, the kind of politicians that lead these countries aren’t exactly famous for their empathy.
Israel can only ever hope to use its nuclear arsenal as a deterrant to its neighboring countries. As soon as they use a single nuclear warhead in the region, it will instantaneously lose all the support it still had in the world and beyond that point it is hard to predict what the world will turn into, but it would be ugly.
That’s the nature of nukes for any country. But as a deterrent they have proven highly effective
China has the world’s largest Navy currently. That buildup has been happening for at least a decade.
But if they’re at war, that ties up a lot of their resources. They’re currently using their military strength to claim international waters in the South China Sea. If they get into a war with Taiwan, they can’t back that claim up. The countries which are being unfairly denied those waters can assert themselves without fear of significant reprisal, and the US would be more than happy to aid that.
There’s really no sensible reason for China to go after Taiwan, it’s complete bait. They stand to lose far more than they stand to gain.
more boats /= capable navy. most of their “navy” is small patrol boats
I’m aware of their current capabilities. The troop transports and carriers are the things that raise my eyebrow.
I don’t mean number of ships, I mean getting the ships and troops into position to use them.
The two small islands close to mainland China will be the proving grounds, I’d expect. Unless he decides to retake the Vladivostok Oblast.
Lol okay loser.
Don’t forget the middle east
Was that not covered by “if Iran goes full monty?”
I am sorry, I obviously can’t read properly
Idk, there is more middle east than just Iran
Yes, like Yemen or Palestine or Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan? They have interests and influence outside their own country, to varying degrees.
Where in the world is Iran located?
I am sorry, I can’t read
There’s only so much they can do if Taiwan is unserious about its own defense. Exhibit A: the fact that eliminating conscription has apparently turned into a bipartisan consensus in Taiwan, in spite of the hollowing out of Taiwan’s military. Who exactly is going to be operating all that expensive military equipment?
Wtf you talking about?!?! They raised the conscription age to 40. I just have friends who just finished their conscription. The mass majority of us already consider ourselves independent. We have our own currency, our own government, our own laws.
Best believe if Xi bear attacks, we are stepping up to beat those China-nese scums.
Conscription period used to be 3 years, then 2, then 1, then 4 months. Finally it became too obvious that 4 months is a joke, so it’s being grudgingly raised back up, but only to 1 year. Still barely time to get any proper training done; for comparison, Israel’s conscription is almost 3 years and includes women.
The Taiwan government also persistently underpays military service members. The result is that it never hits its targets for professional (non-conscript) personnel, then wrings its hands about it…
That’s very different from your “Exhibit A”. Pretty far from what you said about eliminating conscription. Ya sure it’s 1 year now for now. The military thinks it’s enough for now. We pay the government for their expertise. We trust them here.
One year is barely enough to get proper training?
Very few actually do, as evidenced by the fact that almost none of them draft women for any role or duty, except for less than a dozen (only sweden and norway on equal terms).
