National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien warned China against retaking Taiwan by force at an event in Las Vegas on Wednesday. O’Brien explained that amphibious assaults are difficult, and said there is a lot of ambiguity around what the US response would be to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
O’Brien told the event that China was undergoing a massive naval buildup. “Part of that is to give them the ability to push us back out of the Western Pacific, and allow them to engage in an amphibious landing in Taiwan,” he said. “The problem with that is that amphibious landings are notoriously difficult.” O’Brien pointed out the 100-mile distance between mainland China and Taiwan.
“It’s not an easy task, and there’s also a lot of ambiguity about what the United States would do in response to an attack by China on Taiwan,” he said. There are questions about what the US would actually do in the event of an invasion of Taiwan.
China hawks in Congress have introduced a bill called the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act, which would authorize the president to use military force if Beijing attempted to forcibly reunify Taiwan. A version of the bill has been introduced in both the House and the Senate.
O’Brien also called encouraged Taiwan to increase its defense spending, echoing the sentiment of US officials at the US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference, which was held earlier this week.
“You can’t just spend 1 percent of your GDP [gross domestic product], which the Taiwanese have been doing — 1.2 percent — on defense, and hope to deter a China that’s been engaged in the most massive military build up in 70 years,” O’Brien said.
Arms sales to Taiwan are lucrative for US weapons makers. The US is Taiwan’s top weapons supplier, and the island is a leading customer. In the 2019 fiscal year, Taiwan requested more weapons from the US than any other country.
Without doubt, we have the dumbest “leaders.” China to US: “Drop dead.” Besides, China has more right to Taiwan/Formosa than we have to Hawaii, Puerto Rico and a few other places.
“China hawks in Congress have introduced a bill called the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act, which would authorize the president to use military force if Beijing attempted to forcibly reunify Taiwan. A version of the bill has been introduced in both the House and the Senate.”
Oh boy, that sounds like a good idea. I guess congress doesn’t want to do their job again.
Beijing cannot “retake” or “reunify” Taiwan, because Taiwan has never been part of, nor has it ever been ruled by, the People’s Republic of China. It might invade/conquer/occupy Taiwan, but that’s a different thing.
But it was a part of China, and the USA accepted Kuomingtan as the legal government of China after the Communists took over the mainland.
It was “part of China” in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, when European countries weren’t colonizing it. Then it was “part of Japan” from 1895 to 1945, during which time its indigenous population finally lost their last strongholds in the interior. And then it was “The Republic of China,” distinct from the “People’s Republic of China.” It has never, at any time, been ruled by the post-1949 regime that took control of the mainland. So if that regime invades/occupies/conquers it, it won’t be “re-taking” or “re-uniting” anything.
You are deliberately being disingenuous.
From 1946 there was only one china although rent with a civil war. It had a single government led by Chiang Kai Shek. When Shek was defeated he and a couple of million of his supporters fled to Formosa and used an alternative name Taiwan.
Not only that but the ROC claimed to have jurisdiction over the whole of China as a single state, including a government in exile that had representatives for each of the Chinese regions, a full “Parliament or Congress” for a single China.
America and others refused to recognise the communist government of Mao and supported Shek in his claims.
So you are either mistaken, ignorant or lying.
Which is it?
People want to know.
Well, someone’s being disingenuous here, by trying to imply that my motive in stating irrefutable FACTS is support for Chiang or something.
My policy preference vis a vis Taiwan is that the US mind its own damn business, full stop.
That doesn’t mean I have to pretend that the Beijing regime has any credible claim to Taiwan under the rules of Westphalian sovereignty, any more than Chiang had a claim to the mainland.
Your use of The People’s Republic of China and dating it as though Taiwan suddenly sprang from the sea in 1949 is in my mind disingenuous. You did not address the sovereignty of Taiwan between the end of WW2 and 1949.
” At the Cairo Conference, the U.S., United Kingdom, and the ROC agreed that Taiwan was to be restored to the ROC after the war. This agreement was enunciated in the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration, which outlined the terms of Japanese surrender, specified that the terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out.”
…
“The ROC government has in the past actively pursued the claim as the sole legitimate government over mainland China and Taiwan. ”
At that time Formosa-Taiwan was a province of China. So much so that the Government in Taiwan claimed sovereignty over the mainland of China.
Thus historically Taiwan is still in a state of insurrection against the legitimate government.
Only the fact that PRoC is communist stopped it being re-integrated 70 years ago.
It is as bogus as Kosovo.
OK, so at Potsdam, the allies agreed to “restore” Taiwan to the Republic of China, even though it had never been part of the Republic of China (the Japanese had ruled it since 1895, when the Qing dynasty still ruled China).
And apparently they DID “restore” it to the Republic of China, as distinct from the People’s Republic of China.
Feel free to point out where I’ve ever asserted any legitimacy to the claim of ROC Taiwan to also rule mainland China. You can’t, because I haven’t.
There is no such thing as a “legitimate government.” There are just street gangs with pretensions making competing turf claims. And the PRC’s turf claim to Taiwan is about as believable as Spain’s claim to Cuba.
This is exactly what I mean by your strawman nonsense.
Potsdam asserted a single China including the Island of Taiwan.
Your BS about the ROC and not restoring (since when was it theirs to give?) it to the PRC is infantile in its’ assertion. It is like claiming that Belgium had never been part of the EU prior to 1950.
Feel free to point out where I claimed that you had said Taiwan had a legitimate claim.
You use blatantly dishonest rhetoric because your whole argument is bogus, you know it and are therefore totally disingenuous.
You cannot be cured, you can only be exposed.
Is there some reason why the people who lived in Taiwan should have been bound by promises of e.g. FDR, Stalin, and Churchill to give them to one particular gang and not another.
You whole argument boils down to “Taiwan belongs to Beijing because I waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnttttt it to.”
You are dishonest and a liar.
The ROC government of Shek was the government representing China at the Cairo and Potsdam agreements.
Losing the civil war they went to Taiwan from China.
They were not “Taiwanese” and had no connection to Taiwan (other than Taiwan was a part of China) prior to their departure from mainland and effective “invasion” of Taiwan.
You have now descended into childish taunts and stupidity.
You have shown that you are dishonest, stupid, ignorant and childish, do want to make any further comments?
“They were not ‘Taiwanese’ and had no connection to Taiwan (other than Taiwan was a part of China)”
In other words, they had no connection to Taiwan at all.
Where did you get trained in rhetoric or logic?
I understand that your little ego demands that you have the last word, but I want to save this as an example to others in how certain types of individual use word play to twist and distort what they and others have said.
Your passive-aggressive crap is so common in the retarded children that leave college believing that they have skill in overcoming reality.
Unfortunately the “real” world soon shows them that they are ill equipped to even fit in with reality.
So much wealth wasted on worthless people.
The Rockefeller’s General Education Board proudly announced in its 1906 “Occasional letter number 1” that,
“In our dreams…people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education]… We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply.”
So what I am saying is that your are perfectly normal other than the fact that you are a worthless piece of garbage.
You left out the part where the US & UK forced the Japanese to surrender the island under the Cairo and Potsdam Proclamation to the Kuomintang (KMT) because they refused to recognize the CPC. The KMT basically took over and raped the island leading up to the 2-28 Incident, which killed an estimated 10,000 to 28,000 people.
I don’t “leave out” anything. None of that changes the irrefutable and indisputable FACT that Taiwan has never, at any time, been “unified” with the PRC. Nor, for that matter, has it ever historically been part of “China.”
At the time the consensus was that Taiwan (Formosa) was part of the mainland. The Cairo Declaration press release even specifically states “and that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese”.
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/122101
The Potsdam Proclamation even uses the term China as interchangeable with the National Government of the Republic of China in the first two paragraphs:
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/japan/potsdam.pdf
Taiwan is a part of China as defined at the time of return. Future control of the mainland by the PRC and Taiwan by the ROC doesn’t change this part of history.
So Germany didn’t “reunify” because East Germany had never been part of the Federal Republic of Germany?
Nice try. Germany actually had a history OF being unified, albeit a short one (less than a century). Taiwan had never really been “part of China” even under previous regimes. Han didn’t start migrating to Taiwan to farm until the 16th/17th century, and the indigenous population wasn’t fully suppressed/dispossessed until the 20th century — by Japan, not China.
So what? They were too lenient to the aboriginals so their control over the island and the presence of millions of Chinese was moot? That is a silly idea.
On the other if Taiwan were to invade it would be re-taking of their land eh..
I was alluding to another AUMF type thing.