This was hands down my favorite bit from the article:
Some even maintain that every dollar spent on Ukraine is a waste of taxpayer money that could be better used on domestic priorities, such as combating the spread of fentanyl.
These arguments are misguided and dangerous.
How dare they suggest that money would be better spent addressing domestic problems than on a proxy war half way across the world. That’s misguided and dangerous thinking.
I also love how the article takes it for granted that US must prop up puppet regimes in Asia as if that’s somehow in the interest of the people living in US.
No the Taiwanese aren’t. I lived abroad in Taiwan a while back for some time and even then their opinions on China are a lot more nuanced than Americans seem to think. The ones I still talk to are more concerned about the US instigating something that makes it harder for them to live their lives.
Could you elaborate on those nuanced opinions? That sounds like a dig but I’m actually just interested, especially since every time I see someone report on their experiences in Taiwan they represent the opinions they encountered wildly differently from the other accounts.
Not them but I can provide some nuance. Most importantly I think, the peoples of the mainland and Taiwan island aren’t a separate people. Folks in Taiwan island have family and friends in the mainland and vice versa. This was the case in the Korean peninsula as well, so fair question to ask the difference, which is that there was never really a wall of separation between Taiwan island and the rest of China. Taiwan’s main trade partner is the PRC and it’s easy to travel, meaning whatever propoganda might be thrown at these people cannot work as it has in occupied Korea.
On top of these ties, the political relationship here also isn’t as the western MSM portrays it. The CPC generally isn’t sabre-rattling the way the US or even the EU are, there are few threats being thrown around and that’s usually threats towards the west for trying to drive a wegde, not the people on the island. Similarly, despite their declarations to the west, even the DPP aren’t working to completely sever ties. They’ll posture and try to hurt the PRC but they know they can’t survive without the mainland.
We won’t abandon the south vietnamese, Kurds, Central Americans, Afghanistan allies or Ukrainians until it’s damn good and convenient for the us.
Author works for CSIS. Let’s take a look at a list of their major corporate donors:
Contributions of $250,000 and up
Amazon Inc.
Aramco
Bank of America Corporation
Chevron Corporation
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu LLC
Exxon Mobil Corporation
FedEx
General Atomics
GSK plc
HII
Leonardo S.p.A
Lockheed Martin Corporation
Microsoft
Northrop Grumman
Pratt Industries, Inc.
SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation)
While we’re at it, let’s look at government donors:
Contributions $250,000 and up
Government of the United States
Government of Japan
Government of the Republic of Korea
Government of the United Arab Emirates
Taiwan
this shows clearly that US is a death cult with a country attached. Putting children in harms way in factories, butcheries, mines and bars and invest that money to kill people overseas and let people in homeland dies from numerous causes
where leaders told me this month that a major decline in U.S. military assistance to Kyiv would embolden Beijing and weaken deterrence in Asia.
I don’t think that is a common fear shared by the people, WSJ should have reported that Taiwanese leadership are worried. There is not a single mention of what the people of Taiwan want. I have many friends from uni there now, and that is not an express concern of any of them. More than anything they want to be left alone with things the way they are, not dragged into an armed conflict for American interests.
If the US just bails on Taiwan, the CPC just pushes them out of power or they get elected out of office. Do even the die hard one china policy people want any harm to befall the Kumintang leaders?
I wouldn’t mind those cockroaches known as the Kuomintang being taken out (that’s an unfair insult to cockroaches), but I almost always prefer for conflicts to be solved peacefully at all possible.
