Maybe you've seen on Twitter this nightmarish scenario: Trump loses, but not by enough of a margin to immediately concede, and in fact announces a bunch of lawfare to try to knock out enough votes to let him cling on.
At this time, perhaps midway through a couple of months of chronic uncertainty as to who the real winner is, China decides to make a move on Taiwan, confident that America doesn't know who speaks for them anyway (and while redneck militia take pot shots in the streets against Democrat protesters who think Trump must step down.)
It has a worrying sort of plausibility about it, no?
The BBC wrote:
Is China preparing to invade Taiwan? It's a question being discussed with feverish intensity on many China forums right now. And what should be one of the top geopolitical concerns for the incoming US president.
The temperature was raised further last on 13 October when China's President Xi Jinping visited a People's Liberation Army (PLA) Marine Corp base in southern Guangdong province and told the marines there to "prepare for war".
In response some newspapers ran headlines suggesting an invasion is imminent.
It almost certainly isn't. But there are good reasons for the urgency with which China experts are now discussing the future of Taiwan.
I don't know: the main reason for doubting the scenario is that it would seem China would be buying itself a region full of bitter and unhappy citizens - more trouble than it's worth, I would have thought.
2 comments:
Its not a good time for China to have a go at Taiwan. That would lead to almost immediate challenges on several fronts and particularly on the Indian/Chinese border.
These Hindus are hard-core warriors with a kick-ass pedigree going back at least as far as their key role beating people up, all over the world, under the supervision of the British Empire. These are tough guys. Whereas the Chinese soldiers are a product of the one child policy. So they are typically spoilt brats or little emperors.
Now imagine a fat man in an elevator. The example is not my own. But he's a humble fat man and he's always smiling and apologising, even as he grows fatter. Well you know the neighbours of China could tolerate the growing power of China, when they were smiling and polite. But they got so fat and arrogant that they started acting in threatening ways. Rather than patiently and slyly taking up all our supply chains and adopting an open softly softly approach they started subverting other countries and bullying people. Actually probably they've murdered a lot of ethnically-Chinese Australians already but they don't seem to have gone over the edge to assassinate Australians, outside their ethnic group.
They certainly have harassed me. At one stage, when I was hanging shit on Chairman Mao and issuing public warnings for them to pull their heads in I'd get these nasty phone calls where Chinese guys were angrily shouting in my ear in Mandarin I think. That was probably about 2006. I can narrow it down because I was in Beverly Hills at the time. This was due to my incendiary remarks on the "Spengler" column.
Anyway China usually holds the world record for the most borders. More countries tend to border China than any other country. So if they get the Indians and the rest of them pissed off with them they have a serious problem.
Perhaps on a better day the Chinese could snatch Taiwan the way that Reagan took Granada off the chess board. But all their neighbours now have the shits with them. And so if they want to take Taiwan right now I would quote Cormac McCarthy (like I did before the nasty phone calls) and just say:
"Hell aint half full."
Steve,
If Trump loses he loses. He might incite violence but that's about it.
If the Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan it would be a bloody affair. Taiwan are well armed.
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