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this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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Yay, another conflict!
Thankfully most signs are that the PLA is targeting having a force capable of credible cross strait operations in 2027, so we still have at least three years. Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and the US all know this and have been spending the last two plus years reshaping thier militaries to be capable of directly opposing such an act, and in doing so it is become pretty clear that any cross strait action is only going to end in a lot of CCP ships on the bottom and a good fiscal year for Lockheed Martin.
In doing so it makes it vanishingly unlikely that it will actually move beyond posturing in the first place. Unlike in Ukraine where the West has committed to supporting and resupplying the victim, many of the Asia Pacific Nations are committed to providing active military operations in defense of Taiwan.
That being said there is still to my knowledge no Asia Pacific equivalent to NATO Article 5 unfortunately, which may result in dangerous doubt in terms of credible deterrence, especially if the CCP believes it has friends that will quietly bow to it in Tokyo and Washington in 2027. For all of Trump’s shouting, most of his actual actions involvedo withdrawing the US from everything he could that China didn’t like.
While still unlikely, credible deterrence still requires the Chinese Intelligence both believe and be good enough at handling bad news to accurately report that up the chain of command, and as the FSB demonstrated in Ukraine that’s not necessarily a given. If there are enough yes men, then things could get very bad indeed.
There is some evidence that supports subordinates telling ξι such bad news to be unlikely.
Especially in China. That's a place where it's not uncommon for very high ranking members of the government/party/major companies and public figures disappearing for months on time if not indefinitely. If it can happen to those people, it can happen to bearers of bad news much further down the line. Not to mention, Xi has been busy purging anyone who even looks remotely competent/threatening (same thing, really) for a while now in the very old-fashioned sense of the word, which isn't exactly conductive to a smooth running state either.