I am reading the book, “The World: A Brief Introduction” by Richard Haas. In it, he presents a history of the major regions and countries in the world, with a focus on post World War I to present day. He writes about wars, alliances, economics, struggles, governments, and crises.
It’s been fascinating.
I was quite interested to read the section on China and Taiwan, since it seems like every few weeks we are hearing about possible military action by China to take over Taiwan and the US’s response to defend Taiwan from China. There’s been much a lot of media coverage about a potential Cold War (or worse) between the US and China over Taiwan.
I won’t detail the history of China and Taiwan here. You can read it elsewhere.
But, I will point out something that struck me as obvious.
Taiwan is f*cked.
Just look at the map below.
China is a massive country with a total population of 1.4 billion people. Its military is estimated to have 2 million active duty personnel.
Taiwan is a tiny island just 100 miles off the coast of China. It’s population is 24 Million and its military has just 169K people.
The US is more than 7500 miles away.
When China is ready, they will absorb Taiwan in an instant.
The US cannot defend Taiwan against this forever. It seems blatantly obvious.
We’re not going to get into a nuclear war with China.
We’re not going to win a land war with China when we have to travel across the globe to get to Taiwan.
So, what would I do?
If I was one of the wealthy oligarchs who fled China back in the 1940’s to establish myself as an oligarch in Taiwan, I’d get out.
If I was a US company who relied on Taiwan for manufacturing, I’d find new suppliers another countries.
If I was the US government, I’d look at the map and realize that defending Taiwan so it can remain independent of China is a lost cause.
(Then again, since nobody’s asked me for my uniformed opinion, I’ll just blog about it.)