this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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The 21st century indo-pacific is not a comparable issue to 20th century Central Europe. Also appeasement wasn't even the complete disaster casual observers like to make it out to be (who still won the war after all?) but that's beside the point here. Taiwan is not some defenseless independent country being threatened by the reincarnation of Hitler calling for world domination. It's a part of China that broke away in an ideological civil war that China wants back. Even the US state department acknowledges this fact, yet they still believe it is very important that they protect one part of China from another part of China and extend their civil war which should have ended for good decades ago. This is not an act of peace or charity, this is creating a conflict situation, with Taiwan right in the center of any potential explosion.
See, the US doesn't care about these concerns is because the real reason America is in Taiwan is so they can use it as a strategic base for operations to oppose and weaken the PRC, a "West Berlin of Asia" so to say. And somehow, liberals and social democratic opportunists have deluded themselves into believing that stationing the most powerful naval fleet in history (US 7th Fleet) to permanently do 'freedom of navigation exercises' (armed provocations) in Chinese coastal waters is the "moderate" solution to this conflict. And I suppose we'll just have to keep the navy there forever right? Or until the PRC finally collapses? (I'm still waiting lol)
I say we should cut a deal with the PRC, let them have Loser Island in exchange for mediating other border disputes with their neighbors. A majority of Taiwanese citizens want more integration with China, and they're still their largest trading partner. While immediate annexation wouldn't be popular, a gradual process of integration would be best for the entire region. It would allow the two biggest military powers to step down their aggressive actions against each other, end the period of Taiwanese citizens being used as a geopolitical pawn, and provide a solid diplomatic framework to settle future disputes in the region (as this would be a massive rapprochement in Sino-American relations) This wouldn't even weaken American national security (which is what everyone hates about 'appeasement') since it's, you know, an occupied imperialist outpost on the other side of the world's largest ocean, not even in America's hemisphere.
Of course this option would be totally unacceptable for the American imperialist apparatus, they would never be willing to lose such an important base in the Pacific (just ignore that they would still have Japan, Guam, Philippines, etc). So what's going to happen instead is that the US is eventually going to get distracted and entangled in some other imperialist mess, because they can't recognize their empire is hopelessly overextended, and China will just take Taiwan when they think the balance of power is in their favor. This would be the worse thing to happen: a chaotic breakdown of the region instead of a negotiated reordering. There will be decades of bitterness and calls for mass violence. Maybe it will also escalate and some ships get sunk and the nukes fly and oh well its World War 3. Beware those who call diplomacy 'appeasement' in the post-atomic age, they seek your death.
shock, gasp, Hexbear user thinks Taiwan should surrender to China.
How can you consider yourself anti-imperialist when you’re talking about unilaterally giving entire countries to other countries?
Is the Donbas a separate country because it declared independence from Ukraine?
EDIT: Which is actually more than Taiwan has done, the government in exile on Taiwan considers itself the rightful government of the entirety of mainland China and parts of Mongolia.
Way to just completely ignore my point and move the goal posts?
Are the 13 colonies a separate country because they declared independence from the United Kingdom?
Don’t bother replying. I don’t want waste my time talking to people who can’t answer a simple question
I'm not moving the goalposts, I'm just pointing out that it's a bit disingenuous to frame a question about what should happen in an unresolved civil war as a question of nations and their sovereignty. It would be disingenuous to frame Russia's intervention in Ukraine as defending the independence of an entire country, I think it's a similar situation between ROC/PRC, the primary difference being the length of the dispute.
Which is relevant if we're talking about how one can consistently be anti-imperialist, I think. I agree it's a bit flippant to say stuff about 'giving up Loser Island' but I think it's important to recognize that it's more complicated than 'two independent countries fighting over the territory of one of them.'
Donbas isn’t comparable. The government in Taiwan has had a continuous existence since before the CCP.
If the rebellious territories of the Donbas was actually a preexisting government that had all the rest of its territory taken in a civil war you might be onto something. In reality Ukraine gained sovereignty from imperial USSR and now imperial Russia wants to take it over again.
Taiwan isn't a country. They don't consider themselves independent, China doesn't consider them independent, the U.S. doesn't consider them independent.
How can you consider yourself anti-imperialiat when you don't know the basic facts of the situation?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_independence_movement
Gaslight harder, king.
Did you even bother to read the comments you're replying to? Taiwan isn't a country and it never has been. It has been a part of the nation of China for centuries. When the civil war broke out, it was between two political groups inside the nation of China, a nation that includes the island of Taiwan. The communists won the war and the KMT lost and fled to Taiwan, an island in the nation of China. Because the KMT fled, the civil war continues, but the imperialist countries (UK, USA) intervened to protect the losing army that was holes up on an insland in the nation of China.
That army, the KMT, never declared independence, never said they were a separate sovereign entity, and never created a new country. They said they were the rightful rulers of the nation of China, which includes the island of Taiwan.
The imperilaists wanted the civil war to continue because they wanted control over the nation of China, which includes the island of Taiwan. So they made the KMT their proxy and funded and armed them, even while the KMT engaged in brutal mass murder campaigns and brutal political repression for 4 decades. It's called the White Terror. Look it up. People living on Taiwan, an island in th nation of China, were Chinese nationals. When the KMT lost, many of those people wanted to end the war and recognize the communists as the new leaders of the nation of China, of which they were a part. The KMT murdered thousands of them. The imperialists agreed that this was right and good.
The UN had a seat for the nation of China. The recognized the KMT and gave them the seat at the UN. Not two seats, one for one nation and one for another, one seat for one nation, the nation of China which includes the island of Taiwan. Eventually it became untenable to recognize the KMT as the leaders of the nation of China and the world shifted to recognizing the communists of the nation of China, a nation that has an unbroken history of having an island called Taiwan which no one has challenged.
And since then, the imperilaists who cannot allow other nations to govern themselves in their own interests, has been maintaining and exacerbating the civil war to keep their proxy war against communists going.
It is anti-imperialist to support China against the interests of the West.
Have you considered the possibility that people living in Fuzhou, Putian, Quanzhou, Xiamen and Zhangzhou (among many millions of others along the coast) don't want to have American nukes pointed at them a mere 200-300 kilometers away?
Also neither China, the US, the :international-community-1::international-community-2: or the rest of the world do not recognize Taiwan as independent. Only the :nato-cool: despite this, want to wrest Taiwan away to build a puppet state.
Oh yeah and the official acronymn is "CPC".