US approves potential $500m sale of military equipment to Taiwan

So... a couple of tomahawk missiles and a container of uniforms. Taiwan secured.

You could buy about 400 tomahawks with half a billion dollars
- When all that's needed is one with the Kremlin's address in its memory chip.
  :O
Perhaps a couple hammers and toilet seats too!
If that.... The fees for initiating a sale might eat all that

We've had one, yes, but what about second proxy war?

I mean, China can just mind their own business, leave them alone, and then there doesn't have to be a war. How nice that would be.
Well even though I do not ever want to see war between Taiwan and China, I believe that if there ever were one, the war would not be a proxy war but a war where Taiwanese are fighting for their own.
- Taiwan only exists because it served, and continues to serve, US interests as a staging point for military operations against China. A war over Taiwan would absolutely see the US using Taiwan as a proxy, much as they are currently using Ukraine against Russia.

Imagine instead of complete surrender the confederacy retreated and held Texas, and China was selling them advanced weaponry. That’s what this is

This is like if the Confederacy retreated to Catalina Island, massacred everyone there, and continued calling itself the rightful government of the entire continent afterward.
- This is not like that. The ROC government did not "massacre everyone there." It did call itself the rightful government of the entire China for several decades, but it has since then moved on.
Man, these days you know a hexbear without even looking at the user.
I mean this is complete baloney! You are also using the comparison to establish some kind of “evil slavers vs democracy” narrative that wasn’t in place at all in China during the warlord era. They were all equally horrid.
This is, at best, akin to a war between all states in the US after the Boston Tea Party and a communist state, let’s just pick Arizona, slowly winning the wars and forcing the remaining faction onto Hawaii. Then the socialist party forced anyone who could read, more or less, to work themselves to death in a field in the name of communism. Glory to the people!!!
- jesus christ read at least one book about the history of the conflict you're describing before you confidently spout nonsense.
- I agree. People should take how the Chinese government and the US government treat their people into consideration.
Well, not quite. It's more akin to if the union was pushed back and was limited to new-england.
The PRC is the confederate equivalent, as they weren't the original legal government unlike Taiwan, which legally is the heir of the ROC.
Also one of these states is an authoritarian piece of shit, and it's definitely not Taiwan.
- The PRC is the confederate equivalent, as they weren't the original legal government unlike Taiwan, which legally is the heir of the ROC.
  The left wing of the KMT split from Chiang's KMT in 1948 to form the Revolutionary Committee of the KMT. It was headed by a senior KMT General and Song Ching Ling the widow of Sun Yat Sen. Madam Song would later serve as a Vice President of the People's Republic of China and the Revolutionary Committee of the KMT holds seats in the National People's Congress to this day.
  If you even look at the history of the KMT, you'd see that it's incredibly prone to factionalism, including a period during the First United Front where the CPC agreed to join the KMT as a wing to fight the Warlords but left after the KMT stabbed it in the back during the Shanghai Purges.
  Legally, the PRC is recognized by the UN as the sole representative of China under General Assembly Resolution 2758 and the overwhelming majority of the world's nation's recognize that there is only one China and that China is the PRC.
  Cope and seethe.
- The PRC is the confederate equivalent, as they weren’t the original legal government unlike Taiwan, which legally is the heir of the ROC.
  Going by paper legality argument, ROC is also illegal because it wrested power from Qing. Which conquered China from Ming, which toppled Yuan, and going fast forward to Han, Qing, Zhao and Shang, neither of them also risen peacefully.
- one of these states is an authoritarian piece of shit, and it's definitely not Taiwan.
  Tell that to the indigenous people of Taiwan. I bet they'd love to hear about how they genocide was "non-authoritarian".
- Nobody in SEA likes Taiwan. It doesn't help that Taiwan has two naval bases in the South China Sea and always sides with the PRC against the rest of SEA over the SCS, mostly using the justification of "acktually the SCS is part of Chinese naval waters and we're officially called the Republic of China, so this is Taiwanese naval waters btw since we're officially called the Republic of China."
Is that a bad thing? In your hypothetical situation, Chinese people should be happy about their government selling weaponry to Texas, and the Americans should not support their sale of weaponry. To compare this to the real world scenario, Chinese people should feel angry about this and Americans should feel good. I don't really get the point you're trying to convey with your analogy.
- Not everyone is a chauvinistic shithead

Alright folks, time to get into the Taiwan flag business 📈 . I have a feeling the market is about to grow, anyone invested in Ukraine flags still is a fool! 📉

My advice is to put in an order for about 100,000 flame resistant Taiwanese flags, and about 10 million Taiwanese flags that burn real good.
Just make sure you sell before the US opens its TSMC plant and drops Taiwan like a hot rock.
- I still say that Taiwan has two uses that struggle to coexist, manufacturing and military. Once the manufacturing one becomes defunct, what is left is its military use.
- That TSMC plant is running into trouble on every front, including the inability to find local workers qualified and willing to work there.
  Also the expat Taiwanese engineers are being subjected go racist harassment because of course they are lmao.

Money should go towards the poor and not the capitalist war machine.

“Think of how many jobs building an aircraft carrier provides.” -An actual dog brained take, said to me IRL
- I hate to quote fucking Eisenhower but even broken clocks etc etc...
  Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
  Even he was warning us about the MIC, and now people say "what about those employed making bombers? Surely that's the only job they're capable of! What else would they do?"
- mfw they close down the dog-kicking factory, destroying thousands of honest jobs ::: spoiler :deeper-sadness:
  :::
- I've heard similar takes from those drooling boomers also. Think about all the jobs making missiles for war create! Not as many as you'd think old boomer guy.

That'll be four F-35 fighters. The wonders of US Military-Industrial complex never fails to amaze me.

It's kind of an open secret that the US refuses to sell Taiwan any top shelf stuff because the US believes the ROC military to be hopelessly compromised. It probably is.

I got into an argument with a guy on Reddit because he kept insisting that Taiwan was a sovereign nation and I kept telling him that Taiwan does not view Taiwan as a sovereign nation. At one point he asked me if we sold weapons to China and when I said definitionally yes he lost his shit.

A June 2013 poll conducted by DPP showed an overwhelming 77.6% consider themselves as Taiwanese.[140] On the independence-unification issue, the survey found that 25.9 percent said they support unification, 59 percent support independence, and 10.3 percent prefer the "status quo." When asked whether Taiwan and China are parts of one country, the party said the survey found 78.4 percent disagree, while 15 percent agreed. As for whether Taiwan and China are two districts in one country, 70.6 percent disagree, while 22.8 percent agree
Taiwan #1
- The DPP (pro-Independence party) polling seems to differ a bit from National Chengchi University's yearly poll where "maintain status quo indefinitely/decide later" were the two most popular selections.
- How can they possibly be Taiwanese if they don't speak any of the Formosan languages?
- 70% of US adults believe in angels, but that doesn't make it true. No countries with any actual amount of power on the global stage recognize the ROC (see the US' One China Policy), which means that regardless of whatever views people claim to have when surveyed, Taiwan is de facto part of the PRC.
- You sorta have to win the war to declare independence.
  Change the question to: “would you die for Taiwanese independence?” And watch the numbers drop.
- For context: the DPP is the pro-indpendence ultranationalist party founded by local landed elites who collaborated with the Japanese empire during wwii. To this day many Taiwanese ultranationalists around the DPP deny Japanese atrocities such as Nanjing and Unit 731. This may not be the most reliable source, three pinocchios!
- Interesting that you choose to present a 10 year old poll conducted by the pro-independence party instead of easily accessible recent polls conducted by well regarded Taiwanese universities.
  I guess those other cherries just didn't look as ripe, eh?
- From 2023
  "However, in a more stripped-down poll by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF, 台灣民意基金會) with only three choices and no nuanced timeline questions, 50% chose independence, 11.8% unification and 25.7% maintain the status quo."
  https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4782886
Taiwan does not view itself as a soverign nation, but for most practical purposes it is one. Also, I don't think "definitionally" is a word.
Edit: Apparently "definitionally" is a word. I stand corrected.
- Taiwan does not view itself as a soverign nation, but for most practical purposes it is one.
  Being a sovereign nation is when you don't have a seat in the UN and most sovereign nations refuse to recognize you as an independent nation.
- https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/definitionally
- Also, I don't think "definitionally" is a word.
  You think one thing, the dictionary says another.

I can’t WAIT for Taiwan to turn into the next Ukraine 😍! The final victory of liberal democracy over the global 99% is imminent!

lemmitors: "if you're not anti-MIC at 15 you have no heart, but if you're not pro-MIC at 25 you have no brain"
- Interesting paraphrase of the famous Churchill nonsense, which should give some of so called "leftists" here a pause, but alas, they only press the down arrow.
  Lockheed left
Democracies all over the world are ready to fight to the last Taiwanese child soldier!

I'm sorry for your financial situation, but I don't think the government can do much about your debt unless it is student debt.
- They're the US government, they can do whatever the hell they want because they print the money and pay the done pilots.

Lol I remember in 2020 Taiwan bought 4 MQ-9 Reaper drones for $600 million (money up front of course, they will be actually delivered in 2025 - will they even still be around at that time?). Then, when Russia shot down (or better "pissed down") another MQ-9 drone over the Black sea, which Western news decried as pricey as 30 million...

Some Taiwanese did some quic maffs then... to discover... Lmao US friends get US friends prices I guess

Then those Taiwanese need to leave off their "quic maffs" and go read the purchasing contract instead. They bought a LOT more than four MQ-9Bs.
The US can be shitty enough on its own, there's no need to daydream stuff up.
- Also included are MX-20 Multi-Spectral Targeting Systems and spares; SeaVue Maritime Multi-Role Patrol Radars; SAGE 750 Electronic Surveillance Measures (ESM) Systems; C-Band Line-of-Sight (LOS) Ground Data Terminals; Ku-Band SATCOM GA-ASI Transportable Earth Stations (GATES); AN/DPX-7 IFF Transponders; Honeywell TPE-331-10GD Turboprop Engines; M6000 UHF/VHF Radios; KIV-77 Mode 5 IFF cryptographic appliques; AN/PYQ-10C Simple Key Loaders; secure communications, cryptographic and Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) equipment; initial spare and repair parts; hard points, power, and data connections for weapons integration; support and test equipment; publications and technical documentation; personnel training and training equipment; U.S. Government and contractor engineering, technical, and logistics support services; and other related elements of logistical and program support.
  Training and support is a wide category that very likely accounts for the price tag.
- Isn't this just infra for drones?
- Yes you don't get the drones only, as you also get control stations, and other equipment to use them. That's like I get a car, but wait, then I also get car keys, and, hold up, an iPhone case with a BMW logo on it... a LOT! Clearly they are bloating the prices, and you're the one daydreaming stuff up lmao

Gosh I just can't believe it I am simply blown away

Cold War Strategy. The West is yanking the economic rug out from under the CCP while forcing them to spend ever greater sums on their Military. They will eventually either implode from the external pressure or explode into War trying to beat it back.

It worked on the USSR and it will probably work on the CCP.

There is a big difference: the evil West actually created the conditions for and encouraged China's explosive development in the last 30 years with the expectation that with development and mutual dependence, they would become less autocratic. Instead, we got another Mao :/
As a response, This is the US going back to its neutral economic stance towards China: be suspicious and protectionist, same as China is towards other countries.
There are lots of other examples of this like China calling itself a developing country for certain purposes and benefitting from subsidised rates in shipping (subsidized by the evil West).
The difference is that the economy of China is roaring ahead while the so called economy of the Soviet Union went from bad to worse.
- By every measure I'm aware of the Chinese Economy in 2023 is failing. FDI is down 90% YoY, Imports and Exports are down YoY, Youth Unemployment is unbelievably high, Real Estate market is collapsing, inbound tourism is down 90%, and companies are moving their manufacturing facilities out of the country.
  The Pandemic surely had some to do with all of that but I'd point at the escalating Trade War with the "The West" as the primary cause. A Trade War that was specifically engineered to damage the Chinese Economy.

Brinkmanship

How DARE the Taiwanese people defend their freedom!!!
Fucking Lemmygrad propagandist.
- Yeah, how dare they defend their freedom!!!!!!! How dare they say they are not China?!?!?!
  By the way, you might also want to see what the hexbears are saying if you think the Lemmygrad propagandists are bad. Here's a link in case your instance has defederated from them: https://lemmy.ml/post/3821052
- Ah yes, because conducting the largest amphibious assault in human history on a mountainous island with dense forests would go so well... When the defenders have had almost a century to entrench their position and train literally their entire population in military service.
  You start off with D-Day and jump straight into Vietnam. No military on this planet has enough conventional arms to take Taiwan by force.
  If you really wanted to take over Taiwan, you could just naval blockade the island: it's substantially smaller than Cuba and has a larger population to feed.