Hypothetical TSMC invasion 'absolutely devastating' says Raimondo The US Secretary of Commerce says it would be "absolutely devastating" if China seized Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and locked down the South China Sea. “I'm not commenting on whether that's going to happen, how it's going to happen, or if it's going to happen, but what I can tell you is right now the …
American support for Ukraine is plenty vocal, but material support recently has been lacking. Just look how long it took them to finally approve the latest wave of support.
If they give up on Ukraine you can bet they'll give up on Taiwan, China will see a green light and go for it.
Not the same at all.
Ukraine doesn't really produce anything the US needs. Supporting them is the right thing to do, but it's pretty clear at this point that Russia isn't a threat to NATO as it currently exists. Sure, it would be nice to add Ukraine to NATO, but you may have noticed that despite making a lot of noise about it, Putin hasn't done diddly any time we crossed one of his "red lines".
Taiwan on the other hand... remember Kuwait in the '90s? US response would look a lot more like that. Probably wouldn't turn into regime change in China, but it might. It wouldn't just be weapons packages, US troops would be involved. I suspect Japan would jump in too, along with England, France, Germany, Australia, Korea.... It would look a lot like a world war.
Taiwan has made itself necessary. China would be foolish to try.
If China reads this wrong it could lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. Taiwan is important to the U.S. economy and therefore will not be so easily abandoned. The U.S. is diligently moving production of vital semiconductors to the continental U.S., but that takes time.
China (or more specifically Xi Jingpin) needs to ask itself if gaining Taiwan is worth losing access to the entire Western market, including Europe and the U.S. Maybe they should take a hard look at Russia whose economy in the long run will be ruined by not having access to Western technology and products. Russia may win the war with Ukraine but in the long run they'll go bankrupt just like the Soviet Union did.
This is why China has been so focused on building up their economy's internal demand, so they can be less reliant on exports. With more people than the US and Europe combined, they wouldn't end up like Russia - a failed state relying on exporting fossil fuel resources that are going to become much less important over the next couple decades.
China's problem is that they view the people of Taiwan as their own. This isn't like Russia killing Ukrainians or Israel killing Palestinians, where they can tell their soldiers those aren't real people you're killing, but some "other". China won't go in with a big invasion force, they work behind the scenes for the last 10-20 years to try to sour the populace on Taiwan's democratic government. When they move, they'd do a blockade at sea to try to cripple their economy and get the population to willingly submit to reunification with mainland China.
The US was able to save West Berlin with the airlift, but that was half a city. It won't be possible to do that for a country the size of Taiwan, so the US would have to decide if they are going to step in militarily to break China's blockade because Taiwan's navy will never be a match for China's. Only the US Navy would be able to do it, but it is unlikely the US people would be willing to commit an action that drastic that risks nuclear confrontation. They were fooled into getting involved in Korea, then Vietnam, then Afghanistan and Iraq, and the opposition to even simple military aid in Ukraine means it'll be a while before they're able to be fooled into getting directly involved in another war. "Save our chips!" is hardly a rallying cry likely to win strong public support in the US.
China needs to think very carefully about this. Putting up a trade blockade and bullying the Taiwanese may not have the result that they're looking for. Instead of willingly submitting to reunification the Taiwanese may opt to put up a fight. A bloodbath wouldn't look well on Xi Jingping's rap sheet.
Once China sets out on this road there's no turning back. The West will strike out hard, militarily and economically.
Congressman Jake Ellzey and Raimondo agreed during Wednesday's hearing that around a third of the world's commerce travelled through the South China Sea, making it essential to defend the area, including Taiwan.
Most of that commerce is travelling to (or from) China which is also the only credible threat to peace in the region.
If China decided to start building an empire by invading their neighbours then the decisive weapon is not bullets, bombs, missiles or the threat of using them. It's everybody in "the west" saying "if you decided to start forming an empire, we'll stop buying things made in China and go back to making our own stuff" and mean it, with no path back to buying from them again, no matter how much they offer in bribes.
As exports is the source of almost all of Chinas wealth which would evaporate literally overnight this is something that they are likely to fear considerably more than us killing any number of their people; remember that in a system where the plebs can't vote then the leaders don't care about shoving them into a meat grinder. (As seen in Russia at the moment)
Peter2,
The problem is that our plebs can vote. And the Chinese government know it. Putin thought this allowed him to invade Ukraine, because of his domination of European gas markets. Oops! But de-coupling from China will be a much more painful process, and do much worse damage to our economies. There just aren’t the alternative sources for some goods.
If they can seize Taiwan in quick 2 day operation, many governments will find excuses to do as little as possible. That’s what happened with Crimea, and we recognised that as part of Ukraine. We all still officially go along with the Chinese lie that Taiwan is part of China…
Worse, I don’t even have to be right about this. Xi Xinping just has to believe it. I’m sure Putin thought invading Ukraine would go fine…
Winnie the Xi isn't that stupid.
He knows he doesn't have the ability to take Taiwan. He literally can't get the troops there, he doesn't have enough landing craft, there's always a US carrier group nearby to start sinking what he does have and splash his planes. Any troop and ship buildup would be noticed well before any attempted operation, more carrier groups would be sent.
He can make noise. But that's all he can do without getting his ass handed to him.
China imports ~50% of its oil. Most of that comes by sea. If China does anything stupid, those tankers would evaporate. The pipelines would be severed, and China would have to run on its reserves and domestic production for the entirety of the war.
Meanwhile, the US showed that it is energy-independent under the last administration. There's really no contest.
Our economies are also dependent on Chinese goods for our supply chains. Russia had no export markets for its natural gas, as the pipes mostly ran to Europe, and is economically dependent on Western imports. European economies were so inter-dependent that war was impossible by 1914.
Leaders who make decisions due to nationalism and personal feelings often make poor choices. And rarely listen to their economic advisors.
As was shown with Ukraine, the only way to deter aggression is to create a near certainty that it will fail. That means credible defensive alliances, or helping allies get sufficient weapons that invading them looks impossible. China has consistently deterred us from supplying high tech weapons to Taiwan with unspecified threats of harsh diplomatic language. Why would they believe we’d fight?
Typically there’s a greater chance we would. This is how dictatorships and democracies fail to understand each other, and stumble into wars neither want. Misunderstandings of both intent and willpower.
I ain't Spartacus: “European economies were so inter-dependent that war was impossible by 1914.”
Origins of World War I: “On 28 June 1914, a Bosnian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie. This event is described as the catalyst for World War I, but it wasn't the sole cause of the war.”
impossible by 1914?
The major powers had been preparing for it for years and there were regular toasts at nobs' dinners in the UK to "the day" when war would break out.
Apart from all the other clues, have you heard of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway? No. Because there isn't one. Germany started construction on it which put the wind up Churchill who saw that the next generation of Royal Navy vessels would be oil-powered. An enemy railway leading to the heart of Britain's oil suppliers had to be stopped - by going to war. Churchill's answer to most problems.
PhilipN,
It was a mainstream opinion, though clearly not universal, that economic inter-dependence was removing the chance of war. At the same time there was a huge armaments build up, and some very unimaginative generals whose only war plans appeared to be mobilising two days faster than the enemy, hurling millions of men over the border and hoping you can defeat them before they're quite ready.
An enemy railway leading to the heart of Britain's oil suppliers had to be stopped - by going to war. Churchill's answer to most problems.
This is a laughably ridiculous take on history.
The idea that Churchill was in control of a British foreign policy is already ridiculous. The big mover in British foreign policy in 1914 was the Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey. And the big discussions were about whether Britain would be required to honour its committments to the Treaty of London that made Belgium a neutral state - and guaranteed that neutrality. there was serious cabinet opposition to getting into the war, despite that, and the argument that clinched it was that Grey had made military promises to France without having bothered to consult cabinet - and he therefore argued that there was an obligation to follow through on them. The French fleet was almost entirely based in the Mediterranean, and Grey admitted he'd promised that the Royal Navy would guard the Channel. I can't remember if he'd consulted Churchill - as First Lord of the Admiralty, but even if he had - he'd never bothered to ask cabinet's permission for committing them to a likely war.
But even ignoring Churchill's lack of influence on British policy, Britain had very little influence on the origins of WWI at all. The war was happening whatever Britain wanted, and the choice was simply whether to join in or not.
What caused the war to happen was a combination of many factors. But the immediate causes were things like. Insane levels of recklessness from Austria-Hungary, who seemingly had no fucking clue what they were doing. Launched a war with Serbia that they weren't even sure they could win, let alone doing it at the same time as holding off Russia and possibly Italy simultaneously while doing it. But forced that war anyway, because Germany had backed their recklessness - despite regretting it later in the August crisis. Plus the German's having planned a quick war of conquest to cripple France - and wanting to carry it out before Russia's military reforms made them even more formidable in the next 5 years. Plus Russia mobilising and lying about it - telling everyone they'd only partially mobilised (on the Austrian border) - when the Tsar had actually initiated a general mobilisation from the start. Which forced Germany to mobilise.
That last is interesting, because when I studied this at university in the 90s, Russian state archives were still secret, and so the story about a partial mobilisation that failed and led to a general one was what I was taught. Hence my essays blamed Germany much more than it turns out was fair. I don't think anyone's essays blamed Churchill...
I'm not a military expert but I believe Taiwan is relatively easy to defend. It's situated almost a 100km from the mainland and using submarines and anti-ship missiles the Taiwanese should be able to fend off an invasion from the PLA with ease. Sure, China could bombard the island with rockets but that wouldn't change the status-quo.
A Chinese attack on U.S. military assets in the region would spell disaster since it could easily escalate to a nuclear exchange.
The logic of dictators usually doesn't add up. Nobody thought Putin would invade Ukraine because he'd risk losing access to Western markets and technology. He went ahead and did it anyway. I'm therefore not at all sure that China will NOT invade Taiwan, even if it would mean economic suicide.
Eh? Plenty of people thought Putin would invade Ukraine.
Sevastopol is the only decent deep-water port in the Black Sea, which makes it the only decent military port near Russia with access to the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. Without it, Russia's navy doesn't have good access to the Mediterranean, the South Atlantic, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean, etc. Putin had to have Sevastopol to keep up the pretense that Russia is a superpower.
While Ukraine had a Russian-friendly government and would let Russia use Sevastopol, that was fine. When Ukraine turned toward Western Europe and the US and flirted with NATO membership, it wasn't, so Putin invaded Crimea to secure Sevastopol. (Yes, a majority of the Crimean population is Russophone, and many identify as ethnically Russian. That was a good excuse and made the invasion easier.)
But Crimea is a big honking peninsula attached to the mainland by an isthmus that's way over in Ukraine. Russia built a bridge across the strait, but everyone knew it was a soft target, and indeed Ukraine blew a chunk out of it when the war started. Crimea isn't self-sufficient. Fresh water is very dependent on rainfall, and arable land isn't very productive. So Russia needs to be able to supply Sevastopol and the rest of the peninsula.
Putin was in a bad place, and attempting to annex the eastern half of Ukraine was a possible out. If Russia can hold the breakaway provinces (the self-styled DPR and LPR), by annexing them or by turning them into puppet states, it has the land bridge to Crimea and a buffer for it.
(None of this is meant to excuse Russia's actions, just explain why Putin saw this as existentially necessary for Russia's geopoltical status.)
Even better from Putin's point of view, of course, would have been to change the regime in Ukraine back to a Russian-aligned one. Putin greatly overestimated his capabilities and underestimated Ukrainian resistance and support from the West (tepid though that has been) and overstepped badly. What's worse is that the war has become a domestic dilemma for him: he's convinced many Russians that the war is necessary and must be won, but at the same time they're growing weary of its costs. And what's much worse is that the war persuaded Sweden and in particular Finland to join NATO, even under special terms, which is extremely bad news for Russia's naval bases in the Baltic and Arctic, and for St Petersburg and other targets in the area. Finland's military is nothing to sneeze at and they'd be capable of very swift and hugely damaging strikes against Russia in the northwest.
Putin's invasion of Ukraine is one of the most-predictable steps he's taken, deplorable as it is. And it backfired, and now it's all a big mess.
Even if Taiwan invited China to take over and every single person in Taiwan went along with it China couldn't take over TSMC's fabs. ASML would not provide service for the equipment, without which it can't run. This isn't like some drill press that runs for years without needing adjustment or repair, and when it does you can do it yourself. EUV scanners absolutely REQUIRE constant monitoring and maintenance from ASML, so the fabs they get wouldn't be capable of producing anything more advanced than what they can already produce.
The main win for China would be crippling western economies as it would take years to replace that capacity elsewhere (though at least we've woken up to that risk and started building significant capacity stateside) but it wouldn't help their own.
There's almost zero chance that any fab will survive any shooting war in working order, even if no national participant intentionally targets them. Wars are chaotic, with random damage and confused people running around with bombs. And disruption of supply and service networks. Furthermore, if there's an existential threat to Taiwan, both the local government and many well-placed individuals could have all kinds of reasons for sabotage. Including simple revenge and regardless of what "the West" wants.
There might be some question about how many months or years it would take to fix the fabs with everybody cooperating in peacetime, but they're not going to be working after any kind of war. They're shockingly delicate.
Shanghai Communique (1972): “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.”
Anon,
Except this is a tad more complicated. Seeing as the Repulic of China was still claiming that it governed the mainland as well as Taiwan, while the People's Republic of China were claiming the opposite. So the One China Policy was considered a worthwhile compromise to get China into the international system and have an "ally" (at least to some extent) against the Soviet Union. Or at least making the Soviets' job much harder.
Untangling this risks war with China. So we're stuck with keeping the compromise going, despite the unfortunate consequences.
Most don't know, without travel to the island of Formosa; when the communist drove the ruling elite from the mainland, they took all of the treasures that were bestowed upon the leaders of China, for all those thousands of years.
These currently reside in in Taiwan. The displays are stunning, takes days to see what is displayed, and most is locked out of sight.
Maybe that's want the leadership want back...
who knows ..
( I could never read them )
;)
+1000
Even living in the Grand Hotel would qualify as a Museum tour.
All these cultural treasures escaped destruction of the so-called "Cultural revolution".
"Other aspects were more destructive, particularly in the realms of culture and religion. Historical sites throughout the country were destroyed. The damage was particularly pronounced in the capital, Beijing. Red Guards laid siege to the Temple of Confucius in Qufu: 119 and other historically significant tombs and artifacts.Libraries of historical and foreign texts were destroyed; books were burned. Temples, churches, mosques, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed and sometimes converted to other uses, or looted and destroyed. Marxist propaganda depicted Buddhism as superstition, and religion was looked upon as a means of hostile foreign infiltration, as well as an instrument of the ruling class. Clergy were arrested and sent to camps; many Tibetan Buddhists were forced to participate in the destruction of their monasteries at gunpoint."
What a bunch of nonsense, US wanna make from Taiwan a new meat like Ukraine. In Ukraine, 8 years of deliberate killing a Russian population provoke a SMO, a child knows that.
Now, a new eternal lie from US, they must save Chinese Sea from Chinese, coz of trade route, a trade which of 80% US have with China.
I think, this is a very last lie of the US, hypersonicaly they will learn that, as the whole west & US (NATO) learns by Russia, as it seems.
TSMC is already "bombed" & "destroyed" by the US, as they (US) said, they own will do that when the problem starts. As per usual, they (US) create a problem in a first place, to come to "solve" it, so pathetic as is.
"Wait, so the US is getting TSMC to open up shop in Arizona..."
Yes, by paying TSMC lots of money.
"... so that the US won't have to defend Taiwan so much?"
Yes, that's one of their major goals.
"And the Taiwan de-facto government isn't saying anything about this?"
TSMC has the right to do it. I'm sure the Taiwanese government has concerns about the weakening of their silicon shield, but there's only so much they can do to prevent it from happening. It will hold for many years to come because setting up more fabs takes a really long time. Maybe they think it's unstoppable and would rather see a TSMC-controlled international industry than one built by other companies who got the subsidies instead.
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