Yahoo! News Informs the Stupid Peasants Why the US Needs to Go to War to Protect Taiwan

Yahoo! News had this headline at the top on Thursday morning:

When you click the article, you get this different headline:

The actual appropriate headline for this article would be “A Baby’s First Guide to Why the US Must Initiate a World War in Order to Prevent Chinese Reunification.”

The article gives a quick, slanted and false outline of the situation which does not attempt to either:

  • Explain the Chinese position on Taiwan, or
  • Explain why Taiwan is important to “American interests.”

It then gives a series of quotes from supposed experts on what Joe Biden should do.

A firm commitment to defend Taiwan is the best way to prevent an invasion

“The United States needs to remove the ambiguity about whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense. Uncertainty about U.S. intentions raises the risk of war. … President Biden should declare that, though we will not support a Taiwanese declaration of independence from China, we will defend the island if it is attacked.” — Max Boot, Washington Post

The U.S. must accept it has nothing to gain from defending Taiwan

“Bluntly put, America should refuse to be drawn into a no-win war with Beijing. It needs to be said up front: there would be no palatable choice for Washington if China finally makes good on its decades-long threat to take Taiwan by force.” — Daniel L. Davis, defense priorities senior fellow, Guardian

The U.S. should maintain its noncommittal position as long as it can

“As a superpower, the United States should preserve flexibility in its global security relationships. It also is not even obvious that Taiwan’s body politic would welcome an explicit security guarantee from the United States.” — Therese Shaheen, National Review

Taiwan is too important to U.S. interests to let it be taken by the Chinese

“Abandoning Taiwan in the face of a Chinese military assault would be a monumental disaster. … The U.S. cannot afford to see a country that occupies vital strategic space in the Western Pacific subdued by Beijing.” — Hal Brands, Bloomberg

War with China would pose an existential threat to the U.S.

“Stumbling into a shooting war over Taiwan is akin to opening a Pandora’s box, and it would make the last 20 years of conflict in the Middle East look like an uneventful peacekeeping mission. A fight between Washington and Beijing could also escalate to the nuclear level, particularly if the Chinese Communist Party determines that the use of such weapons is the only thing standing in the way of a humiliating defeat.” — Daniel R. DePetris, NBC News

America has a duty to protect the free world from authoritarianism

“The United States and its allies have built and defended a rules-based system over the past 75 years that has produced unprecedented peace, prosperity, and freedom globally. I don’t want to trade that in for a world in which Americans stand by as revisionist autocracies like China gobble up neighbors by military force.” — Matthew Kroenig, Foreign Policy

The U.S. also has diplomatic tools to deter China from invading

“To further demonstrate U.S. resolve, Biden should tell Beijing that any more threats of force against Taiwan’s participation in the democracy summit will trigger immediate diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and an official statement of Washington’s new ‘One China, One Taiwan’ policy. Beijing must understand that war would mean instant Taiwan independence.” — Joseph Bosco, The Hill

The best way to defend Taiwan is through investment, not military threats

“Hyping the threat that China poses to Taiwan does Beijing’s work for it. Taiwan’s people need reasons for confidence in their own future, not just reminders of their vulnerabilities. If American policy makers want to help Taiwan, they will need to go beyond focusing on the military threat. They need to modernize the U.S.-Taiwan economic relationship, help Taiwan diversify its trade ties and provide platforms for Taiwan to earn dignity and respect on the world stage.” — Richard Bush, Bonnie Glaser and Ryan Hass, NPR

Some of those are funnier than others. The idea that a country that is force-vaccinating its population is less authoritarian than a country that is not doing that is actually so ridiculous that it borders on the deranged or outright insane.

But this is actually more anti-war material than you usually see anywhere on a mainstream website, so I guess good job with that, Yahoo!

But while they do include people saying “we really should probably think about whether or not we want to start a nuclear war,” what is lacking is a sober perspective.

Why is Taiwan even an issue?

Why are we even talking about this at all?

Not one single person in this entire media landscape will either:

  • Outline, in real terms, how occupying Taiwan is in “the interests of America,” or
  • Point out that no one will give that outline

You end up in a situation where no one even has any idea what we’re actually talking about.

How is it possible that we’ve reached the point where we’re considering a nuclear war over vague “strategic interests” that no one is able to explain in concrete terms?

Furthermore – and I hate to be the one to have to point this out – but things are tough all over.

America and the rest of the West have a lot, lot, lot of problems. We have very real economic, political and social problems that no one is offering any solutions to. So the idea that we’re talking about going to war to protect some fake country on the other side of the globe is simply inexplicable.

If I was allowed to offer a 200-word sound bite for that Yahoo! News article, it would be this:

Taiwan is a part of China, and the reasons the US occupied it originally are no longer relevant. Instead of continuing to support the fantasy of a democratic China under the guise of the myth of Taiwanese nationhood, the United States should open talks about reunification. China will be open to giving wide-ranging concessions in exchange for the opportunity at peaceful reunification, and this will allow the West to clear up various unrelated conflicts with China, including on matters of international trade. — Andrew Anglin, Hoax Watch

I am happy that some in the media are finally saying that what we are talking about here is a nuclear war. That’s a long way from where we were a couple years ago, when the State Department first started its saber-rattling under Donald Trump. The humiliation in Afghanistan seems to have sobered a few people up.

But the fact that this discussion still remains so very far outside of the real, in the realm of the viciously and confusingly abstract, speaks to the moronic nature of the American mind. These people are literally asking you to believe that every single person in the entire Western world supports the idea of an “independent and democratic Taiwan” being “strategically important to the United States and its allies” even while not one person among this unified chorus is capable of explaining what either of those concepts means.

The basic fact, which anyone who knows the history knows but which no one in the American media is willing to say (and it wouldn’t be printed if they were willing), is that Taiwan was set up as an alternative government to the CCP government of China. The American goal was to foster a “democracy” government in Taiwan, which would eventually rule all of China. To this day, the government of Taiwan officially claims that it is the legitimate government of the entirety of China. This is not a secret, and yet somehow, it remains totally unsaid, and instead we are told that “Taiwan” is some kind of independent country that “China” is trying to invade and conquer.

The fact that Taiwan is not a country, but a piece of China occupied by the United States, does not necessarily mean that we should just give it back to China. But any serious discussion about whether we should or should not give it back to China should start from the point of accurately defining what Taiwan is. Obviously, if it is accurately defined, that would lead a lot of people to grasp the Chinese perspective on the issue, and make China look much less villainous, which is why there is some kind of soft ban on properly defining Taiwan in the media.

I think it would be morally good to simply give Taiwan back to China. But geopolitics are not based around moral goodness, so it makes sense that because America currently maintains control of Taiwan, America would instead negotiate concessions from China as part of the reunification process. But because we live in this fantasy world, we can’t have that discussion, and instead it’s simply “should we go to war to protect Taiwanese independence?” – a stupid and nonsensical question.

America is not a serious country, and its fixation with censorship has ensured that there can never be any form of seriousness injected into any discussion. Instead of talking about actual reality, the media and the political class argue about fantasies with only abstract connection to physical realities.

This is what a “dying empire” looks like.