Why Does Foreign Affairs Mag Appear Ready To Give China Not Only Taiwan But Also Singapore, Malaysia and San Francisco?

[solutions]

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Subject: Realpolitik - Has Taiwan Been Prudent Enough To Buy/Develop Sufficient Nuclear Weapons To Deter China?
From: Solutions
Date: Thu February 27, 2025 4:57 pm PST
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
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Dear John,

I was just re-reading our e-mail exchanges posted on our website February 17 & 18 –

(1) Donald “The Art of the STEAL” Trump – DISHONORING AMERICA’S 1994 SACRED DEAL With Ukraine So Can Taiwan Be Far Behind???, and

(2) Donald “Gun-Boat-Diplomacy Wannabe” Trump.

In both of them, at length in the latter, you reference and discuss your topic proposal posted 12/3/2023 in Sec. 3 of our website (Possible Topics for Future Meetings) entitled –

“Realpolitik - Has Taiwan Been Prudent Enough To Buy/Develop Sufficient Nuclear Weapons To Deter China?”

And yesterday you were ruminating over the phone how wrong-headed were the authors of the 2/25/2025 Foreign Affairs article entitled –

“The Taiwan Fixation – American Strategy Shouldn’t Hinge on an Unwinnable War.”

Do you really think the Foreign Affairs authors should have, as you said, avoided considerable embarrassment for themselves and Foreign Affairs Magazine by considering whether Taiwan should buy/develop sufficient nuclear weapons to deter China?

Your friend,

Solutions


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Why Does Foreign Affairs Mag Appear Ready To Give China Not Only Taiwan But Also Singapore, Malaysia and San Francisco???
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Thu February 27, 2025 10.41 pm MST
To: Solutions
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Dear Solutions,

Thank you very much for your e-mail.

The short answer to your question – ABSOLUTELY!!!

[Assuming, of course, that they wanted to avoid considerable embarrassment.]

WHY???

They seem to think for various reasons that China can defeat the U.S. in a direct head-to-head military conflict – which IMHO is irrelevant.

My Topic Proposal (“Realpolitik - Has Taiwan Been Prudent Enough To Buy/Develop Sufficient Nuclear Weapons To Deter China?”) –

• not only posits that Taiwan can deter China on its own (and should plan to do so because of sentiment like that expressed by the Foreign Affairs authors),

• but also posits that China’s claim to Taiwan is little different than its claim to Singapore (74.2% Chinese per the CIA’s World Factbook), or Malaysia (20.6% Chinese per the CIA World Factbook), or even San Francisco (37.3% “Asian alone” per the U.S. Census Bureau with no further breakdown for Chinese).

In this regard, the People’s Republic of China has never owned Taiwan any more than it has owned Singapore or Malaysia or San Francisco.

• Taiwan was annexed in 1683 by the Qing Dynasty (i.e., the four centuries after Manchuria conquered China).

• China’s Qing Dynasty gave Taiwan to Japan in 1895.

• The Chinese Nationalists under Sun Yat-sen defeated the Qing Dynasty in 1912, but Taiwan remained Japanese.

• Following the World War II defeat of Imperial Japan in 1945 by the U.S., the Chinese Nationalists took control of Taiwan from Japan.

• Following the 4-year Chinese Civil War between Chairman Mao and the Nationalists, the Nationalists were left with only Taiwan.

So why does anyone think that Chairman Xi’s China, which trumpets that it seeks world domination, wouldn’t want to take over (probably “rescue” in their view) Chinese populations around the world as a prelude???

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SO IS A CHINA/TAIWAN WAR “UNWINNABLE” AS FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAG CLAIMS???

My topic proposal (“Realpolitik - Has Taiwan Been Prudent Enough To Buy/Develop Sufficient Nuclear Weapons To Deter China?”) posits that –

• even a few nuclear weapons should be sufficient to deter China,

• per PBS’ Nova Science Series 3/9/1975, “any reasonably bright student” can design a nuclear weapon (an MIT chemistry student did so for the producer of PBS’ Nova),

• per a Sep 1976 British Royal Commission Report in the wake of the PBS Nova program (caused by concern that the IRA might nuke London) -- “The equipment required [to actually construct the nuclear weapon] would not be significantly more elaborate than that already used by criminal groups in the illicit manufacture of heroin”,

• if Taiwan hasn’t long-since developed its own nukes, it should have no trouble buying some of the 132 suitcase-size nukes that went missing when the USSR broke up, 84 of which have never been recovered, and

• Taiwan should be able to buy all it wants from terrorist organizations – noting that Osama bin Laden issued 5 fatwäs commanding his followers to nuke 10 million Americans -- about which the Founding Dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government wrote a famous book and about which Tim Russert’s 5/29/2005 Meet the Press interviewed former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman 1987-1995), U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN and then-current Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman) and Messrs. Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton (Chair and Co-Chair of The 9/11 Commission).

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MY GUESS AS TO THE CURRENT “STATE OF THE ART” OF NUCLEAR TERRORISM

Yes, I admit the old cliché that “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” which seems to fit the Taiwan situation perfectly.

So forget all the Foreign Affairs mag nonsense about Taiwan increasing the size of its defense budget, etc.

And consider the obvious question –

Osama bin Laden commanded his followers to nuke 10 million Americans and as conceded by the failure of the Brits, when otherwise-successfully negotiating for restoration of relations with Iran following the death in 1989 of Supreme Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who had issued a fatwä commanding all Iranians to kill Salman Rushdie, that once the issuer of a fatwä is dead, it is NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO REVOKE IT --

then why haven’t 10 million Americans been nuked by Osama bin Laden followers???

The obvious answer (I would argue) –

Since we know from such sources as PBS Nova and the British Royal Commission that designing and building nukes is so easy (if nukes weren’t also available for purchase), then America and its allies (and similarly China) must have devices that can detect the nukes.

So obvious secondary questions are, for example –

• Does Taiwan presumably have access to such “nuke detectors” and understand the technology???

• Is there a maximum range for the “nuke detectors” that would dictate how and where Taiwan would locate its nukes in China which has quite a bit of territory to defend (my proposal had noted the Taiwan nukes could be placed in major cities, Beijing only, the area from which an invasion of Taiwan would be launched) – but wouldn’t it be just as effective to locate them in sparsely-populated areas UPWIND FROM STRATEGIC TARGETS.

• NB: locating them upwind would work for Beijing and many other large Chinese cities, but upwind from the area from which an invasion of Taiwan would be launched could adversely affect the Taiwan population since it presumably would not be feasible to warn them beforehand.

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APPEASEMENT -- “TRIBUTE” TO ZHONGGUO (LITERALLY “THE MIDDLE KINGDOM”)

So back to another short answer.

Aren’t the Foreign Affairs authors, despite all of their pseudo-analysis, simply proposing Neville Chamberlain-style appeasement???

And what makes them think appeasement will bring “peace in our time”???

Thank you again for your e-mail.

Your friend,

John K.