Item — HN Reader

> Perhaps. However, there are many alternatives to "attack" besides "do nothing".

Yes, and we've tried lots of different things.

> You can't defend Taiwan, full stop. If and when China decides to attack, they're smart enough to make sure to use the right weapons for the conflict, and that any allies Taiwan has won't get involved.

You're making the same mistake others do here by assuming that China can do things and the US can't respond or also strategize based on what they may do.

China's smart enough to use the right weapons for the conflict (when was their last war?).

Ok the US is smart enough to also use the right weapons for the conflict.

> Right now, the US is making this even easier for China by depleting the only weapons it does have, though this is only of minor relevance as what the US has is not even a good match for a China conflict in the first place. The best Taiwan can hope for in the near-term is a mix of promising it will be pyrrhic, and possibly surprising everyone with some anti-drone solution that has yet to be demonstrated.

Why? This is precisely the kind of conflict the United States is good at - air and naval power

And if you don't think the US can defend Taiwan then why concern is there about depleting missiles we can't and won't use to defend Taiwan anyway?

> With this, you are making the same mistake as with Vietnam, "We thought we were winning because we killed more of them than they killed of us", or whatever the quote was.

No, it's been, what, 60 years since Vietnam? We're not trying to stop an internal revolution. Circumstances are different. Internet exists. &c. - there may be loose comparisons but Vietnam isn't and has never been strategically significant to America, necessitating different calculations.

> The global response so far has been "America caused this mess. Sure almost all of us think Iran's leadership is awful, but this is America's mess, America can damn well clean up after itself."

I know, and unfortunately the globe has yet again had an immature and unrealistic response which is precisely why the United States is increasingly eschewing militarily useless allies and taking matters into its own hands.

> Quite a lot of us are even hoping you'll get stuck there, wasting your weapons and personnel, just so you don't make another threat against the sovereignties of technically-still-allies.

Well it's impossible for us to get stuck there. We can just like, leave if we want and then the rest of the world will have to pay Iran's tolls. You're lucky we even care to stop them. We should have attacked them for supplying drones to Russia in the first place.

1 comments

> Yes, and we've tried lots of different things.

Until Trump came along and discarded those other things, several of those other things were working.

> Ok the US is smart enough to also use the right weapons for the conflict.

Demonstrably not today you aren't, but worse than that, the Trump-class battleship is clearly a step backwards. We don't yet know what a conflict with China (and anyone, let alone the USA) will look like because of the rapid changes we are seeing to drone warfare turning things from manoeuvre warfare to attritional warfare, but we do know China-vs-Taiwan would have a logistics chain of a few hundred kilometres while the USA entering theatre would need to cross the Pacific, so it would depend on either being there full time in sufficient numbers to deter (with necessarily very visible assets, which also makes the Chinese calculus very easy, even though the US calculus remains hard because a China that wants to invade will do the opposite of showing off), or having a lot of regional allies (who are currently all getting pissed off by US erratic behaviour).

(If I was Taiwan, I'd be doing three things right now: a novel anti-drone system, anti-ship drones, and actual literal nuclear deterrence).

> And if you don't think the US can defend Taiwan then why concern is there about depleting missiles we can't and won't use to defend Taiwan anyway?

Running out of even the wrong munitions for a fight against China, still means you've got nothing left even for other smaller conflicts where those weapons would have been useful.

> Why? This is precisely the kind of conflict the United States is good at - air and naval power

Before munitions started to get depleted, the 2023 war games I've seen said the US would lose a significant number of ships almost immediately, including 2 aircraft carriers in the baseline. That's a scenario where Taiwan is still successfully defended.

But 2023 was before Ukraine scaled drones to the level of saturation attacks. Unless you've got a much better anti-drone defence solution than anyone knows about yet, you'd likely lose every ship you send, and China wouldn't even need to be at sea to perform the attacks.

> No, it's been, what, 60 years since Vietnam? We're not trying to stop an internal revolution. Circumstances are different. Internet exists. &c. - there may be loose comparisons but Vietnam isn't and has never been strategically significant to America, necessitating different calculations.

You're trying to cause one (or at least Trump sometimes says words to this effect, who knows what's going on upstairs), Iran has a heavy hand on the internet, and Vietnam was seen at the time as of strategic importance WRT domino theory. You were in Vietnam for rather too long a time, and lost rather too many people, for it to be credible to claim "Vietnam isn't and has never been strategically significant to America".

All that said, "Circumstances are different" is both true and not hugely important to the argument I made: wars continue until one party reaches their pain threshold, and the US has a really low pain threshold compared to Iran.

The USA electorate's pain threshold could be higher, but (a) you're the aggressor, (b) your cobelligerent has been making itself wildly unpopular domestically for the last few years, and (c) Trump clearly prefers to punish his domestic opponents rather than bring them on board, even where it would help him.

> Well it's impossible for us to get stuck there. We can just like, leave if we want and then the rest of the world will have to pay Iran's tolls.

Nope, you're currently stuck there. You don't have to be, but you are.

If you let the world (and "the world" would include you too because of how the oil markets work) pay Iran's tolls, you tell the world that you can't beat small regional powers with control over important straits, so everyone does it.

Also, you've got Trump in charge, and his ego won't let him out.

Without Trump, you might be able to patch up the former with appropriate diplomatic arse-covering to get out without the downside, but right now, you're just as stuck as Russia is stuck with Ukraine.

Of course, Trump is the reason why the world wants you to be stuck in the first place, so that he can't use your armed forces to threaten us, which he's still doing e.g. the most recent comment I'm aware of from him about Greenland was last Friday.

> You're lucky we even care to stop them.

Stop them from what, exactly? The thing they only started doing in response to a coordinated strike from the US and Israel?

> We should have attacked them for supplying drones to Russia in the first place.

Ukraine did this all by itself, you will notice.

> Until Trump came along and discarded those other things, several of those other things were working.

Which ones were working?

> Demonstrably not today you aren't,

> Running out of even the wrong munitions for a fight against China, still means you've got nothing left even for other smaller conflicts where those weapons would have been useful.

That's not necessarily true and it's easy to demonstrate without getting in to specific numbers.

> Before munitions started to get depleted, the 2023 war games I've seen said the US would lose a significant number of ships almost immediately, including 2 aircraft carriers in the baseline. That's a scenario where Taiwan is still successfully defended.

Which war-games have you seen?

Separately, of course the US would lose significant amounts of military hardware if a conflict were to, unfortunately, unfold against China. Perhaps you and the Chinese now are under the childish delusion that they can bomb others and not be bombed back? What do you think will happen if China attacks, say, Kadena or Osan?

> But 2023 was before Ukraine scaled drones to the level of saturation attacks. Unless you've got a much better anti-drone defence solution than anyone knows about yet, you'd likely lose every ship you send, and China wouldn't even need to be at sea to perform the attacks.

What's the range on those drones? Talk to me about the US's anti-drone capabilities. Are you familiar with the specific weapons implemented on US naval ships? I think you're just making stuff up.

> All that said, "Circumstances are different" is both true and not hugely important to the argument I made: wars continue until one party reaches their pain threshold, and the US has a really low pain threshold compared to Iran.

I reject non-specific comparisons to Vietnam. I've already said as a matter of fact (not for debate) why those comparisons don't work.

You are right that the US has done a poor job of selling the importance of the war, but again you are mistaken in understanding the ability for the US to stomach higher gas prices versus the ability of people in Iran to not have an economy at all. It's only tolerable for so long.

> Nope, you're currently stuck there. You don't have to be, but you are.

We're not though we can just leave and give Iran control. We won't and shouldn't do that, but we can. So, factually you are wrong here.

> Stop them from what, exactly?

Supplying drones to Russia to bomb Ukrainians - that's reason enough in my mind. But stop them from building a nuclear bomb, stop them from increasing their missile and drone stockpiles even further so then we simply can't do anything when they decide to take over Hormuz, stop the funding of their proxy forces in Iraq, Yemen Syria, Lebanon, and other areas which are causing destabilization and death for no benefit. There are plenty of things.

The thing they only started doing in response to a coordinated strike from the US and Israel?

This is really either disingenuous or actively anti-historical in interpretation. Even if you wanted to discard every single event prior to 2022, you can look back at Iran's proxies and their attack on Israel as a continued chain of events. The war didn't just randomly happen in an isolated environment.

> Ukraine did this all by itself, you will notice.

Did what?