United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has told a gathering of top security officials he doesn’t see war with China as imminent, nor unavoidable, despite rapidly escalating tensions in the Asia-Pacific region.
There’s a very serious game of brinksmanship going on right now in the South China Sea, with China playing this (to me) weird and bitchy game of using military vessels to damage other countries’ vessels or people, but with the “not weapons” parts of their military vessels (water cannons or flares or etc). To me it is just fuckin weird pussyfooting “I’m not touching you I’m not touching you” behavior, but they’re doing it to countries like the Philippines that have defense agreements with the US which is the kind of thing that has the potential to escalate in sudden and unplanned fashion sometimes. This is a pretty good overview. I agree with you that it would be terrible for both countries, but sometimes weird and unplanned shit happens when weapons and big nations are involved.
Also, this statement from the OP article I don’t think is fully accurate:
Neither side budged from their longstanding positions on Taiwan — which China claims as its own and has not ruled out using force to take
The US doesn’t have a longstanding position on Taiwan, other than that we give them weapons and like to talk loudly and pointedly about democracy and how much we like them. We’ve spent 60 years refusing to say one way or another whether we think they’re part of China, or whether we would defend them if China attacked them with military force, and for some reason that’s been working so far. Diplomacy is weird.
There’s a very serious game of brinksmanship going on right now in the South China Sea, with China playing this (to me) weird and bitchy game of using military vessels to damage other countries’ vessels or people, but with the “not weapons” parts of their military vessels (water cannons or flares or etc). To me it is just fuckin weird pussyfooting “I’m not touching you I’m not touching you” behavior, but they’re doing it to countries like the Philippines that have defense agreements with the US which is the kind of thing that has the potential to escalate in sudden and unplanned fashion sometimes. This is a pretty good overview. I agree with you that it would be terrible for both countries, but sometimes weird and unplanned shit happens when weapons and big nations are involved.
Also, this statement from the OP article I don’t think is fully accurate:
The US doesn’t have a longstanding position on Taiwan, other than that we give them weapons and like to talk loudly and pointedly about democracy and how much we like them. We’ve spent 60 years refusing to say one way or another whether we think they’re part of China, or whether we would defend them if China attacked them with military force, and for some reason that’s been working so far. Diplomacy is weird.
I see, so it’s the naval version of the stick battles on the Indian border