Taiwan will be a nuclear power in two or three more years. We'll help them get there, more or less the same way we did with the Israelis. No nation on Earth needs the Bomb more desperately.

In order to attack Taiwan, China will probably pull the trigger on North Korea and get the US involved in that battle and then have them make the choice between all out war on two fronts or giving up Taiwan.

Captain Joe: Den Beste made a comment a while back to the effect that "The US can fight a 10 front war, but 8 of them will have to be nuclear".

Anybody know what President Chen Shui-bian's drink of choice is? I'd like to hoist a few to a man that brave.

If there's a time to do this, it's now. China will only be getting stronger, Taiwan more isolated. The longer we wait, the worse the odds get.

ummm since when isn't taiwan a nuclear power??

most of the informed analysis i've seen says that they are very much so, and did some work with israel & south africa (which was also undeclared nuke, and gave them up after transfer of power)

they were very friendly up until nixon, and could have easily become nuclear... canada did alot of the work in developing the bomb and simply decided they didn't want it (its not like they would need nukes to face off any possible enemies, due to close alignment with us and britain)

us could easily fight over taiwan and korea at the same time... the attack subs and some aegis to fight off the chicom invasion fleet, while the rest got to korea to eliminate the north (none of the pussyfooting around like in the last one)

or just get rid of beijing and the larger military bases then ask governor of shanghai if he wants more (seeing as how politburo wont exist)

1) If you want to kiss someone for the Israeli nuclear program, that would be the French. Link to info here.

2) With the South Africans, they basically were swapping the Isrealis yellowcake for technology. The US wasn't really altogther that fond of it, but we didn't really have meaningful confirmation until SA dismantled its program ('cuz they only built 6). Link to info here.

3) Taiwan, much like Saudi Arabia was interested in a nuclear program as early as the mid-70's. And much like Saudi, there was a tacit understanding reached underwhich the US would place the countries under their nuclear and convential umbrellas in exchange for which they would cease proliferation activity. Prior to that the Taiwanese had been working with both Israel and South Africa. I guess I'll have to write about the Taiwanese nuclear program before too awful long. At any rate, one the things worth remembering about any Taiwanese program is they suffer the same problem that Japan does. They are faced with nuclear armed opponents but simply to do not have enough territory to make preservation of a land-based second strike capability viable, nor are they inclined to build boomers because they are awfully costly if all they can ever be is a revenge weapon.

As an actual comment to the Chen-Shui Ban issue at hand, this is the dominant problem in Northeast Asia, in the case of both Taiwan and North Korea, the people with their fingers on the trigger (Chen-Shui Ban, and Nuclear Elvis) are not, in fact, the belligerants with the most to lose. In both cases, they can be viewed as effective US/China proxy conflicts, but ones which neither the US nor China really has altogether that much control over.

My bad - the Taiwanese nuclear program started in 1964. I guess that's what I get for making things up. :)

The real problem we have here is that the MAD doctrine no longer has credibility with much of the world. With the Soviet Union they knew a launch would be more or less the end of the world as we know it. And we knew it too. Now we have islamofascists and others who think they can accomplish their agenda by doing so. Somehow these types need to be convinced that any application of nuclear arms will result in their cause and any supporters of it will go away forever, possibly with anybody of similar background innocent or guilty going with it.

"If Chen gets his referendum, things are going to get awfully tense across the Tawain Straits."

If Chen gets his referendum, there will be war. It's difficult to see how the CCP, which has tried to tie its legitimacy to the most jingoistic kind of patriotism, can survive losing Taiwan. Beijing will therefore do whatever it things is necessary to avoid that result, including attempting to destroy Taiwan and engaging the US military, if it comes to that.

If it does come to the latter, as an American living in Hong Kong, I wonder if I'll be interred? That would suck.

conrad baby, you would definitely be "interred"... you are probably reaching for "interned" or placed in an internment camp for the length of hostilities, which is unlikely

however, you would have a decent chance of being "interred" i.e. buried in a grave... your body might survive the attack, and who knows, there may be burial processes (depends on how hot HK is)

interned would require a relatively long war, whereas this would most likely be very short... its not like china can establsih a beachead.. they either destroy taiwan, destroy the us fleet and take over, have their forces destroyed, or have forces destroyed and china invaded or eliminated... hk is rather close to the action and might get hit with a nuke or 10

re sa and taiwan... while we're pretty sure saudi can't dev the tech locally.. taiwan has a very large industrial capacity... certainly much larger than pakistan... i wouldn't rest on them staying non nuclear... and it wouldn't take very long... refinement capabilities are rather important for chip fabs...

Giving me crap over a typo, geez. Come on, cut me some slack, I went to publik skul.