Tankiedesantski [he/him]

Dedollarization and constant US imperial overreach are the two factors which are most likely to break US imperialism in the mid to long term.

American economic dominance is propped up by the ubiquity of the dollar in general trade as well as the Petro dollar. In general trade, more and more countries are pivoting to trading in their own currencies or Euros and Yuan and Rubles because of the destruction of confidence in the US dollar as a neutral reserve currency due to recent sanctions against Russia. In terms of the Petro dollar, the trend of decarbonization means that oil will be a less critical commodity over time and even now we see the likes of Saudi Arabia agreeing to sell oil to China in Yuan. Without US dollar dominance, America will not be able to print as many dollars to service its debts, which will lead to either inflation or debt default.

America, like the UK and France before it, doesn’t have the ability to fight all of its repressed imperial subjects at once. The cracks are starting to show at the US giving up against the Houthis in Yemen. The US and EU has also pegged its military prestige to the war in Ukraine, which is also starting to turn. Not only are they taking a reputational hit with every picture of a burnt out Abrams or Leopard, but lesser US allies are also starting to see that full US support doesn’t guarantee victory. Even within US policy circles there is some acknowledgement that defeat in Ukrain could lead to some sort of Suez moment for the US and NATO.

Biden is Hamas.

“Is upholding fascist racial supremacy wrong? No, I’ve merely been upholding the fascist racial supremacy of the wrong people.”

Taiwan should have used military force - or again, that might makes right.

“Should have” used military might? Are you from a parallel dimension where the First United Front didn’t end in the Shanghai Massacre? Tell me how it went down in your reality then. Chiang embraced the CPC from behind with hugs and kisses as a show of his appreciation for their alliance against the warlords?

I don’t have a morality problem because Chiang was an incompetent and corrupt jackass who started the civil war that he ended up losing on the mainland and having to flee to Taiwan Island.

It is about what you believe justifies a nation’s independence

My arguments as to international law go precisely towards your factually incorrect and repeated assertion that Taiwan Island is a “nation” or a “country”. You accuse me of “deflection” but you repeatedly asserted a factual and legal inaccuracy and refuse to address it. Your problem if you can’t engage with the argument, not mine. There is no such thing as a country or nation called “Taiwan” in the world.

The outcomes of civil wars is widely acknowledged by both state practice and opinio juris as being a legitimate factor in the determination of sovereignty over a territory. If you don’t believe me, ask the Confederate States of America and the Republic of Vietnam about their experiences and get back to me.

There is no “morality problem” because there is no issue of morality here. Morality is not a factor in international law.

Ngl it was a difficult choice between NatSec Talking Points Journalist and School of Raytheon Rainbow Washing Bard.

International recognition in line with the principles of customary international law as codified in the Montivedeo Convention make right, but that’s not very snappy.

Skill issue. If I wanted to have a recognized independent country I would simply win the civil war instead of losing and then hiding in America’s skirt like a coward.

I took two levels of journalist before I multiclassed into rogue.

The Taiwan province English-speaking journalist class are shitting themselves because they know they’ll be up against the wall when reunification comes.

Waiting for memes to all converge on crabs.

Please America. Please scuttle NAFTA over your dinosaur pickup truck industry. Nothing would be funnier.

I’m doing my part

No Todd plz, I already bought the Nokia nGage version!

ICBMs are notoriously difficult to intercept. Nobody realistically has an interception system able to take down enough of them to matter. The problem with old ICBMs is that they’re less survivable if the enemy strikes you first so you need even more warheads and delivery systems to compensate.

Nuclear war planning isn’t as simple as applying a rate of interception or failure to your stock of warheads. You have to plan for eventualities like what happens if you’re subject to a first strike - can you ensure that enough of your own warheads will survive to retaliate? If not, or if your opponent thinks not then your opponent is much more likely to try a first strike.

Modern missiles aren’t just faster or harder to shoot down, they’re also more survivable. Have you noticed that while the Russians and Chinese parade their missiles on big ass trucks, the US doesn’t seem to have any? That’s because there isn’t a road or rail mobile variant of the Minuteman 3. So those MM3s have been sitting in silos only for decades, more than enough time for opponent satellites to pinpoint exactly where they are. On the other hand, a Russian or Chinese missile can drive around their own road or rail systems and be untraceable unless you have real time satellite footage that just happens to catch them moving.

So if your missiles can’t move, you can only protect them by hardening their emplacements and silos. Unfortunately, most American silos are about as old as the missiles in them and were designed to withstand much lesser yields of warheads. Maybe some could be brought up to a newer standard, but building of that scale would also paradoxically tip your opponent off to which missile sites to target first.

Therefore, if you’re in a position where you aren’t convinced your own missiles will survive a first strike, your only move to maintain deterence is new missiles or more missiles (or both). Contracts were passed out for new missile designs around 2017 but it seems like nothing has come to fruition. Therefore the only other option is to build more warheads so that they can be fired from planes and other systems instead.

This leads on to the next point which is that warheads are not all necessarily sitting on missiles read to go at all times. Most of the time they’re in central stockpiles that are easier to guard and maintain and are only parcelled out to units in times of heightened nuclear tension. A modern nuclear power has more platforms that can deliver nukes than actual nukes themselves - the whole point of a nuclear triad (ICBMs, planes, subs) is to ensure maximal redundancy so that no one type of attack can destroy all delivery systems.

Hence, a nuclear war planner has to figure out how many ICBMs and warheads are likely to survive a first strike, then figure out how many warheads are needed to put on planes and ships and subs for a counter strike. If the US military is thimking it needs more warheads, then one major reason could be that it’s realized it’s delivery platforms are not as survivable as predicted.

America has a lot of warheads but its delivery systems are relatively behind Russian and Chinese systems. For instance, the current US land/silo based missiles are Minuteman 3s, which were first built in the 1970s. Even with upgrades, they are generally understood to be inferior to much more recent Russian Yars and Chinese Dong Feng missiles.

That said, increasing the number of warheads doesn’t really help in terms of that deficiency so the between the lines conclusion is that the new American missile systems have hit such snags that the military is considering making up the deficiency with numbers of warheads.

Maybe Todd Howard?

The rules based order actually just means “we rule with an iron fist”

Author definitely isn’t mad that China mediated the Saudi-Iranian normalization while the US has been pushing for Saudi-Israeli normalization without success.