Thread: A disaster for All Concerned: Taiwan War Games

The official line from Beijing re Taiwan has not changed in over 60 years. A 'renegade province' and they wish to reunite by peaceful means, but do not rule out military force.
The official line from the USA hasn't changed in 43 years- they do not recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state, rather as part of the PRC.
These are the only countries that still recognise Taiwan-

Country	Year Relations
Belize	1989-present
Guatemala	1933-present
Haiti	1956-present
Holy See (Vatican City)	1942-present
Honduras	1985-present
Marshall Islands	1998-present
Nauru	1980-2002, 2005-present
Palau	1999-present
Paraguay	1957-present
Saint Kitts and Nevis	1983-present
Saint Lucia	1984-1997, 2007-present
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	1981-present
Tuvalu	1979-present

https://worldpopulationreview.com/co...cognize-taiwan

Warmongers should take their bullshit elsewhere- they might have more luck.

Surely you have heard the saying "Won the battle but lost the War"? I thought you guys invented it.
Then again, you guys even describe the Battle of Lake Changjin as a victory. And Tet. And Arnhem.

Not to be outdone, we brits have our Dunquerque.

I'm afraid the Winner gets naming rights. This was the longest retreat in US military history. Oh but of course, a US victory!


When a breast beating self proclaimed US Patriot declares Victory, it's time to unfurl the white flag.





US says Assad will fall, Arab states offer safe haven

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's departure was "inevitable," a senior US official said on Wednesday, while earlier in the day troops shot dead eight pro-democracy protesters and wounded in 25 at a funeral in the capital Damascus, activists said.


US says Assad will fall, Arab states offer safe haven









We’re Winning in Afghanistan

Why hasn't the media noticed?

We’re Winning in Afghanistan – Foreign Policy

Originally Posted by sabang

Tet

Hey, I was in that one!

Killed a bunch of slopes in that particular donnybrook. Gooks galore. Thousands of the bastards.

Even though at the time we folks knew we had won hands down, in retrospect, the war was lost.

Why you ask? Answer is easy. As with all wars the combined stronger will and the means win wars. The US had the means but Tet was the turning point that eroded the up to then will.

At the time being a young and foolish gung ho swabby I had no clue of the impact of what Uncle Walt said after the Tet offensive, “We are mired in a stalemate [and] the only rational way out, then, will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.”

The beginning of the end of the war for the US. US left Vietnam and South Vietnam fell to the North shortly there after.

Bottom line, the US lost the war.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Nobody intends to attack China

You may want to consider the NaGaStan and Chinese official opinion.

The 16% just spent many hours recently and previously running such war games scenarios, generally never winning.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

No such thing

Some History :

Ukraine: Putin announces Donetsk and Luhansk recognition

21 February 2022 Section BBC News
"Ukraine: Putin announces Donetsk and Luhansk recognition Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that he is recognising the independence of two breakaway regions of Ukraine.

The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are in the east of the country and could allow him to move troops into Ukraine.
The move has been condemned by Nato and Western countries."

Subsection Europe

Ukraine: Putin announces Donetsk and Luhansk recognition - BBC News

Utilising the UNSC adopted Kosovo resolution.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 - Wikipedia

Originally Posted by sabang

Dunquerque

You may be jumbling Alberquerque which is of Arabic descent.

Dunkerque please if you must use our spelling, my stepfather was a freeman of the city. The Flemish name more commonly used in Flanders, Belgium and teh Anglosphere is Dunkirk.

The town's name is from Vlaams/Flamingo/Flamand/Flemish a language similar to Modern Dutch .

Dun from Duun meaning a Dune of sands , the North Sea sand stretch broken only by estuaries from their to beautiful Denmark, I have had the pleasure to hike cycle and sail some of it and visit the memorials along the way.

Kirk as in the Scottish a church so Dunkirk the church in the sands.

It has a very special place in our family of misfortune, my mother's first fiance killed my uncle taken as an Officer prisoner and marched to a Polish Offlag for 5 years.

In general usage a miraculous retreat and the Dunkirk spirit of revival from a shocking defeat.

You are correct to challenge fact and warmongers whose only interest is profit. I am well aware there are two sides to any story and that once hostilities commence bad things happen. As to naked aggession as civilians I think we must agree to differ and the attack by nuclear Russia on a small neighbour , not for teh first time is a worrying issue for all peace lovers not just NATO or Europeans.

The horrors at Mariupol and Bucha will go down in the annals of infamy alongside Katyn which I am sure I need not elucidate.
For our younger posters from beyond Europe it was a WW2 massacre of 20,000 Polish Officers and teh future leadership not by the evil nazis but by Russia.

Katyn massacre - Wikipedia

At the trials in 1946, Soviet General Roman Rudenko raised the indictment, stating "one of the most important criminal acts for which the major war criminals are responsible was the mass execution of Polish prisoners of war shot in the Katyn forest near Smolensk by the German fascist invaders",[75] but failed to make the case and the U.S. and British judges dismissed the charges.[76] Only 70 years later did it become known that former OSS chief William Donovan had succeeded in getting the American delegation in Nuremberg to block the Katyn indictment

Start at 40:00

I should start the post off (related to Taiwan) with an excerpt from the article below……

The change is also essential to deter China from a possible invasion of Taiwan. “What we’ve seen from China in recent years is … an effort to undermine the longstanding status quo that’s maintained peace and stability for decades,” Blinken said.

• U.S. beefs up Marine unit in Japan amid fresh threats from China

The U.S. will station an upgraded Marine Corps unit with the ability to fire anti-ship missiles in Okinawa, Japan, in a move aimed at deterring China, top U.S. and Japanese officials announced on Wednesday.

The revamped unit, to be called the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment, will also be equipped with advanced intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on Wednesday.

“These actions will bolster deterrence in the region and allow us to defend Japan and its people more effectively in an increasingly challenging security environment,” Austin said, calling the unit “more versatile, mobile and resilient.”

The move sends a strong signal to China that the U.S. can quickly defend Japan, and the new unit will be able to rapidly respond to contingencies, Defense Department officials said.

A Marine Littoral Regiment is a hard-to-detect unit designed for operations in coastal waters. It is equipped with Naval Strike Missiles mounted atop unmanned variants of Joint Light Tactical Vehicles. The units comprise 1,800 to 2,000 service members.

Austin announced the news during a joint press conference at the State Department with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their Japanese counterparts, and comes two days before President Joe Biden is slated to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House.

While the number of American troops in Japan won’t change, Austin said the U.S. believes the new unit, which is replacing the 12th Artillery Regiment, will be “more lethal, more agile, and more capable.” The move is expected to be completed by 2025, he said.

The change is also essential to deter China from a possible invasion of Taiwan. “What we’ve seen from China in recent years is … an effort to undermine the longstanding status quo that’s maintained peace and stability for decades,” Blinken said.

That was an implicit reference to China’s intensifying military intimidation of Taiwan, which in recent weeks included an incursion of a record number of nuclear-weapons capable bombers into the self-governing island’s air defense identification zone. Those moves constitute Beijing’s efforts to “establish a new normal” favoring Chinese military power in the Taiwan Strait, Austin said, while adding that he doubted that “an invasion is imminent.”

Japan is home to 18,000 U.S. Marines, primarily based on Okinawa. But the large American military presence has been a source of tension with Tokyo for years. In all, the U.S. has roughly 54,000 troops in the country.

The deployment reflects what Blinken said was a mutual recognition that China “is the greatest shared strategic challenge that we and our allies and partners face.”

Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada used unusually blunt language in describing China as posing an “unprecedented and greatest strategic challenge” to the U.S.-Japan alliance. Hamada also expressed concern about “enhanced military cooperation” between Beijing and Moscow, an implicit reference to Chinese-Russian live-fire naval exercises in the East China Sea last month.

The news comes weeks after Tokyo unveiled its biggest military build-up since World War II, approving more than $2 billion in defense spending including hundreds of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Both Austin and Hamada referenced growing military tensions between Japan and China over the disputed island chain that Japan refers to as the Senkakus and what Beijing calls the Diaoyutai. China has fueled that friction with increasingly frequent incursions of ships into Japanese territory. “Japan and the U.S. will continue to be united in raising objections against China’s attempts to change the status quo in the East China Sea,” Hamada said.

Blinken also said the two nations will strengthen cooperation in space and cyberspace, including affirming that attacks in space could trigger Article V of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, which stipulates that the U.S. will defend Japan from an attack.

Joint U.S.-Japanese cooperation on space exploration aims “to land the first woman and person of color on the moon,” Blinken said.