Donald Trump Suggests He Would Not Defend Taiwan From China

Beaver [she/her]@lemmy.ca to politics @lemmy.world – 432 points –
Donald Trump suggests he would not defend Taiwan from China
newsweek.com
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Yes America will, he just hasn't been told how the US economy would collapse without Taiwanese semiconductors yet. Taiwan will not let China take the fabs intact, it's their insurance forcing the west to help them.

He's perfectly okay collapsing the economy as long as he and a few rich friends make it out with more in the short term.

Just depends on if Taiwan or China gives him the bigger kickback.

Kickback sound nefarious and non-official. Call it a reward for official services. That'd make it completely legal per the SCOTUS ruling

Exactly then it's all very cool and very legal thanks to the US supreme court. Honestly it's my official duty to collect unnamed sums of cash for favours, how else can a poor President of the most powerful nation on Earth ever survive?

Nah, Russia is Trump's true love. He doesn't care if China benefits, as long as it weakens the US, because that is what benefits Russia.

He doesn't need to make a decision or get a kickback. Russia has already provided for his every need; a massive publicity campaign that is ongoing, unlimited money in the form of crooked bank lending and sweetheart real estate deals. He gets Russian intelligence on whatever might threaten him or enrich him.

He saw the Russian oligarchy in which a handful of cutthroat dogs control everything and can do whatever they want, and fell in love.

This is exactly what "America should not defend other countries" dumbos don't understand.

Trump is a literal traitor, if it destroys the US then it’s a good thing to him.

The United States will lose its super power status with Donald Trump as president

and it will be transferred to China with Russia as their lapdog. A new age of authoritarianism which will be extremely costly and deadly to quell ala wwii

I don't even know who would be able to fight the trio from hell. At that point it's only a matter of time before the whole planet is fascist.

France, UK, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Finland, and presumably quite a few American mercenaries that don't want to watch the global society fall into corruption.

Yup, the US (and it's military personnel) would be split if it joins the new axis powers in WW3. That split would do significant damage to the readiness and performance of military as a whole.

Not only that, I guarantee they will push us out of being the world's reserve currency.

Once that happens, we no longer can enforce our will around the globe via soft power (threat of tariffs, sanctions, ect.). Goodbye to normal prices of any kind and hello hyperinflation.

That would explain his sudden love for crypto after bashing Bitcoin during his first term.

If you just read Promise #3 in the Forward of the Project 2025 document, I believe that's the point.

Any time globalization is mentioned, it's in a negative way. They call the global US treaties and economic policy a woke, progressive failure. They blame much of America's problems on our current path of global leadership.

They have to pull it all in and weed out what they dont like before they try to expand in a way that fits their image. (Oil and manufacturing) It's how governments like this function.

Which is hilarious, if the dollar stops being the reserve currency for oil America's massive debt mountain will be called in and the economy will collapse.

Yeah...alot of them don't think it through. What was the Pol Pot guy in Cambodia... He kills everyone that's not a farmer, then he needs someone to fix the broken radio...

it will effectively hand trillions of dollars of business investments directly to china.

It needs to, the US needs to mind it's own business

The US needs to act like a global citizen, not the global police.

Saying that they have been a significant stabilizing pwer post ww2, and the changing world order would create significant upset.

(Hate the term world order as it makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist - I mean the actual international relations definition)

Well for now the US remains the only global super power.

People say China is a superpower now, and maybe they will be, and perhaps they edge America out in certain, specific economic or military measures, but they don't have the high power, strategic alliances that America has.

NATO, Five Eyes, NORAD, ANZUS, US France, US Japan, South Pacific Treaty, US Canada (most? of the arctic), US Brazil, US Australia. UK. South Korea. Mexico.

Even in Africa, we have a string of alliances right through the middle (the part that isn't just desert), and still lesser, but still significant alliances in south and north Africa. Check the receipts on mutual defense agreements, cooperation agreements, joint military exercises, to say nothing of the many energy, space, and naval alliances, strategic military bases and territory; Alaska and Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Gaum, Samoa.

Wow, China has more people; their GDP should correlate but it doesn't. Also, seems like having more people may be a liability. One thing they definitely have going for them is public infrastructure, still with massive wealth and income inequality.

Trump is an idiot and a coward. He doesn't give a shit about global security, he doesn't get that abandoning allies only makes us look weak and unreliable, and he has no principles which could compel him to take a stand. He will decide things based on his own emotions and ego, doing whatever he thinks makes him look good. And his idea of looking good is less about being a leader or statesman and more about pretending to be a tough guy that gets respect by rewarding friends and punishing enemies.

Remember, this is the guy who, when faced with a choice between showing leadership in the face of a pandemic or downplaying the disease so that it wouldn't be associated with him, went with downplaying the disease. If he can't be trusted to make the right choice in a conflict between a virus and humanity, why would we ever expect him to make the tough call to defend an ally in a difficult conflict.

Honestly, I think if Trump had been president in 1941, he would have downplayed the significance of Pearl Harbor and would have used it as an excuse to stop aid to our allies. But I'm sure he'd still be all for internment, it's very much his style.

pretending to be a tough guy that gets respect by rewarding friends and punishing enemies.

Or vice-versa, when it comes to the US' relationship with the countries themselves (as opposed to his personal fawning sycophancy towards dictators).

Right, it's not about whether they are America's friend or foe, it's only about their relationship with Trump. And unfortunately, Trump seems to be better at relating to dictators.

And it probably doesn't help that democratically elected leaders from countries that have longstanding relationships with the US tend to expect America to live up to it's obligations. They aren't coming in and kissing the ring in exchange for favors, they're putting the burden on the president to, you know, do his fucking job. "What's that, Ukraine wants the defense funding that congress allocated for them? Well what will they do for me?"

And unfortunately, Trump seems to be better at relating to dictators.

I know you're not intentionally mincing words, but I prefer to be as explicit about it as possible: Trump idolizes dictators and wants to be just like them. He is a fanboi of Putin, Xi, et al.

Russia, China - hell, North Korea - take whatcha want.

No wonder the idiot commies are for him.

They are not really commies. But I'd guess you know that.

Edit: In case it's not clear, I strenuously object to the use of "commie" as a pejorative, particularly when it makes no sense whatsoever.

Then what are they?

Totalitarian. The specific flavor is Juche. It started as an ostensible offshoot of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and then became whatever the ruling family wanted it to become as time went on. By now, its essentially just a cult of personality/deification ideology around Kim jong un.

North Korea is absolutely not socialist or communist in any meaningful sense.

Auth left, where the state plays the part as the capitalist and it's citizens are human resources to be managed.

Hasn't Auth left and Auth right had enough time leading the world? (All of human history)

I honestly don’t know what they are. I doubt they do.

I think they are a new definition to be honest. Is authoritarian one?

No idea. They’re very unhappy about everything. So - maybe?

Then why would you say "idiot commies"?

They mask at leftist, but if you connect the dots they exclusively pipe up for trump and authoritarian countries like Russia, Iran or China

If everything is shared under communism, that would include political power. That makes communism (IMO) a direct democracy. Does that sounds like those countries to you?

What the fuck does it matter what I think? I never forwarded my opinion on the matter and simy made observations

They claim to be communist in some cases. Socialist is also a sort of blanket term which “means something” which - is somehow different from what others know it as. And “liberal” is an insult, so. They’re very confident they’re “left” of all creation, and any real-world effort to help people through existing national political structures is obviously corrupt and unworthy of examination.

Does that help?

Have you ever tried asking?

The term you're looking for is Marxist-Leninist. It is by far the largest communist ideology in the world.

If we're not going to have bases all over the world, we can shrink the size of the military, right?

Right? Insert Anakin/Padme meme

This kind of declarations are very dangerous and could lead to other countries to produce their own nuclear weapons (South Korea for example)

A bit different, but South Korea already asked the US to redeploy nuclear weapons to South Korea and im fairly positive the US already agreed.

I hope that if Trump wins the elections he don't reconsider this agreement

My friend... The gop's stated goals are to "dismantle the administrative state." That agreement won't be worth shit if he wins

They want to fire all federal employees, and shut down our regulatory agencies (or at the very least, cause them to grind to a halt). And the ones they do hire back will be "their people." In other words, sycophants who also want to dismantle the administrative state, but from the inside.

I'm sure it will be a GREATLY reduced workforce just to drive home to people how "ineffective" those agencies and systems of government are.

This is not a conspiracy theory, these are their stated policy goals. Don't let this "unity" bullshit coming from Trump post assassination attempt fool you. His campaign is clearly trying to distance themselves from their own stated policy goals because they know how unpopular they are. Take a moment to let that sink in...

The Heritage Foundation made the mistake of saying it out loud. I guess they thought there were more Republican voters that are like them (that is to say, evil, rather than just a working class person that's been misled into voting against their interests)

That agreement likely won't be worth the paper it's printed on. At least, if I were a foreign power, that's how I would be proceeding. As if these things do not exist. Because they won't.

Nationalism taking over globalism..

It's so incredibly short sighted. It's like your neighbor asking to borrow your hose because his garage is on fire, and saying no because it costs water and doesn't directly help you. Not only is that going to mean your neighbor is never, ever going to help you with anything, but if that garage fire turns into a raging house fire, your house might go down too.

"The globalist oligarchs are taking over!" - locally grown free range organic oligarchs probably

Fat greasey bearded red neck squeals intensify

China takes over Taiwan and starts restricting AI training chips to USA 😂

Cool I can't wait until the price of all of our electronics goes up 400%.

Maybe then all of the "I don't care, politics doesn't affect me" idiots will finally wake the fuck up.

Well he is a little bitch that's afraid of a fight, so...

Of course he merely “suggests” because he has no idea what he would actually do. He probably thinks Taiwan is a K-pop band.

"Trump's comments still fall broadly within the ambit of the longstanding U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity regarding any action in the event of a Taiwan contingency."

Ah yes, the strategic ambiguity that strategist Trump is known to utilize.

Good thing the ambit is so broad as to hold all of his strategies.

I legitimately have no idea what this comment means.

Hypothetically he wins and China invaded." Biden was weak." Supporters swoon. Geopolitical affairs get dumber.

Good he's probably not that good of a fighter

Most of the world does not want the USA promoting civil wars, coupes and proxy wars between neighboring countries to assure their hegemony.

I wouldn't expect Biden to either, if China actually went for it.

There's only a handful of places who even recognise Taiwan as a country, and Paraguay sure ain't coming to the rescue of nVidia's share price if it kicks off.

Because the entire world, including the US recognizes Taiwan is part of China

Only officially. Which sounds like a smart ass response but it's not.

If US recognized Taiwan as its own country it would lose a major trading partner, affect global stability and trade... and do not much else. We know why warships are there, military bases in close proximity, bilateral exercises take place - but officially sure, you own them.

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