Thursday, October 24, 2019

Holding the Line

China doesn't like it when we sell weapons to Taiwan (but what doesn't displease them)? But our weapons sales are crucial to our western Pacific position.

Yeah:

There are multiple reasons for Washington’s willingness to arm Taiwan despite Beijing’s anger over what it sees as meddling in Chinese internal affairs. From a military perspective, though, the most important reason is that without Taiwan, the Pentagon’s strategy for containing China would be severely weakened and might come completely unraveled. To understand why, all you have to do is look at a map.

I've noted that the Taiwan issue is more than a Taiwan issue, given the free democracy's position as a cork in the bottle penning in China's fleet.