A choice remark: “We’re now defending the fact that we’re in Aukus.
“If we weren’t in Aukus, we wouldn’t need to defend it. If we didn’t have an aggressive ally like the United States – aggressive to others in the region – there’d be nobody attacking Australia. We are better left alone than we are being ‘protected’ by an aggressive power like the United States.
“Australia is capable of defending itself.
“There’s no way another state can invade a country like Australia with an armada of ships without it all failing. I mean, Australia is quite capable of defending itself. We don’t need to be basically a pair of shoes hanging out of the Americans’ backside.”
I’ll lay my cards out on the table. I have some good friends from Taiwan. By and large, they’re not fans of the current US policy, seeing it as potentially more likely to antagonise China than to help. They’re fans of the status quo staying exactly as it is. But they’re really not fans of China. They idea of China invading Taiwan is an absolute terrifying existential dread for Taiwanese people. One of my friends is lucky enough to already have citizenship in NZ and partly reside here in Aus thanks to that. Another has spent some serious effort researching options to move money somewhere that couldn’t be seized by China if they did invade and he decided to flee, including some greyish legality bank accounts in other countries, and looking at cryptocurrencies. I’m not sure 100% where exactly he stands on that right now.
I’m also extremely wary, by default, especially on Lemmy, of people trying to defend Chinese aggression. This platform has a lot of pro-China stooges, who pretend to have leftist beliefs but are more than happy to defend or deny atrocities committed by countries that aren’t even vaguely leftist, like modern-day Russia, or countries that pretend to leftism while embracing a large degree of authoritarian control over individual actions while allowing a lot of corporate exploitation of people, like China does. In other words: tankies. But I’ve seen you around before and I want to give you the benefit of the doubt.
As far as many of your bullet points: I don’t have any time for whataboutism. It’s an extremely dishonest and lazy form of argument. I don’t give a fuck if the West has also done bad in the past, or even if it’s continuing to do so. That doesn’t excuse China invading independent countries, and doesn’t provide any sort of even vague excuse for suggesting countries shouldn’t support Taiwanese’s de facto independence remaining exactly as it is. That sort of whataboutism is the hallmark of tankies, and whether used deliberately for that reason or out of a sincere belief, it does nothing but undermine the argument of the person making it.
The bottom line is that China invading Taiwan would be exactly the same as Russia invading Ukraine. It’s an aggressive and illegal invasion of an independent country, done on the basis of some false arguments about the invalidity of that country’s right to its own self-determination. It should be, at the very least roundly condemned and the defending country given aid to help it defend itself. Even if direct military support is not involved.
I’m really sorry for your friends, their situations are horrible.
I’m about as far from a tankie as you can get lmfao, I am an anarchist, I want every single tyrant whether petty or not to stop or get the mussolini treatment - from landlords to kings. But gearing up for war footing is not about right or wrong; It is about whether or not millions of people dying, ploughsheers being melted to bullets, diplomatic options being burned, and peasants being dispossessed serves the political elite. That is the only way nations wage war.
Look at Iraq, Sadam was a horrible maniac and a tyrant. Is life better now? Did that war help anyone? I don’t think it did at all.
If the people of Taiwan are to maintain some political freedom war against a nuclear armed superpower is not the way. Countries are run by fucking maniacs and international law is broadly understood as supporting the PRCs position on Taiwan which complicates things and means direct intervention is very likely to escalate. Possibly to the use of nuclear bombs.
I’d recommend you read that book, I think you’ll like it. They are in favour of the current USA led hegemony and the deeply unequal global order, so you don’t need to worry about secret leftism or secret authoritarianism masquerading as leftism. They just also see the asia-pacific with much more nuance than your average polly or ‘journo’ and see australia taking a more peaceful route into the future.
To be clear: their situation today is not horrible at all. It’s totally fine. It will only become horrible if a foreign country invades their home.
Again, comparing the idea of China invading Taiwan to situations like Sadam Hussain is a mistake. Because we’re not talking about one country interfering in another country’s internal issues. We’re talking about one country providing a degree of protection to another against a third country invading them. Defensive military aid is a completely different question to invading a country for its internal practices, even if those internal practices are tyrannical. We’re talking about a hypothetical situation where war has broken out regardless, and it’s just a question of ensuring that the little guy doesn’t get totally overrun by a much bigger country.
It’s great to talk about taking a peaceful attitude into the future. But I don’t see any way the region can be peaceful with the threat of China invading other countries’ territory. It’s bad enough today with them using their military to invade other countries’ waters deep in the southern South China Sea. This isn’t the USA, or Australia as a proxy for the USA, being aggressive or upsetting peace. The peace is being upset by China.
Any discussion about Taiwan that doesn’t fundamentally start from the premise that it is an independent country and its people have the right to self-determination is not one to be taken seriously. Because it’s either in bad faith or a level of ignorance that makes it impossible to take any conclusions seriously. And that’s not what I see from people like Keating who talk about friendly relations with China without acknowledging the very real possibility that China trying to invade Taiwan is a completely unacceptable action. And his talk about how it should just be left for China to invade because it’s “not a vital Australian interest” is just nationalistic bullshit, putting the lives of Australians ahead of anyone else.