Maybe we'd defend them, and, if so, the US naturally wouldn't be trading with what would be our enemy.
Maybe we'd do sanctions, cross our fingers, and hope that heavily entrenched Taiwan would be able to defend itself.
Who knows? It is the mystery of strategic ambiguity. They've been, while maybe not getting along, getting by for the last couple decades. So, hopefully we'll never find out what exactly the plan is.
Luckily Taiwan built a modern economy, where most of the value is in the people who live there (rather than natural resources). And they are pretty well entrenched. The amount of force required to conquer the place would probably slay the golden goose as a side effect. Surely China's government can see the benefit of doing peaceful business there...
Neither Taiwan, nor Ukraine are about economic value. It's about "historic justice" and protecting vital long-term national interests as seen by rulers of China and Russia respectively (e.g. in the Chinese case the latter is about breaking the first island chain). The economic aspect certainly plays a major limiting role, but it has limits as we can see today with Russia.
I really don't think they are comparable situations.
Things are working out for China at the moment. No reason to press the issue, possibly upsetting the favorable status quo, until they are powerful enough that they know nobody will say anything.
Not even touching the political aspect (Ukrainian nationalism being clearly anti-Russian long before 2014), for the Russian military having well established NATO military bases in Ukraine and Georgia is many times worse than for US to have Russian bases in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America (and you should remember how US reacted to the possibility of those). And no, the Russian military can not responsibly believe in "defensiveness" of NATO for a number of good reasons.
The invasion itself is clearly a bad and desperate move, but it comes after all the previous moves (from trying to be friends with NATO during the pre-Munich years and keeping Ukraine on the hook using the Minsk agreements) were exhausted and it has piled on top of the utter failure of Russian policy on the Ukrainian front since 91 (targeting oligarchs instead of population).
Are you kidding? What about all the natural resources of Ukraine? And huge arable land?
If Russia managed to control Ukraine, even at terrible but temporary cost in 100 years Russia would be much better off with Ukraine than without. It would make Russia even more serious player on so many markets.
They never drew their economic power from people. They could exterminate all Ukrainians and still come on top economically in the long term if they controlled the land.
As for gas, we can see how overt declarations about going off carbon fuels are squaring against reality where German leaders are practically crawling up Putins ass in the middle of the war to ensure harmoneous future cooperation with a country that has only carbon fuels.
The plan is we suck it up because there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. Why? Because China is a nuclear power. And unlike Russia, we are absolutely dependent on Chinese exports to a degree it would cripple us completely to place sweeping sanctions on China.
Yes we have a law saying we will defend Taiwan. No we actually won't. Because we can't.
It is worth noting that it isn't that easy to invade Taiwan. At its closest point, 21 miles separates England from France. On a clear day you can see the white cliffs of Dover from France. Yet that 21 mile gap has meant that the last time England was successfully invaded was almost 1000 years ago (in 1066 to be precise). For almost 5 years the Germans had uncontested control of Western Europe and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
From the other side, the D-Day invasion took 2+ years of planning and massive resources to cross the English Channel with sufficient force not to get immediately wiped out.
Chinca could probably do it but the cost would be incredibly high. Airlifting would take a lot and be vulnerable to air defenses. Sea is a much more practical option but vulnerable to many defenses too.
I am sorry but I don't agree, that statement presumes that the goal is to defeat the enemy in a conflict.
The goal is clearly to avoid having the conflict in the first place. To do that you must make clear to the opposing side where the line is and that they should not cross it.
The policy until now was not to appear weak, but to maintain an ambiguity, cynically allowing the US to partly deter an attack, preventing Taiwan from declaring indepence and maintaining the option of not getting involved without losing credibility.
By my armchair amateur analysis I think that while the policy worked great in the past, it looks like now it is starting to fail to deter and the option of not getting involved without losing credibility was always an illusion. The only thing it achieves now is the prevention of Taiwan declaring independence.
To me at least it looks it's time to make it clear that Taiwan will be defended, in order to deter war.
Maybe we'd do sanctions, cross our fingers, and hope that heavily entrenched Taiwan would be able to defend itself.
Who knows? It is the mystery of strategic ambiguity. They've been, while maybe not getting along, getting by for the last couple decades. So, hopefully we'll never find out what exactly the plan is.
Luckily Taiwan built a modern economy, where most of the value is in the people who live there (rather than natural resources). And they are pretty well entrenched. The amount of force required to conquer the place would probably slay the golden goose as a side effect. Surely China's government can see the benefit of doing peaceful business there...