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by publicola1990
1344 days ago
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It is not clear if any well defined "red line" has been crossed. If it has not been, then this is a "pre-emptive" strike, which could be morally hazardous. More than the cold war, US-China relationship is now looking more like US-Japan relations in years prior to world war 2. A wary US clamped down on access to resources to Japan, including oil, which denials could be seen as one of the reasons used to justify Japanese expansionism which lead to the war in Pacific which was extremely costly and tragic to all involved. Have US policy makers learnt the lessons of that conflict? Is Taiwan a major concern for the US?. The status quo on Taiwan is also the result of US policy too, Taiwanese sovereignty is not something US has really stuck out their neck for. |
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Something else that’s being lost is that China has long had similar export restrictions on high technology items of strategic importance, including many items in biotech, AI, materials science, and medicine.
The comparison to US-Japan relations before WWII is not a good one. Relations soured after Japan invaded Manchuria and infamously massacred civilians in Nanjing. That was followed by Japan becoming part of the Tripartite Alliance, aka the Axis, with Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s fascist Italy in 1940 Even then, the US continued to supply oil while cutting back on some other goods.
It wasn’t until Japan invaded French Indochina in 1941, done partially as a way to prevent the US from continuing to support China, that the US embargoed oil exports to Japan. Notably, the Imperial Japanese Navy began seriously working on the plan to attack Pearl Harbor in January 1941, long before the oil embargo was in place. Japan was going to war whether that happened or not.
This chip technology embargo isn’t going to cause the same devastating impact for China as the 1941 oil embargo was for Japan.
And yes, Taiwan is a major concern for the US and for much of the rest of the world, because it houses so much of the world’s high technology semiconductor manufacturing. A war over the island would be devastating for global supply chains and the global economy as a result.