Conquer Taiwan? Well of course they can, and will, and Milley will no doubt call Xi to tell him so
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next year in taipei
China Sends 38 Fighter Jets Over Taiwan in Largest Incursion Ever
In what is being described as Communist China’s largest-ever incursion in Taiwan’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), Taiwan scrambled dozens of aircraft when 38 Chinese fighter planes in two waves flew close to the island nation.
Communist China is marking the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and it’s not unusual for them to rattle Taiwan’s cage to honor the occasion. What’s unusual is the makeup of the warplanes.
The first wave of incursions comprised 18 J-16 and four Su-30 fighter jets plus two nuclear-capable H-6 bombers and an anti-submarine aircraft, while the second had 10 J-16s, 2 H-6s and an early warning aircraft, the ministry said.
The J-16 fighter is the latest carrier-based fighter aircraft in the Chinese arsenal. The Chinese are showing they are capable of launching a coordinated operation from land and sea-based platforms — something that would be necessary for an assault on Taiwan.
There is a very real purpose to the Chinese incursions that aren’t some elaborate psy-ops game.
“Xi Jinping has instructed the PLA to heighten its readiness and prepare for warfighting under ‘realistic fighting conditions.’ Hence, it is relatively unsurprising that the PLA continues to fly into Taiwan’s ADIZ as part of realistic training and preparation for armed conflict,” Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation policy think tank, told CNN on Saturday.
Beijing is seriously probing Taiwan’s defenses now as well as measuring the depth of support the U.S. holds for Taiwan. China doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks. But what if they sense a weakening of commitment to Taiwan’s independence from Biden? Or any Democrat that would replace him?
If China ever believed they could get away with absorbing Taiwan without anything more than protests from the U.S., Taiwan will likely join Hong Kong as a formerly independent province of China.
Xi’s gotta have it, and Biden and our woke military are, perhaps inadvertently — incompetence can be as fully effective as malice — signaling them to go for it. If I were a Chinee war lord, though, I’d wait for Turkey and Syria to explode next year, hopefully at the same time Israel bombs Iran. With the Middle East in flames, would anyone in the US leadership be willing to engage in a full-scale military operation on the other side of the globe? To ask is to answer.
Whenever the balloon goes up, I suspect that we’ll soon be looking back at 2021 as the Year of Living Quietly.
