> Who is threatening Japan with cruise missiles? Certainly not China or Russia. North Korea, perhaps.
China has said that they believe that, in the event of hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike US forces everywhere in the region -- and the US Navy still has a strong presence in Japan. Also S. Korea and the Philippines.
This means potentially launching missiles at these countries too, and the Chinese have made it very clear to all involved that they will consider and/all US allies in the region as potential belligerents and act accordingly. AKA military action against Japan and SK, and possibly Australia and NZ. It is just another part of the Taiwan political calculus.
Point is: moving the fabs out of Taiwan doesn't mean shit if they're still in a country that China could strike, and in the case of Japan, would likely strike, in the event of hostilities.
> China has said that they believe that, in the event of hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike US forces everywhere in the region
Do you have a source for this? I haven't heard this stated before, but I'm not an expert here.
Even taking this as true, I think it's a big leap to go from striking US military bases in Japan, to striking civilian infrastructure in those countries.
It seems quite clear to me that the opening salvo you are hypothesizing (attacking multiple military bases and civilian targets) would be an act of war against the USA and Japan. This would certainly provoke all-out war with the US, and they have a first-use policy that could entail a nuclear response.
Frankly the whole scenario above seems extremely unlikely to me, and I think Ukraine is the better example to model here. Essentially, China occupies Taiwan, and dares the US to strike in retaliation, knowing that their retaliation would be the thing that triggers armageddon, and betting that the US is not actually willing to escalate militarily over Taiwan. I predict that China would take an effort to avoid attacking any US military personnel stationed in Taiwan (I gather this is just an unofficial presence), because the rational play is to give the US as little excuse as possible to escalate in response.
In other words, China MUST offer the US a path to de-escalation/capitulation in order to take Taiwan without a war with the USA. It's much easier to take Taiwan without a full war with the USA (obviously, IMO).
They're not even remotely capable of doing that before US intervenes. Taiwan is a heavily fortified island with unfriendly geography and a massive high tech army.
Sure, I'm not making any claims on whether they can successfully do that, just that in this widely-studied geopolitical contest, it's the most likely move that they will attempt to achieve their publicly-stated goals. (And not some crazy all-out war on the US and its allies as GP was proposing.)
FWIW on the likelihood of this specific claim, my impression is that the Pentagon considers it likely that they will try to annex Taiwan at some point in the next decade, e.g. see yesterday's headlines from Blinken (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-17/blinken-s...).
I don't have any particular domain knowledge to judge how hard it would be for China to occupy Taiwan (or how much more military power China would need to tip the balance in its favor), but I'm interested in any hard analysis that you can share on the subject. The general reading I've seen has suggested that they would be able to do so in the next 10-20 years if current trends in military growth pan out.
That sounds like saber rattling to me. Trying to scare diplomats with talk of armageddon to secure a better bargaining position. It's a constant of international politics and one shouldn't read too much into it. The same is true of North Korea talking about turning Seoul into a crater whenever they need to ask for food aid.
> China has said that they believe that, in the event of hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike US forces everywhere in the region -- and the US Navy still has a strong presence in Japan. Also S. Korea and the Philippines.
This would be starting World War III. It would be akin to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, with the main difference being, we have thousands of nukes and China does not. This course of action is so profoundly stupid that I cannot imagine China taking it.
China has said that they believe that, in the event of hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike US forces everywhere in the region -- and the US Navy still has a strong presence in Japan. Also S. Korea and the Philippines.
This means potentially launching missiles at these countries too, and the Chinese have made it very clear to all involved that they will consider and/all US allies in the region as potential belligerents and act accordingly. AKA military action against Japan and SK, and possibly Australia and NZ. It is just another part of the Taiwan political calculus.
Point is: moving the fabs out of Taiwan doesn't mean shit if they're still in a country that China could strike, and in the case of Japan, would likely strike, in the event of hostilities.