You don't read my mind well if you think that I am against China defending itself. Most nations have an army for that purpose.
I am against China performing threatening exercises near Taiwan and against China claiming the majority of the South China Sea for themselves when hundreds of millions of other people live on its shores.
Clearly Taiwan does not want to be "defended" by China, but is rather desperately asking for defence against China. Also, the international court ruled against China's claim to control everything behind the 9-dash line. It's not true that China needs that line to defend itself - it has done so perfectly well since 1947 without it.
Does India need to control the Indian Ocean in order to defend itself?
What about Mexico, should it control the Gulf of Mexico? Ireland, the Irish Sea? Etc.
And, by the way, as of 2024, you don't really need to control the entire sea (or even half of it) to prevent the enemy from landing on your shores. Any military worth its cost has a large assortment of missiles for that purpose.
Case in point: Ukraine has unambigously denied the Russians (the Russians!) control of the Black Sea while literally having no navy to speak of. By shooting at them from land. That is how it goes.
Taiwan also doesn't rely on its control of the seas to defend itself. Even the Israeli Navy is comparatively weak. Etc.
Taiwan is literally an independent country, although they promote a policy of strategic vagueness about this in hopes that it will discourage China from launching an invasion. The arguments China makes for its ownership of Taiwan are no more defensible, and arguably less, than Portugal's justifications for maintaining ownership of Goa.
It's not a country according to the UN because China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Does Taiwan have its own military? Yes.
Does it issue its own passports? Yes.
Do you have to have their visa to land there? Yes.
That's a country.
And you, sir, on this thread, sound more like a propagandist than someone trying to have an actual conversation. You're not here to converse, to listen, but only to trumpet your talking points. That's not what HN is for, and you've been here long enough to know it.
The problem is not the army, but military posturing. It can too easily transition into an actual war.
Case in point: Russia. Putin's ratings were falling, and he decided to commit "a small victorious war", based on faulty assumptions. And his assumptions were faulty because all the secret agencies were filled with yes-men who were just telling Putin what he wanted to hear.
That's the problem with the authoritarian regimes: they don't have people who can stop the Dear Leader if the Dear Leader starts seriously believing in conspiracy theories and/or just goes mad with power.
The US starts a new war for posturing every few years. They have the faulty assumption that they can control the world, even as they keep losing wars. So, not a problem unique to Russia.
> The US is not in a real danger of becoming an authoritarian state
So you're saying democrats are lying? They say that may happen by the next election, so at least 50% of the population believes this is possible.
Moreover, from the point of view of foreign policy the US is already an authoritarian state. People have no say on weather to start or stop a war, anymore than the Russians have.
They are not lying. Trump is literally saying that he's going to use the military to suppress his opponents, after all. I just happen to think that the US has far more resilience built into its political system than it seems.
E.g. Project 2025 is terrible and if it's implemented, it'll result in pure hell for the regular people. But a hypothetical Trump administration won't be able to implement even a fraction of it. It'll need many dozens of new laws passed, and probably even new Amendments.
And then there are also individual states that hold a lot of power to sabotage the laws that they don't like. For an example, look at the "sanctuary city" laws in California or Washington.
Mind you, it doesn't mean that a hypothetical Trump administration won't hurt a lot of people. I'm just saying that it won't be able to totally monopolize the political power.
> I just happen to think that the US has far more resilience
Well, if this is true then democrats are lying. They pretend the US can be transformed into a dictatorship if Trump is elected.
But the real point is that in terms of foreign policy the US is already a nondemocratic state, because both parties support non-ending wars and are financed by the MIC. The voters don't matter anymore.
