There is a debate in Congress about giving US President Joe Biden the right to wage war with the People’s Republic in the event of an invasion of Taiwan by China. Such a dispute could also spark a nuclear war.
A debate is going on within the Democratic Party about whether US President Joe Biden should be given more power. Specifically, it is about a military reaction to a potential invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Accordingly, the centrists among the Democrats are strongly in favor of expanding the president’s war powers. The “progressives” (left) are reluctant. Yet.
A Democrat in the House of Representatives, Vice-Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Elaine Luria (Democrats, Virginia), advocated in a guest post for the Washington Post for Transferring war powers to Biden.
Luria fears it will take too long to get congressional approval if China is to take Taiwan. “So if you can’t act fast enough, China will take Taiwan with ease,” she said Foreign Policy.
Luria describes the need for authorization to fight China as necessaryto “de-escalate” the situation despite the obvious risks. “Without the ability for the president to respond immediately, any delay would prevent the United States from responding at a lower level of conflict to stave off an invasion and de-escalate the situation,” she wrote in the Post.
Republican support
Republican hawks have already drafted a bill. This would give Biden the power to go to war with China over Taiwan. “My Republican colleagues introduced the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act in February, to give the president the authority to counter an invasion of Taiwan and prevent a fait accompli. This law is a good starting point for solving a legal dilemma, ”Luria said in the Post.
It is precisely the Republicans who in recent years (especially during Donald Trump’s presidency) have massively promoted the containment of China. At the moment, it looks like the Biden administration is following suit.
What would the USA’s chances be?
However, showed several simulations of the US militarythat the US armed forces would be mercilessly inferior to the Chinese in such a scenario:
Last fall, the US Air Force simulated a conflict that is more than a decade in the future. It began with a Chinese biological weapon attack that hit US bases and warships in the Indo-Pacific region. Then a major Chinese military exercise was used as cover for the deployment of a massive invasion force. The simulation culminated in Chinese missile strikes on US bases and warships in the region, as well as a lightning strike from the air and an amphibious assault on the island of Taiwan.
The result was sobering. What many Americans don’t know is that the Pentagon’s years of secret war games strongly suggest that the U.S. military would lose this war. And it does so faster and faster every year.
Air Force Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, assistant chief of staff, strategy, integration and requirements, told Yahoo News exclusively:
More than a decade ago, our War Games indicated that the Chinese were doing a good job investing in military skills that made our preferred model of expeditionary warfare, in which we advance our troops and operate from relatively safe bases and sanctuaries, increasingly difficult would do. At that point in time, the trend in our war games was not only that we were losing, but that we were also losing faster. After the 2018 war game, I clearly remember one of our war game gurus standing before the Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff of the Air Force and telling them we were doing this war game scenario [eines chinesischen Angriffs auf Taiwan] should never play again because we know what’s going to happen. The definitive answer, if the US military doesn’t change course, is that we will lose quickly. In that case, an American president would likely be faced with an almost fait accompli.
What do the hawks want to achieve?
Despite this knowledge, do the centrist Democrats and Republicans now want to give the senile US president the power to attack China militarily in the event of an invasion of Taiwan? Do these politicians really want to start a nuclear war?
And not only that: the entire Pacific fleet could be destroyed. All US bases with tens of thousands of soldiers would be rubble and ashes. In Japan, in South Korea, in Guam … everything destroyed within a few hours. All because of Taiwan? Should the USA risk or even lose an important part of its navy and air force within a few days? A nuclear war would then be inevitable. But the USA would not win this despite the nuclear superiority. Nobody can win a nuclear war. So what’s the point?
