No, it'd mean fighting for said people. Here's how a war with China over Taiwan would actually play out:
- Large numbers of young American men who've been rendered economically redundant by automation and globalization and whom changing societal norms have denied any chance of marriage and family are drafted and sent off to get shot by large numbers of drafted young Chinese men who're in essentially the same situation thanks to the One Child gender imbalance. In this manner, the American and Chinese status quos both remove threats to themselves
- Large sums of money, either taken directly from American taxpayers or printed, devaluing the preexisting savings of American citizens are given to military-industry complex megacorps to create even more redundant military equipment.
- Various laws to censor dissidence against the status quo and spy upon everyone are forced through, justified by 'wartime emergency'. Needless to say, once the war is over, they're never going away.
- The war is an enormous bloody stalemate at best, insofar as, if either side looks like they're winning the conventional war, their opponent can threaten to go nuclear. At worst, said bluff is called and plebeians on both sides die en masse while the wealthy and politically powerful who created said war in the first place vanish off to their private and/or government-funded bunkers, to emerge once the fallout dies down and use their hoarded technological goodies inside said bunkers to rule even more authoritatively over the survivors who've been reduced to pretechnological barbarianism as essentially feudal nobility.
It's interesting how you can have some good points, one completely wrong, and miss others that are equally as important.
Let's get started on those:
1. The Chinese
cannot sustain a long-term war with the USA. They are utterly dependent upon naval trade, and if the US Navy interdicts that, the Chinese not only have no meaningful ability to stop them, but basically every other nation in Southeast Asia will happily back the US to the hilt in doing so. Their economy will crash in weeks, and while communists are often resistant to that kind of problem, when they start to literally
starve en masse and run out of fuel oil for their war effort months later, they will not be able to sustain the effort.
2. Just because a lot of untrustworthy politicians and companies could benefit from a war, does not mean that the consequences of letting China take Taiwan
would not be even worse. Further, due to the fact that there's a nice hundred mile strip of ocean between China and Taiwan, we wouldn't end up with a need to perpetually garrison Taiwan like happened with South Korea.
3. If the US goes in, Vietnam and Japan
at a minimum will also happily take up the opportunity to slap the CCP around. Between Taiwan's strong defensive advantage, the PLA's need to project air power to even have a
chance at taking Taiwan, and the US military's overwhelming advantage in air power, the PLA's air power would more or less be wiped out in the first few weeks or couple months of war, after which they'd be forced into an entirely defensive posture, and the only question is how many losses they're willing to suffer before surrendering.
4. Your point about one side threatening nukes if they start losing too badly is complete nonsense. The USA isn't going to try to whole-hog invade mainland China, and that is the
only circumstance under which China would be willing to risk a nuclear exchange. Because 'exchange' is exactly what it would be, and Xi Jinping is too much of a brutal pragmatist to destroy his entire empire (and die himself) when the US hits back with a much larger and more powerful arsenal.
5. China's political stability. If China actually makes a move on Taiwan and
fails, the lost of their aura of infallibility alone might ruin them. Having a total economic crash on top of that almost guarantees that at a minimum the current party leadership would be couped out, and it's possible the communists would be overthrown outright. If they can't win, and win
fast, they'll have more domestic problems, not less. The 'short victorious war' as a political tool
almost never works, and tends to cost those who attempt it horribly.
6. It's entirely possible China would lose even without US support. Invading an island nation is no small task. Invading one that's also
mountainous and covered in trees, is a
brutal proposition. The only reason China has a chance at all, is because sheer weight of numbers can be just as brutal. There's a slim chance that Taiwan could win without any kind of support, but if the US, Vietnam, and Japan start funneling them arms and supplies? China will be in the 'quagmire' the press like to chatter about' so much. If Vietnam decides to jump in on Taiwan's side once China has a huge portion of their military committed? That's probably game all by itself. And if India takes the opportunity to push China's borders back, hooo boy....
On the whole, the
only way that invading Taiwan can work for China, is if the US flinches and refuses to support them, and even that isn't guaranteed to work out. We don't even need to land soldiers on the island (which isn't to say we
won't), we just need to shoot down the Chinese air force and sink enough of their navy that they can't support the invasion.
Part of the reason that people react so strongly to you saying we shouldn't get involved, is because you're basically proposing appeasement, because some very corrupt people would benefit alongside everyone else.
