Communism is the most murderous ideology in recent history. Communists around the world killed close to 100 million people; that’s more than 5 times the number killed by the Nazis. Of those 100 million, the Chinese Communist Party is culpable for 65 million dead.
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Luckily for the world, communism was dealt a decisive defeat last century. Within a few years of the Berlin Wall coming down, communism imploded across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. There were other unforeseen benefits: with its Soviet benefactor gone (and with other economic triggers), India had to roll back democratic socialism. Billions of people suddenly experienced freedom like never before.
There was hope that the Chinese regime would also suffer the same fate as other communist governments. But they managed to hang on to power, crushing dissent with tyrannical, barbarous force.
Despite the persistence of the Chinese Communist regime, the end of the Cold War marked a victory for liberal democracy. The 1990s were a time of optimism, as the world enjoyed a peace dividend.
All of this resulted in a belief that communist China could be wooed and charmed into what seemed like the future: a peaceful, liberal global order, with free enterprise, free trade, and open engagement among the peoples of the world.
The United States, Europe, and Japan opened up trade and travel with communist China. Entire industries were offshored with the belief that as the Chinese people engaged with liberal democracies, the communist regime would loosen its grip on them, like how Augusto Pinochet eventually ceded power and Chile became a democracy.
Unfortunately, the opposite occurred. The Chinese Communist Party remains entrenched, having transformed China into a surveillance state. The 26-year old Great Firewall of China looks quaint as compared to their modern Black Mirror-like dystopian social credit system. They’ve leveraged technology to create an authoritarian regime unprecedented in history. Rather than adopting liberalism, China is exporting illiberalism. (As an example, see how western governments imitated the harsh Chinese COVID lockdown model, instead of going the way of Sweden.)
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More alarming than China’s domestic repression is its growing threat to the liberal global order. The regime has whipped up jingoistic propaganda domestically to fuel its rapid militarization, closing — and in some cases surpassing — the West’s technological lead. With aspirations to replace the United States as a global power, China is already asserting itself as a regional hegemon, as evidenced by its frequent clashes with several of their neighbors. This foreshadows the future if China expands its reach beyond the region.
In the hive mind of the communist regime, the Chinese Civil War never ended, and Taiwan (formally known as the Republic of China) must be defeated, annexed, and brought under the control of the Chinese Communist Party. Unification is a ruse.
American intelligence is on to it, and their assessment states that Dear Leader Xi Jinping has given the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) a deadline of 2027 to take Taiwan by force. Their assessment seems correct as evidence of what the Chinese have been up to piles up. They have built ships capable of an amphibious assault like D-Day. They have reinforced their aircraft bases with enough concrete to build a 4-lane highway from Washington DC to Chicago. They have built new aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. They recently revealed 6th-generation fighter aircraft. They are working on drone taxis that will get weaponized sooner rather than later. They have allegedly weaponized microwaves. The list is long.
Meanwhile, after two decades of being involved in conflicts around the world, the American people are war weary. It’s understandable why someone would say, “Not my country, not my problem, let the Chinese communist regime take over Taiwanese democracy.” But this is a historical inflection point unlike anything seen before. It’s not like German reunification, in which the East Germans gave up communism and voluntarily merged into a liberal democracy. It will be the forceful extinguishing of Liberty in a part of the world where liberal democratic norms were imposed by the United States after the radioactive dust from World War 2 settled.
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The United States and allied countries understand the threat, and have been addressing Taiwan’s security needs by supplying them with weaponry. Turning Taiwan into a porcupine with missiles as quills will help, so will creating an aquatic defensive perimeter around the island.
But in the end, it’s absolutely imperative that no communist boots land on free Taiwanese soil, and if they do, they are repelled quickly. If there are no boots on the ground, Taiwan isn’t invaded. Period.
That’s where the American model of an armed citizenry rising up in defense of their country comes into play. The Second Amendment was written with several goals in mind, one of which was repelling foreign invasions. After the lessons learned from the invasion of Ukraine and the October 7 attack on Israel, it should be obvious that Taiwan really needs an armed and trained citizenry.
Direct support from the West may be unlikely. The only country that can realistically project power that far away is the United States. Political realities may mean that the United States doesn’t intervene directly. This has nothing to do with the Taiwanese people’s race or language or religion; at the start of World War 2, the US was in a similar isolationist (or non-interventionist) mood. Winston Churchill put a lot of effort to get the United States involved in support of the United Kingdom, and even then, American involvement was finally precipitated by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The weaponry being supplied by the West will help Taiwan delay access to the island, but the communist regime will launch wave after wave of attacks. They could reduce Taipei to rubble before even sending a single boat across the strait. Given their history of killing their own people to maintain power, they may be willing to do so, even if it means ruling over a devastated island.
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The comparison of military power is bleak:
Currently, Taiwan has 169,000 active-duty military personnel, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ The Military Balance. That’s a figure dwarfed by the PLA’s 2-million-strong military. The PLA air force operates more than 2,400 combat-capable aircraft, including J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighter jets. Taiwan has 474 combat aircraft, and most of its fighter jets are decades old. China also boasts the world’s largest navy, including two aircraft carriers with a third on the way.
To bolster its defense forces, Taiwan has mandatory military service for men. But, the commitment is only four months—compared to 18 months in South Korea, and about two years in Israel and Singapore.
Taiwanese troops will be overwhelmed in the face of an enemy that’s overwhelmingly larger. Let’s not forget that communist regime is sizing up to achieve qualitative and quantitative parity with the United States.
The worst case scenario for Taiwan is that the communist PLA defeats their defenses and lands troops on the island. This is where Japanese Admiral Yamamoto’s (unsubstantiated) quote comes into play.
You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.
Taiwan must arm all willing adults, both men and women. There’s no alternative. While the Taiwanese seek to avoid war, the Chinese Communist regime shows no respect for their democracy and will impose conflict upon them.
What happened in Hong Kong in the recent past is evidence what is to come if there is no resistance.
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An important precursor to arming the Taiwanese people is a shift in the mentality of their government. They will need to trust their people with arms. It’s a bridge that most governments are afraid to cross, but the Taiwanese government must.
Once that mindset shifts, the people can be armed quickly and cheaply. Taiwan has an adult population of roughly 19 million. Giving each adult an M-4, a shotgun for FPV drone hunting, a sidearm, and 1000 rounds of ammo for each gun won’t take a big bite out of the Taiwanese defense budget.
Arming the population is obviously insufficient. Training is extremely important, as President James Madison learned after the Battle of Bladensburg during the War of 1812. Training must start immediately.
Even if my guess is wrong and it costs a lot more money, that’s still a small price to pay for freedom. Money that’s spent on defense can be recouped with a few years of economic growth, but freedom that’s lost to a totalitarian regime could take a century to be won back, or never.
In the absence of direct security commitments from the free world, the best hope for Taiwan is deterrence through strength. An armed citizenry is the last line of defense to warn a potential attacker of the high price to pay for invasion. So far, the Taiwanese government has either not understood that, or understands it and is still not over the “trust your people with guns” hump.
Dear Leader Xi Jinping’s 2027 deadline is fast approaching. Taiwan must act quickly, or risk becoming the first domino in a new Dark Age of Tyranny.
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