From: roten@cuba.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles Roten)
Subject: Re: Super Power in new century and Yellow Peril
Organization: /cuba_b/dirbe/roten/.organization
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Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 18:48:21 GMT

In article <1hue9rINN9pf@agate.berkeley.edu> hankwong@ocf.berkeley.edu 
(Henry Y. Wong) writes:

>Couple of things I would like to add about the discussion over the
>potentiality of PRC invading ROC (Taiwan):
>
>First of all, PRC has all but flat out stated that it will invade Taiwan
>if it declares independence.  

Well, yeah .. but an (implied) verbal threat and $0.50 will buy a cup of 
coffee.  Any tinpot dictator worth his salt will rattle his saber from 
time to time .. even if it _is_ so rusty it would not make a good 
butterknife.  Remember Benito Mussolini ?

>                              That is why the people of Taiwan (who are
>Chinese-ge, not Taiwanese-ge, unless you're talking about the aboriginies)
>are chicken to support independence and still stick with KMT.  I guess
>they prefer status quo (prosperity but less freedom) vs almost certain
>disaster (invasion).  Anyway, PRC seems bent on taking Taiwan at ALL costs, if
>it comes down to that.  Someone posted in s.c.t. an all-encompassing invasion
>plan that sounded pretty tough to counter.  Besides,
> Foreign pressure isn't going to scare PRC off- it
>didnt do so after Tiananmen massacre.

No, but other things will.  

Remember the Battle of Britain, and the humiliating end of Sealion ?  The 
Germans were _infinitely_ better off versus Britain in 1940 than the PRC 
is versus Taiwan today, when it comes to a cross-strait invasion.  

70 percent of the PLAAF fleet is composed of _MIG-17s_ !!!  With avionics 
that makes even the Soviets look advanced.  They cannot fly at night.  
They cannot fly in poor weather.  And when the poor bastards _can_ fly, 
some of them have had as little as 10 hours of air time a month !!!!  
Training good pilots is _expensive_.  The US Navy spend a million dollars 
a man to train its aviators.  But in the PRC, the needed cash just is not 
there right now.  Sure, in 30 or 40 years, things will be different, but 
today ....  

I am not faulting the leaders of the PRC for this, mind you.  It is the 
smart play.  Better to modernize the PLA _after_ the industrial economy 
has fully matured, to avoid frequent obsolescence, and the unreasonably 
high costs of maintaining a modern high-tech military with an infant 
industrial infrastructure.  But it renders PRC rhetoric about Taiwan so 
much hot air.  

Consider the problem from the point of view of the poor bloody 
infantryman who has to cross the Taiwan Strait in an invasion barge.  As 
long as his own side does not _CONTROL_ the air, he is 1) as exposed as 
a bug on a plate (_NO_ cover or concealment even from eyeball observation, 
and as for radar ...), and thus 2) a sitting duck.  Meat on the table for 
any hotshot fighter jock in a maritime strike aircraft with a bomb and an 
attitude.  That is the relentless logic which killed Sealion.  

IMO, the KMT dominates Taiwanese politics for two reasons.  First, folks 
_EVERYWHERE_  vote the economy.  That is what sank Bush.  That is what 
has Yeltsin running scared.  But Taiwan's economy has been consistently 
improving.  So folks tolerate the government, even if they _are_ first 
rate assholes, and tyrants into the bargain.  Just look at Lee Kwan Yu's 
career as Tyrant of Singapore.  A benevolent, tyrant, to be sure, but a 
tyrant none the less.  And nobody who mattered really cared.  

Secondly, the opposition parties seem, at least to my eyes, to be a 
little on the radical side.  Maybe, folks on Taiwan share my assessment.  

>Second of all, sorry to break your hopes, Dwight Joe, but there is no way
>the UN will ever intervene if PRC invades Taiwan.  Like you
>said, Taiwan is a non-political entity. It is not even in the UN.  
>Also, remember that PRC is one of the five permanent members of the Security
>Council and thus would certainly veto any sort of resoultion, or at least
>be able to block action until it is too late (which is not too hard with the
>UN you know.)  Last of all, UN is overrated- its track record sucks.  Just
>look at its ineptness in Bosnia, Cambodia, and to a lesser extent Somalia.
>By the time UN votes to actually forcefully go into Bosnia, if it even does
>so, it will only arrive in time to pick up the pieces.  And they aint doing
>sh*t in Cambodia.  

I have to agree with you here.  *SIGH* !!!  

>                   Taiwan cannot rely on anybody else for its defense,
>it's gotta do it on its own.

Check out Dunnigan's analysis of the Taiwanese/ROC military.  I used to 
take his assessments lightly .. before Desert Storm.  Not anymore !!!  

>Now that I think about it, what does this have anything to do with scaa??

Damfino !  :-)  

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