In my government class I have to prepare a powerpoint with options as if im the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of staff.
Here is the crisis: “China starts a series of war games in the South China Sea and it is theorized that they are planning to invade Taiwan”.
What would you do if you were the Secretary of Defense?
If you have time, I would appreciate thought out answers as to why and the process. Not just ‘nothing’.
Thanks!
is this work that you will be graded on?
Ha! [:D] This is one of the MAJOR reasons why I hate college. They present you with a morally indefensible scenario and say doing nothing is not doing the assignment and you get no credit for the assignment, so you must invent some bass-ackward way of doing the assignment. Ick. I do not envy you.
Stay out of the conflict and secure your own country. You’re doing something, but you’re not being sucked into the morally bankrupt position of having to intervene in some manner.
You could also offer to arbitrate. You could also offer to ask the Chinese to stand down. You could also offer humanitarian aid to both sides if violence breaks out.
When you’re asked to play a game you can’t win, redefine the game so you can. Satisfy your instructor, and your morals. If you’re creative enough, you might be able to pull it off.
Remember, the best defense is to avoid conflict, not to be effective at conflict.
Easy. Deploy the 7th fleet to the Taiwan Strait. The PRC doesn’t have the naval capacity to defeat it and then invade Taiwan.
If you want to get all hard-core libertarian about it, the answer is of course: do nothing. The fall of Taiwan is unlikely to affect the USA in a major way, especially since Chinese markets are now open.
You should start with what you would have done prior to the situation. That is to notify the people of Tiawan that you are not going to protect them or give them money and or support. Also state clearly that any stated or implied alliance or defense agreement is now null and void. You could also say that the people in Tiawan have every right to defend themselves and that includes but is not limited to using the dreaded WMDs, especially nuclear weapons to do it.
You could say that the people of Tiawan are free to pursue their own defense and will not need permission from the US or anyone else before acting to defend themselves.
At this point the answer to the question is easy: Do nothing as it isn’t your problem.
If the professor says that you just started your job then simply reply that you would have made it clear before you took that job that all current entangling alliances (ALL OF THEM) are null and void and the parties in these are free to defend themselves against aggression using any means they see fit.
Thanks guys I really appreciate the ideas! They are all very helpfull and insightfull. And yes this is for a grade; its actually a group assignment where Im joined with two others students. Both are very open minded and Im doing most of the work so hopefully I can bring them into the libertarian mindset along with the rest of the class once I present my solution. My government teacher is a big neo-con and has actually said ‘those loony libertarians’ before in class.
My initial solution was just to ‘do nothing’ but I know that wont fly in this class and I wanted to get better ideas so it would be easier to bring my classmates into the mindset rather then them being turned off by the ‘do nothing’ attitude. I am not very familiar with the relationship between Taiwan and China so all yall posts have really helped out.
Keep them coming!
Instead of proposing what is best to do, consider becoming your own devil’s advocate and proposing what would be worst. Perhaps something like secretly giving Taiwan 10+ nuclear missles with the condition that they use them immediately against big red, etc. etc.. Probably won’t help your grade but should spark some thought among the statist your surrounded by.
just nuke 'em all!! [:P]
silly libertarians wantin’ peace and all… geez…lol
first, drop licensing and legal restrictions to the export of arms to taiwanese peoples.
found a charity ‘arms for taiwanese’, you could funnel through 0.25% (1 quarter of a percent) of the federal military budget, this would be enough to spend
150$ on every adult tai (each of the 22million of them), enough to buy them their own AK47 at ‘african prices’
forego taxing any income earned by us citizens earned by way of mercenarial/bodyguards/security provision/consultancy work in taiwan.
Why would anybody intervene in that confusion aka war, actually possible war due to Chinese are doing drills and it’s a theory they might attack Taiwan? But either of these ways, why?
It just occurred to me. As the Secretary of Defense, you can pull a Rumsfeld.
Attack Iraq.
In order to engineer consent you’ll need propaganda, Osama has recently been spotted in China, that’ll get the war drums beating. If that doesn’t then remind the proud people of the United States of America that the communist party is still in charge over there, show some pictures of the atrocities that occured as a result of those damn commies. Tell the people that cold war just isn’t over yet, you’ve got some gooks to shoot, and some other people to protect (American loving people, of course).
Now, you’ll need financing, taxes will have to be raised, money will have to printed and perhaps some debt financing too.
if you go with giles plan you should mention how many olympic medals china won. cause sports are important.