US to announce $345 million military aid package for Taiwan
The U.S. on Friday announced $345 million in military aid for Taiwan, in what is the Biden administration’s first major package drawing on America’s own stockpiles to help Taiwan counter China.
Could be a huge deal.
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This angers me because 345 million would help a lot of people here in #Amurica that need the help - living on the street, starving, no healthcare .... need I say more? I am not necessarily an Amurica first kind of guy but we need to do more than something to help those suffering in many parts of our own country.
Unless I'm mistaken, we don't send them literal money. We send old military equipment, gear, vehicles, etc
It's just a byproduct of the massive military industrial spending... so while it's not money that we're sending, it's stuff that we unneccessarily spent lots of money on.
In this case you may be right. I don't really know. Maybe it is 345 million in obsolete military hardware. 🤷
There are expiring stuff as well, missiles and the like. Rather than a costly safe disposal they get to do what they're designed for.
Sit around and wait to be used by other countries, in a progression of trades and transfers, until someone actually tries to fire it and figures out that one of the previous holders of the missile sold a few important bits on the sly?
I mean you can do both
We can either gift an ally who is opposing invasion risk, or we can let the gear expire and rust. Generally the money is already spent, it's finally going to a good home
Take a look at what recently happened to Hong Kong. Take a good, long, hard look.
Now realize that we are pretty much the only thing preventing the same thing from happening to Taiwan.
Other people have needs too, not just you and me.
This is a bit of a cynical take. $345m is not that much to the US government. It's not going to deprive anyone in the US. Plus, what are homeless people going to do with military equipment?
If it was $345bn I'd agree but this is barely even going to register on the accounting spreadsheet.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . > This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Okay, this is a nice sentiment but the money is long gone. It was spent when the equipment was made. It will either be scrapped or left to rust in a hangar.
“Let us beat swords into ploughshares.”
I definitely agree with that. But at the same time this is almost as good a cause as any for all our bloated military budget to go to. Besides Ukraine.
America prioritizes war over everything else
I'm pretty sure this is an obvious deterrent move so that China invading Taiwan doesn't collapse the world economy and not a push for war. An invasion of Taiwan would be one of the worst things to happen to the American economy, so as much as "America wants war" gets posted, I just don't see it here. Only TSMC has the tech or the capacity to manufacture the chips they make. That is the priority with this move.
I worry that escalating tensions will make conflict more likely, not less
Helping a strategic trade ally and making it clear that they have the backing of the US in more than just words seems to me like something that would make invading Taiwan even more risky than an amphibious invasion would already be. It's not like Taiwan (or the US) is going to invade the mainland, so I can see why this is, and has been, the foreign policy of the US. The US aircraft carrier group that's patroling the area and the commitment to defend Taiwan in the TRA are already a thing. This is just following through on commitments already announced. I don't see a way that this transfer of weapons could be used as a pretense for an attack where the international response wouldn't be extremely negative towards mainline China. I don't agree with a lot of the foreign policy of the US, but I can see how they justify it with their own interests.
This aid is not charitable. America needs to maintain its hegemony to continue benefiting from it and Taiwan is a critical strategic asset.
Also, the TSMC chip fabs getting blown up would shatter the world economy. That hurts everyone, not just American billionaires.
Of course that's the motivation here, but fact isn't anti-west enough for some folks around here. Sure, there is plenty of criticism to bring up about the foreign policy of America, but this is a move is expressly a war deterrent.
Straight Newspeak. You know what war deterrent is? Peace measures. Where are the brokered discussions between China/Taiwan trying to resolve the situation peacefully and in finality? Why not host both Chinese and Taiwanese dignitaries in a third country and attempt to negotiate some sort of end to this 3/4 century long game of chicken? People give the Swiss shit for their neutrality, but that’s exactly how peace happens.
Now, don’t take that by neutrality I mean to say that one should let one party overpower the other, but conversely, if we truly are the big world police, we should use our influence to extract concessions from the more powerful party to ensure fair dealings.
This is a complex geopolitical situation, not some black and white matter like so many contend.
With the way China is acting you honestly believe they would agree to any deal that keeps Taiwan independent? Have you been paying attention the last 5 years?
Your idea is completely naive of the politics of the situation IMO. Trying to broker a deal where China agrees to let Taiwan be independent seems like an exercise in futility. Also they're a dictatorship so it's not like you can wait until there's a more favorable party in power.
Don't they teach you shills how to spell America?
I choose to spell the country I live in as America.