Somewhat reddit-brained lib friend of mine sent this article which triggered a whole discussion of geopolitics: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/tsmcs-euv-machines-are-equipped-with-a-remote-self-destruct-in-case-of-an-invasion
He said that would reduce the chance of an invasion and I was like (paraphrasing): “really? does it? the generations-long and unfinished business of the chinese civil war and all the history there is outweighed by the thought of losing one chip fab that they’ve already proven they don’t really need after all the sanctions? They aren’t going to invade unless their hand is forced, there’s literally already US troops on taiwan-held islands, if they were on the brink of invading they would have done it already, but they aren’t.”
He basically argued that the majority of people there wanted to be independent therefore its simple self determination and the US should help them, etc.
I said the no capitalist state gives a flying fuck about self determination and asked if texas has the right to secede, or perhaps more relevantly, if texas settlers had the right to secede from mexico and join the US in the first place? because its not like the nationalists that took over the island were its native inhabitants, who are now mostly dead, flooding a low-population place with “settlers” doesn’t mean you own it…
we went back and forth a bunch and he stopped arguing when I pointed out the inconsistency of supporting palestine but also taiwan, when they (while not the same, taiwan wasn’t settler colonialism) have kind of a similar arc, what with israel’s “majority”, both having invaded and largely displacing the prior inhabitants.
I don’t feel I had all the best arguments at my disposal, though overall I feel good about my responses.
My quick go-to is "Imagine if the Confederacy, after losing the civil war, retreated to Puerto Rice, slaughtered the natives and every emancipationist they could find, and then spent the next 40 years in a state of martial law trying to root out “Yankee sympathizers”.
This is exactly what I say except I use Key West instead of Puerto Rico. It’s more clearly a part of the US and it was a part of the confederacy
I literally said this but I said “Cuba” not PR.
that was right before they said “taiwan has the right to self govern and make their own alliances, and ask their allies for support when they are threatened by a neighbor, just like ukraine”. I should have stuck to the analogy because I’m really curious what they think isn’t fitting about the comparison. If I had to guess its at best just “well the nationalists already ruled taiwan but invading PR/Cuba would be unacceptable” but that’s not even exactly true, it was handed to them by the japanese iirc
I often use the same argument but, being French, with the French Revolution, Louis XVI and Corsica instead.
This is my go-to as well but I usually say Hawaii. Puerto Rico is probably a better example. If you get someone who actually cares about history, you can even tell them that the Taiwanese people under the KMT hated it so much that they felt they were treated better even by the Japanese, who were forcing people to change their names to Japanese, speak only Japanese, and turned them into second class citizens but who at least brought them modern technology. If it wasn’t for US intervention, Chiang Kai-shek would have been rightfully executed.