Taiwan struggle session goes here. Please include sources with your claims if you can.

  • gammison [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    in terms of current geopolitics

    I know you only put the geopolitical argument as an addendum about the internationalism but I want to reiterate its importance.

    In terms of what you termed the geopolitical argument (which is not actually geopolitical lol), Russia has a claim to Poland since it controlled it during the Russian empire, Britain has a claim to Northern Ireland, hell you could argue China as a successor state to the Qing has no claim to Taiwan because of the Treaty of Shimonoseki or has a legitimate claim to tributary relationships with the Korean peninsula if you throw away the treaty. I hate these kinds of arguments around claims to territory, they make no sense and only really serve to justify exercises of state power when they are possible, and excuse the lack of state power when they are not. Like seriously considering the notion of "the indigenous Taiwanese should be asked first before annexation" is already capitulating to a vision of state power that we should not entertain as legitimate in the first place (and is wildly out of touch with the opinion of people living in Taiwan as support for annexation is small and getting smaller, and with the opinion of the Chinese state which is sabre rattling itself considering the entanglement that now exists between the SEZs and Taiwan and there is little desire to actually force a resolution to the situation).

    • vsaush [he/him]
      cake
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah I agree, all of this state stuff needs to be thrown away and swept out of our minds. There's only one international working class and inter-state disputes are bad for us and we can transcend it with socialism. Maybe it would be better to not include anything about it, but I do think it's fun to consider. Like, I like playing FPS games even though they almost always are pro-American war on terror nonsense and I like playing Civilization games even though they codify a vision of world history that I think is fundamentally wrong headed. For the China-Taiwan dispute, it's not a game and real peoples lives are at stake but also I don't think there's a war on the horizon there anyway so I don't feel as guilty doing bad armchair general/strategy stuff.