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You know, it hadn't occured to me before now, but Trump did an unexpected piece of damage when he started his trade war.

The initial steps of a war footing with the west would involve the cutting of financial ties in a strategic way to cause hassles in western markets without drawing too much suspicion.

Before those would have looked out-of-place and very noteworthy. Now they blend in. Are they actually ... considering attacking Taiwan soon? That strikes me as sheer suicide, the west hasn't been this up-in-arms for decades. That makes intervention about a million times more likely.

They do know that while Taiwan has no direct military guarantees from the US, they do have some from our immediate allies, right? And we are not the types to sit out a fight anymore, getting smacked with that error twice in the last century taught us our own valuable lesson, sending us into an overcorrection in the other direction. We do the whole intervention thing now, often.

I hope I'm reading too much into this. I've always been in the war-is-actually-unlikely minority, but these moves seem strangely timed to me.