It's because China realizes that, although they would certainly win, invading Taiwan would be too costly. Taiwan doesn't have to be tough enough to actually beat China, it just has to be tough enough to convince China that messing with Taiwan is a bad idea.
The US military has the most expensive, high-tech war gadgetry in the world, but they haven't actually won a war since bombing Japan over 70 years ago despite being at war pretty much constantly since then. Did Vietnam have superior weaponry? Does the Taliban? Does ISIS? Does Al-Qaeda? Big weapons (short of nukes) are ineffective against guerilla resistance. It's very hard to loot houses with a tank or do door-to-door searches with a helicopter. The US had supersonic aircraft and nukes in the 1960s, but they still had to send a guy with a pistol and a flashlight to crawl on his belly through the tunnels in Vietnam.
This raises the question of why the US keeps starting fights it can't win, when other countries sometimes refrain even from starting fights they can win. It's because the military-industrial complex has a lot of control over our government. The costs of these invasions are absorbed by the people, while the companies are able to profit from each conflict, whether we win or not.
If a force like that attacks us, and they have as large and complacent a population of taxpayers as we do, then yeah, we're probably fucked. But if we're talking about a group like the Zetas or Maras, and they're trying to decide how best to use their limited resources, they're probably a whole lot more likely to attack a rich, undefended place full of people who are afraid of getting PTSD from firing a gun (think Vikings raiding monasteries), than to attack a humble little town with a big wall around it, machine guns and guards at the gates, and infantry rifles in every home. It comes down to a simple risk/benefit analysis.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: I'll play
Date: 2016-06-17 02:06 pm (UTC)The US military has the most expensive, high-tech war gadgetry in the world, but they haven't actually won a war since bombing Japan over 70 years ago despite being at war pretty much constantly since then. Did Vietnam have superior weaponry? Does the Taliban? Does ISIS? Does Al-Qaeda? Big weapons (short of nukes) are ineffective against guerilla resistance. It's very hard to loot houses with a tank or do door-to-door searches with a helicopter. The US had supersonic aircraft and nukes in the 1960s, but they still had to send a guy with a pistol and a flashlight to crawl on his belly through the tunnels in Vietnam.
This raises the question of why the US keeps starting fights it can't win, when other countries sometimes refrain even from starting fights they can win. It's because the military-industrial complex has a lot of control over our government. The costs of these invasions are absorbed by the people, while the companies are able to profit from each conflict, whether we win or not.
If a force like that attacks us, and they have as large and complacent a population of taxpayers as we do, then yeah, we're probably fucked. But if we're talking about a group like the Zetas or Maras, and they're trying to decide how best to use their limited resources, they're probably a whole lot more likely to attack a rich, undefended place full of people who are afraid of getting PTSD from firing a gun (think Vikings raiding monasteries), than to attack a humble little town with a big wall around it, machine guns and guards at the gates, and infantry rifles in every home. It comes down to a simple risk/benefit analysis.