China holds back for now over Taiwan

I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we [the US and China] will fight in 2025,” wrote General Mike Minihan, head of US Air Mobility Command, in a private memo two years ago. There are still five months to go, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he’s wrong.

- Gwynne Dyer

Don’t take my word for it, because my recent record in these matters is bad. I didn’t think Russia's Vladimir Putin was crazy enough to invade Ukraine, although I knew he was largely detached from reality, and I was wrong. For a long time, I would not use the word “genocide” to describe what Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu was doing in Gaza, and I was wrong again.

In my defence, I had not spent quality time with either man, and I was reluctant to predict their actions based entirely on other people's estimates of their characters (especially since most of those people didn’t know them personally either). I still felt compelled to weigh the pros and cons of the case, on the mistaken assumption that facts had some influence on their decisions.

The possibility of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is a far greater threat to the peace of the world (such as it is) than the relative sideshows in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. Aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons on both sides. A few poorly planned displays of ‘determination,’ and the US is in a war with China, with the two Koreas and Japan not far behind.