For those of us, unfortunately, in the imperial core, what steps should we take to stop a US war with China over Taiwan? I’ve honestly been pretty scared since the war in Ukraine started knowing that China is next. We must avoid this at all costs to save the thousands of Chinese lives that will be sacrificed by the west in their bid to reestablish a unipolar world.
While I’m not discounting the achievements of the anti-war movement in support of Vietnam, the war still waged on for years. The same with Iraq. What should be done differently?
I believe that regardless of what happened in the past, the only thing that matters is what current Taiwanese people want.
The White Terror ended in 1987, and involved the genocide of the native peoples of Formosa.
It doesn’t seem honest to refer to “public opinion” while ignoring the events that shaped that opinion.
Events are not isolated in time; past events make future events possible, while future events are determined by the past. If you condemn the events leading to the status quo, then it’s necessarily the case that you should not take the status quo as any sort of ethical baseline. That is, the current inhabitants of the island must not be exposed to war, and they will obviously decide their fate with their actions, but I don’t find a reason to believe that their government deserves any special status regarding the island.
That’s quite impractical since all nations and their borders were established as a result of unethical conquest. This can be used as a justification for an unending cycle of violence.
Exactly. Every change to the world order has people in favor and against, and can have a multitude of effects deep into the future. If one carefully considers them, one can subjectively label some change as good, some as bad, a few violence justified, most condemnable. But setting some arbitrary point in history as the stop point is unsound from a justice standpoint.