You can tell that Ben Rhodes either
- he knows very little about China and Taiwan (unlikely) or
- he is shaping what he says to you to give a false impression of China’s strength for some other reason (more probable).
The usual reason for these exaggerations are
- to encourage the US to increase its defence budget,
- to encourage it give more aid to Taiwan
- some political motive to suggest Trump is weak.
I think there may be an element of anti-Trump politics. He was security advisor to Barrack Obama he says so at the start. He is a member of the Democrat party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Rhodes_(White_House_staffer)
He says in this sentence:
“If that happened again in 2028 … It’s the last year of the Trump administration, and I think Xi Jinping thinks, well, Donald Trump’s not gonna go to war to protect Taiwan.”
In reality Trump has sold more military gear by far to Taiwan than any previous president (the main hold up is on the Taiwanese side to approve the budget to buy the gear). Trump maintains ambiguity about whether the US would help Taiwan if China attacked it in any way just as for every previous president.
Trump seemed to “consult” with Xi JingPing about Taiwan during his last visit but he just says he let Xi JingPing say his say. He didn’t change the US position on Taiwan.
Here are some of the things Ben Rhodes doesn’t tell you and likely DOES know. If he knows then he is holding back the information possibly for political reasons. If he doesn’t know he has very little understanding of China and Taiwan. That seems unlikely as a former National Security Advisor for Obama.
He says that
Taiwan is vastly superior to Ukraine in its military capabilities even today except for drones - where it can likely rapidly catch up.
He says that
He says
- it would take a while for the US fleet to get to the area to break the blockade. This is true, some days depending how close their nearest aircraft carrier strike group is, but
- doesn’t explain Taiwan isn’t helpless. It can easily withstand a few days of blockade and it has military capabilities to fire shore-to-ship cruise missiles or send its own subs against the Chinese ships and do many things of its own if it wanted to.
And then he claims that
- (FALSE) the US would need to preemptively hit missiles in mainland China before sailing ships into the area to break the blockade.
- this doesn’t make sense. It couldn’t destroy enough Chinese missiles and missile launchers to make their ships invulnerable, instead it would have to rely on its air defences.
It would be rather about the US fleet sailing towards the blockade and highly unlikely China attacks back for the same reason the US wouldn’t want to attack China. It would likely just withdraw, possibly with some minor exchange.
None of this is likely because it would be a huge political set back for China to try to intimidate Taiwan militarily and fail.
Even if it just took a small island belonging to Taiwan near the Chinese coast and Taiwan then was to regularly fire cruise missiles at it even just say one a month - this would show that Taiwan is not part of China and undermine China’s claim that it is already part of China. Hard to keep up that pretence when Taiwan is firing cruise missiles from time to time at a Chinese garrison on a Taiwanese island.
DEBUNK: China can’t attack Taiwan and China can’t stop US sales to Taiwan
— which also can make all its own military equipment if it choose to buy from its own companies
You can read it here:
https://ddebunked.org/d/4061-china-cant-attack-taiwan-and-china-cant-stop-us-sales-to-taiwan-which-also-can-make-all-its-own-military-equipment-if-it-choose-to-buy-from-its-own-companies?clean
