Taiwan almost had indigenous nukes at some point. The issue with nukes is that you want to never use them, and for that you need your nuclear doctrine to be a credible deterrent. Taiwan’s lack of credible deterrent comes from lack of nuke delivery platforms, not nukes themselves.
If they can miniaturize fusion-boosted weapons, they may have a delivery vehicle. Their HF-2E cruise missiles are roughly comparable in size to Tomahawks, which can optionally carry nukes. The listed payload of the Taiwanese missiles is about half the mass, but who knows if that's accurate. Maybe the range would be reduced, but most of its military targets in a conflict wouldn't be far inland anyway.
Taiwan is almost certainly only a few months from completely indigenous nuclear weapons: they have their own nuclear power reactor at Maanshan, and all the way back in the 1980's the US estimated that they were less than two years from a nuclear weapon. Given (waves hand generally at the world around him) all of this, they have almost certainly undertaken quite a bit of effort to shorten that timeline over the past forty years.
South Korea and Japan are in basically identical places, FWIW. The only reason we haven't seen a north-east Asia nuclear arms race, so far, is that several countries relied on their presence inside the US Nuclear arms umbrella. With that looking more questionable, I think the next four years are likely to see widespread nuclear weapons proliferation. Certainly the example of Iran, where the US negotiated an excellent treaty and then unilaterally pulled out of it and started violating the treaty whole-sale under Trump's last time as president, and the fate of Ukraine, who were invaded by a much larger, nuclear armed neighbor, should encourage all three of those countries to make nuclear weapons faster.
The only reason any of them might not is domestic political response, which loom biggest for Japan, but I doubt that would stop any of those countries.
TW nuclearizing is PRC redline, and they're thoroughly infiltrated by PRC intelligence (half the reason US had to coerce them into ending initial effort was because PRC intelligence knew what was up). Today, any TW nuclear program is 7 minutes from being cratered, they're simply not nuclear turn key capable anymore unless US just positions nukes on TW and give authority in which case we're in WW3 anyway.
US stopped Taiwan's nuclear effort for fear of restarting the civil war, thus dragging US into a potential nuclear WW3 scenario.
If US lets Taiwan (or even Korea/Japan) into the nuclear club, then what is stopping nuclear proliferation to Iran? Venezuela? Cuba? There are negative externalities to US allowing it's allies to have nukes.
Taiwan doesn't want nukes according to the past Presidents.
The roadblock most countries have to nuclear weapons is a lack of a domestic high-tech industrial base… which Taiwan has in spades. I’m surprised they haven’t built a bomb already!
If I were them, I would try the Israel approach of very carefully refusing to admit whether they do or do not actually have 127 bombs that can reach Beijing.
Oh.. why 127? No specific reason… don’t worry about it…
AtlasBarfed|1 year ago
Even if the US "guarantees" Taiwan security, the current administrations "guarantees" are not worth the even hot air they are made of.
I'm not sure if you were joking, but it would be 100% justified, especially if the "negotiation" with Russia over Ukraine are correctly reported.
budududuroiu|1 year ago
harshreality|1 year ago
mandevil|1 year ago
South Korea and Japan are in basically identical places, FWIW. The only reason we haven't seen a north-east Asia nuclear arms race, so far, is that several countries relied on their presence inside the US Nuclear arms umbrella. With that looking more questionable, I think the next four years are likely to see widespread nuclear weapons proliferation. Certainly the example of Iran, where the US negotiated an excellent treaty and then unilaterally pulled out of it and started violating the treaty whole-sale under Trump's last time as president, and the fate of Ukraine, who were invaded by a much larger, nuclear armed neighbor, should encourage all three of those countries to make nuclear weapons faster.
The only reason any of them might not is domestic political response, which loom biggest for Japan, but I doubt that would stop any of those countries.
maxglute|1 year ago
DeepCope|1 year ago
If US lets Taiwan (or even Korea/Japan) into the nuclear club, then what is stopping nuclear proliferation to Iran? Venezuela? Cuba? There are negative externalities to US allowing it's allies to have nukes.
Taiwan doesn't want nukes according to the past Presidents.
jiggawatts|1 year ago
If I were them, I would try the Israel approach of very carefully refusing to admit whether they do or do not actually have 127 bombs that can reach Beijing.
Oh.. why 127? No specific reason… don’t worry about it…
DeepCope|1 year ago