China stages military drills around Taiwan to warn ‘external forces’....they're falling into our trap

 via Defense News

China’s military on Monday dispatched air, navy and missile units to conduct joint live-fire drills around the island of Taiwan, which Beijing called a “stern warning” against separatist and “external interference” forces. Taiwan said it was placing its forces on alert and called the Chinese government “the biggest destroyer of peace.”

Here

The drills are nothing.  The reaction to the arms sales are over the top and point to a couple of mistakes the Chinese have made in this mess.

#1  They imposed a deadline on themselves to accomplish reunification.  HUGE MISTAKE!  From my view of the Chinese people and culture they aren't the type to issue ultimatums or strict deadlines.

In this case they did and its pressurizing everything.  Imagine if they didn't put down a marker and simply said as soon as possible.  

They could then build up their military slowly and efficiently.  Instead they're on a breakneck rush and every allied country in the region is on alert.

#2  They've thrown away the carrot and essentially limited themselves to only one course of action.  All around the world they've successfully used diplomacy, guile and sometimes trickery to achieve their goals.

To their credit the deed was done before anyone noticed.  They never gave themselves that option with Taiwan.  Perhaps its the success they had in Hong Kong that made them switch tactics.  Perhaps its the propaganda that Taiwan is simply a breakaway province and no one would care.  I don't know and it doesn't matter.

China has picked its course and is rushing full speed ahead with no off ramps due to their rhetoric.

#3  They didn't believe we had time to course correct.  They're only partially right on this one but being partially right isn't good enough to win a flawless victory.

Because of points 1 and 2 the allies in the Pacific are fully aware of the situation and taking action to correct things.  Should they have acted earlier?  You bet your ass but in this case late is better than nothing.

China doesn't have all the gear/tech in place yet.  Soonish but not yet.  Meanwhile we've had a couple of challenges appear that have turned the MIC to damn near full and leaders in the US and Japan (to a certain extent in S. Korea and Australia) are acting to plug gaps.

Have you noticed something else?  

This is a bipartisan thing.  Even stupid war opponents like myself argue about the "what's" that are being done, not the issue that something SHOULD be done.

In this whole kerfuffle China has made missteps that are playing into our hands. Instead of acting calmly and rationally they've acted like a bully and alarmed the entire region.

If war comes and I hope it doesn't this will be an ugly shock to the system.

I don't think historians will be able to call a winner to be honest.  Thousands of lives lost, Taiwan reduced to rubble, China teetering and probably gonna have a military coup and America will in all likely hood withdraw from the world stage.

Everybody loses and loses big.

The weird thing is that China could have easily achieved its goal by being patient but it had to swing its dick around instead.