We see what the digitalization of weapons is doing to how war is being waged in Ukraine but no technology has forced changes on our defense policy and, by extension, upon our Constitution than nuclear tipped ICBMs and now hypersonic missiles. In order to preserve any credible deterrence our potential enemies must believe or at least fear that the president can retaliate in seconds to any nuclear attack. Hence, the president is now virtually empowered to destroy the world so the nuclear football is always at his elbow.
By extension then, we have adopted legislation that permits the president to take us to conventional war and submit the issue to Congress in, I believe, 30 days. In the age of cyber warfare, satellites, and hypersonic missiles, a month is an eternity. So the issue may well be far out of the hands of Congress in minutes but certainly the potential exists for Congress to lose all options for control in a month. So if Congress is to have constitutional relevance it must act in advanced to conventional situations such as posed by Taiwan and make clear in advance what our national posture should be in the event of incursion, attack, or invasion. The time to debate the issue is now.
The first matter to be determined in such a debate is what is America's national interest in the integrity and sovereignty of Taiwan? American foreign policy has already compromised the sovereignty of Taiwan with the acknowledgment of the one nation theory.
My view is that our national interest should be considered according to a timeline. The immediate and intermediate future tells me that America has vital interest in the independence of Taiwan so long as Taiwan is producing computer chips without which we simply cannot function economically, and without which we certainly cannot defend ourselves. These chips, although not the top and most sophisticated in the world which are made mostly in the USA, these are the second-tier manufactured in bulk that are superior to China's.
Longer-term, an intelligent national policy would be to transplant capacity to make first-class chips on a wholesale basis back to the homeland but that would be a further step toward a mercantilist policy that is long overdue but which simply is politically impossible so long as China owns not just American congressional politics but virtually every American institution. Considered from the Chinese point of view, the wisdom of Sun Tzu councils patience, the wise course is simply to wait and Taiwan will fall into Chinese hands like ripe fruit without incurring the sanctions the world is imposing on Russia for Ukraine while America continues to decline and fall into Chinese thrall.
So the issue here becomes can the country come to a conclusion concerning the true nature of the threat from China and to a clear understanding of how that plays out in Taiwan. That requires a leader and that means it is very unlikely to occur until at least after January 2023, if then.
