No. of Recommendations: 4
and Taiwan so small and so isolated that it would be trivial to blockade any materiel support that allies tried to bring in.
That's a different scenario than Ukraine. If you can block the support, you can subjugate the populace enough. China has tried subjugating the Vietnamese and it hasn't worked. We didn't do well in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras. In fact the Philippines is the one where we could've stayed if we wanted to, and we would've kept a base but they wanted too much money IIRC. The base wasn't seen as strategic enough at the time - it was also contentious, Philippine nationalism was played up.
When I first got to the Philippines, a lot of Filipinos wanted to become a state of the United States. One expat espousing a pathway to statehood and he had thousands of Filipino followers. I got the picture the old AF base was covered in volcanic ash. Remember Duterte didn't like the USA. The NPA got him to release a bunch of prisoners to get to the table, and then never got to the table. The Muslim insurgency took over a town, had to be taken back, but Duterte had tried overtures with them. The Chinese didn't treat him well enough, even though he went along with making XI out as a savior. is he still in Europe waiting trial? Sarah Duterte seems to have flamed out. We have bases there because it's in their interest to help keep China at bay.
