Something that most westerners, particularly my fellow Americans, are unaware of is that the Soviets already had over 100 nuclear warheads in Cuba, many of them having fully functional delivery systems capable of striking the US. Even if we got them there, it’s not the end of the story
For some reason the following simple truth is difficult for my countrymen to accept, but you have to know on some level that all of this matters more to China than it does to us, and unless we completly overmatch them in power (as we did in the past, and do not now) in the long term they will always win in the east.
We could not even keep Afghanistan before our commitment flagged - what makes you think we could outlast the efforts of the largest economy in the world to remove weapons of mass destruction from Taipei?
The didn't win in Korea, they didn't win in Japan.
They didn't even win in Vietnam, the US completely destroyed N. Vietnam military machine ... and then left.
By the time the US actually left Vietnam there was very little fighting and no casualties. The US could have stayed.
Similarly in Afghanistan ... there were very few soldiers there, with a different Foreign Policy there's no reason to believe the US could have chosen to 'stay'.
There are still major bases in Korea, Japan and Germany, no reason not to keep a base in Afghanistan if they thought they wanted to.
Nukes in Taiwan would really upset China (a lot!) and throw a big wrench into everything, but it's a very legit threat, it would make direct assault really hard.
Certainly one 'Omega Weapon' would be a short range, small yield nuke that Taiwan could use against an invading maritime force. Scary, but real power.
For some reason the following simple truth is difficult for my countrymen to accept, but you have to know on some level that all of this matters more to China than it does to us, and unless we completly overmatch them in power (as we did in the past, and do not now) in the long term they will always win in the east.
We could not even keep Afghanistan before our commitment flagged - what makes you think we could outlast the efforts of the largest economy in the world to remove weapons of mass destruction from Taipei?