I indicated a while ago (3-6 months back I think) that taiwan, to me, looked like a distraction. And if you were going to start that fight you might as well go all the way because there was a 50/50 chance that the u.s. would hit you with everything we have if anyone even attempted it. All the way would mean going to war with the u.s. itself. And the infrastructure weaking, social agitation, and disorder in the u.s., looks exactly like the very preliminaries necessary for such a war. Therefore, the next step wouldn't be to take taiwan. Thats merely an agitation and distraction. The next step would be, as you said, attacking japan and those properties adjacent to it. Because no attack on the u.s. could succeed (short of a nuclear war), without first taking the japanese. It may not be our doorstep, but it's our lawn. Meanwhile the u.s. would lose a beat misallocating and mistrategizing for the defense of taiwan. Taking taiwan would only serve to put us on our backfoot because of the chip shortages/electronics manufacturing disruption it would cause--an essentially *reactionary* move in response to u.s. tarriffs. We know a certain asian nation that shall remain unnamed, has never been truly reactionary, so it doesn't align with their profile to do something like that. If you're competing for silver, you might as well go for gold. > Overall, the most likely military threat from xyz, should it choose to attack Japan, would be from missile strikes Is this because of the need for any strike to be sudden and without warning, or more likely because of the lack of sea power projection? Really stimulating thread you've started here. Thanks.