Daniel Davis writes a lot about military matters, much of it appearing at a site labeled 19FortyFive. Today he considers whether the U.S. should go to Taiwan's defense if the Chinese attempts to invade the island. The short answer in his view is "no" and his reasons aren't trivial.
Occupying Taiwan doesn't give China massive military advantages for as Davis writes, it is only 100 miles off the Chinese mainland. Since we don't have major bases there, we don't lose similar advantages if occupation should occur. If China makes an all-out effort to invade, we and the Taiwanese probably can't stop them.
Taiwan makes something like 60% of the world's semiconductor chips. Losing access to that production could seriously impact world economics. Giving the chip plants to China to control as it sees fit would be orders of magnitude worse.
Before the Chinese do invade Taiwan, I believe there should be preplanned precision U.S. missile strikes on the Taiwan semiconductor and chip plants set up and ready to go. Destroying that capability is better than handing it to our enemies. We should also be developing our own capabilities in chip production, and recent legislation is supposedly moving us in that direction.
