Thread by @TheDailyMao

Tbh, this declaration is a net plus. By standing by Pompeo's genocide declaration, Blinken just clarified China's strategic calculus by removing US ambiguity around a possible reset. China can now move on Taiwan island without any hesitation around what it might be missing out on

This makes the Operation Taiwan thread I've been working on a possibility rather than an outside conjecture. Is the US really sure it wants this? There are no good outcomes for the US out of such an op. Biden will very likely be more hated than Trump by the end of it.

China's logic is that if the US is willing to stick to its guns on a proclamation where it has very little credibility, then the rest of its China policy is going to be similarly unreasonable. In that case, there's no point in negotiating on anything

https://twitter.com/chinahand/status/1351651571688345602

Remember that back in December the Biden admin, via track 2 dialogues, had been signalling a more constructive relationship with China across a range of fronts - including ones as touchy as US-Taiwan relations. Locking in genocide deeply reduces the credibility of these signals

Remember also that the US hesitated to even label what was going on with the Rohingya a 'genocide' even though Myanmar's actions involved mass rape, murder, and ethnic displacement politico.com/story/2018/09/…

Both intrinsically and as part of a sequence of events, this declaration further reduces the credibility of the US in the eyes of China, and will make any agreement harder, not easier. As such, they raise the likelihood of conflict. So in the next thread we'll explore it.

/end