Doubt.

Facta non verba. Deeds not words.

The mouths of the west are liars, even their deeds are deceptive. Every major war the US has gotten into has been through subterfuge, false flags, crafted narrative lies. From the revolution and the lie about the peaceful protestors being massacred and the following tea party to Remember the Maine, to Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq WMD’s, to I believe even Pearl Harbor which I think the US knew about ahead of time and allowed to go ahead to enrage the people and steel them behind their government for the war ahead.

They don’t know anything but arrogance. This is but a clever ploy to lull their enemies into a false sense of security while they pivot and undertake other moves and measures.

Remember Russia insisting that their troop build-up was just an exercise right before the invasion? It’s because surprise is helpful. The US isn’t and never was going to outright say “we intend to pivot to and stoke a crisis in Taiwan to force a military confrontation with China and further justify militarization in the region plus partial decoupling”. That would just give Beijing a heads up and opportunity to plan better. Better to deceive them and the west practices and lives deception and has for centuries.

They’re pretending to lick their wounds. Pretending they’ve given up on Ukraine but the moment Russia pulls back and they sense a chance (and aren’t otherwise too overly committed or distracted) they’ll be back trying to get it into NATO. In the meanwhile expect color revolutions and pushes to get other countries surrounding Russia into NATO, more trouble in Georgia and various other CIS states for instance to divide, distract, and weaken Russia.

Oh they know they’ve lost any hopes of decisive victory in this round but they’re not retreating from the region so much as carefully studying the chessboard and looking for better moves.

As to the US updating State Dept stuff to include not supporting independence. This is less than meaningless. A piece of scrap paper found in a gutter is worth more than this written on it from the US. They would happily say this, then arm them, push troops in and start a fight with China while screaming at the top of their lungs that the people of Taiwan have chosen democracy and the US will stand with them forever. And liberals, leaders, academics, politicians, business leaders, normie citizens who watch the bourgeois propaganda news will all see no contradiction here, will support this. No one but Marxist-Leninists will be around to point out the sudden shift and no one will care when we do. It’ll be a smug gotcha from our back-seats watching helplessly that liberals will not acknowledge then and will not acknowledge 15 years after it goes down and settles (maybe some liberal academics will point it out in history books but put it down to guileful and clever strategy on the part of the US rather than backstabbing dishonesty).

Let’s see US pull trainers out of Taiwan, let’s see US stop arms deals to Taiwan. Let’s see some actual actions not just cheap talk. Let’s see them drop the China containment via attempting to bring NATO into the Pacific and rallying occupied Korea and Japan around building up their military, stationing advanced American weapons/nukes there, etc.

Without actually dialing back the ramped up aggression they’ve already committed to these words are just a lie, a ruse to try and deceive China into lowering their guard. May they be smart enough to not trust it one bit. They must press forward with building more nukes, with modernizing their military, more ships. They must be ready for it when it comes.

there’s a whole issue of is their system secure? Is it noncorrupt? Does it meet all the standards … every other nation in NATO does.

Uh… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. This is a joke, right?

Is Turkey noncorrupt? Is the US noncorrupt? Is the UK noncorrupt?

Even by capitalist standards of “noncorruption”? Gimme a break…

Even most right-wingers, even people who believe in capitalism would readily admit those countries are highly corrupt.