China/Taiwan fight.
I have little love for the Chinese Communist Party (which is in no way Communist and would better be described as a business oligarchy) and am happy to condemn its dismal human rights record and its moral and political bankruptcy. However, it is completely ludicrous to pretend that China does not have a case for sovereignty over one of its own provinces. Taiwan is not after all an independent nation - it is essentially a breakaway province. Even the KMT who founded Taiwan in its modern state have never argued against this.
So does China have the right to rule its own province even if that province wants to break away? Well I imagine the US might want to have a say in Alaskan politics if it broke away from the republic.
What does amaze me is that other countries which do not have any territorial claims to Taiwan or China and which are geographically and culturally far removed from this region and dispute think they have the right to intervene militarily and provoke a major international war.
Now you can say 'we are the world's policeman' but that has no legal basis in international law. Who appointed you? Who are you answerable to? And on whose behalf do you govern?
And yes you can make a case on moral grounds that a democratic government has more moral validity than an unelected, unaccountable dictatorship but then you have to take a good look at the massive human rights abuses committed by the Nationalist Chinese in WW2, their collusion with Japanese forces guilty of massacres and ethnic cleansing all over China, and their military finances which were almost entirely driven in the early days by the illegal presence of their Narco army in the golden triangle (inside Burma and Thailand).
So it's hard to champion intervention from a moral position, international law, historical prerogative, or even geographical proximity. Leaving aside the 'ally' argument and whether a breakaway province can legally have an ally in international law (possibility) it comes down to the rather obvious factor that the US is not happy that its strategic and business influence in the Far East and its massive intelligence gathering operations in Taiwan are under threat. But if we are going to fight a war on those grounds against a country which wants to take control of its own province....just who is the invader?
This dispute has not blown up into a major war since 1945 so there is no reason to believe that calm heads will not prevail and the dispute will fizzle out.
Sorry, I will no doubt get flamed for this but these things are important to point out in a free society.
In the context of geopolitics and history, there really wouldn't be a pretext for making an analogy between Alaska deciding to secede from the US or how it might be comparable to Chinese claims that Taiwan is a breakaway province?
First and foremost, we purchased Alaska from the Russians at kind of then-bargain basement deals in 1867 between then-Secretary of State William Sewell and the Russian ambassador partly due to Russia's wish that their Alaskan colony didnt Falcons into British/Canadian hands. You may not be aware of this, but if the Russians hadn't sold us Alaska, their is a very good chance Alaska eventually becomes part of Canada because up until WWI, although Canada was its own sovereign, independent nation, Britain still controlled their foreign policy and from the 1830's till signing of the Entente Cordialle in 1907, Czarist Russia and UK were involved in a near-century long military, diplomatic chessmatch historians have called, "The Great Game". " The Great Game" was sort of the 19th century's Cold War and it involved territorial disputes from Balkans, Crimean War, Baku, Afghanistan, British control over India, British expedition to Tibet in 1903, dividing Persia(Iran) into spheres of influence, how British/French and Russians were arguing about how they were going to divide up the dwindling, unreformable, centuries-old Ottoman Empire, "sick man of Europe". Russia, amazingly during the Civil War, was a staunch Union ally, while the British held deep pro-Confederate sympathies, Lord Russell even argued before the House of Commons in 1864 for British military intervention to prevent a potential race war. Russia had also discovered immense oil, natural gas resources in Siberia in the early 1860's so it made Alaskan ownership a bit of a moot point by then.
Also, most Taiwanese, if they were polled or asked, likely wouldn't want to revert back to some one-party authoritian Communist regime opposed to a parliamentary democracy, they shouldn't be forced to accept or tolerate a compromise solution which makes that a distant possibility, its not fair to them. A Hong Kong-type solution wouldn't work either because Chinese Communist leadership has actually broken or bended the terms of the handover deal brokered between UK And China back in 1984 where Hong Kong would enjoy its long-cherished democratic institutions for 50 years after their handover, "two systems, one government " agreement. Based on how riot police handled and beat up pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong 3 years ago amid accusations of press/media crackdowns, limiting civil liberties, individual rights of city citizens, arresting dissidents, honestly how can any reasonable, realistic Taiwanese politician, citizen take any claims of Chinese respecting their rights as face value? Theyll gradually bend then break the rules, albeit over a decade or two, of most or any agreements they make.