Some realpolitik food for thought:

There is a large segment of people yelling that if we let Putin get off easy with invading Ukraine, China will take it as a signal to invade Taiwan. That's mostly wrong.

Here are the facts:

- Russia is not very important to the global economy, except on energy. China is very important to the global economy on virtually everything. You will not find a product in the USA that wasn't touched by China in some way. That's a fact of life.

- The west has not made promises to protect either Ukraine or Taiwan. In Taiwan's case, we have been explicit about our ambiguous policy: we will not comment on what the US may or may not do to protect the island.

- Foreign leaders are by and large, not totally unhinged madmen. They are mostly rational actors, and have definite reasons why they do things or take risks. If you know what a ruler/country's priority interests are, you can predict their actions with a surprising degree of certainty.

- Russia has said for 20 years that NATO expansion east was considered a strategic threat to them, which by definition it is. They said it when we added Poland, Hungary, and Romania to NATO. They said it when we added the Baltics to NATO. And they said it in 2008 and 2014 when we declared the intent to add Ukraine and Georgia to NATO.

- Russia is not a strong country. They are a declining Great Power that has (had) an economy the size of Italy which is highly dependent on raw energy exports. The population is just larger than Mexico's. Russia is not secure, in fact it is entirely the opposite. Russian trade access is at the mercy of countries like Turkey, the EU, China, and Japan. They have no naturally defensible borders and those borders are some of the longest in the world. In every aspect, Russia is a cornered, wounded bear that feels besieged in its own cave.

- Therefore, Russia is willing to take major risks to protect what it sees as immediate security interests. Risks like major international blowback, isolation, or even blockades.

- China on the other hand, is strong and getting stronger. China does not need to invade Taiwan to feel secure, or to distract from trouble at home. China feels like time in on its side. In fact, a Chinese takeover of Taiwan is much more likely to be from a simple blockade: the Chinese simply tell everyone that trade with Taiwan is forbidden, and they will not allow ships to enter Taiwanese waters. Is the American president going to start a direct shooting war over that? Maybe. But probably not. Either way, China doesn't have to take that risk right now, it can wait.

- Additionally, China is watching the sanctions on Russia. They are noting that the west is sanctioning things which are easy, but nothing that is hard. But sanctioning China at all is hard. What do you do, tell companies they can't buy Chinese goods any more? lawl. Walmart and Amazon would SHUT DOWN. A lot of people would initially be on board, but when the goods on hand run out, well, buy water purifiers.

So that's it. We don't have much to worry about, regardless.