Shrike
2hr ago
Yes.
To be fair to China, I think a pocket blue-water force to respond to overseas contingencies does make sense, particularly as China and Chinese companies begin to do more and more business overseas. I rather doubt this is the ultimate intent for the large blue-water build up they are doing, however.
Shrike
3hr ago
Except for Vietnam and Singapore, I think the other countries have ports with access to the Indian or Pacific Oceans.
But I think the real answer to your question is "yes, as long as you can control the strait, you wouldn't want mine it." But if the Chinese were going to wrest control of it from you, they'd be able to use it to blockade you anyway...so you might as well lay the sea mines.
At least that's what I think.
it’s incorrect to say that anyone, even a coalition, would be able to effectively blockade China.
The United States could do it, almost certainly. Keep in mind that the US has the largest (by VLS cells) and most capable navy on Earth, and the Houthis (with, to be fair, powerful backers) have been able to run a fairly effective local blockade against their wishes. A pan-Asian coalition (including India, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia) might also be able to do it right now. Frankly...a single Asian nation could probably do it effectively for a limited time just with sea mines.
Let me walk through this, just a little bit – basically, surface ships are very vulnerable. If you don't have them to escort your cargo ships, then your cargo ships will all get captured by helicopter boarding parties, or sunk by maritime patrol aircraft and submarines. Or, if they have to transit a strait (like Malacca) they are vulnerable to even cheaper weapons systems, like short-range anti-ship missiles, speedboats, and artillery.
So you need to escort them with destroyers and frigates to keep away the helicopters and submarines (there's no guarantee you do anything to American submarines except get sunk by them, of course). But destroyers and frigates by themselves aren't sufficient to run a blockade by an opponent with combat aircraft – a country like India or the United States will locate your surface ship and then dispatch tactical aircraft with Brahmos or LRASM missiles to sink it, and a country like Singapore, or the Philippines can just mass anti-ship fires, or even use the good old artillery tactic, and then you're back where you started, because surface ships (unsupported) are not good at finding and destroying shoot-and-scoot weapons like missile launchers.
And that's without getting into mines. The best way to close Malacca is with anti-ship mines – they are small and terribly cheap (it would probably be affordable for Malaysia or Indonesia to buy tens or even hundreds of thousands of mines) and it could require hours to clear each one. You're going to have to escort specialized (practically unarmed) minesweepers to the area to slowly clear the entire strait of mines. Said minesweepers will die without adequate protection against submarines and aircraft. But of course if your destroyers and frigates get too close to provide that cover, they will die to mines.
So you're going to need to more than run a few escort ships if your threat is greater than maritime patrol aircraft and submarines. If you want to transit Malacca opposed, you might need to actually seize territory around the strait to make it safe. A lot of territory. Or, you'll need to destroy all the potential anti-ship weapons in all of Malaysia and Indonesia – which is not easy. It's definitely something you can't do with just surface ships, you'll need marines.
And then, even if you clear out the strait, with your surface ship group, you're going to only be able to escort one convoy at a time, because even if you seize all the tactical air bases the bomber threat is real. Against the United States, even a large flotilla will be sunk by bombers. The US bomber force can attack you anywhere on Earth and they're going to lob missiles at you. Even if your air defenses are perfect, they can do this until your VLS cells are dry. Then they're going to sink you with 1000-lb bombs. (Actually realistically you just get sunk by a submarine but we're pretending like our surface ships can prevent that for a moment).
So now you need something that can defend you against bombers. And that's the aircraft carrier. China has three. This means they can probably keep one on station for an extended period of time (rotating between the three carriers). One carrier isn't enough to defend shipping between China and Europe against the American navy (probably not enough to defend it against India, either). The US has bigger, better carriers and tactical carrier aircraft than you do, and more of them, so it's going to steam out with two of them, shoot down all your planes, and then kill your ships with bombers, and then blockade you again.
So, to "bust a blockade" against the United States or a similar maritime power, you need to be able to patrol thousands of square miles against submarines and defeat the enemy navy at sea.
Let's review real quick – against a pan-Asian coalition, to make the sea lanes clear reliably, you need to
- invade Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia (or maybe you can clear them with a sufficiently large air campaign?)
- conduct air operations against Japan, the Philippines, India, South Korea, Taiwan, and probably Vietnam
- conduct anti-submarine operations throughout the the East and South China seas, the strait of Malacca, the Andaman Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea
(These countries, by the way, combined, have more submarines than China does!)
I am very skeptical that China can do this. I'm skeptical the US Navy could do this.
And to defeat a blockade by the US, you're plausibly going to need to defeat their entire navy on the high seas (otherwise they can far blockade you), not to mention the above mentioned anti-submarine operations, and to say nothing of doing something about the bombers and maritime patrol aircraft.
Also, I personally believe the South China Sea moves to be primarily about resources (fishing, oil, etc)
Sure, this seems plausible.
Shrike
1d ago
Yes, it strikes me as funny to suggest that Putin's invasion of Ukraine (precipitated as it was by an illegal coup with foreign support that overthrow a democratically elected leader) was a response to too much democracy. To Western-alignment, perhaps.
I could be very wrong, but I doubt that Ukraine (which as I recall had done fairly poorly compared to Russia) would have suddenly eclipsed it in standard-of-living if Russia had resorted simply to economic warfare instead of, well, literal warfare.
Shrike
1d ago
On the one hand – actually, yes.
On the other hand – this is already the case. Taiwan (by itself) already has intermediate-range missiles. They can probably strike the Three Gorges Dam, which I am given to understand – if successful – could be "pretty bad" (millions dead).
Furthermore, if you look at the Chinese coastline, you'll see that it is hemmed in by its rivals – Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are, on paper, trivially able to establish a maritime blockade of China. This is probably why China has gone to such great lengths to establish a perimeter in the Spratlys and other island groups. Controlling Taiwan goes a long way toward mitigating this problem and giving China an avenue "out" into the Pacific, allowing them to operate carrier groups and nuclear submarines to their full advantage. (It also lets them turn the tables on Japan and blockade Japan instead of the other way around much more easily, which I think is part of why Japan has shown so much willingness to get involved).
The TLDR; is that there are very tangible security reasons for China to want Taiwan.
However I do question if Taiwan is a stable stopping point. Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia can still keep China cut off from maritime trade with Europe and Africa in that scenario. So I definitely wonder if a reunification of Taiwan with China would satisfy Chinese security risks, or simply cause them to turn towards other potential threats.
Shrike
1d ago
The problem is that you can't have all three.
I...don't think this is true. It probably is true that you can't maximize the benefits from all of them. But having tariffs at all creates a protective effect and generates revenue, unless they are so high they cut off all trade (which might happen in one or two categories but ~never happens wholesale).
For example, the Trump admin not having any coherent idea of what they're looking for in a trade deal (in no small part because Trumpian trade theory makes no sense), so trade talks are floundering.
I'm not privy to the talks, so I don't have a strong opinion on them.
badly overestimating the strength of the US' position.
I think the US negotiating position is quite strong. I don't know that I would have been as bellicose about all this as the administration is reportedly being, but I think the current administration basically (and, sadly, probably correctly) sees the US military and economic arrangements as part of a whole cloth arrangement. The leaked Signal chats were very instructive in this regard. And so the US can't just threaten to tank your economy (which they absolutely can do) they can threaten to cripple your national security structure as well.
Please note: I am not saying threatening to do this is a good idea, necessarily. But I am saying I think the US has a lot of leverage. Not that you should weigh my opinion on this stuff (particularly economics) very strongly.
If you wanted to build an anti-China trading bloc, you would probably try to carefully negotiate a multi-lateral trade partnership with other critical trade partners in a way that encourages trade to shift away from China rather try trying clumsy threats and hoping for the best with bilateral negotiations.
Hmm, yes, it seems like DJT is trying to have his cake here (TPP) and eat it too (protective tariffs). I'm not even sure that's impossible, but it will almost certainly mean compromises will have to be made. Alternatively, Trump tried to have protective tariffs and then pivoted to a less ambitious program when the stock market panicked.
In Trump's shoes, I would have tried a much slower approach, with gradually ramping up tariffs to smooth the transition (this would be less abrupt and painful whether your goal is industrial policy or dealmaking, so it seems like a straight-up win). That seems very obvious to me, which is part of why I can't shake the suspicious feeling Secret Sauce Stuff might be involved. But there are other plausible, perhaps much more plausible explanations for the apparent urgency.
Shrike
2d ago
This narrative that the US has not prospered since 1060s is wrong.
I am not saying it has not prospered. I am saying that free trade can generate losers as well as winners - which it sounds like we agree on. This is true of anything, so within certain parameters, that's fine. But left unchecked it can be dangerous.
These problems could be solved by transfers to those areas. The US needs to build much more infrastructure, for example.
Yes, perhaps. In a vacuum, I quite agree with your idea. Unfortunately, the US government already spends too much, so I am not sure where it's supposed to get this extra money from (well - I know where I would get it from, but I do not run the US government).
No amount of data will convince them, they will always find some contra-argument that GDP is a false measure, that data is false, that inequality makes it useless, that true measure is fertility which has fallen and so on and so on.
I mean - reductio ad absurdum, this is true at a certain point, is it not?
Imagine we gave all the wealth in the United States to the best hedge fund managers in the US, and he owned the rest of the population as chattel slaves. Since hedge fund managers are probably better at managing money than 60% of Americans, GDP would skyrocket. Or just imagine that we executed people who are credibly predicted to be a considerable drain on public welfare (like terminally ill indigent poor, dialysis patients, convicts, drug addicts, etc.) Again, this would redirect wealth in more profitable directions. But obviously people would be quite justified to argue that GDP is a false measure of their well-being in these cases, right?
And that is similarly true in the immediate post-Soviet-breakup aftermath: life expectancy dropped! That's objectively bad! That's different from arguing that the economy is better, which I doubt is true (although the Soviet break-up was a short term economic shock to be sure).
(Note that I am not arguing that Latvia would be better off now not to have broken up).
One specific example that opioid crisis in the US was caused by free trade is wrong. It was caused by Purdue Pharma, an American company that provided misinformation that their synthetic opioids don't cause addiction. Apparently regulators failed to act sooner before damage was done and a lot of people became addicts. The cause is definitely not access to fentanyl because that is the result and not the cause of addiction.
Except the fentanyl trafficked to the United States comes from China and Mexico, not from Purdue Pharma. And I doubt it would reach our shores nearly as easily (particularly from China) without the free trade apparatus we've constructed.
That's not necessarily to say that free trade is inherently bad. But there are tradeoffs, and in specific cases I think it is fair to consider whether or not the tradeoffs prompt reconsideration. I would quite like it if the end result of all of this is what I think Trump may be aiming for, and what you have proposed - closer cooperation and more trade between the US and more trustworthy allies, less trade with China (I don't really mind cooperating with China, of course). If we have to bring out the "big stick" of tariffs to accomplish that, I think it might be worth it.
Ehhhhh - in the United States, to use some examples, the value of a home relative to the value of wages has increased tremendously since the 1960s and 1970s. The price of college education has also increased (although that came later).
Now, I don't know that it is fair to pin that on trade, or entirely on trade, but my perception - as an American - is that free trade has inadvertently created a trap, by offshoring traditional industrial manufacturing, which as I understand it often granted people long-term stable employment with the prospect for real growth in wages. Now most people looking to earn good money in America go to college, often by taking out loans, which then traps them in long-term debt. On paper plenty of wealth is being created, but often at the expense of actual prosperity and fiscal stability of ordinary Americans. I'm not much of a liberal but it is true that wealth in the United States has become more unevenly distributed over time, which I think is probably partially attributable to free trade, and at a certain point that's (practically speaking) a potential societal hazard. And, more darkly, free trade has helped enable the American opioid epidemic, which is more dangerous and destructive to Americans than terrorism or crime.
I am not sure it was reasonable to expect the 1960s to last forever (we had just bombed the rest of the civilized world to ash, so they had to buy our stuff) and I am not necessarily arguing that free trade is bad for the United States on paper.
But it is true that offshoring hollowed out a lot of traditionally prosperous parts of the United States. And now you're complaining that Donald Trump, whose election was in part a response to...offshoring, which was due to free trade, is going to make us all poorer.
Perhaps free trade is necessarily in tension with democratic government, or perhaps it is possible to arrange free trade in such a way as to prevent the evils of offshoring and atrophying domestic industrial might, or perhaps any number of things. Certainly what I've said here is necessarily an oversimplification. But if I had to guess free trade, like immigration, follows a natural cycle and if it is not properly moderated and balanced against the concerns of its citizens, it will be subject to backlash.
Just to clarify - I'm not really against "free trade." It's more that I think as implemented the United States has made some major mistakes in the last 50 years and needs to stop making them. I don't really consider "lower tariffs" as one of those mistakes so much as "offshoring" but sadly one begets the other. I also think, unfortunately, that it's impossible to admire your cake and eat it too. Perhaps, for all the ill it did, we really did pursue the best course, more or less. But if that's true maybe it's also possible, for all the ill it does, that we are pursuing the ~best course now. Different times call for different measures.
Shrike
2d ago
I still would need to see good reason that would explain why trade deficits are the problem per se.
If you think about it very in very reductive terms, I think it's pretty easy to understand where the potential problem is. Obviously if in your personal life you "import a greater value than you export" (buy things you cannot pay for) you might be In Trouble. It seems, intuitively, to be something like debt - maybe it is sometimes necessary, or sometimes even beneficial, but not something you want to make a habit of.
However Real Life Macroeconomics is not very reductive! So while I can intuitively see the problem with a trade deficit in theory I am not sure how well that actually captures the practice, particularly because "value" is a slippery thing. Maybe that's why I personally care a bit more about "limited autarky" than the trade balance, since I am not yet prepared to try to better understand macroeconomics in anything like a systematic way.
Shrike
2d ago
We are totally dependent on global trade.
The United States is not, no.
That is a good thing, makes us all better off.
Not necessarily true - in this system there are losers as well as winners, at least proportionately.
People who worry about that don't understand this point and also don't have an alternative except start producing everything locally, which means that we become poor again.
There's definitely alternatives between "get critical industrial supplies from China" and "complete autarchy." The best position for any country, of course, is limited autarchy - being self sufficient on
- Food supplies
- Energy (including things like transformer manufacturing, oil refining, coal and uranium extraction, etc.)
- The entire arms production supply chain (starting in the ground and ending up in the hands of the military)
- Other critical supplies (such as basic medicine)
You can offshore some of this to trusted allies, or try to compensate for it in other ways, but producing the above locally (which the United States does not do) is a desirable goal for any country.
I also think that a lot of your statements rely on a perfectly efficient and frictionless market. The market is not perfectly efficient, and it is definitely not frictionless. The United States, in particular, has a lot of what might be described as barriers to internal trade - some of them quite severe. It's quite possible (and I listened to some economic-types who are probably smarter than me suggest this, so it's not something I just made up) that even with tariffs, the US grows wealthier by cutting down these internal regulations.
The good idea would be to make a block against China, remove any tariffs between countries except China and put sanctions and tariffs on China.
Yes - this is the sort of move I have been discussing.
Shrike
2d ago
Teensy-tiny would be 1% or maybe 2-3%.
I do not think that the tariffs Trump has announced are Final For All Time.
I already explained that trade deficits are imaginary problem.
I don't think this is the consensus of economists. At a minimum there appear to be differing schools of thought on it.
Shrike
3d ago
Now all countries need to find other export markets to replace lost exports to the US.
That's the thing, there are no other export markets that will replace lost exports to the US.
Notice that China has increased tarifs towards the US as well.
I have. I've also noticed that it's been reported that China is also threatening countries that are going to cut a deal with the US, and furthermore that they are obstructing Apple's attempt to relocate equipment to India. In other words, China is not only doing all the bad things you are saying Trump is doing (threatening countries with tariffs if they trade with the US instead of China) they are also disincentivizing further investment in the Chinese economy through abusive government practices.
It's possible that what you describe will happen. But it is also possible that it is China that will become isolated.
No country in the world really wants to be dependent on Chinese manufacturing. Not even Russia. Joining the US side might be a good opportunity, especially for countries like Mexico, Argentina and Vietnam, to onshore their own manufacturing as alternatives to Chinese labor for the American consumer. This would both increase their trade with the United States and decrease their own dependence on Chinese labor.
At least, that makes sense to me. I don't pretend to have a very firm grasp on the nuances of the global economy. But I don't think that means I have dementia.
Shrike
3d ago
If you go to countries and say "we are going to slap you with a massive tariff if you choose China, or a teensy-tiny one if you choose us" it...makes total sense? The US is the largest consumer market in the world – if you are forced to choose between China and the US, all other things being equal, you pick the US every time.
Now, obviously, there's room for Trump to bungle the execution (by making all other things not be equal). But the plan is not crazy.
Shrike
3d ago
This demonstrates possibly the largest single difference between Chinese and Western manufacturers / vendors. China is chock full of manufacturers who are perfectly happy to handle small quantity orders while Western manufacturers by and large are only willing to deal with major customers.
Yes. I tend to think this should change. I would prefer it changed in a smoother way, but I guess I'll take what I can get.
Shrike
3d ago
Trump's dealings with tariffs make no sense.
I dunno. I would have a stronger opinion of this if I considered myself more economically literate. But the basic strategy that seems to be shaping up, as reported, of essentially forcing countries to choose between the US and China does make sense. We'll see if he's able to pull it off.
Some people continue to refer to hidden motives but by now we are aware that this is not the case.
I don't really think that's true. Keep in mind that the press has sat on really big stories in the past at the request of the executive branch. If (as has been rumored) China was planning to attack Taiwan - and this precipitated some frantic economic maneuvers - I could definitely see "us" being unaware of the story. I don't hold that theory strongly but it's been in the back of my mind.
Just like many still believe in Havana syndrome as real or something like that.
Why would you use this as an example? (This keeps happening, to me, I swear!)
Almost certainly, Havana Syndrome is real and is being covered up by the US government to smooth over relations with foreign powers and/or conceal the fact that we have and use the same technology. We know how it works (it's a directed energy weapon). It's possible that the symptoms are not even being induced as an anti-personnel attack, but rather an electromagnetic spectrum attack that targets data. President Bush and his family were plausibly affected by this at a summit in Germany (and he wrote about it in his memoir). The Russians have even been reported to have alluded to these types of weapons publicly. There are other incidents, too (such as then-Vice President Richard Nixon being bombarded by extremely high doses of radiation - probably not due to any attempt to harm him, but rather due to a wiretapping attempt) showing that certain foreign powers are willing to irradiate high-ranking US personnel in potentially dangerous ways as part of their espionage programs.
This stuff is all public knowledge and findable on a Google. That doesn't mean that every reported case of Havana syndrome is legit, but there's absolutely zero reason to believe that it's somehow impossible and very good reasons to think it is real.
Now people will be even more angry when they realize they have been cheated again.
And rightfully so, if your idea is true.
Shrike
4d ago
There you go - sort of a silly question from me, sorry, it's just that there's been so much stuff announced and then paused that I haven't been tracking when all of these things were actually for real kicking in (as opposed to being announced. I guess I'm not used to the government working so quickly!)
Anyway, to my point, it's looking like The Latest is that they'll be brought back down, at least a bit, supposedly. Which is, again, pretty classic negotiating. Slap them on, show that You Mean Business, pull back when you get a deal, which...might be happening?
For individuals there's the additional insanity of a flat minimum of $100 / $200 fee for individual packages where the tariff would fall below that amount, starting in one week from now.
I hope this helps reshore domestic light manufacturing. Not sure that it will, but that could be good.
Shrike
4d ago
How would you differentiate “lost a step” and “suffering from dementia”?
You peak at intelligence in the late teens or early twenties - before you are even eligible to be President. So from that perspective all Presidents have "lost a step" - none of them are as bright as they once were. I think Trump was better at debates in 2016 than in 2024.
I'm not a doctor, so I tend to defer to them for the definition of dementia. Personally I would use a sort of everyday definition - if someone is mentally lucid enough to take care of themselves in the day-to-day. With POTUS, the standard should arguably be higher - "if they can fulfill the duties of the office."
But if you are able to separate his rhetoric, you could see that now he has lost a plot.
Which plot specifically? I don't see "Trump doing wacky stuff with tariffs" as, by itself, indicative of dementia. But I don't typically watch Trump speeches, so if he was noticeably out of it, the way Biden sometimes appeared to be, I wouldn't necessarily notice. If Trump is actually suffering from dementia then he should step down quickly, before it meaningfully impacts his duties.
Shrike
4d ago
Quite possible. I don't know that much about the legal grounding of the tariffs. My understanding is that Congress delegated a truly insane amount of authority to POTUS in "times of emergency" - I suppose SCOTUS might also rule there is no justifying emergency.
The fundamental issue, I think, is that SCOTUS and Congress want POTUS to have sweeping emergency powers. They have arguably relied overmuch on "norms" to govern the President's use of them.
Shrike
4d ago
No one believed that absurd tariffs will get implemented etc.
Have they actually gotten implemented though? I keep hearing that Trump keeps kicking the ball down the road on them. Which is a pretty classic negotiating tactic - hit people with sticker shock, and then walk it back.
I am still very very suspicious that some of the motivations behind the Tariff Whiplash Phenomenon is Secret Sauce Stuff that will come out in 1 - 40 years. Not confident, just suspicious. (There seem to be other plausible explanations.)
Either way, I don't really think Tariff Whiplash is really good evidence that Trump has dementia (I suspect he has lost a step but isn't suffering from a mental illness if that makes sense).
Shrike
4d ago
Anyone know of a mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that claims Trump has not done anything to expand Presidential power and is "using it as it was meant to be used?"
I think the only think Trump has done that really counts as an expansion of Presidential power (off the top of my head, but I am quite willing to be shown other examples) is asserting authority over independent agencies. (Pushing for diversity of viewpoint from universities also seems...novel...but I have not read the supposed authorities cited and "regulators pushing an extremely novel interpretation of US civil rights law on universities" is not exactly new, so I am not sure if that's really a good example, but it is the other one that readily comes to mind.)
I believe there's a fairly mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that holds that these independent agencies shouldn't exist, because they are not contemplated in the traditional Constitutional scheme, as they are neither executive agencies, nor part of Congress, nor part of the judiciary. Under that interpretation, Trump is not expanding his power by asserting authority over independent boards - he is exercising authority that has always been his, over all executive agencies. And in fact it seems to me like an awful lot of the stuff that Trump has done that's been attacked as being a novel use of Presidential power has just been exercising latent power over the executive branch.
From my point of view, the most problematic thing Trump has done from a separation-of-powers issue might be TARIFFS. Congress is supposed to make the laws, and, you know, our overall tariff policy is pretty important and under the original Constitutional schema probably would be left to Congress to decide. But guess what? Congress - as I understand it - decided to delegate him those powers. So he's not aggregating new powers to himself, unless SCOTUS rules that those powers are inherently those of Congress and that the executive may not modify them, which as far as I know they have not done. And probably are unlikely to do.
I think it's quite fair to argue that Trump is sort of double-dealing here - he's pushing (on the one hand) for expanded executive power from what might be a more originalist or right-of-center angle (the "you can't delegate too much power to unelected bureaucrats" theory of the Constitution) while on the other hand he's making maximal use out of the power that Congress delegated him under the more modern way of doing things (you might call this the "legislating is hard, let's let the President do that" theory of the Constitution) that might itself be subject to criticism under more originalist means of governing.
But here's the fundamental deal. The executive was always supposed to have a lot of decisive authority over the executive branch. It's just that the scope of his duties was originally quite small. Over the course of 200 years a number of makeshift patches were applied in US law that arguably would not fly by original-intent standards but (charitably) were necessary to make the Constitution workable so that the President and Congress could delegate sufficient functions to experts or (uncharitably) were necessary to subvert democracy by placing an unelected class of power-maximizing bureaucrats between the American people and their elected representatives and the levers of power. (That's not the only two options, and I think the truth of the matter is more complex than either or both of them, but I think phrasing it like that is clarifying). And when wielding both of those powers, the President might be much more powerful than contemplated under either the original or hotfixed versions of the Constitution.
And now we've essentially gotten the point where the President is willing to make vigorous use of the full scope of his authority under both the Constitution and those makeshift patches that we've applied, and in a way that is not only controversial but also impacts a lot of people. (Remember that Obama straight-up drone struck a noncombatant American citizen, which was controversial and arguably a bigger Presidential power-grab than anything Trump has done, but it only, ah, impacted a few people directly.) So now, maybe, Congress will decide to take the reins and do something about it.
Or not. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it.
Shrike
5d ago
So do you have numbers?
Not any recent. But the older numbers I have seen or recall tended to indicate either parity or a Russian advantage - maybe with exceptions were Ukraine had a localized advantage at a certain front for a time. There was much moaning about China providing Russia with many more drones than Ukraine. If Ukraine has surpassed Russia in drone deployment I would sort of have expected to hear about it, although I don't know any Russian procurement officials.
Now, with all that being said - didn't Russia ration arms in periods leading up to offensives in the past? I would not be surprised if they were stockpiling drones for an offensive. But who knows.
If China is actually weaning Russia off of drones then I think they are making a hubristic mistake. Or, possibly more likely, they actually are stung by European whining about their assistance with China and are attempting to do an about face. Which would be interesting if true - perhaps they are rattled by 20000000% tariffs after all.
Shrike
5d ago
Typical Baltic yapping.
Is Germany considered a Baltic state now?
regiments have to use drones very prudently, while Ukrainians spam them by the thousand, and seem to have no issues in procurement.
This is a fairly common perception in wartime that needs have no bearing on actual procurement numbers.
Americans are delusional as well if they don't understand how much the credibility of their defense commitments has suffered from Trump and Vance's posturing with regards to Denmark.
Perhaps, but that has no bearing on whether or not there are still American troops in Europe - and there are, tens of thousands of them. One of the linked articles said there were about 100,000 Americans in Europe - that's larger than the entire German army.
Europe is not entirely deindustrialized, they can make their own drones, in addition to Chinese-Ukrainian ones.
I believe this is technically true, yes.
Shrike
6d ago
Both Ukrainian and Russian states have atrociously high tolerance for losses and their citizens will keep dying for the foreseeable future.
This seems plausible to me, but much of the rest of your comment I think is subject to criticism.
Ukraine is in a hard but sustainable position right now
I wouldn't rule out this possibility, but on the other hand it looks like Russia is sending back 20 Ukrainians in bodybags for each Russian body they get back from the Ukrainians. This almost certainly reflects who is advancing as much or more than actual casualty ratios, but it is still not great for Ukraine.
This makes them less likely to ever militarily assist Russia
The Chinese are supporting Russia's military industrially. Not only have they been criticized by NATO and European leaders for this, but Chinese firms have been sanctioned. Reporting from last fall indicates that Russia actually established a facility to build military drones in China.
If Europe is unwilling to break from China it is for other reasons, not because China isn't helping Russia.
Europe, de facto deprived of the American shield, is also quickly militarizing
Europe is not "de facto" deprived of the American shield. The Americans have done some saber-rattling to convince the Europeans to open their wallets. They might cut half of the extra forces Biden sent to Europe in 2022, since which time Sweden and Finland both joined NATO, bringing more manpower to Europe's defense than said extra forces. Reducing US forces in Europe by 10% is not the same as pulling out of NATO or anything like that.
And China has also cut off Europe's access to drone components which makes a European pivot to China for defense purposes...fraught. Particularly considering that Ukraine's new and very transparent attempts to link China and Russia together in their invasion are...unlikely to increase the supply of drones to Ukraine. I really doubt Ukraine and Europe can match China and Russia's drone production, so if this is a stagnant war that will end only when the last infantryman is killed by the last FPV drone, I think Russia is still favored here.
Budapest Memorandum anyone?
A non-legally-binding document that contains no security guarantees is hardly worse than "vague European security guarantees" if those are actually on the table.
However, with all of that being said, I do agree with you - I suspect that either Ukraine, Russia or both will not agree to this deal. (I do agree with Lizardspawn that it might be smart for Russia to accept it, banking on Ukraine refusing it.)
Thanks :)
I think a lot of this depends on the exact scenario at hand. The US has a lot of submarines and they have very good endurance, and you don't need that many aircraft to run a blockade properly (especially if you've just decided to sink all shipping). Similarly the US is likely to lay mines via aircraft. I think that surface fleet endurance is likely to be more limited.
And, to clarify my position a bit: my position is that a successful blockade could be put in place, not necessarily established indefinitely (for instance I could see China eventually beating a pan-Asian coalition).
It's pretty simple to ID ship types - you can do this acoustically, and most large navies surely have libraries of ~all ship types just to help IFF in wartime.
Discriminating between individual ships might be harder, I'm not sure exactly how hard it would be, if that's an already solved problem, or how much it would matter in a blockade scenario - I could see a world for instance where we just presumptively turn back (or sink) all traffic that we haven't already green-flagged (doubtless in "coordination with our allied and partner nations"). It might also be possible that just type identification is good enough for our purposes here.
Yes, this I tend to agree with. And like you said, any blockade is likely to be part of a war. And I think that the US - whose mine stockpiles are very limited compared to Chinese stockpiles - would probably focus on hitting more specific targets closer to home. Why mine Malacca when you could mine the Taiwan Strait, or the Qiongzhou Strait, or the entrance to the PLA's submarine pens in Hainan? :trollface:
Without having read it (although I might, thanks for linking!) I tend to agree. I suspect they would be able to get what they needed for the duration of a war from Russia overland, although I seem to recall a prior commenter noting that they had no oil pipeline hookup and thus it would be an insanely inefficient way to get oil.
More options
Context Copy link