Shrike
6d ago
This is a made up number. It includes veteran care. In the future. Separate budget entirely.
All US revenue either comes from taxes or from debt. Neither are unlimited (well - taxes aren't unlimited, the jury might be out on the debt!) At the end of the day, it's all one budget.
The USAF and USN. Their core assets were not affected very much by counterinsurgency operations.
This is not true for the Navy or the Air Force, although perhaps your MOS didn't encounter them much.
Guess who is the least useful branch in a probable conflict with China? That's right, the US Army.
Yes, I do agree with this.
This is a hilarious take since drone bros like Elon take exactly the opposite line you do on drones vs. manned platforms like the B-21.
IMHO, the problem isn't with unmanned aircraft necessarily (although I am skeptical that 100% unmanned replacements for fighters and bombers are viable for other reasons, but from a certain POV any missile is just an unmanned aircraft, and missiles are definitely useful!) but rather that drones like the Predator and Global Hawk aren't very survivable on the modern battlefield (hence why the Houthis keep shooting them down). I'm not saying we shouldn't have some, particularly in the semi-attritable ISR role, or in the stealthy role. But I'm not sure the 300 MQ-9s we have will be super helpful if the balloon goes up against China. (Maybe in the far blockade scenario as ISR assets.)
The USN and USAF have a lot of rot and incompetence built up.
Sure, I believe this. But I think (particularly during the Obama era) that the GWOT, admittedly combined with the Ukraine situation, slowed the "pivot to Asia" that Obama announced.
Shrike
6d ago
Please don't blame GWOT expenditures on the inability of the USAF to manage the budget projections of its aircraft development and production.
Not just aircraft - ships, fighting vehicles, helicopters, tanks and artillery projects were killed or trimmed down during the relevant time-frame. I agree that DoD development retardation is a thing, but I don't believe you can spend $8 trillion and fight a 20-year unconventional war and not have it impact your ability to fight a conventional war, both in terms of procurement and in terms of troop training.
If nothing else, the DoD shifted and pursued procurement programs that were very useful in the GWOT but of dubious utility in a hot war (drones being a big example).
Shrike
6d ago
My point is that I don't think we, or the Taiwanese, are going to do this.
I agree. We should not rely on brinksmanship to deter China.
One nice thing for Taiwan is that it's very unlikely that "quickly" is in the cards, just based on how the island is. I guess there could be some kind of coup situation.
I think air assault is an underrated scenario (unironically: look at how well this worked for the Russians!), but I agree that a Chinese blockade is probably more likely.
But it won't be meaningfully done by taking our support away from Israel and/or Ukraine. It's not like we balance our defense budget.
Every Standard and Patriot missile we launch off in support of Israel and/or Ukraine is one we do not have stockpiled for a fight with China (and after how we've been moving around worldwide 155mm shell stockpiles for Ukraine, don't try to tell me those stockpiles aren't fungible! They are!)
I actually from a purely pragmatic perspective support some degree of stress-testing weapons, so I am less inclined to view limited battlefield expenditures as a waste. If we use 10 to improve the effectiveness of the other 1000 by 10%, it is clearly worth the cost. But you can't pretend like the weapons we are firing off now aren't relevant to a Pacific fight.
If the US committed to really fucking Russia over by giving Ukraine every edge we could then that's the strongest way to deter China because we are demonstrating capacity, will, and competence.
I mean - if the US should go full commitment for Ukraine, then by the same token it probably shouldn't screw around at all, we should just give Taiwan nukes. (Frankly, I trust the Taiwanese with them much more than the Ukrainians!)
Shrike
6d ago
The EU collectively is the second-largest trading partner of China, and the US can interdict all of that traffic without even going into the Indian ocean. The Chinese are a major importer (around 50% of their crude, it looks like) of Middle Eastern oil, which can also be easily interdicted from the Persian Gulf. While I assume they will shift to Russian oil to compensate, targeting oil pipelines is much easier than targeting, say, mobile ballistic missile launchers. Similarly, China is a net food importer, and the EU, Brazil, and of course the US and Australia are major food importation locations for Chinese consumers that could be trivially closed without venturing under the Chinese bomber window.
Unsurprisingly most Chinese trade is with its direct neighbors, and that would definitely be difficult for the US navy to interdict. However, anti-ship missiles don't work on submarines, which could sink shipping pretty much wherever the PLAN couldn't establish an effective anti-submarine presence. Which is probably ~everywhere, but we'll pretend that the PLAN navy can actually stop them if they deploy, which means they end up outside of China's shore-based anti-air umbrella to contest chokepoints, at which point they are vulnerable to the 350+ anti-ship missile salvos the USAF can deliver against them (that's assuming the US uses a mere third of its B-1 fleet at a time, incidentally!)
I definitely think the US could seriously harm China's economy by a far blockade. I think the real question is if it would actually matter to the war (I tend to be more skeptical of that) and if the US would risk the international anger at neutral ships being targeted, as Dean points out. However, I think the US throttling the Chinese economy with a far blockade in retaliation for something like an attack on Taiwan is within the realm of possibility, and it would be foolish for China not to consider that as a potential threat in their decision making matrix.
Shrike
6d ago
But in any real conflict between nuclear powers, the willingness to go all the way up the escalatory ladder has to be symmetrical, or at least perceived as such. Otherwise one side is going to get its way.
Sure, but there's also a question of who is having to make which choice. I don't want the situation to be the US threatening nuclear escalation because we've lost the conventional war and that's the only ace up our sleeve. I want the situation to be "the US has destroyed the combat effectiveness of the Chinese Navy in 24 hours and now China has to decide if it wants to wave its nuclear weapons around." This is particularly true since if China can occupy Taiwan quickly and successfully, US nuclear threats are meaningless. What are we going to do, nuke Taiwan? We need to be able to defeat China conventionally, if we want to play this game at all. That makes their nuclear threats close to meaningless - what are they going to do, nuke Taiwan?
If China thinks we'll back off because we are not fully committed to the fight then they will be emboldened to test our resolve.
Right, and if don't actually have the capacity to sink the entire Chinese navy, China is more likely to think we are not fully committed to the fight. That's why dropping Ukraine and redirecting any aid money to more LRASMs would spook China. (Mind you: I am not saying this is the correct course of action, merely that it would spook China. As I understand it, we don't actually spend much cash on Ukraine, most of the value is in contributions.) It would be a significant sacrifice that would indicate the US perceives it would receive greater value from defending Taiwan and defeating China than it would from defending Ukraine and defeating Russia.
As with economics, the expectations matter almost more than actually what happens.
If the US invests to defending Taiwan at the cost of other admittedly important priorities, it creates expectations that the US intends to get a return from that investment.
Per Wikipedia, that's not how the Soviets felt:
This makes sense. But it's because they lost the PR game, not because they didn't get concession diplomatically. US brinksmanship didn't by itself carry the day for the US, the US had to make concessions.
Shrike
6d ago
But also it was a very cheap military engagement as these things go.
I would just flag that it arguably cost us essentially a generation of modernization as multiple procurement programs were canceled while funds were spent to fighting the GWOT rather than preparing for conventional conflict.
It seems plausible, just to use one prominent example that would be very relevant to a Pacific conflict, that absent the GWOT the B-21 would already be in service (originally the Next Generation Bomber was scheduled for 2018, but procurement was kicked down the road due to cost concerns.)
Shrike
6d ago
China won't care about escalation risk if they think we don't have the balls to put it all on the line for Taiwan.
I don't think this is true. We can actually help deter China without threatening nuclear war if we have the tools needed to fight a conventional war. Perhaps this means that China will always have "escalation dominance" over Taiwan, as Russia will have over Ukraine. But US interest in the region creates an additional deterrent effect (although it needs to be combined with Taiwanese resolve, which arguably matters much more than US resolve!)
I think Taiwan is a foregone conclusion if China waits
My personal opinion is that Taiwan likely becomes harder and harder over time. Part of this is due to demographic shifts in Taiwan. Part of it is due to increased US investment in procurement programs clearly aimed at China, at US onshoring and containment efforts, and at clear and increasing bipartisan focus on China as a serious threat to US hegemony. Part of it is due to internal Chinese social and economic issues (while I don't think China is going to drop dead in 10 years due to an aging populace, it is true as I understand it that they will never have as many military-aged males as they do today – I think this is less relevant for actual force generation and more relevant for societal casualty acceptance).
The Cuban Missile Crisis was about the Soviets parking missiles way closer to the US than we were willing to accept, so we engaged in a bit of brinkmanship and it wasn't a bluff.
I think this is overstated. For all the scary "brinksmanship" the public watched, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended in tit-for-tat negotiations, and the United States (secretly) agreed to withdraw its own nuclear missiles from Turkey as part of the deal. I'm not sure how the Politburo viewed it, but from a certain point of view it was a success for the Soviet Union, as its attempt to park ballistic missiles in Cuba to gain strategic parity with US missiles in Europe ended with regaining at least some of that strategic parity (by forcing the withdrawal of US missiles).
Shrike
7d ago
We need to dramatically increase our advanced missile stocks and production capacities. We should probably just buy ships from e.g. South Korea and Japan, because boy did we fuck up there. We should also make Anduril a very valuable company by having enough autonomous capacities to make the Chinese realize that even if our carrier battle groups can be taken out, Taiwan would effectively be a minefield.
Sure. None of these, frankly, seem all that far-fetched.
The best way to deter China is not to have a bunch of missiles in a warehouse. The best way to deter them is making them fear the resolve of the US in defending its friends and allies in the face of risking WWIII.
Look, China can do math. All the "resolve" in the world doesn't do us any good without missiles in the warehouse.
Which is why the question of "will they/won't they" is more important than "just how long will US missile stocks last."
If we are confident nuclear madman theory alone is sufficient to deter China, we don't need to do any of the above. But I don't actually think anyone wants to die in nuclear fire for Kiev or Taipei and as such the threat of a nuclear madman is unlikely to be persuasive and, even if persuasive, unlikely to be consistent in a democratic society (note the difference in Russian foreign policy towards Ukraine after the election of President Biden!) So one concern with the nuclear madman threat is that it will simply result in waiting out the madman. (Another concern is that two can play that game, of course!)
Shrike
7d ago
Right.
IMHO, the US Navy could conduct a devastating far blockade of China relatively easily. (That's something that is missed in discussions of superior Chinese shipbuilding: "The PLAN said that the US Navy was seizing all of their cargo vessels and I asked him what he was doing about it and he said he just kept building more ships and I told him it kinda sounded like he was feeding the US free cargo ships and Xi Jinping started crying.")
The main question is if that's actually something that is fast enough to help Taiwan. If they prioritize air and sea denial strategies, their survival becomes more likely.
Shrike
7d ago
Hypothetically, the US could do a lot to increase its military pressure on China re: Taiwan without taking away from Ukraine support at all. Maybe we could try that first?
Sure. What do you have in mind?
Sure, we lit a lot of money and attention on fire
Money and attention counts on my bogging-down meter, at least half-credit. Regardless, this is a semantic discussion: the point is that for China, more US investment in Ukraine is (generally) better, regardless of what that looks like. Obviously there's a sort of "looping back around to being bad" outcome where the US nukes Russia, or switches all its rare earth supply chains to Ukrainian sources, or what have you.
Shrike
7d ago
I don't really think this is true. A lot of it depends on the specific goal the US is trying to achieve. But just generally, the US doesn't need carriers to "win" a Taiwan Strait engagement.
Frankly I'm not sure the US would bother to use a lot of Tomahawks on missile launchers, particularly since the newer ones have an antiship mode.
Shrike
7d ago
Empirical evidence suggests strongly that it keeps not happening
Look, there's a difference between something not happening and something being impossible. I'm discussing how China would react in a hypothetical.
Furthermore, the Taiwanese themselves (unlike the Ukrainians) are pretty lackluster in their own efforts to build up deterrence to China.
Yes.
Don't confuse stocks and flows.
Sure. Both are important, and which is "more" important depends a lot on your timeline.
They aren't being permanently committed or destroyed.
The munitions, vehicles and weapons we sent there are. I agree that we aren't "bogged down" the way one might describe us as being "bogged down" in Afghanistan, but we are "bogged down" in the sense that it remains a large center of US governmental attention (which is not unlimited) and, for as long as we continue to support the war effort, US industrial capacity (which is also far from unlimited).
Shrike
7d ago
This is not an actual available option.
Why not?
If we have munitions capacity issues what better way to fix them.
Sure, if Ukraine/Europe can release funding to fund US munitions (which I do gather is happening, and that seems fine). But if the US has budget X and they can split it between the Pacific and Europe, or just spend it on the Pacific, the latter option is scarier for China.
What on earth does "bogged down" mean here? I'm not arguing we conduct military operations.
That ship has already sailed. The US has been conducting "non-kinetic" military operations in support of Ukraine's war effort for the duration of the war.
Shrike
7d ago
Taiwan is a naval battle first; I don't think we've been supplying much naval weaponry to Ukraine.
I agree with this on the whole, but we have given Ukraine a fair amount of Patriot missiles, which would be very helpful defending against Chinese ballistic/cruise missiles, particularly for point defense around airfields.
Shrike
7d ago
The US/West failing to sufficiently back Ukraine emboldens China and other would-be aggressors when they do their risk calculations.
The US ditching Ukraine to prioritize Taiwan I think would actually spook China. The US doubling down on its commitments to Ukraine means fewer weapons in the Pacific, unless the US also slashes its social services or something else to double down on walking and chewing gum. China would prefer the US bogged down in Ukraine, and the US openly abandoning them to their fate to focus on the Pacific would demonstrate that the US "ambiguous" policy towards Taiwan is actually one of total strategic commitment to Chinese containment.
There's no new cheap missile to take them down
There is actually, the APKWS laser-guided rocket, which has already been used by US fighters to take down Geran-type weapons.
A single F-15 can carry fifty of these, [edit: sorry, at least 42, although I'm sure larger pods could be introduced] introducing video game ammo logic to real life and allowing a squadron on station can defend a vast territory from even hundreds of Gerans pretty easily and more effectively than static air defenses (Gerans are slow and ~easy to detect if they are flying at 3km). At somewhere around $20 grand it trades nicely in cost with a $70,000 cruise missile.
Ukraine can't use this particularly effectively because it has been unable to degrade Russian air defenses and fighter coverage (and in fact I wonder if Russia modified their Gerans to fly at higher altitudes specifically to deny fighter interceptors ground clutter cover). NATO's air forces and capability to degrade air defenses are vastly superior to Ukraine's, so the APKWS is a more viable defense strategy for them.
Shrike
12d ago
Religion as whole in the US is still declining
There have been some signs that the decline is tapering off. I would not be shocked if it continued to slide, but I also would not be shocked if it didn't go lower.
Of course part of this is the question of "what counts as religious"? The rise of the nones, for instance, hasn't really corresponded with the rise of secular atheist types (and many nones indulge in religious practices) - so has the decline of religion been essentially false, and it's just been that organized religion is on the decline? Or do we really need to look at practice and church attendance? That seems like a more serious and better measurement in many ways (as I understand it it actually is a better predictor for many religious benefits) but does that unfairly discount religious practices that are by their very nature disorganized? There's some methodological questions there. I'd simply confine myself to observing that the "decline of religion" mostly doesn't mean "the rise of secular liberal atheism" or anything like that. It means people aren't going to church, not that they have become transhumanist Star Trek liberals or something.
They are also massively less influential than they were in the 80s and 00s and they'd have to work pretty hard to get that power back.
One notable difference since the 00s, I think, is that evangelicals will be more comfortable being in a political coalition with Catholics, and even Mormons and Muslims. They're still going to have serious reservations, but Obama-era liberalism made the misstep of putting "conservative religious people" broadly on the same team in some areas. I think this is tremendously important - all the little parts of these coalitions have their own organizations and patronage networks. Exercising political power is not just about counting heads, you need networking and institutions, and "all religious groups in the US that are relatively conservative" is much more powerful a coalition than "evangelicals."
Shrike
12d ago
That said, I suspect this is mainly due to the much larger population of non-practicing Catholics?
Yes, I think this is right. I also think there are a lot of people in the Catholic church who are very left-wing (...even on positions like abortion) and who want to reform the church from within.
Whereas as you say evangelicals who are dissatisfied with, say, the evangelical teachings on abortion just leave.
That said I would not be surprised if this changes - if younger people who leave Catholicism increasingly drop the label entirely, rather than continue to call themselves Catholic and just not do anything, then Catholicism will become more meaningful as a signal.
I think this is likely. My guess is that in the US over the next 40 - 50 years, Catholic numbers drop considerably (or if they hold steady, it's due to immigration) but the remnants are more dedicated and more "conservative" as far as such things go.
Shrike
12d ago
I am spitballing here but I have definitely wondered if places with longstanding minority groups just are able to handle integration much better than places where the very same groups are new. In other words, in this scenario, possibly you are both right and it's just that DFW, which has ~always had a significant Hispanic presence compared to Fairfax, Virginia, is much better culturally at handling the situation.
It would be odd if it were not at least somewhat that way, imho.
Shrike
12d ago
I don't think that this is true – non-denominational churches (which I would think are often but not always right-wing evangelical coded) are actually growing. And attending evangelical types typically have a positive tfr, IIRC.
Some groups (like the Southern Baptists, IIRC) are undergoing narrowing (perhaps temporary as Baby Boomers and the Silent Gen decline?) and of course retention rates are not perfect (so a high tfr does not guarantee continued adherence.) But I think that modeling a mild downturn in attendance to infinity is as naive as modeling a mild upswing to infinity.
Regardless, just going by current trendlines, I think we can expect evangelicals to continue to be a "live player" group. They're often overlooked in favor of the Amish or tradcaths because the Amish are basically a far-group to most internet users and tradcaths have a lot of momentum, so they are more fun to talk about, while evangelicals' day in the sun ended with Bush 2, but evangelicals never actually went anywhere.
I wouldn't necessarily predict it but I think there is actually a very good chance that evangelicalism (defined broadly, and perhaps throwing in a few Protestant denominations that wouldn't consider themselves evangelical but nevertheless have many of the same characteristics) is actually the Religion of the Future in America. Very plausible to see them cannibalizing the mainstream denominations as they enter tailspins, pick up tradpilled younger Gen Zs, and make massive inroads into traditional Catholic territories.
Shrike
12d ago
It is reasonable to assume that, if things continue on as they have for another 100 years, secularism will continue to rise.
If things continue on as they have for another 100 years (appropriate to your analogy) the "mature" civilizations will, like the elders of a community, only be a shell of their former selves, if anything is left of them at all.
Shrike
12d ago
There is potentially a discussion to be had about how Catholics got into that position, and I'd guess it has to do with the quite large and influential Catholic education system.
I would also just add that "evangelical" continues to be much more of a signal for "right-wing" than "Catholic" and so I think Catholics are an easy place for righties to get people who agree with them on most everything without also having a religious affiliation that is listed under I AGREE WITH RIGHTIES ON MOST EVERYTHING in the dictionary. (Obviously evangelicals are more nuanced than that, but in terms of public optics I do think it matters a bit.)
As per your comment, I would not be surprised if this actually changes, and Catholicism becomes smaller but much more visibly right-wing as older generations of leaders die out (and as the left shifts to be more and more hostile to religion and away from old Catholic-friendly patronage networks). I foresee Catholic thought-leadership staffed with evangelical foot-soldiers as being a very potent coalition in the future, despite their cracks.
Shrike
21d ago
Even if you have outer layer air defenses, you don't have a lot of time if they goof up and you need your CIWS. So maneuvering to unmask seems very plausible to me.
I'd also say that the US military, from what I can tell, embraces a mindset of utilizing the full spectrum of their capabilities for the sake of professionalism. Which is a DoD Powerpoint-y way of saying that the military likes to both test and practice things during real military environments, so making a radical maneuver to unmask in the face of even a nominal threat could very well be seen as a "best practices" thing.
Jewish settlement of Israel going back millennia is well-documented.
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