Shrike
15hr ago
Yeah, heaven only knows what things are going to look like in 10 - 20 years. No point in getting locked into a flowchart.
I was homeschooled and dated and married basically entirely "within" the broader conservative religious universe – which wasn't necessarily 100% homeschoolers but had a lot of overlap, and I personally was homeschooled. I met my wife, who had a similar background, at a college with a statement of faith and we married shortly after we graduated. I have zero regrets about any of the above and plan to raise my children relatively similarly.
To the extent that I've had a better outcome than the stereotypical homeschooler (which might not be the case – in my experience homeschoolers often turn out fairly well) it might be in part because my parents were always very confident in their children and our ability to succeed outside of the house and "in the real world," whether that was in romance or on the job or in areas of basic life competency. My parents never really expressed anxiety about our ability to work, or find a wife, and never seemed fearful about our future, or overprotective. They were never hectoring about the "basic life script" but there was an implicit assumption that we would follow it, not because they insisted on it but because we were capable of it.
One concrete thing I would say is that my wife and I both took a few community college classes in high school and found that very good for starting the transition out of the home. I think it's worth considering even if your kids are in public or private schools – it's a good introduction to the college format.
Shrike
23hr ago
The former prescribes manning up. The main problem is boys refusing to step up and take risks. The latter focuses primarily on anti-feminism and identifies girls' attitudes as the primary problem.
I suspect part of the reason that the former is popular in certain circles isn't because there's necessarily a denial of the attitudes of some women, but because the idea is "you don't want to marry that sort of woman anyway."
Which, on the one hand, might be true. On the the other hand, it might be good for there to be more of the sort of woman "you" would "want to marry." On the gripping hand, it's often considered unseemly for men to tell women how to comport themselves, which tends to explain why men often restrict their public advice to other men and boys (or, if they do give women public advice, is along the lines of telling them that they deserve good marriage material in a man, which, while not necessarily bad advice, is at least to some degree indirect advice to men about what sort of men they ought to be).
Shrike
1d ago
I don't recall, good point! But if they were never going to use them as a carrot, I don't understand why they are still "frozen" – the "give the frozen assets to Ukraine" idea has been floating around for a bit but as far as I know hasn't even partially materialized. Presumably they are still on the table for a reason – although perhaps that's less strategy and more bureaucratic/legal hang ups somewhere.
Shrike
2d ago
I don't know for sure but I suspect the German Council on Foreign Relations may be manipulating the facts somewhat.
Really funny if true, because I suspect the normal American response to this will be "get your act together" rather than being more inclined to help.
How do 160 million beat 3-4x their number in an offensive war?
First off I would remind you that this sort of feat of arms is historically pretty normal. Small European detachments operating alone conquered entire kingdoms. The United States and its allied conquered Iraq in less than a month with about 600,000 men against an army of 1.3 million in a country of nearly 25 million.
I realize it's very popular at this point, of course, to say "well Arabs can't fight in modern wars" – but can Europeans?
With all that being said, though, I tend to agree with you that Russia just meat-grindering through Europe is very unlikely.
Let's take what I think is a more realistic scenario (inasmuch as it does not presume Russia is acting like an omnicidal entity):
-
Russia, perhaps out of paranoia over NATO preparations to put more troops in the Baltic states, decides to seize them. It decides to launch a three-pronged assault from Kaliningrad, Belarus and Russia proper, cutting through Lithuania and Latvia to secure a land bridge to Kaliningrad and isolating Estonia. Because none of these nations have military capabilities to speak of (about 8,000 active personnel in Estonia, about 20,000 in Latvia and Lithuania each, and currently no tanks, no fighter aircraft or attack helicopters, although there is a NATO air policing mission there, very limited air defenses, etc. etc.) the Russians, after a preparatory barrage, are able to cross the border without meaningful resistance and cut logistical lines flowing from Poland to Narva. Rather than attack large towns, the Russians simply put blocking detachments with ATGMs and tanks outside of them. The Latvians do not have a navy to sink, so the Russians steam their least valuable destroyer into the Gulf of Riga and park it there to interdict commerce.
-
Russia then begins to lay literally three million land mines between Belarus and the Baltic sea. Russian troops surround Estonia but do not invade. The governments of the Baltic states are given 72 hours to agree to neutralization. Although all three countries have large reserve forces they can call up in theory, Russian cruise missiles have hit all telecoms and VDV detachments have seized the power plants via heliborne assault – the power is out nationwide. Spontaneous disorganized resistance with small arms might be effective against an occupying force, but the Russians are less occupying and more raiding. Commerce is stopped, and any troop concentrations are dispatched via Iskander or Su-34, but the Russians aren't trying to go door-to-door. In order to fight them, the Latvian military and reservists who survived the blitzkrieg are going to have to attack Russian positions that they are fast preparing. Just as the Russians were able to slice off and fortify parts of Ukraine, they also expect to be able to, at a minimum, cut out and hold a land belt between Belarus and Kaliningrad by direct force while using a stranglehold on energy and communications to force the now-isolated Baltic states to the table. And, unlike Ukraine, the Baltics have no strategic depth. Russian helicopters and attack aircraft can operate throughout the region, and artillery from Kaliningrad and Belarus can cover the entire Polish-Lithuanian border.
Now in this circumstance NATO's entire point is to uphold the sovereignty of its member states. But it can't win this fight by waiting for the Russians to run out of men to push through the meat grinder. Instead they have to have enough forces in Poland to contain Kaliningrad and push Russian troops out of the Baltic states quickly before they are able to build fortifications (or, alternatively, have the ability to clear three million land mines) systematically while under fire and hoping that the population of the Baltics doesn't freeze to death in the intervening period.
Obviously for the sake of the scenario I granted the Russians the ability to pull this off, which is probably debatable. (I think they could easily beat the Baltics, the problem would be being sneaky enough about preparing to beat the Baltics that the US or someone didn't move an armored division there while you were preparing.) But you see my point about the need for a military force that can do more than just attrit the Russians over a long period of time. Just like the Ukrainians, if they wanted to preserve their full sovereignty, needed to be able to protect or reclaim Crimea, NATO as a whole needs to be able to protect or assemble a force that can reclaim the Baltics. Ukraine failed unambiguously. I don't think Russia cares that much about the Baltics, but if you're NATO, you have to have some means of assuring the sovereignty of your member states.
Ukraine's rare earths exist but they're not valuable in any significant sense.
Hmm, I hope we're able to scrounge some up regardless. I'm given to understand the problem with rare earths is more in refining them, rather than finding them?
Shrike
2d ago
Yeah, I was responding to Ranger's phrasing, which was saying that Europe had conventional superiority. But the phrasing might have come out wrong...
I also suspect, functionally, that if there's any big USA/EU split, England will go with the US. So if we count the US out, in some scenarios France is the only European nuclear power.
Shrike
2d ago
I guess it's unlikely they'd have the will to do this but that brings us back to will, not capability.
While I take your point, I kinda disagree. A lack of will is a lack of capability. It also seems like there are real questions about the actual capability of Europe sans American support right now:
Europe lacks heavy transport aircraft, military cargo ships and the specialized vehicles required to move tanks and armored units.
The article as a whole is about NATO sans the US, not an EU peacekeeping force in Ukraine, and I do think that Europe could manage to get together such a force if it had the will. But I do think it's worth noting that there are actual capability gaps that only the United States can fill right now. If Europe and the United States can figure out an equitable division of responsibilities, it's not necessarily a problem, but if Europe needs to send tanks to Ukraine and it can't transport tanks, that's a problem even if Europe has the will.
It makes no strategic sense to send peacekeepers to Ukraine.
I think the point of sending peacekeepers to Ukraine is to raise the stakes for a second Russian invasion by making it likely you'll spread the conflict elsewhere. Whether or not that makes strategic sense depends a lot, I think, on if Europeans think that Putin will come for them, next, if it can "finish off" Ukraine, but also on their economic prospects within Ukraine, and on the cost-benefit analysis of whether ending the war sooner is worth the increased risk of sending peacekeepers (assuming here that a European willingness to commit troops will help end the war sooner, which perhaps it won't.)
Not pretend rare earths reserves
These are real, right? But it looks like the US of A got there first, so it might be sort of pointless for Europe now? Not exactly sure how the trade deal shakes out. Certainly Europe could benefit from a diversified control of rare earths.
I think it's all a giant façade. This is the best explanation for the humiliating 'yes we will, no we won't' approach by Keir Starmer and Macron, they're in a dreamy state between the MCU and reality.
This definitely seems plausible to me. But I also wonder if EU politicians really believe they need to do something but then realize that what would be necessary to actually accomplish such an effort is unpalatable, so they bounce back and forth between wanting to do something and failing to do it. Modern democratic politics does in theory, I think, have a sort of trap wherein cutting programs is political suicide, raising taxes is political suicide, and so it can be very hard to actually do something about threats that are real but not immediate. Not sure if that's what is happening here.
if you have more of everything save nukes then you ought to win, regardless of whether the front line becomes marginally shorter or longer.
European NATO doesn't have more of everything except nukes. They have an edge in tactical aircraft, I think. They might have an edge in tanks and IFVs right now, particularly with Russian losses, but the Russian industry can probably surpass them in 3 - 5 years of postwar production [my source for this is vibes, I am open to correction on this!] I've seen claims they have an edge in artillery, but I question if this is including older systems that aren't nearly as relevant in modern warfare. Either way, Russia has a huge edge in shell production. Russia has vastly more surface-to-air-missile systems. I am pretty sure Russia also has (or again, will quickly have once they stop shooting them) an edge in cruise missiles, and as far as I know no European nation (except, I think, Turkey) has produced a tactical ballistic missile, which the Russians use regularly. Europe has no strategic bombers (Russia has more than 100, a combination of Tu-92s, Tu-22Ms, and Tu-160s, the last of which has reentered production). Russia has an edge in nuclear submarines (Europe has ten nuclear attack submarines, Russia eleven plus four Oscar cruise missile submarines plus an extra ten that Wikipedia says are not in frontline service but either placed in reserve or undergoing a refit. Ballistic missile submarines are unlikely to be frontline combatants but of course Russia has an edge there too, with nine active and three being refitted or overhauled, versus eight in the Anglo-French nuclear deterrent). The Europeans will have more conventional submarines (although they are much less capable in terms of range than nuclear submarines, so it's worth asking if e.g. Grecian submarines will be able to meaningfully participate) and I think a larger surface fleet, although the Russian fleet might actually be better equipped as an anti-surface force as a general rule (I think at the end of the day Europe still has the edge as long as the single French carrier isn't in drydock, but Russian anti-ship missiles are no joke). The Russians will also, I am quite confident, have a massive advantage in mine warfare both on land (with potentially literally millions of mines in their inventory, although who knows how many were used in Ukraine) and at sea.
I'm not really a fearmonger about Russian intent. I don't particularly think Putin wants to invade Germany or something. But I do think it's important to understand why Europe is uncomfortable about having Russia on its borders (particularly now that they have done their darndest to kill Russians by the hundreds.)
If the much richer, more advanced, populous EU can't beat a corrupt Russian oligarchy without the US despite the enemy having a fraction of the resources then there's no point in defending it
Yeah, I mean that's the big question isn't it? Europe seems quite mad at the United States for having the audacity to consider a pullback and pivot to Asia, even though the EU is the world's largest economy and even by purchasing-power-parity has, I believe, a tremendous edge over Russia. So why can't they handle this ~on their own?
Shrike
3d ago
I suspect part of the issue here is that Trump actually has a pretty good carrot for Putin to end the war – sanctions, and frozen assets. But the problem is that it's hard to make that offer expire – even if Trump threatens to take it off the table, if Russia keeps winning, at some point Ukraine will be in such a bad place that they will beg him (or whoever is president at the time) to put it back on again. So Russia does have an incentive to make peace, but it's really at their leisure, once they get everything they want out of the war.
A proposal sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to impose new sanctions on Russia and 500 percent tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, gas and aluminum has received broad bipartisan support in the Senate, possibly even a veto-proof majority.
This would probably completely bork US relations with India, right? Doesn't India buy oil from Russia? Probably won't happen, right?
Ukrainian defense guaranteed by Europe
It seems like this was also a missing part of the puzzle: Europe is unwilling or unable to put boots on the ground in any significant number.
I keep being told that Europe is going to actually get real, for real this time, they're going to militarize, it's going to be gnarly, the US will regret ever awakening the European dragon, they're going to pivot to China...and then I see stuff like this.
It's really a shame, since I actually think (even under pivot-to-Asia conditions) the US can make a very good deal with Europe/NATO that is mutually beneficial while still drawing down the US commitment to Europe.
I would tell Europe that the US is trimming its army and pulling out most of its units (I'd leave tripline forces there so that if Russia shoots at Estonia or something it's uncomfortably likely to kill Americans; their job in a real war would be to coordinate joint efforts). But the goal of pulling those forces will be to reinvest that funding into the US Navy and into mass munitions stockpiles. Ultimately the deal with European NATO, I think, should be as follows:
- The US provides strategic bombers with a deep stockpile of weapons
- The US provides the blue-water navy, aiming to keep the sea lanes clear in the event of a Russian invasion of NATO
- The US provides tactical aviation and force enablers like cargo aircraft and refueling aircraft, although not necessarily forward-based in Europe
- The US continues to cut Europe into R&D, selling munitions, aircraft like the F-35, &ct. to keep Europe's teeth sharp and short.
- The US will continue to cooperate on cybersecurity and intelligence
- The US provides the nuclear-stockpile-of-last-resort that is a counterweight to the massive Russian nuclear arsenal (to increase strategic uncertainly from Russia's POV, France and the UK should be encouraged to continue to maintain their own nuclear stockpiles)
The main thing the United States is not aiming to provide in this scenario is ground forces or day-one aviation. In the event of a war with Russia, the United States is still prepared to come save Europe's butt, but this will be by air and by sea.
European NATO is responsible for:
- The Army. Tanks, air defense, infantry, tube and rocket arty, the whole shebang.
- Reciprocating their R&D advances with the US (I know this is already a thing!)
- Green/brown water navy (this means conventional submarines, minelayers/sweepers, missile boats and pocket forces of surface combatants)
- "Day one" tactical aviation assets in sufficient numbers to fight – we can plan for these to be supplemented by a surge of aircraft from the United States as a war drags on, but Europe should have its own air force in sufficient numbers to be able to fight after a Russian "day zero" cruise missile attack.
- Building infrastructure like airfields and munitions depots
This arrangement provides Europe with a lot of confidence in its ability to deter Russia on its own, even if the United States derps off in a fit of isolationist rage (we're building a Russian-equivalent ground force here) while also providing the United States with assurance that Europe isn't going to develop as a rival superpower (the US navy will remain without peer). It saves Europe billions in developing and maintaining a massive nuclear arsenal while also saving the US billions in maintaining a peacetime army that is expected to fight the Russians at the drop of a hat. And it funnels US production into capabilities that are flexible – forget about the 600 ship navy (well, no, don't, let's do that too) but have you considered the 6 million missile military? A robust navy and in particular tens of thousands of cruise missiles can be aimed just as easily at China as they can at Russia. Thus, instead of endangering global peace by being not-quite-strong-enough to fight Russia or China (while still trying to maintain security commitments – or ambiguities – that contain both) the US is able to continue to provide its traditional role of ruling the waves and backstopping local allies.
And, ultimately, I think it's reasonable. In many ways, this sort of split already exists, or at least did during the Cold War, where nations like West Germany focused on their army and coastal fleets while the US focused on its air force and navy, so doubling down on it should be easy and natural (it's not like asking Europe to develop ICBMs and field them in 5 years, or something). European NATO is getting the good end of the financial bargain, too, since fielding troops and tanks is cheap compared to aircraft carriers and intercontinental bombers. The European Union's economy is only slightly behind the US, in purchasing power parity. Since the end of the Cold War, we've "flipped" some of Warsaw Pact's most feared enemies, like Poland and East Germany, into allies. So, ultimately, it should be very doable, on paper, right?
Unfortunately my confidence in the ability of Europe to achieve even this limited goal is falling by the day. The US maintains about 100,000 troops overseas in Europe. If Europe can't deploy a quarter of that number to Ukraine as peacekeepers, how much help are they actually going to be if they actually have to defend Estonia or Latvia?
Sorry for the digression! This turned into a bit of a monster of a comment. I have my dissatisfactions with the United States and the way it has handled itself. But at least it's pretty clearly still a live player.
Shrike
4d ago
My point isn't that a totalitarian system couldn't have decided to do fake physics. My point is that if you, Supreme Dictator For Life decide to do real physics it's probably just a bit easier to stick your head in from time to time and figure out if they are doing real or fake physics, because you can see if people are landing on the moon and making ballistic missiles that hit their targets and so forth.
The softer the discipline, the harder it becomes for people without specialized training to articulate the problems with the discipline when it goes off the rails (for instance you don't need literary training to complain about modern literature, but it helps – whereas if someone's rocket misses the moon, it missed the moon and you don't need to understand rocket science at all to notice that.)
Now, arguably today physics has advanced to the point where it's less tangible at the cutting edges! But I think you see my suggestion.
Shrike
4d ago
It won't generate literally zero revenue in an accounting sense, though it might damage overall tax revenue, on account of depressing economic activity while not raising much money. Tariffs are highly distortionary.
Sure.
The proper remedy for this would be heavy investments in industrial automation (the US is embarrassingly under-roboticized considering it's the world's most advanced economy) and closer trade ties with allied countries (e.g. Mexico).
Yes, I agree with this. I'm not sure this is enough for reshoring, though, based on conversations I've had with others.
Autarkic economic policy [...] We don't produce a lot of cheap consumer goods, but I don't see a reason to care that we're buying t-shirts from Vietnam instead of Mississippi.
Right, I care a lot less about cheap consumer goods than I do limited autarky by which I mean "do we have our energy, food and basic staples, and military supply chain secured against hostile actors." Obviously this doesn't preclude trade – I think there are a number of foreign suppliers (like a number of our European allies, or Mexico) that it would be safe to rely on.
We don't have this, and we should.
More importantly, the crude transactionalism doesn't speak highly of the current admin's thought processes.
You can be impressed or not, but my point was that the administration was using a "whole cloth" approach to thinking about what they were doing militarily or economically. (Or at least Vance is. Perhaps his thinking does not carry over.)
Personally I think this approach is a baby step towards a grand strategy that the United States needs to actually have and follow daggumit so I hope that the administration continues to refine it.
I guess you're going to have to clarify what you mean by "secret sauce",
Fundamentally, just nonpublic knowledge.
I think this is grading Trump on an outrageous curve.
Less grading on a curve, and more withholding judgment.
I don't see much reason to extend him charity on this
One of the things that I have found is that my charity or lack thereof can't change policy. However, I sometimes can learn things when I try to figure out why things I don't understand are happening, instead of chalking it up to incompetence. I hope I've made it very clear that I don't rule incompetence out, but assuming that isn't really very interesting or educational.
Shrike
4d ago
Catholicism only required this of the priesthood, and that only was standardized in the 11th century, and even today in the Eastern Rite churches married men can be ordained as priests.
Shrike
4d ago
One of the nice things about hard sciences like math and physics (and, if I had to guess, one of the reasons the Soviets performed so well in it - aside, of course, from having a good pool of genuine talent) is that you can run standardized objective tests for it pretty easily...and you can maintain oversight of it pretty easily, I would guess, relative to softer sciences.
I'm not suggesting that you can't test for things like literacy (and in fact communist regimes are actually very good at producing a literate population, too) but at the end of the day if the Politburo demands you go to the moon or be shot, well, okay, even the Politburo can figure out if you went to the moon or not. Whereas if the Politburo demands good literature you can hand them a pamphlet denouncing the latest object of the Politburo's denunciation and even if it's quite bad by what standard, the Politburo isn't a literature department, and even if it's obviously bad can they condemn a condemnation of the thing they wanted condemned?
And I suspect you can get a very similar dynamic under non-totalitarian regimes in the West (including not just governments but of course things like universities and the like).
Shrike
4d ago
By contrast, a very smart Christian probably became a priest
Going to quibble with this a bit - in Europe, as I recall, it was common for priests to be second-born sons of gentle blood, because the firstborn would inherit. Given that firstborns are slightly more intelligent than their siblings as a general rule, and that wealthy elites are probably more likely to have more children, I think the Christians (at least among the elites) were likely also pursuing a "eugenic" policy, if you will, although it might not be as effective as the one you put forth as the Jewish strategy.
For the warrior caste, my prior would be that the selection pressure was similar to European nobility, more brawns than brains.
Combat is g-loaded, actually, although of course physical prowess is also important. My guess is that if there was a selection effect on the nobility or warrior caste that it was for a combination of both.
Shrike
5d ago
Raising enough revenue to replace income taxes requires extraordinarily high tariffs without a decrease in imports (good luck).
Oh, no, I don't think this is fully possible under the current state of affairs. You might could substitute some income, but the welfare state is too vast to fully replace. But there's a difference between "replacing income taxes" and "generating revenue." I (contra Trump, I guess) am very skeptical the former is possible without some major changes but the latter seems like a no-brainer. Like I said, I agree you can't maximize the benefits of all three. I just don't think it's right to suggest that e.g. a protective tariff will generate zero revenue.
suppose one could reconcile tariffs-as-industrial-policy with tariffs-as-tax-policy if one supposes that the economic boom from ISI policy will be so massive that even with massive hikes in taxes on imports, people will still consume enough imports to generate a substantial amount of revenue.
I've heard people Smarter In Economics Than Me suggest a Trump economic boom over the rest of his term (this was after the tariffs came down), but their theory was that it would come about due to deregulation. They weren't exactly fans of how the tariffs were handled.
Frankly, the most honest pitch would be that this is just right-wing degrowth policy - arguing that poverty is an acceptable tradeoff for certain intangible benefits (for left-wingers, it's environmental protection and anti-capitalism; for Trumpists it is the reestablishment/reaffirmation of certain social hierarchies).
Maybe this is what the administration is doing, but do you not buy into the concern about outsourcing our industrial base to China at all? (I don't think that situation is quite as dire as is often suggested, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the problem, does it?)
The US is a valuable market, but it's not so valuable that you can't live without it. Especially if they plan to shake you down on the regular and you're starting to doubt they can be counted on in a pinch.
Sure. As I said,
Please note: I am not saying threatening to do this is a good idea, necessarily.
Although, with that being said, I do suspect the US probably could delete-from-existence some European nations. The question of whether or not the US has leverage and whether or not it should use that leverage (or how it should use that leverage) are different in my mind.
Were they?
Did you read them? Some of the most interesting discussion revolved around the question of if the US should commit valuable military resources to reopen a trade route that largely does not influence US trade. Pretty interesting to see that the administration at least seems to be thinking about this (or at least some members, specifically Vance, seem to be).
Has Trump ever done anything to make you think 4D chess theories are plausible and not cope?
There are a number of good moves his administration made in their first term, I think. Whether or not that counts as "4D chess" is up to you, I guess. But the idea that the government acts based on secret information isn't, I don't think, proposing a novel theory of government action. "Secret Sauce Stuff" motivates government action all the time, from standing up Space Force to killing Qasem Soleimani to locking China out of the US power grid. One analogous example might be US actions against Huawei (which were undertaken under the Biden and Trump administrations). The US has targeted Huawei directly on the basis that they are a security concern, and certainly there are public reasons to think this, but I am sure FVEYS has Secret Sauce reasons as well.
Now, I'm not sure that's what's going on here. I don't think that Trump or his administration is above making mistakes. But look, when Trump says "I'll put massive tariffs on China if they go to war with Taiwan" and then less than a year later does this, amid some (perhaps overstated) warnings from the DoD that China is targeting 2027 as a kick-off date for military action against Taiwan and at least one unsubstantiated rumor that their timeline is even shorter, it does make me suspicious, yes. I think we should all be open to the possibility that the solution might be Just That Obvious even if we don't think that's the most likely alternative.
Shrike
5d ago
Good comment.
Thanks :)
The US would only be able to bring over a little over half of their fleet, I bet - would it be able to sustain a blockade operation against thousands of ships attempting to blockade-run for more than a couple of months? The US would probably say yes, but I actually think that's uncertain.
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).
There are a lot of ships that transit, and all of them would need to be checked or identified on some level.
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.
Even then, it seems to me a far more likely scenario that China is blockading Taiwan, which I think the PLAN is currently capable of doing (if just barely).
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:
an oil embargo probably wouldn't work
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.
Shrike
5d 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
5d 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
6d 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
6d 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
7d 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
7d 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
7d 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.
The Amish and similar groups exist and are real, and they are arguably more radical than what the Benedict Option calls for. They don't have elite power, either, although they do have elite allies (and I do agree that you should get elite allies if you can).
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