doglatine
15d ago
Yeah, I’ve seen some wild liveleak stuff in the past but the scene with the dog was enough to make me decide my brain really doesn’t need this content in it.
doglatine
20d ago
I think a lot of this analysis is on the money, and the US doesn't realise its vulnerability. A lot of its policies are the kind of social engineering experiments you can get away with in a time of leisure and ease, but are unaffordable luxuries in a hostile world. But it's also worth noting some major US strengths -
(1) Attracting top talent. The US is still the world's number one destination for the smartest most talented people from across the planet. China doesn't offer a very compelling cultural package to anyone who isn't Chinese. Sure, you'll get your Filipino nurses and Indian janitors, but those people would much rather be working in the US. Being a global super-attractor for high-conscientiousness, high-g, high ambition individuals is an incredible strength.
(2) Economic security. If you're a billionaire, would you rather put your money in the US or China? Sure China might have less red tape to deal with, and fewer DEI requirements, but the government can also just seize your stuff or imprison you or kill you if you piss off the wrong person. Or they might suddenly decide to make your whole industry illegal, or put massive restrictions on it for ideological reasons. This is not the kind of climate that fosters daring investment decisions; the closest thing China had to an Elon Musk or Sam Altman figure was Jack Ma, and he has been aggressively slapped down by the CCP.
(3) Facilitating creative destruction. Related to the above, the US is a hub for social and technological change. Partly due to its size and partly due to its relatively laissez-faire governance, it's a haven for disruptive new technologies like crypto and AI. By contrast, I have low expectations of the ability of Chinese society as governed by the CCP to properly harness generative AI. Part of that is because China has some of the strictest regulations on AI in the world. But more broadly, AI is likely to cause massive destabilisation in job markets, information ecosystems, and education, and it seems unlikely to me that the Chinese government will just shrug its shoulders and let that happen.
(4) Market discipline. We talk about China's incredible high-speed rail network, but it's still possible this will turn out to be a boondoggle. Generally, the economics of high-speed rail suck, and it's not just Western inefficiency that holds it back - Singapore and Malaysia recently cancelled a line between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore because the numbers just didn't add up. By contrast, the economics of air travel are pretty straightforward, and the US has roughly 25 times the number of airports as China. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the US is some kind of paragon of market efficiency, and it regularly throws taxpayers' money at stupid projects. But I think the combination of democracy and strong free-market foundations makes it harder for it to do this at the same scale and duration as China.
(5) Long-term economic trajectory. China's economics look vastly different now than they did 10 years ago. Back then, Goldman Sachs thought it likely that China would overtake the US in nominal GDP by the late 2020s. Now it's been pushed back to the late 2040s (crucially, well past the median projected date for AGI), and may indeed never happen if China's demographics don't improve. More broadly, China has yet to find an alternative solution to property development to be the second leg of its economy alongside manufacturing; it has far more property than it will ever use, and its attempt to use overseas construction projects as an alternative have had very mixed results (plus could never absorb the same amount of labour as domestic production). China's youth unemployment rate is high, and many of its young people are increasingly disaffected. Meanwhile, with the rise of "safeshoring" and "derisking", new FDI is flowing into alternative manufacturing hubs in India and Indonesia, which can increasingly compete with China on price. China seems to have fallen squarely into the middle income trap, at quite a low level, somewhere below Russia and above Egypt in GDP (PPP)/capita terms. None of this is to say that China's threat has receded - it is enormous, and even if its economy simply chugs along, it will remain a huge global producer. But it's not the all-powerful economic juggernaut it appeared a few years ago. By contrast, the US economy has performed very impressively, actually beating China in GDP/growth in Q3 last year (admittedly that one is a bit of an outlier).
(6) Friends and Allies. The US has lots of allies. Among its closest are three nuclear powers (UK, France, Israel), two permanent UN security council seats (UK, France), six of the world's largest economies (Germany, Japan, UK, France, Italy, Canada), and some of the world's largest raw mineral producers (Canada, Australia), and that's not even counting India and Indonesia, who the US is increasingly courting. It leads many of the world's most powerful international organisations like the World Bank and IMF, has a hugely outsize influence on culture, has military bases all around the world, and has no serious enemies on its own continent. By contrast, China's closest allies are Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, and Russia, who are as much liabilities as assets. It is on poor terms with several of its closest neighbours, notably Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, The Philippines, and Vietnam. It has very little cultural power and very few bases overseas.
So, I think it would be a mistake to throw up our hands in despair; the US has formidable structural advantages in any prolonged conflict with China. But none of this is a reason for complacency. Hopefully the Ukraine War has proven to be a shock to the system and will reinvigorate US ambitions.
doglatine
20d ago
'defend allies without going on global adventures' I meant taking a stand to defend Taiwan if it were attacked as opposed to isolationism - that wasn't clear in my post though. However, the US has lots of troops all over the world, that huge base in Africa that was recently closed for example.
One of the reasons the US has bases all over the world is so it can quickly deploy forces in defense of allies. For example, the recently-closed based in Niger was helping the government of that country (and neighboring regions) defend against ISIS and Boko Haram. Bases in the Middle East can help defend KSA, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and UAE against Iran, Houthis, etc.. Base in Okinawa and the Philippines protect those countries from China. And so on. While I'm sympathetic to your broad view that the US has overestimated its strength and should be focused on protecting what it has, it's not clear to me that the material means of doing so are radically different. E.g., if a US ally in East Africa is attacked, the solution is sending a carrier group.
The idea that Ukrainians are only fighting out because mean old NATO made them do it is absurd. In the months leading up to the February invasion, it was widely assumed in Western capitals that Ukraine would fold like a house of cards, and that would be that. The only reason the West got sucked into the conflict in its current capacity is because Ukraine put up an impressive resistance, stopping the Russian offensive in its tracks and pushing them back rapidly. Relatively recent polling data from Ukraine (a few months old, but after the failed summer offensive) shows continued strong support for the war and confidence in the UAF. Now, I'll happily grant that Ukraine's 2023 summer offensive was a disaster, not so much because of casualties but because it significantly depleted Ukrainian munitions and led to the current "shell hunger" being experienced across the line, and all for very little return. But despite this setback, Russia has not been to shift the lines significantly either, suffering lopsided casualties for minimal territorial gains at Bakhmut and Avdiivka, and the largest successful advances of the war after the initial invasion still remains the Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive of Q3 2022.
The bitter lesson of the last year, I would suggest, is that the operational environment in Ukraine now strongly favours defensive operations, and large breakthroughs are unlikely. On the one hand, this is bad news for Ukraine: any dreams of sweeping advances into Crimea or liberation of Donetsk City have been thoroughly quashed. However, it's also bad news for Russia, insofar as it makes an outright military resolution of the conflict unlikely. Instead, it will be a battle of stamina and will between Ukraine (and its backers) and Russia (and its backers). It may be that the Ukrainian people decide it's not worth fighting on, and will sue for peace, and that's ultimately up to them, but we're a long way from that point. Moreover, it's not clear that the fundamentals of the battle of stamina really do favour Russia: we're witnessing dramatic scaling-up of munitions production in Europe and the US, the continuing depletion of Russian armoured vehicle stocks, and increasingly bold attacks on Russian oil and gas infrastructure hundreds of miles behind the border. It seems to me that the resolution of the conflict remains wide open.
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