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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   28511 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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What are the odds China moves on Taiwan in the next 12 months?

The Ukraine war seems to be ushering in a major political realignment in the West. Previously staunch pacifists are penning pieces about how they went from left to center-left, as yesterday's liberals become today's neoliberals and tomorrow's neocons. The circle of life turns, I suppose? It certainly seems like wokeness has traveled far enough down the barber pole that my age cohort is starting to lurch rightwards. Noah Smith is writing hawkish piece after hawkish piece claiming we've entered a new cold war, with a new Axis of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea opposing America and NATO & Friends. He linked to this article making the case for a new cold war, and specifically China moving on Taiwan:

in practice. I see three main plausible scenarios:

Pearl Harbor. China combines an invasion of Taiwan with an attack on U.S. installations, at least in Guam, and possibly on Japanese territory as well. The United States, and possibly Japan, are immediately at war with China, with high likelihood of rapid escalation to general war.
Korea 1950. China attacks Taiwan, probably associated with preparations for invasion. Though, as in South Korea in 1950, the U.S. defense commitment is ambiguous, the brazen character of the attack raises the odds of at least U.S. and Japanese intervention, and all prepare for the possibility of escalation to general war.
Indirect control. China implements air and sea border controls to make Taiwan a self-governing administrative region of China. There is no need for a direct attack on Taiwan or any blockade of usual commerce. Without initiating violent action, the Chinese can assert sovereign control over the air and sea borders to Taiwan, establishing customs and immigration controls. This is not the same thing as a blockade. A blockade would instead become one of the possible consequences if the other side violently challenged China’s assertion of indirect control.

Most of the time, the arguments I see putting China's invasion 5-10 years in the future focus on the second scenario and claim China is still lacking amphibious materiel/experience to pull off a D-day tier invasion. I've only rarely seen the third possibility discussed, but it seems much more likely. The recent military exercises to point in this direction.

This is all wildly outside of my lane. What do people think the odds are that China instigates some kind of blockade or customs control over Taiwan in the next 12 months? The bull case:

  1. The wars in Ukraine and Israel are straining US defense production almost to breaking point already, however, waiting a few years could see China confronted with an America and EU that brought a ton more military production capacity online.
  2. The election will inevitably (particularly now that Trump is a felon) lead to an enormous amount of chaos between October 2024 and February 2025.
  3. China's relative advantages must be reaching their zenith, given demographics and the resurgence of neo-industrial policy.
  4. A demoralized military-class that is increasingly apathetic to foreign policy/wars that don't directly impact Americans.

The bear case:

  1. Significant domestic malaise following the mess of zero-COVID, the housing crash and relative slowdown of the economy (or does this make it more likely to boost support for the regime?)
  2. Fear of economic/military retaliation from US, Japan, Australia, Korea?
  3. Taiwan is a convenient way to whip up nationalism, but would be inconvenient to actually invade and potentially bungle.
  4. ?? Honestly, I'm having difficulty articulating reasons why China wouldn't make a move soon.

I'm interested in whether people think this is largely driven by Gell-Mann amnesia and I'm being irrationally swayed by an increasingly hawkish media environment/overly focused on domestic US politics, or whether the odds of China invading are much higher than people seem to think (although I could only find a betting market for a hot-invasion).

I dunno about "12 months" but a couple things that I think point towards China's window closing, not opening:

  1. The US has started developing a lot of new anti-ship capabilities. But we're having embarrassing teething pains on the hypersonic weapons, and while we've got the stopgap LRASM in production it's unclear (at least to me) how many we've actually got ready to go into combat. A number of new programs, like the B-21 and the Australian acquisition of nuclear submarines, could potentially be very potent – but in 5 - 10 years, not months. If you're China, do you want to go to war today, or in 2035 when the US has 100 B-21s armed with hypersonic anti-ship missiles and Australia has its own set of nuclear submarines? (Obviously China won't be sitting still for the next decade, but if they think they have enough to go now, why wait for your enemy to get stronger?)
  2. Younger generations of Taiwanese are identifying more and more as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.

Since I suggested to @quiet_NaN that I would, here's my thoughts on the "surround Taiwan with the Coast Guard and start conducting customs inspections" option:

The good:

  • Since almost everyone recognizes PRC as the legitimate government of China, it puts China in a favorable position vs. USA + Japan in matters of international law and international reputation in a way that bombarding Taipei would not.
  • It also shifts the onus to act on Taiwan and/or Japan + USA, and puts them in the awkward position of potentially using military force against the Chinese Coast Guard.
  • It is easier to reverse than a war, and less embarrassing to cease operations than losing an invasion, but (importantly) it doesn't take an invasion off the table and might assist in preparing for one. It's a great trial balloon!
  • It lets the PRC cut off the Taiwanese supply of microprocessors and arms shipments destined for Taiwan, making their potential enemies weaker in one stroke.
  • A very soft version of it, such as simply enforcing existing Chinese customs law against traffic to and from Taiwan makes it something less than a blockade, but is still financially difficult for Taiwan (since it amounts to a double tax) and lets the Chinese restrict the flow of sensitive materials.
  • If Taiwan decides to comply, it acculturates Taiwan to Chinese rule.
  • The Taiwanese navy is defensively oriented and will be more vulnerable than it already is attempting to break a far blockade. If it does attempt to do so, China might be able to retaliate precisely by destroying those naval assets (or Taiwanese naval assets writ large) in "self-defense" without escalating the situation further. This gives puts China in a win-win scenario: Taiwan can acquiesce or it can risk losing its naval assets, rendering it more vulnerable to an invasion. Of course Taiwan could attempt to climb the escalation ladder, but doing so unilaterally would be risky.
  • International shipping is very risk-averse and would probably comply as a default.

The bad:

  • It is likely to precipitate dramatic Taiwanese reactions and harden the Taiwanese stance against China.
  • Parties attempting to break the blockade might be able to generate local force advantage and would probably get to pick their battles.
  • Although I think this risk would be mitigated somewhat if China mostly relied on its Coast Guard, it would invite a sort of reverse-Pearl Harbor wherein the US, Japan and Taiwan decided to secretly attack, and launched a coordinated strike on their own time against exposed Chinese naval assets. Being further from the mainland means being further from air cover and the mainland air defense umbrella, and in deeper water that is better for nuclear submarine operations. You can see a scenario where Team Taiwan lets the blockade go along for four or five months while getting every available nuclear submarine in position and then sinks a big chunk of the Chinese navy in half an hour.

Overall I wouldn't be surprised if China decided to do this in response to a US arms shipment, a la the Cuban missile crisis.

It's hard to imagine any great-power war against the US not involving kesslering every useful orbit as the first move, which would likely destroy any long-range precision weaponry advantage that the US has (consider how even the medium-range kit Ukraine got is creaking under mere GPS jamming, and every Starlink outage causes pandemonium). Under lower-tech conditions, contesting China's geographical advantage over Taiwan may be hard for the US, whose military seems quite addicted to its C&C capabilities, and even the lessons of Ukraine's defense may not be applicable in a scenario where real fog of war is once again a factor.

The US would do well to fix in doctrine that destroying enough of its space assets will be grounds for unbounded nuclear retaliation, but it might require some preparatory propaganda to get people to accept it as reasonable so soft power doesn't suffer for it.

GPS satellites are in a high enough orbit that chain-reaction "Kessler syndrome" is not trivial to cause up there. Space is too sparsely populated up there for chain reactions to occur on invasion timescales.

If that's the case, it might still be possible to ASAT them individually because there are so few?

That would be how one probably has to do it. But let's see: China's 2007 ASAT test was carried out with a modified medium-range ballistic missile with a ground range of about 4000 km. That's not going to reach 20000 km altitude; I don't think even an ICBM could get up there. Probably it would take individual killer-satellites, launched on one space rocket apiece, which would themselves be much more vulnerable to existing ASAT weaponry before they reach their targets. Probably not cost-effective.

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