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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.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's the US that makes the first move against satellites in a Pacific war: aircraft carrier battlegroups are actually pretty hard to locate if you don't have any imaging or radar satellites in orbit.

I agree that taking out the huge US satellite constellations will degrade US war fighting capabilities, but in a Pacific war over Taiwan I suspect a Kessler syndrome asymmetrically helps the United States: China is surrounded by Taiwan, South Korea and Japan in a ring, and their naval and shore-based assets will be able to track Chinese naval activity, identify it for targeting, and communicate that to US bomber strike packages originating from well outside China's effective reach. Meanwhile, the US carrier fleet will be free to steam in circles in the middle of nowhere, Pacific, and China will have to resort to trying to locate them with submarines, recon aircraft, and possibly ELINT (very fun and fancy until the carrier turns off its radios). It's possible there's some other options I haven't thought of, but the long and short of things is that targeting a ship at sea is much easier with orbital assets and much harder otherwise.

I also think it's worth considering that the US has a lot of nuclear-strike-warning orbital assets, so hitting US satellites indiscriminately may send the signal that you're planning to go ballistic in the nuclear way – but those same assets are helpful for all sorts of stuff, with resolutions sensitive enough to pinpoint the release of small weapons. I assume if you're China you just shoot them down anyway.

I should note that there are a lot of soft-kill ways to deal with satellites and (additionally) plenty of hard-kill ways that don't result in massive debris clouds. That doesn't mean people won't create said debris clouds – either because they're just using basic ASAT missiles or to make it harder for the US to simply putting more assets in orbit with its massive edge in earth-to-orbit transport.

Carrier strike groups, or the planes launched from them, still need to get close to be useful - close enough that you could find them with clouds of cheap drones flying WWII-style search patterns (China has overwhelming manufacturing advantage there) or radar. I don't see why China would need to strike them while they are circling out in the open Pacific, if they can't do anything significant to interfere from out there because they have no significant quantity of weaponry in the intersection of "gets past layered air defence" (something that China will have in its own vicinity and the US won't) and "finds its target". Taiwan, too, has layered air defense and proximity, but without the US being able to bring much to the table anymore it would just get overwhelmed.

The point, I think, is more in that the US must know and fear this possibility; a loss of its space-based recon and targeting would spell trouble not just in Taiwan but in every other theatre (would Ukraine or Israel be able to hold on without their current ability to be forewarned of any troop concentration and surface construction ability almost immediately?). My lay sense would be that yielding Taiwan and trying to make the best of the outcome would be better for global US power prospects than yielding the space advantage and fighting for Taiwan, even if the latter fought can somehow be won (as in Taiwan stays independent and US-aligned).

The F-35 has a 750ish mile combat range, which can be extended by in-air refueling. You can tack another, say, 100 - 200 miles onto that with an anti-ship missile, so a carrier strike group could hang out midway between Guam and Taiwan and launch effective strike packages against targets in the Taiwan strait. And one thing that the war in Ukraine has proven is that stealthy cruise missiles launched by low-flying aircraft can evade layered air defense, so our assumption should be that this strategy is at least somewhat effective. Of course, the US can also sortie effective strike packages from CONUS, but they will take a lot longer to get to the target.

The "cheap drones" you mention the Chinese using will be Predator-style drones – quadcopter types won't have the range, you'll need large, long endurance surveillance assets – basically unmanned U-2s. Which means they show up very nicely on every radar within a couple hundred miles and a fighter will likely show up and dispatch you before you get within range of the carrier. Optics aren't necessarily particularly effective maritime search assets anyway, as you mention you really want long-range radar, but that's 1) expensive, 2) prone to being spoofed, and 3) lets everyone know you are out looking for a carrier well before you can actually find the carrier, if their electronics are working correctly. You can try to build a stealthy drone to mitigate these problems but at this point you're no longer a cheap drone, and probably not a cloud. And, well, see how well WWII-style search patterns worked out for the participants in WWII.

Now, I'm not saying that a carrier battle group couldn't be spotted in such a manner. I'm just saying it's not an easy win.

Something that might be is over-the-horizon radar. I'm not sure how effective that would be, or what limitations it might have.

The big advantage the US has re: space is that it can just put more space-based recon in space pretty quickly. At least, I assume that's what the X-37 is for. So quite possibly you could see a situation where China knocks down all our satellites and we just put up a maneuvering recon asset that they can't touch the next day.

As I understand it, the idea of using carriers against China would be to interdict shipping coming to and from them from far away, as well as any naval assets attacking Taiwan.

I'm inclined to think that China and Russia have more to lose in losing space-based assets than the US, even assuming no retaliation in other arenas. Gaza is tiny, the IAF can monitor them just fine with conventional aircraft and drones. Russia is vast, but I think Ukraine is mostly covered with AWACS aircraft operating outside of actual Ukrainian territory, and there probably isn't all that much advantage there from the ability to monitor deep inside Russia. Meanwhile, satellite surveillance is probably the best way Russia has to see what NATO is doing outside of Ukraine. Invading Taiwan is logistically complex, China would probably benefit greatly from having intact GPS to pull it off, as well as the ability to see where those carrier groups are and what they're up to, which would be tough to get any other way.

I'm not sure how confident to be in all that, but I think it's enough to make the case that all-out space war is not likely to be a clear win for the counter-US powers.

It’s ridiculous to assume the US military hasn’t fully prepared for the possibility of kesslerization given it’s been theorized as a warfare tactic for almost 50 years. In any case, I imagine both Russia and China would be extremely reluctant to use it given how much damage it would do to either side’s allies all over the world. The destruction of high orbit satellites is far from assured. The speed of it is also unclear and is actually pretty slow iirc in a lot of models.

Good point about the speed at which it would happen - I didn't consider that it could only amount to a "debris threshold passed now leads to inescapable exponential growth that will reach the point that no sats survive for long in 10 years" scenario.

I do however doubt that either of Russia and China would be particularly concerned about the damage loss of international space capabilities would do to their remaining allies (Google Maps? Degradation of weather forecasts? Loss of landsat-type commercial imagery?) if they are in an existential-ish struggle against the US. All of those sound to me like they would be minor relative to the effects of disturbances to the financial system and supply chains such a war would impose on everyone either way.

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