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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 think the risk of war is high (perhaps not within 12 months but within a few years). However, I think the chance of an immediate invasion like everyone is preparing for is much lower.

Amphibious invasions are very hard, especially against a prepared defender (they'll see it coming with modern satellites). The Chinese have specialized marine brigades that are tasked for this mission, they're definitely aiming for the capability to invade. They trained many more marines even as the army was downsized in manpower terms. But actually invading and landing are very challenging tasks.

China's great advantage is in industrial and attritional warfare. They have enormous industrial capacity, their manufacturing sector is roughly equal to the US, Germany and Japan combined. They want to wage war in such a way that leverages this capacity to the utmost. While China's been expanding its marine corps, they've also been putting a lot of effort into missiles. They tested more missiles in 2021 than the rest of the world IIRC. They don't want to fight the US in the skies and seas up close, they want to fling hundreds and thousands of missiles at US airbases, ports and ships before they can even reach the battlefield. They want to most efficiently turn their production advantage to a military advantage by turning this into a missile war. I think their strategy for Taiwan is to pound it with missiles, airstrikes and drones. They'll wait for months before landing, waiting for the defenders to get exhausted by the bombing.

At the same time, attrition will take its toll on Taiwan. Taiwan is about 30% food secure, China is 90-95% secure on grains with huge stockpiles. China takes food extremely seriously. Taiwan is innately crippled by geography, it's a tiny mountainous rock in the ocean that also has to import fertilizer by sea.

Taiwan has no energy production, in 2021 Taiwan relied on imports of fossil fuels for 97.7 percent of its total energy supply. China is about 80% energy sufficient (this is mostly coal) and they produce 25% of the oil they need. They can import another 10-15% from Russia. In addition, they have about 100 days worth of oil stockpiled. That's enough oil for military needs. I believe they have the state capacity to ration domestic civilian oil use and scramble up more supply from Russia. In WW2 the US quickly built pipelines to take oil from Texas to the industrial North, they used barges and trains and all kinds of tricks.

All the wargaming for Taiwan seems to focus on a period of a few weeks, a quick invasion. This is rosy, optimistic thinking for a great power war. This is WW3! It won't last for a few weeks, it will take years like all the other great power wars. Germany fought through famine in WW1, they fought through energy scarcity in WW2. Highly determined states will find a way, they'll synthesize oil and ration. I think we underestimate Chinese nationalism at our peril, there's a great deal of resentment of the West and hatred especially for Japan. It will be very hard for anyone to oppose the war given they'll be fighting Japan and the West in the world's most secured and propagandized police state.

The fait accompli quick-invasion strategy relies on a very high level of coordination and excellence from those forces in the field today. China probably doesn't have that confidence. Industrial warfare only requires that they have huge production capacity and the ability to learn. An industrial, attritional strategy doesn't require that Chinese marines seize enough ports without damaging them too much, that their airforce can defend the landing craft, that they can quickly resupply forces...

Attrition puts the onus on us. We have to resupply Taiwan with food and energy lest they capitulate. They will surely capitulate before China capitulates, even if you think my estimates for Chinese self-sufficiency are inaccurate, they can't be so far off that China is behind Taiwan. We have to penetrate the Chinese anti-access, area-denial grid, escorting supply ships and docking them in Taiwanese ports! We have to resupply South Korea and Japan too, who are in similar (but much better) positions to Taiwan. We have to endure a withering barrage of missiles before we even get to contest the airspace and sea. We will have to mobilize our economies and accept massive casualties to fight China over several years or accept defeat.

https://news.usni.org/2022/09/28/chinese-launch-assault-craft-from-civilian-car-ferries-in-mass-amphibious-invasion-drill-satellite-photos-show

“Everybody assumed that you had to seize a port first. That those [ferries] were second echelon forces… Somebody else has got to seize the port,” he said. “2021 was the first time we saw them dump amphibious assault vehicles right into the water, which means now those ferries can be the first echelon sending assault units straight to the beach.“

You underestimate the Chinese to your peril. This is the biggest shipbuilder in the world. Is it hard to produce a transport that can disgorge landing craft and amphibious tanks? No. They can do this. You should inherently assume they can do this because it's pretty straightforward. Why is your model of China a country that lacks these basic capabilities? They can build a space station but they can't build a fancy car freighter?

Do I think they can succeed in an amphibious invasion of Taiwan right at the start of the war? No. But it's not that the Chinese military is 'crap', it's that it's a very tough operation they've never tried before. Nor has the US. The US has not fought a major power at sea since 1945.

Chinese amphibious capacity is less than 10 ships, which provides less than 1000 soldiers per trip.

One Type 075 can transport about 800 soldiers. They have 3 in service. They have a host of other amphibious warfare ships as well, type 072s and others... Many, many more than 10. Where are you getting these numbers from? They have an enormous amount of usable civilian capacity.

I can tell by your diction you have some experience here, normal people don't say tube artillery. We are looking at a very serious conflict with a very strong power. The Western world is not well-served by wildly inaccurate and overconfident denigrations of adversaries.

Consider just how much Chinese technology has infiltrated port infrastructure. We need to treat this threat with deadly seriousness, otherwise I suspect there will be a lot of unpleasant surprises in our future.