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-_-_-_-_-  4mo ago (noahpinion.blog)   2105 thread views

Noah Smith: Manufacturing is a war now

noahpinion.blog

Industrial policy has been a frequent subject on Smith's blog, for those who don't follow it. (He's for it, and thinks that Biden's industrial policy was mostly good - it's worth following the links in this post.) This post focuses on defense-related geopolitical industrial policy goals and pros and cons of anticipated changes under the incoming Trump administration and Chinese responses. Particularly, he highlights two major things China can do: Restrict exports of raw materials (recently announced) and use their own industrial policy to hamper the West's peacetime industrial policy (de facto policy of the last 30 years). These are not extraordinary insights, but it's a good primer on the current state of affairs and policies to pay attention to in the near-future.

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Why don’t we just let China have Taiwan and the South China Sea? I really don’t care about China. China doesn’t care about most of the rest of the world. China doesn’t seek dominion over European civilization. China is uninterested in the export of world revolution in the way that, say, some historic communist states were. The Taiwanese will do just fine under Chinese rule; even the old KMT vets are unlikely to face any retribution in their very, very old age. Most people neither require nor care about democracy; they want streets that are safe, low crime, affordable and decent food on the table, a youth that is disciplined and hardworking, and a feeling that their country is headed in the right direction.

What matters is civilization. What matters is mass immigration. What matters is law and order. What matters is the cultural rot that has hollowed out the West, leaving a small class of feckless, neurotic elites and a vast population of normal people held hostage by the scum at the bottom of society who continuously go un- and under-punished. What matters is ugliness, in architecture, in obesity, in fonts, in advertising, in fashion. China is responsible for relatively little of this.

Challenging China is both pointless and cruel. The Chinese, for all the great flaws of their system, still have the kind of state capacity and self-belief that Western nations can only dream of. Waging a war against China would be an act of nightmarish self-harm. Fix the West, first, on a cultural level, then worry about whatever the fuck is going to happen with Taiwan (I don’t care).

Why don’t we just let Russia have the territory of former Novorossiya? The same arguments apply as here.

  • China is about 10x as strong
  • China does not seem to want more than taiwan and access to the ocean
  • Russia has a (recent) record of using military means and nuclear threats to expand its borders – China’s relative peacefulness (100x) should be rewarded and Russia’s behaviour punished . If nothing else, to avoid nuclearization.

The PRC wants the South China Sea, Taiwan, Senkaku, Ryukyu (they've openly put out feelers, even if they haven't officially demanded it yet), and a few territories along the Indian border, plus maybe Korea, plus some degree of control over the policy of ~everywhere (see e.g. the Fourteen Demands).

Japan and South Korea will nuclearise if Taiwan falls unfought. Pure if-then. In a world where the USA is not willing to defend East Asia and the PLAN has Pacific Ocean access unobstructed by the First Island Chain, Beijing would otherwise be able to dictate terms to them due to the threat of blockade (neither country is remotely close to food security).

Unless we feel like performing the kowtow, we're probably going to have to fight the PRC, and if so we should fight it while our allies are all intact and the geography works against it.

I don’t care if South Korea and Japan have nukes and would probably consider it a good thing. I’m very confident that Xi Jinping does not personally want to rule over the Japanese the way Putin dreams of reconstituting the Russian Empire, so I don’t really care.

I don't care .... I don't really care

I care .... I really, really care.

the Great Man theory of history really is some midwit shit. This isn't about Xi or Putin, this is about large scale economic-military-political spheres of control and influence that will outlive both of these men. The post WW2 world order was started by a bunch of Americans that are now very dead and has been sustained for going on 80 years because of a system maintained and reinforced by cultural, political, economic, and military forces.

China is not seeking Taiwan as an end state. They are seeking to create a Chinese system (of cultural, political, economic, and military means) that similarly self-sustains and self-supports for centuries. That can only come with a reduction in both the relative and absolute power of the West, especially the United States. Such a drastic shift in power will necessarily alter our cultural values and operation. I don't want Beijing's incredibly global presence to dictate cultural norms to any extent (aside: Ban TikTok).

The world hasn't gotten any smaller, but nations (in the conceptual sense) have become larger and can move faster and further. There is no "over there" any more.

Who’s next?

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