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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   33324 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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US can't defend Taiwan's integrity anymore and has begun exploring "scorched earth" strategies instead. That's the conclusion of various US reports that David Goldman has read and now written about.

Trump's former NSA Robert O'Brien at a recent conference basically conceded the same argument, saying the US won't let China take Taiwan's semiconductor factories intact. So the focus has shifted from winning a war to making China's victory a phyrric one.

All this makes sense given that aircraft carriers are now more or less sitting ducks in the SCS given China's massive and rapidly growing missile inventory, many who can hit moving targets and that's even excluding hitting stationary ones such as airbases on islands, where China's hypersonic missiles can't really be defended against.

I guess the "good" news is that sending in US troops to die on foreign soil in large quantities has now been all but eliminated in the case of Taiwan. Senior US officials are telegraphing to the Taiwanese that if SHTF, then we will take out your crown jewels whether you like it or not. It also tells a story of diminishing US innovation advantage in military matters. America is still the top dog, but the days when it could send a few carriers to the Taiwan strait without seriously worrying about a Chinese military response - as Bill Clinton did in the 1990s - are now long gone.

I suspect the big constraint for China is now economic blowback. Chinese companies are still big exporters and would essentially lose those markets in the event of a major geopolitical conflict. This differentiates China from Russia, which doesn't have much to sell other than natural resources, is why I think a hot war over Taiwan is unlikely. And even in Ukraine, it's a proxy war and not a direct one. In Taiwan, all sides agree that the US would have to get directly involved for Taiwan to even have a chance because the numbers are absurdly lopsided in China's direction otherwise. I suspect the Taiwanese just didn't used to calculate that the Americans would be contemplating destroying vital Taiwanese infrastructure in the event of an outbreak of hostilities.

inb4 “people said this about Ukrainians too”

Not just "people", you said that. and given that Cimafara has always been /r/TheMotte's resident CCP cheerleader color me skeptical about your assessment here.

Agreed. Well, I don't want to be too harsh, being one of the few here on record in favor of CCP's Taiwan operation, specifically due to the TSMC factor (though I have doubts now); but the point is – nationalism isn't some unique and rare essence, dependent on TFR (like Hanania argued), or particulars of local culture and history and ethnography (indeed, this is Putin's mistake that's costing me my country), or whatever Moldbug can concoct about reality of languages, or any other galaxy brain justification for denial of reality where large armies are not hard to man with volunteers.

For decades even in the least developed regions, centuries in more fortunate ones, we've been living in the era of nation states, bonded by education and shaped by conflicts with peers. However aristocratic and superior one feels or affects to be, it is crucial to remember that modern «plebs» aren't literally premodern peasants either; when struck, they don't surrender or break ranks and run to their little peasant huts in the boonies (like, say, Russian Empire's conscripts often did, folks who identified far more strongly as Tambovians or Kaluzhians than Russians). People are ideological and political, they identify as citizens of a given national polity, take pride in that fact, like their countries (and Taiwan is more deserving of affection than most); and universally despise their wannabe imperial conquerors who pontificate on historical destinies of peoples and seek to philosophize with cruise missiles. People take even verbal, to say nothing of violent, attacks on their, genuine or imagined, collective sovereignty personally – and that alone can make it real.

If the Taiwanese aren't «blood-and-soil nationalists» yet (doubt), they sure will be when first missiles land. Judging by the history of 24.02.2022, in a week they may begin clamoring for the genocide of «subhuman, ethically inferior, natural slaves» on the continent.

I've never heard it personally, but I would be willing to bet on some Taiwanese having their own "Great Sort" myth. Much as Americans like Murray have long maintained that the meritocracy of public school-college-job-promotion-endogamous marriage-children pipeline has thoroughly sorted white Americans by IQ and class by 2000.* Or as I've heard in real life and from Malcolm Gladwell on both sides of the Jamaican/American Black debate, both "Jamaica was a rich colony, Georgia was poor, everyone knows the best slaves were sent to Jamaica and the worst to America, and it carries right on down" and its inverse "Most of the slaves in the Caribbean died, its where the masters sent criminal slaves so they wouldn't be around too much longer, the Jamaicans are their descendants." And hell, throw in Nigerian PhD students who will give the line right out of Boys Don't Cry about "American Blacks are the descendants of guys so useless we sold them for a pack of cigarettes, and they want to make fun of my accent?"

Some Taiwanese probably buy into some "All the decent Chinese with any brains or ambition fled the PRC to Taiwan after the revolution, and any that were left died in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Those left behind are the slaves, the losers, the invidious commissars. We need to return to rule over them."

*I personally find this one so dangerous I almost refuse to think about it, as it would very conveniently slice me and mine into the upper class at the exact moment Charles Murray says that scientifically all my prejudices against the lower class are justified.

Are you talking about this report? If so the short version is basically what @sarker said, it's one thing to expect Kiev to fall within the first few, it's another to expect the Russian invaders to be greeted as liberators.

The longer version can be found within the report itself...

Until days before the full-scale Russian invasion, the intelligence community of Ukraine broadly assessed that the most dangerous enemy course of action was a high-intensity offensive against Donbas in late February 2022, with the Russians using the destruction of the Ukrainian forces

in the JFO area as a means of destabilizing the Ukrainian state. The most likely enemy course of action was assessed to be a prolonged period of political destabilization to create favourable conditions for a military offensive in the early summer, with the main effort being against Donbas. Several factors contributed to the assessment that Donbas would be the main effort, despite extensive warnings from Ukraine’s international partners that Kyiv would be the enemy’s main effort. First, an assessment of Russian forces north of Kyiv concluded that they lacked sufficient troops to effectively isolate and seize the city. The offensive was therefore viewed as a diversionary deployment, aimed at drawing and fixing Ukrainian forces away from Donbas. As the terrain north of Kyiv was highly unfavourable for a major attack, it was assessed that Russia’s attempt to draw Ukraine to concentrate on this axis would make Kyiv disproportionately vulnerable from the east. Second, interception of communications and observation of the Russian units on the Gomel axis confirmed that the personnel did not believe they were going to war and were not prepared for major combat operations. The disconnect between strategic-level discussion that emphasized the threat to Kyiv – shared with Ukraine by Western partners – with this tactical picture, supported the belief that there was a strategic influence campaign that did not reflect the tactical preparations being made by Russian units...

...As it became apparent that the Gomel axis was the enemy’s main effort and that another group of forces would strike through Chernihiv, a redeployment of Ukrainian forces was ordered approximately seven hours prior to the invasion. This took considerable time. The result was that many Ukrainian units were not at their assigned defensive positions when the invasion began and, especially on the northern axes, were not in prepared positions. Redeployments from the southern axis towards Kyiv also left fewer troops to hold the coast. Ukrainian units found themselves in a meeting engagement with the enemy. The critical point here is that the war started with the AFRF holding the initiative at the operational level but with their tactical units surprised by what they were being ordered to do. The UAF found themselves surprised at the operational level but with tactical units which had been psychologically and practically preparing for this fight for eight years. The interaction between these variables would be decisive in determining the outcome of the first 72 hours of fighting...

The report goes on for another 30+ pages, but the long story short is that the UAF was far better prepared and enjoyed a far wider base of support amongst the general population than predicted. Russian command and control also sucked, in particular their battle damage assessment and general level of preparedness was abysmal. The Russian high command appears to have assumed that a strike having been carried out meant that the strike had been successful. IE they assumed that if the barracks, garage, hangar etc... that ordinally housed a UAF unit had been destroyed, that that corresponding unit had been destroyed. However because the first thing the UAF had done once it became clear that invasion was immanent was order their forces to disperse, a sizeable portion of the initial Russian strikes hit nothing but dirt/empty buildings.

The VDV were sent into Hostemel on the assumption that the UAF had already been crippled and that they would be greeted as liberators, instead they found themselves dropping into the proverbial woodchipper. The UAF units surrounding Kiev that the Russian high command had classified as "destroyed" were still very much alive, and rather pissed about having their towns being cruise-missiled.

It's one thing to say that Russia will take Kiev in two weeks. It's another to say that they will be greeted as liberators.

The UK’s RUSI (something like the British version of the Rand Corporation, ie. the main state funded military think tank) published a recent report on the first six months of the Ukraine war. One of the things they argue is that the Russians actually came much closer to pulling off their plan than jubilant or gloating Western commentators expected, and that failure ultimately came down to a handful of strategic blunders made by Russian high command in the weeks leading up to the invasion coupled with some intelligence failures.

Can you point in the direction of reading more about this?

I think that she may be referring to this report here (it's the only RUSI publication matching the description that I'm aware of), but if so she seems to have come away with very different conclusions.

Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022

I get the sense that there definitely is a Taiwanese nationalism that has been slowly bubbling to the surface, probably at least ever since that politician cosplayed Asuka Langley Sohryu on the campaign trail, but especially after this year.

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