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Look, there's a difference between something not happening and something being impossible. I'm discussing how China would react in a hypothetical.
Yes.
Sure. Both are important, and which is "more" important depends a lot on your timeline.
The munitions, vehicles and weapons we sent there are. I agree that we aren't "bogged down" the way one might describe us as being "bogged down" in Afghanistan, but we are "bogged down" in the sense that it remains a large center of US governmental attention (which is not unlimited) and, for as long as we continue to support the war effort, US industrial capacity (which is also far from unlimited).
Hypothetically, the US could do a lot to increase its military pressure on China re: Taiwan without taking away from Ukraine support at all. Maybe we could try that first?
We were not even "bogged down" in Afghanistan. As a percentage of our actual military capacities, only a tiny fraction was ever committed to Afghanistan. Sure, we lit a lot of money and attention on fire, but in term of actual combat capacity it was not a big deal to run that occupation. Even with Iraq, it was primarily the Army, and even then not our major units like say armor/artillery (after the initial invasion).
The USAF and USN were either only lightly involved or, by definition, have assets that are very easy to rapidly redeploy.
Vietnam was a much, much larger and costly commitment. One of the very reasons the "forever wars" were "forever" is that it was not that costly to continue indefinitely.
Sure. What do you have in mind?
Money and attention counts on my bogging-down meter, at least half-credit. Regardless, this is a semantic discussion: the point is that for China, more US investment in Ukraine is (generally) better, regardless of what that looks like. Obviously there's a sort of "looping back around to being bad" outcome where the US nukes Russia, or switches all its rare earth supply chains to Ukrainian sources, or what have you.
We need to dramatically increase our advanced missile stocks and production capacities. We should probably just buy ships from e.g. South Korea and Japan, because boy did we fuck up there. We should also make Anduril a very valuable company by having enough autonomous capacities to make the Chinese realize that even if our carrier battle groups can be taken out, Taiwan would effectively be a minefield.
No, it's not, because the actual proportion of our commitment of resources matters and you are failing to recognize second-order effects of priming the pump of the defense-industrial complex. As well as the signal of Western resolve and military competence. The best way to deter China is not to have a bunch of missiles in a warehouse. The best way to deter them is making them fear the resolve of the US in defending its friends and allies in the face of risking WWIII.
Since we aren't giving Ukraine any nukes, we have plenty of those laying around. Which is why the question of "will they/won't they" is more important than "just how long will US missile stocks last."
Sure. None of these, frankly, seem all that far-fetched.
Look, China can do math. All the "resolve" in the world doesn't do us any good without missiles in the warehouse.
If we are confident nuclear madman theory alone is sufficient to deter China, we don't need to do any of the above. But I don't actually think anyone wants to die in nuclear fire for Kiev or Taipei and as such the threat of a nuclear madman is unlikely to be persuasive and, even if persuasive, unlikely to be consistent in a democratic society (note the difference in Russian foreign policy towards Ukraine after the election of President Biden!) So one concern with the nuclear madman threat is that it will simply result in waiting out the madman. (Another concern is that two can play that game, of course!)
We have the USN and USAF and a nuclear triad ready for a full-scale confrontation with North Korea and/or China on any given day and have for decades. We can and should do more on that, but it's not like we don't have a lot of combat power in the region.
Resolve, on the other hand, is trickier. China won't care about escalation risk if they think we don't have the balls to put it all on the line for Taiwan.
I'd say we need to do both to maximize the chance of deterrence. In the US, we do not democratically launch nuclear weapons. Trump has lost his "madman" edge with respect to China, I think. Not that he couldn't get it back in short order.
But this is why, yes, I think Taiwan is a foregone conclusion if China waits and it's obvious to everyone what cards are on the table and who's bluffing. The Cuban Missile Crisis was about the Soviets parking missiles way closer to the US than we were willing to accept, so we engaged in a bit of brinkmanship and it wasn't a bluff.
But risk it all for Taiwan? For South Korea, in comparison, we have treaty obligations and troops deployed that will act as a tripwire.
I don't think this is true. We can actually help deter China without threatening nuclear war if we have the tools needed to fight a conventional war. Perhaps this means that China will always have "escalation dominance" over Taiwan, as Russia will have over Ukraine. But US interest in the region creates an additional deterrent effect (although it needs to be combined with Taiwanese resolve, which arguably matters much more than US resolve!)
My personal opinion is that Taiwan likely becomes harder and harder over time. Part of this is due to demographic shifts in Taiwan. Part of it is due to increased US investment in procurement programs clearly aimed at China, at US onshoring and containment efforts, and at clear and increasing bipartisan focus on China as a serious threat to US hegemony. Part of it is due to internal Chinese social and economic issues (while I don't think China is going to drop dead in 10 years due to an aging populace, it is true as I understand it that they will never have as many military-aged males as they do today – I think this is less relevant for actual force generation and more relevant for societal casualty acceptance).
I think this is overstated. For all the scary "brinksmanship" the public watched, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended in tit-for-tat negotiations, and the United States (secretly) agreed to withdraw its own nuclear missiles from Turkey as part of the deal. I'm not sure how the Politburo viewed it, but from a certain point of view it was a success for the Soviet Union, as its attempt to park ballistic missiles in Cuba to gain strategic parity with US missiles in Europe ended with regaining at least some of that strategic parity (by forcing the withdrawal of US missiles).
I'm not arguing against the need for better conventional deterrents. But in any real conflict between nuclear powers, the willingness to go all the way up the escalatory ladder has to be symmetrical, or at least perceived as such. Otherwise one side is going to get its way.
If China goes for Taiwan, does the USN put itself in harm's way and fire upon Chinese assets? How do we respond if they sink a ship? Hit a regional base? Will we attack the mainland?
As with economics, the expectations matter almost more than actually what happens. If China thinks we'll back off because we are not fully committed to the fight then they will be emboldened to test our resolve. "Strategic ambiguity" was a clever means of not having a formal commitment but still making sure the Chinese were sufficiently worried to not try anything. I don't think that's going to work much longer. Either we gotta put a tripwire there as we have in South Korea, or it's going to become more and more clear the US will not risk a full confrontation.
The public did not "watch" most of the actually scary part. The JCS told Kennedy we should invade right off the bat. Kennedy later on was convinced it was necessary and preparations were made. Luckily, the Soviets were not willing to go down that path. Shooting down the U-2 or spooking the Soviet submarine (for which a single person stopped the launch of nuclear torpedoes) or any other incident could have set things off.
Per Wikipedia, that's not how the Soviets felt:
Sure, but there's also a question of who is having to make which choice. I don't want the situation to be the US threatening nuclear escalation because we've lost the conventional war and that's the only ace up our sleeve. I want the situation to be "the US has destroyed the combat effectiveness of the Chinese Navy in 24 hours and now China has to decide if it wants to wave its nuclear weapons around." This is particularly true since if China can occupy Taiwan quickly and successfully, US nuclear threats are meaningless. What are we going to do, nuke Taiwan? We need to be able to defeat China conventionally, if we want to play this game at all. That makes their nuclear threats close to meaningless - what are they going to do, nuke Taiwan?
Right, and if don't actually have the capacity to sink the entire Chinese navy, China is more likely to think we are not fully committed to the fight. That's why dropping Ukraine and redirecting any aid money to more LRASMs would spook China. (Mind you: I am not saying this is the correct course of action, merely that it would spook China. As I understand it, we don't actually spend much cash on Ukraine, most of the value is in contributions.) It would be a significant sacrifice that would indicate the US perceives it would receive greater value from defending Taiwan and defeating China than it would from defending Ukraine and defeating Russia.
If the US invests to defending Taiwan at the cost of other admittedly important priorities, it creates expectations that the US intends to get a return from that investment.
This makes sense. But it's because they lost the PR game, not because they didn't get concession diplomatically. US brinksmanship didn't by itself carry the day for the US, the US had to make concessions.
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