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I saw a bit of discussion downthread about Taiwan, and as a resident doomer, that's like red meat to me. Plus, I recently saw this actually fairly good and accurate - but still incomplete - WSJ article about what an invasion might look like in terms of nuts and bolts. But talk about the actual mechanics of an invasion get all the attention, so let's talk about something different: what does the world look like after an invasion, assuming it happens?
Unfortunately to answer this question we do need to backtrack and still break down exactly the way in which this invasion happens. There are, essentially, 3 methods for invasion:
Option One: The First Strike. To oversimplify, because of the reality of the geographic and power arrangement, much like Pearl Harbor, a similar idea presents itself. If you can knock out enough American ships, bomb the island bases, bomb bases in Japan (possibly; also Korea, Philippines are possible), attack the GPS and satellite systems, accompany it with a massive cyberattack on both military and civilian targets, cutting undersea cables, and so on, you make a military response ultra-hard mode, giving China carte blanche to invade at their own pace with the wind at their backs. Lots of the details are untested, but there's good reason to think that China would be at least moderately successful at this, depending on how hard they want to commit (a big question). And unlike WW2, it's unclear that America has the industrial strength or the allies willing to pitch in to win a war if it drags on longer. It should be said that buildup to this is virtually guaranteed to be noticed in advance. On Taiwan proper, the ultimate goal, this manifests as an amphibious invasion similar to what's described in the article. It's an outright fight. (One I tend to think is overstated in difficulty, but that's beside the point)
Essentially, three outcomes. The US wins, China loses in the initial stages pretty significantly. China wins, takes Taiwan, does very well against the US (and possibly allies). Or, fighting drags on and WWIII kicks off. Whether or not Taiwan itself folds with a big or a small fight, or even wins, is within this WWIII-esque scenario, because a first strike virtually guarantees a war. It's conceivable China might try something smaller-scale, thinking America might take it on the chin, but we all know America usually punches back.
Option Two: The Slow Grinder. China, possibly taking advantage of local Taiwanese political developments and/or American weakness, blockades Taiwan. Sleeper agents, propaganda, and intimidation blanket Taiwan. America dithers whether or not to intervene, because that would basically mean that America was starting the war, over an island they never formally committed to defend with arms (it's complicated) very far from home.
Two outcomes. Taiwan and/or America capitulates is one possibility. Though I suppose it might matter who blinks first? Or, China's bluff is called and America breaks the blockade, China backs down. I think politically, actions short of a blockade but muscly moves have similar outcomes and so belong in the same general bucket. If the blockade turns into a fight, outcomes also collapse more or less to the first option, albeit with notably different starting assumptions in terms of a fight. I'm not going to call that out as a separate outcome for simplicity.
Option Three: The Sneak Attack. Yep, you heard that right. China has been doing more and more major military exercises. It happens sometimes that these turn into real invasions. Even with some intel, people often second guess this - Russia-Ukraine being an obvious example. It's plausible. Central to this case is the somewhat Chinese military competence, but mostly the degree of Taiwanese resistance. Personally, I think that any appreciable number of Chinese soldiers get into Taiwan, and the nation folds without much of a fight. Picture this: internet blackout. President killed in a sneak missile strike and/or assassination. Chinese troops both helicopter in by the hundreds from offshore helicopter carriers, land on beaches, use temporary piers to land even more. Civilians don't actually fight back much, due to bad equipment, poor training, and poor communication. China eventually overwhelms with numbers, and the US doesn't think it's realistic to land boots on the ground to retake. Most of the Taiwanese strategy hopes to deny beach landings, and if they happen anyways, it's a bit handwavy "urban warfare".
So. Two outcomes. Taiwan loses is clearly one, and one that I find likely in this case. It could also be that China embarrasses itself and fails abysmally in the landing, and then backs off, giving it up as lost. I'll count this as its own outcome, because a failed invasion could still collapse into a larger hot war outcome.
So, we have approximately seven outcomes across three scenarios: China attacks the US first, and either wins or loses quickly, or else the world experiences a longer war. A longer threat or blockade results in China backing down, or the US capitulating (or Taiwan itself). Possibly accompanied by a political settlement or backroom deal. And finally, China takes Taiwan or fails all by its own, quickly.
What does that mean for the world order?
What's striking to me is that nearly none of these outcomes are actually very good for the US, like at all. Even the "good" options! Being attacked and winning? We all know what 9/11 neurosis did on the US, this would be just as major a shift in the attitudes, if not more. I suppose a smaller, cowardly first strike (or a neutralized one) is plausible, resulting in a more 'meh' reaction, but I don't find it likely. China failing a sneak attack might be viewed as good, but I worry about that. China has, historically, not reacted very well to national humiliations. A loss just kicks the can down the road to some other issue, in my view.
The one truly "good" option is where China tries a blockade (or threatens one), and the US resolves the situation with diplomacy - without selling out Taiwan. It's just that... that seems wishful thinking. Have you listened to what China has been saying for literal decades? They are dead-set on taking Taiwan. Maybe they could be (fooled into?) thinking that Taiwan will eventually vote itself into becoming a protectorate or part of China, by its own internal political process. Accepting the status quo.
Of course, that's the whole pin in it, right? I'm taking for granted that a conflict happens, or that China at least makes some kind of move. But isn't that a reasonable base case? The "window" won't be open forever, and we all know how groupthink can take over organizations. On the other hand, it could be I'm excessively poo-pooing this option. Successfully solving the crisis with diplomacy, maybe an economic deal, could also be great for the world, with one less looming crisis over everyone's heads. Maybe it's an agreement to hold a vote in Taiwan once and for all to settle it. Dunno.
I should note that all of these assume a hostile Taiwan, but that's also not a solid, fully given assumption! It only takes a single friendly or weak President to sell out their own country and offer diplomatic cover for the takeover. The US would find it ranging from awkward to impossible to intervene 'against Taiwan's wishes' so to speak, even if it's only a cover and doesn't represent the people. Additionally, and very critically, we've seen a "little green men" approach work in Crimea, so never underestimate the value of plausible deniability and the wide variety of "grey zone" ops, paired with misinformation.
What do Europe and other Asian allies do? That's a wrinkle I didn't address. Might be meaningful. There IS, I suppose, one nice outcome where US allies help us out in the negotiations, or even in combat, and our ties deepen, creating an even stronger power bloc worldwide by virtue of shared goals and arms.
What about the scenarios that are bad for the US/Taiwan? Here's where things get interesting, and I'm curious to know your thoughts. China winning a first-strike, and abject US defeat is plainly fascinating. In a single stroke the world order is upended. Americans are now insecure at their place in the world, outraged that they were beaten, playing the blame game. Perhaps they re-unite and re-dedicate themselves to making a comeback in 10 years. But either way the hold is broken. De-dollarization probably accelerates, global trade is now China-dominated via increased sea and political and economic power. China now has a guaranteed seat at any world table it wants in any international incident.
China winning a lightning strike? Honestly I view this as somewhat status quo, believe it or not. The US might lose a little face, but we never like actually, fully guaranteed we'd defend Taiwan this whole time (strategic ambiguity). Think Hong Kong - protest, followed by quiet acceptance. I view this status quo-like state, to be clear, as mildly good for China. The biggest thing is that China would now have access to the crown jewels of tech: GPUs. That is a pretty big deal, even if you're an AI pessimist.
"WWIII" is... well, I have no idea. Worst case, nukes get exchanged (maybe half a dozen). Russia gets involved on China's side. Things spiral out of control as many countries get pulled into conflict (Japan, Korea, North Korea, etc all have opportunities). Abroad, the American distraction provides plenty of cover for other wars to start (Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, various African countries, all can act with temporary impunity).
At any rate, I'm curious if one of these post-invasion scenarios captures the attention of anyone else. The US has been the head honcho for so long, it's hard to imaging a world where they've been beat solid and perhaps even retreat into a new generation of isolation.
I think that peaceful reunification is the base scenario at this point and Americans are a bit high on their own supply. It's not that there's more enthusiasm for it, but there is definitely less visceral rejection. The fundamental case against it has been not «freedoms and democracy» (Taiwanese adopted LGBT stuff largely to please their patrons) but the belief that the Mainland is a big, embarrassingly poor North Korea where you worship Mao, eat gutter oil, work like a dog at Foxconn and die.
It's still popular with the older Taiwanese, but facts change and speak for themselves. As a young graduate you can earn more in tier 1 city like Guangdong than in Taiwan, and Guangdong is plainly newer and bigger and cooler. The Mainland is increasingly seen as «awesome» by local influencers, DPP is unpopular (eg for shutting down their nuclear power on a Germany-tier green platform, which ironically makes reunification-via-blockade a lot easier, they'll run out of coal and gas in 2 weeks and their civilian society, nevermind those fabs, stops dead) and getting censorious in apparent desperation, KMT is likely to win this time, Ukraine as of 2025 serves as a warning rather than inspiration. The military buildup on China, including specialized assets like these zany barges that defeat the «few landing-worthy beaches» objection, seems very serious and increasingly impossible to deter. Basically, if you're against China, you can't rely on any shithole level deterrence like geography, they can simply engineer and build their way over it. You need to rely on hard military capability.
And that's the problem, because no matter how porcupine Taiwan gets, the real muscle has to come from the US. And they believe less and less that it will come. Lutnick-style opportunism is widely seen as dismantling their Silicon Shield, and I think they're right – the US that can make chips at home doesn't have an existential stake in Taiwan. China cares about the First Island Chain and about finishing the civil war. The US stopped caring about that back in 1979-1980, and using Taiwan as an opportunity to contain China is only worthwhile if that's the relatively cheap option. It doesn't look cheap. Only chips, then – and once chips are made in Arizona, not even that. There's broader logic about «our allies in the Indopacific» but at the end of the day that's hubris and imperial overextension, all of these arguments are downstream of the ambition to contain China and Win History, and as Trump's National Security Strategy demonstrates, ambitions can be downscaled in response to new circumstances. The US can keep Guam and Okinawa in a world where Taiwan has fallen, and will try to.
So I think that by default, China takes Taiwan within 5-20 years, either by a face-saving «1 Country 2 Systems» arrangement, or with a brief blockade followed by polite demonstration of overwhelming power. I believe China (Xi) has a similar theory and so won't rush into a hot conflict, which serves everyone for the moment just fine, even if me and Xi are in fact wrong.
P.S. People who argue about blockading China are not very familiar with the facts. They aren't dependent on imported food, these soybeans are for pigs. They don't actually biologically need to eat that many pork bellies. They have vast stockpiles too. They're electrifying very rapidly, from cars to trucks to ships now, and in a few short years their core logistics and power generation will be able to maintain wartime economy without any maritime fossil fuel supplies. Commodities like iron ore are harder but that's not even a blockade issue, the US can compel Australia/Brazil/Chile to stop exports. Even then, it's not going to be decisive. The Chinese can just do things, it's actually mesmerizing to see.
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I don't think that works. Even with a massive first strike leading to a hot conventional war with the US right off the bat, if China doesn't actually compel Taiwan to surrender in short order, the US has the easy option of having the blue water navy camp outside of Chinese missile range and completely stop shipping in and out of the country.
This isn't hard mode at all, unless China decides to sally their entire Navy and challenge the US outside the range of their land based assets.
This forces a kind of timeline on it. China can surely survive for a considerable time, but it also puts a limit on it that's not "their own pace" -- they have to either seize the island or fold, they can't just wait.
Did you know that the Navy can blow their entire anti-ship missile arsenal in just a few hours? China has the advantage of time, including in naval engagements at missile range. Edit: There's a legitimately interesting strategy where they accept a large amount of losses on purpose if they manage to get the engagement in a favorable spot. The missile ranges in question don't necessarily favor the US, and camping outside missile range is possible generally, but not if you want to intervene in an actual invasion. They also have built up a fairly sizable oil reserve.
Right, you can’t intervene in an invasion from outside missile range, but you can entirely choke all seaborne commerce.
Hence it puts the timeline pressure on the invasion. Even the largest oil reserve won’t last that long.
China is a continental power with a direct land connection through Central Asia to some of the largest energy producers in the world and Taiwan is an island, every indication is that the timeline for the latter would be much shorter than the timeline for the former.
First, the land connection doesn't and can't carry even a tiny fraction of China's foreign trade, and certainly not enough food and fuel to get through a cold Beijing winter.
Taiwan would have benefit of replenishment via their eastern ports by the largest blue water Navy in the world.
If China absolutely needed to they could drastically increase their rail and pipe infrastructure and could endure a significant decrease in living standards whereas Taiwan could not survive a total blockade in the most literal sense. Even the backwards and isolated China of the Mao era was able to survive isolation and a direct war against the US, why would you think they couldn't survive a naval blockade today?
and no, they wouldn't have "the benefit of replenishment", if the US Navy sailed into China's AShM umbrella (which reaches well beyond Taiwan) it would quickly go from the largest blue water Navy to the largest underwater Navy. Hence why the original post was about how they'd stay out of range and impose a blockade instead.
Increasing infrastructure takes significant time.
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And why is not the following scenario pictured - China invades Taiwan and USA shrugs. China doesn't seem to be too keen on military domination of the eight dash line, you have both okinawan and phillipino islands a stone toss away - you can contain them just as good there. There is no domino theory like in Vietnam. Does this island is worth so much USA blood? During the cold war the USA was scared by mostly by USSR ideology, not by their expansionism. There is no ideological difference this time. CCP are more laises faire capitalistic than all the other big players.
The PRC has been building military bases all over the nine-dash line. And Taiwan actually is strategically critical; if the PLAN can base out of its east coast, they can more credibly threaten a blockade of Japan or South Korea (they can't do that now because the narrow, shallow straits might as well be labelled "insert sea mines here"). Would also allow them to put their ballistic missile subs into deeper water and hide them better.
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It pretty clearly is? Slow Grinder + America Capitulates, or Sneak Attack + America shrugs were listed pretty obviously in the set of possible outcomes. And combat in the South China Sea doesn't necessarily favor the US and its allies - although clearly we have tons of assets right there, China is also pretty nearby and with Taiwan they have more room to maneuver and the Philippines in particular has to pay greater attention to their northeast. But mostly, China has a decent number of semi-hardened airstrips built on the dredged islands there (in direct contravention of their promises to leave the area demilitarized, I might add). Still, the point about containment is a decent one - for us, perhaps, but not for Japan and Korea, and we still have plenty of assets there too.
Part of the whole reason to explore these scenarios is to get a broader, big-picture view of why the US should or should not defend Taiwan. It's not just about the near-term, it's about the medium and long-term. There is in fact a domino theory of sorts in some foreign policy circles, which is that if we decline to defend Taiwan, on top of the Ukraine thing, on top of the NATO wishy-washiness, suddenly there's really good reason to believe that the US cannot be trusted to honor mutual defense pacts (this is true even if we've taken pains to avoid anything even approaching a formal pact with Taiwan - perception matters). On top of that, an argument is made that taking Taiwan is a line where it's clear that China now has full, superpower impunity to do what it wants. On that note, I'd be interested in your thoughts as to whether or not the international community, such that it is, would be able to levy significant sanctions on China for a Taiwan move, or if such would even be wise.
In terms of ideology, that's not the threat. It's more about political-economic power. Right now China can't pull the kind of things we can do, like just randomly threaten Venezuela. They don't have the room or the respect. If they take Taiwan, it's a different ball game, no matter which way they take it. China can now use gunboat diplomacy in the following decade, in addition to economic coercion. And de-dollarization might also accelerate. The stakes are real.
And then on top of all that, there's just general sadness that a decently-functioning democracy, where people govern themselves, is taken over for nothing but pride and ego reasons by a non-democratic one.
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Maybe I'm wumaoing too close to the sun but my understanding is that younger Taiwanese people are increasingly open to reunification or some sort of a new deal. Taiwan's got large income inequality & economic issues + a few popular democratic movements have been smote on grounds of being too open to negotiating with the mainlanders plus the nice parts of China are now nice enough to make it feel more viable to join the Sinosphere.
And one thing I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned here yet is that the Chinese sympathizers are most densely concentrated in Taiwan’s own military forces
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You're more reversed the direction than not. If you want a mental model, think more status quo bias that is both anti-reunification and anti-independence.
In Taiwan, it's the older people who are more open to reunification in the sense of 'there might be a deal they'd accept without the threat of death and oppression as the alternative,' and the younger generation who have less familial/emotional attachment to the continent. This is why the KMT, the party descended from the nationalists opposed to the CCP, have increasingly become the 'pro-China' party- they still identify themselves as 'Chinese', whereas the rise of self-identification as 'Taiwanese' is coming from the youth cohort. This is also the cohort who have have had their formative exposure to China being things like the Hong Kong crackdown on what remained of the democracy there, and recognize that they would be on a similar receiving end if they joined the sinosphere. The two-system system was the potential compromise, and the CCP renenged on it.
The age dynamic, it's a similar dynamic to the Korean views of reunification. It's the older Koreans (and increasingly dead) who fought against the North who also had the memory of families on the other side of the partition. Younger Koreans have no such familial sentiment, and are more concerned with the bad effects a reunification could have on them, even if it was from the top.
The relevance of this back for Taiwan is that the youth aren't necessarily 'pro-independence.' Formal independence would credibly mean a war which would be bad for them. The status quo preference bias that works against reunification also works against formal independence. The status quo- which is neither independent or unified- is preferable, and they are open to politicians who maintain that.
This is for the most part true, however there's a small but growing cohort of younger supporters of unification, in part because they're envious of all the shiny new infrastructure on the mainland, but also because the main pro-independence, DPP-voting cohort has aged out of being the cool young rebels and become everyone's cringe parents or teachers who can be triggered by loudly claiming that you identify as Chinese. This group more or less occupies the same ideological niche that the dissident/extremely online right does in American political discourse these days.
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I'm mostly basing this off meandering around Taiwan previously plus a few interactions with young people studying abroad and the sentiment I get is that identifying as broad Chinese diaspora is cool whilst Taiwan's no longer doing much for people who aren't already landed or otherwise exposed to the cabal of large established businesses actually holding the economy together. Maybe I'm indexing more for people of pro-China sympathies since I've met these people either in China or Malaysia.
My loose understanding is that Taiwanese youth unemployment is high, and generally economic prospects for those who are not fortunate enough to get into the absolute biggest businesses are slim.
Young Taiwanese who enthusaistically identify as Taiwanese abroad as opposed to broad Chinese diaspora are nowadays volunteering themselves for PRC targeting. Those overseas police stations aren't just for monitoring 'Chinese of non-rebellious provinces.'
Taiwan's youth unemployment isn't great (about 12%), but it's not exceptional for the region either, and it's considerably better than China (about 20%). There may well be some 'the grass is always greener,' but 'our economy will be so much better if we join China!' would be more of a 'maybe China will hyper-subsidize the populace while installing the police state' as opposed to reverting to a higher median.
Yeah but the China they're interested in is coastal developed China which is how they expect a Taiwan umbrella situation would be managed. The overseas China police station is going to do... what exactly to a random Taiwanese person, there's plenty of patriotic Taiwanese around as well.
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I think we actually know what the US win situation looks like, because we already saw it happen.
Picture this: the Chinese decide that their window is closing but they have a moment of opportunity (perhaps after a US or Taiwanese presidential election). Their plan is really simple: surround Taiwan with troops and ships doing increasingly provocative exercises to demonstrate Taiwanese weakness, give Taiwan an ultimatum of some sort (e.g. "stop buying US military hardware") and then when it is denied, a limited ballistic missile strike on Taiwanese C&C facilities, combined with a lightning heliborne assault to seize a port, coordinated with a large amphibious landing. The Chinese decide not to open with an attack on Japan and the US, reasoning that the thousands of ballistic missiles they have in reserve will send a clear deterrent signal and the Taiwanese will give in under the shock of the offensive, capitulating as soon as it is clear that a bridgehead is established, an estimation made based on accurate intelligence assessments of Taiwanese will to resist.
And this is basically correct: just like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US and its allies don't militarily intervene. Unfortunately for China, just like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese government keeps their ultimate plans secret from their own leadership until the last minute for reasons of operational security. This means that the United States, with its sophisticated signals intelligence apparatus, actually has a clearer picture of the battlefield than the Chinese commanders on the ground. This allows the US to do the in-real-life equivalent of "streamsniping" the Chinese, directly transmitting targeting coordinates and other intelligence to Taiwan, while Chinese commanders are operating largely in their own lane, without broader situational awareness of the battlefield. The air assault troops are met by an armored brigade and cut to pieces; ballistic missiles are intercepted or hit empty buildings and airfields; Taiwanese antiship missiles (guided by US assets in orbit, allowing them to hit assets the Taiwanese are blind to) strike vulnerable Chinese naval flotillas that are traveling with their air search radars stowed to avoid broadcasting their position, and the Chinese amphibious assault/port seizure operation runs into a recently planted minefield and is ignominiously sunk by mines designed during the First World War and artillery shells designed during the Second in the last mile before the beach. The survivors are eliminated by tanks and helicopters without making a significant bridgehead.
And that's it. Because the difference between the invasion of Ukraine (where substantially similar events took place but merely shifted the mode of the war) and the invasion of Taiwan is that Russia has a land border with Ukraine and no problem consolidating whatever gains they have, pulling more tanks out of their stockpiles and drafting more men if their first push fails. But an amphibious landing is a much more binary thing, and when the Chinese lose a third of their amphibious and air assault transport capacity? They can't call a time out and build more ships, or dig in and hold ground, as the Russians did. Ten years worth of procurement underwater or stranded on a beach in 72 hours. Sure, the Chinese still have a large fleet of second-tier ships, including many transports, but those will be, if anything, less survivable than the purpose-built amphibious fleet they've lost, and the Taiwanese still have a cool five digits of contact mines in their inventories.
Now, in this situation, the Chinese could attempt a blockade, or nuclear threats. But we're angling for an at least somewhat plausible hypothetical best case scenario for the US here (not necessarily the most likely scenario) so we'll say instead the government collapses in the face of thousands of casualties with nothing substantial to show for it and the military remove the Secretary General from power.
Most likely scenario? Eh, I wouldn't bet on this happening. Possible? Sure, I think so.
The problem with ultimatums is that it telegraphs the next step. By the time the ultimatum is denied, the C&C facilities and all leaders have been dispersed/hardened, all civilian air traffic is stopped and the air defense have orders to destroy anything that flies.
Definitely! But that hasn't stopped it from happening.
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"Well, we have no clue how they got thousands of Exocets. You know the French, they'll sell to any despot who can say 'oui': maybe they were laundered through some third party. But we didn't make them."
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China can’t win WWIII: it is too dependent on foreign trade, which the US navy is more than capable of cutting off. Without ocean trade China cant supply the oil, iron, coal, or copper it needs to run that massive industrial base of theirs, and can’t supply the food it needs to feed its people. Nor does it have a blue water navy that can escort oil tankers from Iran: forget about escorting iron and coal freighters from Australia, there’s no way the Aussies will be trading with China if China attacks a NATO member. They’ll die on the vine without global trade, and don’t tell me they’ll bring it in by rail from Russia and India: they don’t have nearly enough throughput with Russia to supply even a quarter of their import needs, they have even less throughput with India, and India hates China and would love nothing more than to see them wither. They’ll probably jump in near the end and take Tibet while they’re at it.
In other words, the First Strike option is China committing suicide.
Well, there is the off chance that the first strike succeeds very quickly beyond expectations and before the economic/industrial effects take hold.
I don't give it much chance of success, but if China manages to strike first and seize the island by force with low/minor US & Taiwanese casualties, it changes the calculus of the reaction.
I'd probably say 1 chance in 5 that works. And the downside of failure is pretty high.
There's a significant chance that it works. I give it 2 in 5, personally, though reasonable people disagree. However, that's missing the point a little bit. Our estimation is not the relevant probability of interest! The relevant probability is what Xi Jingping believes the probability to be, and that is going to be filtered through the presentations from his own military wing - loyalists, actually, since he performed a purge just a few years ago.
The other shoe, of course, is whether the US would stomach a defeat. We aren't used to it. It's unclear how the President (whoever it is at the time) or the populace would react. The assumption is that we'd do a second Pearl Harbor, but other people think we're too soft for that now or wouldn't have a "miracle" that the carriers escape to rely on.
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Half a dozen nukes is not the worst case or a likely case. If the USA detects Chinese launches, it will go full counterforce in an attempt to destroy as much as possible of their arsenal before it's airborne. That in turn means the PRC is in a "use it or lose it" scenario and will likely launch as much as it can (excepting, possibly, the sea leg).
Of course, then there's the issue of the peace terms. If PLA nukes have hit cities, the West's peace demand would be along the lines of "denuclearise/demilitarise China, free Tibet/Xinjiang, formally cede Taiwan" with little room to budge (particularly given the need to prevent the PRC trying again later). The PRC is aware that, as you note, this means no more Mandate of Heaven, so it plausibly refuses. Plausibly, Trump/Vance then order countervalue in order to force a capitulation (or state failure), because Rule 2 of war and they aren't the sorts to just back down. End result is that China is a basket-case again, like the early 20th century. Russia, if it stays out, does well in some ways (with the West significantly weakened), but doesn't become outright hegemon. Probably no more culture war, as SJ would suffer base existence failure to a fair extent and would be blamed for weakening the West and thus causing WWIII.
No. The immediate problem is that the PLAN would have un-interdictable access to the Pacific proper via Taiwan's east coast, which means Japan and South Korea would have Beijing's hand around their throats via the threat of blockade (neither is even remotely close to being able to feed itself). They probably both withdraw from the NPT, Beijing in its overconfidence (and with popular support due to the long-standing cultural antipathy) plausibly attacks, and you're back to WWIII. There's a reason that Japanese PM Takaichi Sanae made those comments about a Taiwan invasion posing an existential threat to Japan and justifying the use of the Japanese military, and there's a reason (though not a good one) that one of China's diplomats to Japan publically threatened to cut off her head in response.
Maybe I should have elaborated on this point. Frankly, for all the attention on MAD, I don't think this is the 21st century model. Rather, there's a series of escalations that appear reasonable on the surface: someone uses a "tactical" nuke, then someone nukes a single semi-military target, then the other retaliates with two civilian-target nukes, then three in response... and then people regain their sanity and meet for talks, because it's obvious to everyone that this cannot continue. Like, for example, let's say LA - and LA alone - is nuked. Obviously a calamitous event the world has never seen before. But even then... would the President really pull the trigger on a full MAD response on all of China in response to a single lost city? MAD says yes, you need to, but human behavior says no. We're too hardwired for proportionality for full-MAD to really work. That's my mental model at least for the most likely 'worst-case' scenario, but it's possible I'm a little too optimistic.
Going full countervalue in response to a single nuke? No. Going full counterforce in response to a single nuke? Yes, at least on the US side. The question isn't so much of retaliation as prevention; you want to destroy as much as possible on the ground.
(Also, a single nuke pointed at a city probably won't do much due to ABM.)
I predicted the USA going countervalue against China in a big way if the PLA had nuked cities, the counterforce response ran China out of nukes, and the PRC still refused anything but a white peace. At that point, there's just straight-up no alternative; the Western public would not stand for a white peace (not to mention that it'd let them try again in a few years), and invading China wouldn't work (rule 2 of war). Hence, "after I destroy
Washington DCShanghai I will destroy another major city every hour on the hour, that is unless of course youpay me 100 billion dollarsunconditionally surrender". Same trick as was used on Japan in WWII.More options
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Japan is 90 days from a nuclear warhead. The funny (well, not haha funny) thing about that is that it is both a very short and a very long time.
My point exactly.
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If our cities get nuked then our peace demand will be “There is no PRC”. We won’t stop until we’re writing a new constitution for China in Beijing. We did that to Japan and Germany and they didn’t destroy even one of our cities.
You and what occupational army?
The Americans were worn out by a decade trying to occupy a country of 30 million when they had the ability to walk in from friendly buildup areas at the outset. Occupying a country of 1,300 million is just a wee bit beyond the capacity of the modern United States, even without the literal and figurative fallout of a nuclear war.
If a nuclear exchange has happened, there are no longer 1.3 million Chinese. Not even close. We have more than 10 times as many nukes as they do, and if they launched even one of theirs at us then we would have launched most of ours in response. Second, we’d most likely partition it like we did Germany, I imagine Australia taking a bite, Japan and Korea taking some large bites, and probably India will jump in and take most of western China once it’s clear the CCP is about to lose.
I think you meant "billion" here; I would expect high Chinese casualties, likely over half a billion if they don't surrender immediately, but not >99.9%.
Nah, it wouldn't take that many.
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The US didn't occupy Japan proper, and would have no need to occupy China proper after a literal nuclear war. If the US is in a position to demand peace, it means the PRC no longer has nuclear capability while the US does, and that means the US gets to write a new constitution for China in its capital. Or we continue the nuking; we've done exactly that before. The remaining Chinese aren't going to fight to the last man for the integrity of the PRC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Japan
The occupation took place AFTER the surrender; that is, it was (mostly) not a contested occupation as @Dean is suggesting would be necessary. Same thing for China in the unlikely event there's a nuclear war that they decisively lose.
I think the word you're looking for is "invasion" rather than "occupation", then. The USA invaded and occupied Germany, but only occupied Japan.
@Dean's usually fairly precise with his terminology; I believe he was specifically raising concerns over the USA's ability to occupy China - concerns which I share to at least some extent. Invading China is a completely-different kettle of fish, and one I dismissed out of hand in my first reply in this chain ("Rule 2 of war": "do not go fighting with your land armies in China"); I don't think Dean was even entertaining that idea.
Indeed I was not. I view it about as dimly/lacking in competence as I do the nuclear holocaust scenario. And you are correct in that I was referring to the occupational role alone.
I can absolutely model a nuclear exchange scenario between the US and China, but 'we're going to nuclear genocide 99% of the population and impose a new constitution like this is post-WW2 Japan and no one will resist it like Japan' is enough of a difference in starting positions that I felt it better to simply not to return to the topic.
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If Dean was talking about occupation, it doesn't make sense; we occupied Japan after they surrendered and allowed Eisenhower to write their new Constitution.
Regardless of the terminology, I stand by the claim. If, after a nuclear exchange, the US is in a position to dictate terms to the PRC -- which basically means we still have nuclear capability and they don't -- then the US will be able to (and almost certainly will) re-write their constitution and the remaining Chinese will not do anything about it. Their official armies will have surrendered (and if they don't, the nuking continues) and there will be little enough insurgency that US forces will be able to handle it. The bulk of the Chinese are not going to be fanatical supporters of the PRC. As in Japan, almost certainly much of the mechanism of government below the national level will remain largely intact -- the US is too small to directly administer China. But not to dismantle the PRC.
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Possible, I suppose (though occupying China to that degree wouldn't be trivial). Largely ends in the same place, though, of "PRC refuses, China burns in countervalue strike".
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But it's important to note that many of these "China loses" scenarios are incredibly bad for China. So it's sort of a mutually assured destruction so to speak.
I was actually thinking about this scenario earlier myself, and I think if China wins, it will be essentially bloodless. A modern army requires an immense amount of logistical support, and if left without supplies and air support, will find itself easily destroyed by far inferior and outdated opponents. Even more so an insertion of a bunch of paratroopers and helicopter infantry is just going to get blown to bits by militias with half century old m60 tanks, artillery, and airstrikes. As a result, the "sneak attack" option is essentially a nonstarter. But, on the other hand, the requirements to land a full scale invasion force are so challenging that if the Chinese are able to be in position to make a landing, the war is essentially won already and all resistance on land will be token.
If China can demonstrate an anti-ship missile strike capability credible enough to scare the carriers off, SAM capability to scare the F-35 off, and fighters powerful enough to control the skies, the ability for foreigners to intervene will be seriously blunted. And if the Americans know that getting involved would result in major losses, they'd likely back off without firing a single shot. Unlike Ukraine and Russia, Taiwan is not a near peer power. Their stuff is significantly worse then Ukrainian stuff, and Chinese stuff is significantly better than Russian stuff. Without foreign support, the Chinese would gain air superiority quickly and the land forces would just be sitting ducks.
We have no idea if Chines stuff is actually better than Russian stuff: they haven’t been tested in a war in decades. Russian stuff seemed like it was better than Ukrainian stuff until the war actually started, and Russia fell on its face and revealed it was a paper bear. China might do the same.
The Russian stuff was better than the Ukrainian stuff. The Ukrainians were fighting with
If Russia had just been fighting Ukraine I think it's very plausible the results would have been "as predicted." My recollection was that NATO intelligence was responsible for ensuring the Ukrainians responded to Hostomel in something like a timely manner. The odds of the Russian shock attack succeeding look much better, I think, if the Russians successfully complete an airbridge and start rolling over Kiev in the opening hours of the war.
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I don’t know about better, but they definitely have more. They are probably the only country other than America that could do 2000 PGM strikes a day for two weeks straight.
I dunno: how many of their missiles do you think are filled with sand instead of explosives? Corruption is a real problem in China, and you saw what that led to in Russia: huge amounts of military equipment that was not maintained properly and broke down almost immediately.
It seems to have led to Russia winning the war.
It led to Russia needing several years of grinding combat to potentially gain some Ukrainian territory, maybe more if they stick it out longer instead of settling, instead of them cruising into Kiev and victory within a month as they and everyone else expected them to do. We all thought their military was so powerful that Ukraine would be steamrolled. Instead their military is just about capable of beating Ukraine, eventually, at the cost of exhausting their war machine.
Buddy, look at frontline map computer!
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Yeah but it is/was a massive grindfest when a lot of people thought it was gonna be over in weeks or months.
That’s because those people were morons who didn’t know anything about Ukraine’s actual force composition. They thought Ukraine had roughly the same military strength as Latvia.
And I’m saying that the people saying that China has a superior military to Russia may be the same “morons” who said that Russia would win the war within a month.
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Would a full-blown attack on GPS satellites not cross the nuclear threshold for the US? Also, it seems like a lot of the elements of the "first strike" scenario you outlined are not ones that short-term countermeasures are readily available to; hence, from a Chinese perspective, signalling willingness, ability and poise to (attack GPS, destroy undersea cables...) and then proceeding to do a full-scale invasion as if the US could be assumed to not intervene (and then executing the "first strike" if it shows signs of doing so after all) seems strictly superior to the "first strike" which would test the initial proposition upfront.
As for the "little green men" scenario, it seems unrealistic for Taiwan for various reasons, because it probably only worked on Crimea due to an alignment of opportune circumstances (geographic proximity, a local low point in Ukrainian state capacity and coherence, overwhelming support for the invaders among the population and frequently even local military units since the UA military had no functioning political alignment machinery at that point) which are all unlikely to be met in Taiwan.
My own sense is that a more likely way a takeover of Taiwan would go would actually be something like blockade -> half-hearted attempt at a blockade run by the US, without a consensus in favour of it -> overwhelming Chinese military response to the blockade run -> no popular consensus behind any sort of "Pearl Harbor 2.0" narrative to rally popular support for a full US war entry -> US limits itself to an economic-political response -> blockade continues, eventually resolved by a Taiwanese surrender or a much more weakly opposed invasion as it has been demonstrated the cavalry won't come.
30 years ago? Probably not. However I can imagine a scenario where someone in the decision loop interprets it as an attempt disable American early warning and missile defense assets in preparation for a more general nuclear strike, and then makes that case to the President.
Today? Absolutely not. The huge expansion of civilian space infrastructure along with massive improvements in the fidelity of both space and earth-based sensors means that we are no longer dependent as we once were on a small number of strategic satellites that could easily be knocked out by an adversary. And with the US representing a super-majority of world's total space lift capacity I think the more likely outcome in the event of such an attack would be a bunch of Chinese Satellites suffering sudden unexplained failures or falling out of the sky for no reason while the US Space Force conspicuously refuses to confirm nor deny playing any role in the matter.
Parsing US Space Command comments carefully, you get the sense that both China and the US have some slightly different advantages in the space realm, it's not universally one side with all the cards. Both have antisat capabilities of at least two varieties. I feel like their attitude right now is medium confident but slightly nervous. And it's worth noting that China is potentially only 3-4 years away from pulling closer to SpaceX, which would jive with potential timelines in terms of lift capacity backstops.
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I'm not positive it would start with GPS satellites, but with the current setup of space weaponry and capabilities it could escalate to that pretty easily. Also, it's hard to justify "we nuked (potentially) millions of people and broke a three quarters of a century long precedent" with "they made our maps harder to read".
Are you suggesting that they can do lots of non- or less-lethal things in their first strike, then? It's possible, but seems unlikely beyond some of the easy fruit like a smaller-scale cyberattack and internet shenanigans. The point of a first strike is to prevent a counterattack, decreasing overall risk. And militarily it seems quite plausible (in their view, which is what matters for their decision making) that they'd be able to prevent US intervention if they took out enough air and sea bases (and carriers, potentially) to buy them the ~2 weeks to do an invasion (would Taiwanese resistance be less if they saw that China beat the US and no aid is coming? Probably yes).
Re: grey-zone tactics, it doesn't have to look exactly the same. What if Zelensky had just lost an election to a Russia-friendly President who rolled over? Would he really be forcibly removed, or would the situation create just enough confusion to allow the tanks to finish rolling into Kiev? I think you underestimate Taiwan's geographic proximity, potential low points in governmental trust, support for China among the population and even political leadership who might stand to gain promotions under a Chinese takeover. What if they hold a sham vote, either among the people or in the legislature? Or even hold a vote, lose it, allege fraud, and use that as an excuse? False flag something? Stage a partial civil war with sleeper agents? Have commandos take hostages? There are a lot of options, and to emphasize this point, they might only need to work for a week or two, and dilute local resistance.
I agree that your scenario seems somewhat likelier than some of the others (though part of me wonders if Chinese military leadership gets too high on their own supply, they could do something 'illogical') - what do you see the world looking like if that happens, US weak response included? Do you think it's a sea change, or just another part of a slow slide towards something else? Personally, I think any Taiwan resolution has the potential to be the biggest geopolitical world event since the end of the Cold War, but I'm open to other perspectives.
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The United States is going to sell-out Taiwan. The discussion we need to be having is what our price should be.
I propose 500 billion dollars, accomplished via the cancelation of China-held treasuries.
Even if it where in the us interest to sell out(which this administration won’t, have you ever looked at any of Colby’s views?) Taiwan, that number is completely ridiculous. 500 billion, seriously? If the country really needed that kind of money it could get it easily.
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Sell-out in what sense? IMO the most likely longterm situation if China continues to be economically ascendant is that the most Hawkish Taiwanese literally die off and the culture reorients itself towards the Sinosphere.
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What incident are you thinking of, exactly? I can't recall of any incident where they've been in an actual position to react to said national humiliations, though that might be due to alot of my focus on China being more historical than present day.
The period from the first Opium War to the eventual reunification of the Chinese mainland at the end of the Civil War lasted about a hundred years, hence the Chinese Communist narrative regarding "the century of humiliation", the main consequence of said humiliation being that the regime that lost legitimacy cannot reunite the country and thus needs to be replaced by another.
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Broadly historically speaking? The Opium Wars left a century+ long impact on the national pysche. Even farther back, the Mongolian invasion was a huge deal. One they ended up (partially) whitewashing into a "Yuan Dynasty" as if it were just a normal thing. More recently? Online Chinese hypernationalist netizens have reacted very harshly to a wide range of perceived insults abroad. Sometimes encouraged by the government, but lately they have had to be restrained in some cases. There are a ton of media examples from the last 10 years.
Edit: and yes, as magicmushrooms said, humiliation implies national weakness which implies governmental weakness, and would indeed threaten the CCP's claim to legitimacy, crazy as it might sound to us here. That's partly why the "how" matters, because some resolutions can be "spun" better than others. Outright military defeat? Yikes. Collapse of the government is just as likely and scary as a vow of revenge, Versailles style.
The impact and influence of hyper-online nationalist Chinese netizens is often very much overstated. The reasons are multifaceted but are essentially that most western “China watchers” are (by very nature of their own demographic - mostly white young men in the Anglosphere - their education and academic interests, their experience in China proper, and their literal profession and their clientele) mostly interested in Chinese views on geopolitics. The reality is that most Chinese have few to no prominent views of geopolitics beyond the bland centrally taught views of the wider society in which they live, they are almost uniquely parochial even when compared to Americans.
So these guys hyperfocus on a relatively small minority of very online young Chinese men who have very strong opinions on what Chinese foreign policy should be and who have strong views on things like the Ukraine War, Israel Gaza, American foreign policy in South America, immigration to Europe and other stuff that people discuss all the time on X.com. Thus even serious professional China analysts often post about the views of “Chinese netizens” as if someone in China was writing about, say, groyper views those of all “American people”, uncritically.
I realize netizens are obviously non-representative, but it's equally true that generalized Chinese patriotism is on the rise, relatively speaking. That was part of the deliberate plan after all! Put your heads down for a decade or two and work single-mindedly to grow economically and scientifically, and only after you deserve respect do you demand it. Whether that patriotism is generalized enough to produce a genuine "war fever" that happens in a wide range of societies is an open question. It's clear the Great Firewall and censorship generally has been somewhat effective in establishing norms and contours to national conversations on some of the issues, ironically that is somewhat a counterbalance. But you also have the increasing popularity of war films, increasing participation in various boycotts after international incidents they don't like, and other sort of second-order effects, so I wouldn't be quite so quick to immediately say that Chinese people don't care about geopolitics at all and will never care.
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Ah, that sort of reaction. Fair enough. Question answered, thank you.
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@EverythingIsFine may be referring to the idea of the Mandate of Heaven - that the Chinese tend to violently chuck out governments that are seen to have failed. If the CPC were forced to relinquish its claim to Taiwan as part of a peace deal, it would have a hard time holding on to power. This potentially means loose nukes.
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