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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21382 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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So as one of the resident Taiwan pessimists, I have surprising news. Contrary to all my expectations, Trump might have actually pushed back a Taiwan invasion. I'm always a little suspicious of the variable quality of Time magazine stories, but this laid out a pretty cogent case. First, my prior base case:

With the U.S. military depleted and distracted by a conflict on the other side of the globe, observers worried that Chinese strongman Xi Jinping may never have a better opportunity to move on the democratic island of 23 million, whose “reunification” he has called “the great trend of history.” The fear is that Trump’s transactional bearing and embrace of a “might is right” doctrine—both in his own actions and his ambivalence regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—could be interpreted as a green light by Xi.

“Will Xi be tempted to take advantage of U.S. potentially exhausting smart munitions and attack Taiwan even if the PLA is not fully ready?” asks Prof. Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London. “Possible.”

You can definitely still make this case. I'm almost tempted to. On a very substantial fact-based level, the US in the next 1-2 years especially will be possibly at the lowest level or readiness in a great while: large portions of the fleet will need refits, interceptor stocks will take years to recover even under optimistic scenarios, other precision munitions are also low, every conflict lowers US domestic appetite for more, and contrarily war would improve domestic approval within China that's otherwise a little grumpy with recent so-so growth. Additionally, there's some mild but decent evidence that US defenses are indeed still vulnerable to the new classes of hypersonic missiles. US capacity and abilities are sure to spike again in the 3-5 year time frame as the US not only implements highly relevant fixes to problems that have been exposed recently, but also continues to re-orient its efforts to prioritize things that threaten China more both directly and indirectly, so the window is real but closing.

However, on a more how-the-real-world-works level, war is less likely. Trump demonstrated quite clearly that the US military is far more capable and combat-ready than observers had assumed. It has the capacity to plan carefully thousands of targets, kidnap or assassinate world leaders (though with nuclear-armed China I disagree that this is very relevant), completely overwhelm air defenses without losses (including at least some amount of Chinese-made equipment in both Venezuela and Iran), sustain and project power across the globe, process an enormous amount of intelligence and surveillance with decent accuracy, and more. And clearly the President can unilaterally do whatever they want, with Trump in particular shedding a previous (avowed) aversion to conflict. DPP is not weak exactly, but definitely having some down moments compared to the more pro-China KMT within Taiwan, mildly raising hopes of a political reunification. And Taiwanese self-defense efforts as far as I can tell remain pretty lackluster despite continuing to shell out for some high end systems. Furthermore this is a tiny little dry run of how badly the global oil supply can get screwed with even a regional war, doubtless actual action would be worse, and I'm guessing China feels a bit of that pain.

And sure enough this seems to be the initial reaction. Here for example, we have a typical bellwether academic at a flagship university saying stuff like this:

Li Yihu, dean of the Taiwan Research Institute at Peking University, said the reunification process would enter an “accelerated phase” in the next five years and the mainland needed to do more to communicate an understanding of what he said was the inevitability of the process.

“Currently, we are doing very well in terms of building the capacity and the resolve to use [military deterrence], but we still need to work on ensuring that … both overt and potential adversaries fully understand the consequences of deterrence and the gains and losses,” he said.

He was referencing the deterrence theory of former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who argued that deterrence was a product of the physical military capacity to inflict damage, the resolve and willingness of leadership to act and the potential rivals’ perception and understanding of the deterrer’s power and resolve.

Reading between the lines, the obvious message is: wow, actually, the US is doing really well at deterrence recently in all of these three areas, especially demonstrated capacity and resolve, and China has, well, very little to show for its own efforts. No big operations besides military exercises. No real allies willing to pitch in. Unclear transmission of internal resolve to America, too. So in our how-the-world-actually-works framework, China is missing the essential psychological ingredients to actually pull off deterrence even if I still believe that in terms of the nuts and bolts, China could win pretty handily even if the US intervenes (in terms of a conflict itself) and has more cards to play in terms of the "how". They know it, too, but that's likely not going to be enough.

As such I'll take a predictive L in advance. My predictions about 4-5 years ago that a Taiwanese invasion would happen in approximately this timeframe was wrong. Difficult to foresee political factors significantly distorted the general strategic picture, which I assert remains accurate. My primary failing was underweighting the political side of things and the significant variance there, along with its impact on the strategic calculations necessary to pull the trigger on a big move.

I'm sorry, but it seems a bit of an unjustified update. Taiwan timeline likely didn't change a bit.

interceptor stocks will take years to recover even under optimistic scenarios

Right, the war with Iran has already wasted years' worth of production of interceptors, and you've even got a $1.1B radar and it seems multiple of those vaunted THAAD systems destroyed. This looks extemely bad for any future conflict with China but not because you'll take time to replenish this stuff. I've given to understand that Americans have a certain logarithmic sense for prowess of different adversary nations: Venezuela and Cuba are like "5-6", Iran and Russia are "7", China is maybe "8". In reality the differences are measured in the orders of magnitude. If Iran can exhaust these interceptors in a week, a massive Chinese strike would probably take hours to burn through Guam, Okinawa, and whatever is on Taiwan. They're making 31 million cars a year, just for example; mobilized, they can make not thousands but tens of millions of flying mopeds if they want. Interceptor-based defense is just inadequate against a superior industrial power; it barely works against an inferior one.

Yes, one can argue that this doctrine is getting obsolete if DEW-based defense advances, but similar logic applies to whatever comes next, and what's happening now isn't a case of getting caught by surprise – like a third of your naval power is in the theater, amid long-established bases, with local cooperation; and you've been watching the war in Ukraine for over 4 years, these are the same damn Shaheds (maybe with a few modifications) Russians had been using early on, from the OG Shahed maker. Where are Palmer Luckey's Roadrunners or Anvils knocking them out for cheaps? All these AI-driven turrets? Lasers, EW systems? The anti-ballistic front is less embarrassing but still economically sad. In light of all this, it's unclear to me why China would ever care about the "opportunity" presented by the US exhausting interceptors elsewhere.

Trump demonstrated quite clearly that the US military is far more capable and combat-ready than observers had assumed

This is a strange take too. Which observers believed that the US can't enjoy air superiority against Iran? Some doompillers who watched one too many recruitment ad with LGBT representation?

What actually matters is, for instance, whether they can detect and effectively engage your stealth aircraft. And this war is not teaching us much because Iranians don't have any modern Chinese assets or equivalents. I've been trying to find confirmations of hits of anything of that sort, because the entire internet is overflowing with claims how American-Israeli Power has proven inefficacy of Chinese temu radars/missiles. So far I've only learned that CENTCOM has taken out an HQ-2 SAM with something like a JDAM. It might be Sayyid 2, though. In any case both are close derivatives of the Soviet 75 Dvina, and 75 here is not for the year of commissioning, it actually dates back to 1957. It's probably the most widely deployed SAM in history, you've had trouble with it in Vietnam, and have learned a thing or two since then. There are some claims by pro-PRC third worldists and hawks alike that «China Arms Iran with 700km Anti-Stealth Radar Capable of Tracking F-35 and B-2 — YLC-8B» , and consequently now gloating that those radars have been destroyed. It's not impossible, after all having a long-range radar unit by itself doesn't imply you can react effectively, but I just hope that Americans and Israelis show photos of the wreckage. Same story with alleged Chinese missiles and everything else.

In Venezuela, it's not clear if any air defense systems were even operational, or stuck in half-disassembled mode. Looking up this stuff one is struck by the vast overrepresentation of American and Indian content, indeed Americans and Indians are becoming culturally indistinguishable.

The fear is that Trump’s transactional bearing and embrace of a “might is right” doctrine—both in his own actions and his ambivalence regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—could be interpreted as a green light by Xi.

This is just … I don't know how to describe it, some mix of naive idealism and narcissism. Is Xi a dictator or nah? Why would he need a "greenlight" in the form of example of belligerence from his main pacing threat? Where would he cash it in? Nobody important in, say, Europe will claim that whacking Iran is morally or legally equivalent to conquering Taiwan, so it changes nothing and is only good for domestic rhetoric about Western hypocrisy. I guess Americans are so powerful that they can afford to be solipsistic, and so might overrate the value of domestic moral rhetoric in the general case. But even on that front, China is quite unified in believing that reunification, including by violent means, is justified. United States is no standard or paragon. It's not making invasion more likely.

and I'm guessing China feels a bit of that pain.

I think they've been quite sure they'll lose access to oil imports in the case of the full-scale war with the US, and will have to fight for it.

Basically I believe Americans strongly overrate how much their antics in random powerless Evil Nations affect Chinese plans one way or another way. They're just not informative.
If you think I'm a Chinese shill, here's a Chinese hawk with impeccable credentials: Tanner Greer.

The idea that the Iran operation was mostly about China, that it fundamentally changes Chinese perceptions of American strength, or that it has already altered the balance of power between China and America in any real way, is bizarre to me.
We know what metrics the Chinese judge their competition with the US by. We know the military measures they care about and we know the non-military elements of national power that they think are most important.
Very honestly: the upcoming war powers resolutions vote on Iran will likely matter more to Chinese perceptions of American capacity (if the admin fails to get the vote) than the actual military attacks on Iran. Not hard to predict the sort of analysis the Xie Tao types will write up.
To fundamentally change Chinese perceptions (or for that matter, realities, as IMHO the Chinese are largely looking at the right metrics) the Iran operation would have to change one’s answer to any of the following questions:

  1. Militarily: Does this operation mean that US carrier and amphibious ready groups can operate more safely within range of Chinese missiles?
  2. Militarily: Does this operation suggest that American, Japanese, and Taiwanese airbases, command centers, fuel depots, etc will be more resilient to the thousands of missiles pointed at them?
  3. Militarily: Does this operation demonstrate previously unknown capabilities of the two platforms American war plans turn around: stealth bombers (and/or their accessories—AWAC and refueling planes) or submarines?
  4. Militarily: does this operation demonstrate previously unknown space or cyber capabilities, and does it say anything meaningful about how America might fare once a war of attrition begins in space?
  5. Militarily: Does this operation give the Chinese reasons to think that nuclear brinksmanship might deter American and Japanese intervention? Does it suggest the Americans and Japanese are more willing to risk a war with a nuclear power than previously imagined?
  6. Militarily: Does this operation suggest that Americans, Japanese, or Taiwanese are less casualty averse than previously imagined? Does this operation signal anything important about the willingness of the American, Japanese, and Taiwanese public to sustain a bloody war over time?
  7. Politically: Does the Iran operation signal that Donald Trump and his administration believes that Taiwan is worth a war?
  8. Politically: Does the Iran operation show that the American people and American political parties can be easily rallied behind a protracted war effort?
  9. Politically: Does the Iran operation signal special commitment to South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, or Japan, or in any material way make it easier for those governments to take more forceful national security measures against the Chinese?
  10. Politically: Does the Iran operation make it easier for the United States to coordinate sanctions packages in moments of crisis, export restrictions, and so forth with foreign powers (eg Europe)?
  11. Politically: Does the Iran operation make it more difficult for China to pursue diplomatic agreements with anyone on the long run—the gulf states, Europe, Russia, India, etc?
  12. Politically: Does the Iran operation improve US-India relations in a way that might divert Chinese military investment away from Pacific theater?
  13. Politically: Does the Iran operation change any of societal weaknesses that the Chinese believe they have identified in American society, and which they think will doom its ability to sustain itself in long term geopolitical competition? (I could make these separate questions but here is the list: immigration and multiculturalism, right wing populism, political polarization, uncontrolled social media, the financialization of our politics and economy, racism, and general cultural decline).
  14. Economically: Does this operation damage the exports-driven economic growth that is currently sustaining the Chinese economy?
  15. Economically: Does this operation damage in any meaningful way China’s drive to create the greatest and most technologically advanced scientific ecosystem? Does it derail China’s drive to become the world’s leading scientific power?
  16. Economically: Does this operation restrict Chinese access to cutting edge technology, research, or science?
  17. Economically: Does this operation turn back American de industrialization? Does it make America, Japan, and Taiwan more capable of the mass production of military arms?
  18. Economically: Does this operation supercharge America’s own technological innovation (eg does it help us get faster to advance AGI)?
  19. Ideological security: Does this operation damage in any significant way the vast machinery China has built to influence political outcomes in foreign nations?
  20. ideological security: does this operation damage in any way or suggest deficiencies in China’s counterintelligence apparatus?
  21. ideological security: does this operation make liberalism or democracy nor any non communist system of rule more appealing to the Chinese people or to Chinese elites? Does it undermine the ideological coherence of the regime?
  22. ideological security: does this operation reduce Xi Jinping’s control of the military or allow opponents to him to coordinate more successfully than before?

Anyways you get the idea. The Party leadership sees geopolitical competition between the United States and China as a contest of technological supremacy. The long run weaknesses they see in the United States are political and cultural; in turn, the thing they fear most is ideological subversion of their own regime. Militarily they prepare for a no-holds barred fight over the waters of the west Pacific —the key factors there are the willingness of US, Japan, and Taiwan to be a part of that fight and then our ability to sustain it in the face of great losses in both men and machinery. The Iran stuff is orthogonal to almost all of that.

Which observers believed that the US can't enjoy air superiority against Iran?

I don't think air superiority is the right term for what the US enjoys above iran... What's above air supremacy? air superlativity?

The Coalition lost 70 planes in the first gulf war. Are there any confirmed plane losses, aside from the three who fell to Kuwaiti friendly fire? Or is this propaganda?

And the entire leadership was wiped out, that's new too. I thought the iranians had a chance to damage an american warship, since the ukrainians and argentinians managed to sink russian and english boats. It's a complete massacre, come on.

The war's not over, there's still going to be plenty of time for Iran to damage an American warship or shoot down American aircraft at this rate.

aside from the three who fell to Kuwaiti friendly fire?

What is the evidence that it was friendly fire, by the way?

Trump demonstrated quite clearly that the US military is far more capable and combat-ready than observers had assumed

But without proper planning or strategy. Trump apparently didn't consider that Iran might close the straits of Hormuz, only now is there bleating about insuring vessels, only now are defence company executives being summoned to boost production. The plan seems to have been 'big strike package and then we win', which just isn't how things work.

Maybe nobody in the US decision-making cabal knows that Taiwan imports the vast majority of its food, energy and fertilizer by sea. Maybe they aren't aware that Taiwan can be blockaded into submission while China retains access to land markets and enjoys self-sufficiency in grain if not meat. Maybe American leaders are still thinking in terms of wars lasting a few days or weeks, rather than years. Wars between strong powers tend to drag on for a lot longer than expected. What is the plan to defeat China in attritional, industrial warfare?

THAAD getting wrecked by Iran's missile and drone arsenal is also pretty alarming. THAAD is what's supposed to defend Guam and other US bases necessary for this war.

Capability is not just tactical success but understanding the nature of the war you're going to fight, preparing the proper force and choosing the right missions and tactics. Executing the wrong approach proficiently isn't good enough.

“Currently, we are doing very well in terms of building the capacity and the resolve to use [military deterrence], but we still need to work on ensuring that … both overt and potential adversaries fully understand the consequences of deterrence and the gains and losses,” he said.

He could well be saying 'how do we deter Trump, he doesn't seem to think strategically at all.' And that is indeed a nightmarish situation to be in, since quantitative superiority means nothing to a man who doesn't understand numbers, just makes them up. Qualitative superiority is useless since Trump always thinks he has the biggest and best of everything. What can you do but roll the dice and let the outcome speak for itself? Or just wait for more unforced errors? The waiting for unforced errors strategy seems to have been going pretty well for China thus far.

Trump apparently didn't consider that Iran might close the straits of Hormuz, only now is there bleating about insuring vessels, only now are defence company executives being summoned to boost production.

I am very certain that the US military considered the possibility that Iran, known for threatening to close the straits of Hormuz for decades, might close the straights of Hormuz. I think the stuff about insurance was in response to rising insurance premiums - there's really no point in saying anything publicly about that ahead of time.

Trump has also been on the production thing for some time now.

Maybe nobody in the US decision-making cabal knows that Taiwan imports the vast majority of its food, energy and fertilizer by sea.

Unlikely, CSIS has done public simulations of Taiwan blockades, and some of the players are or were in said cabal.

THAAD getting wrecked by Iran's missile and drone arsenal is also pretty alarming.

It's very unclear to me the extent to which this damage is real. A lot of reported hits on THAAD locations doesn't necessarily mean much given that it's a semi-mobile system. We'll see how it shakes out.

What is the plan to defeat China in attritional, industrial warfare?

If it turns out that "the missile will always get through" – which is obviously true given enough missile mass – then that's bad for the power that needs successful missile defense to win a war in Taiwan. And that power is not the United States. China cannot win a war over Taiwan if their ships get sunk by missile salvos. If the US and Chinese Navies sink each other in a Taiwan fight, the status quo is maintained and the US wins.

I am very certain that the US military considered the possibility that Iran, known for threatening to close the straits of Hormuz for decades, might close the straights of Hormuz.

I tend to agree with this. I would just add that RandomRanger doesn't have much credibility when it comes to these sorts of issues. Earlier, he indicated that he was "confident" that Israel had bombed a girls' elementary school in Iran. Recent news reports are suggesting that if it was probably the United States. Of course it's too early to know for sure what happened -- and certainly too early for anyone to be "confident" that it was Israel.

It looks to me like RandomRanger is so consumed by hatred of Israel that he just isn't capable of critical or objective analysis when it comes to any issue that involves Israel.

Earlier, he indicated that he was "confident" that Israel had bombed a girls' elementary school in Iran. Recent news reports are suggesting that if it was probably the United States.

Man, who cares? Neither the US nor Israel would just bomb one specific girls' school for kicks, it makes no sense. They are acting in a coalition. The news here is that the school got bombed and not by Iran.

Man, who cares?

RandomRanger, apparently, among other Israel-haters.

Neither the US nor Israel would just bomb one specific girls' school for kicks, it makes no sense.

Of course not. But Israel-haters LOVE to seize upon these sorts of events.

Anyway, my point was about his lack of credibility, not about the event in particular.

Neither the US nor Israel would just bomb one specific girls' school for kicks, it makes no sense.

If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the moral quality and proclivities of our world leaders over the past few years “Heathen blood sacrifice to Ba’al to ensure success in the conflict” isn’t particularly loopy or out of the question.

No? The loopy ideologies involved in the conflict are misinterpretations of messianic prophecies which do not involve human sacrifice.

No, it's actually insane schitzo shit.

But without proper planning or strategy. Trump apparently didn't consider that Iran might close the straits of Hormuz

Iran didn't. Lloyds did. Dynacom (Greek shipping company) has been sending tankers through... not sure if self-insured or what.

now is there bleating about insuring vessels

Which, given that the problem is insurance, makes perfect sense.

THAAD getting wrecked by Iran's missile and drone arsenal is also pretty alarming. THAAD is what's supposed to defend Guam and other US bases necessary for this war.

One AN/TPY-2 radar was hit. I don't know about Trump, but I'm sure everyone below him in the DoD and military knows the enemy does sometimes take out your stuff. This does not take out all of THAAD. As for Guam, Iran has nothing that can reach it anyway.

THAAD getting wrecked by Iran's missile and drone arsenal is also pretty alarming.

This is news to me. Further details?

There are pictures of an allegedly destroyed radar all over Twitter. What that actually means or even if it’s real are questionable.

Destroying a single radar isn't "getting wrecked". The whole system is a lot more than just the radar and even then "getting wrecked" carries the connotation that the missiles and drones are able to penetrate the system with regularity and hit their intended targets rather than merely destroy some of its infrastructure.

The idea that Trump pushed back a Taiwan invasion only makes sense if there was, indeed, a plan for a Taiwan invasion. And I'm not sure of that, given the anemic support that China has been giving to Russia for the last 4 years. If China cares enough about its trade with the West to avoid providing significant support to a country that is actively engaged in a proxy war with the West, despite easily being able to provide such support, it seems weird to me that China would enter a possible open war with the West by attacking Taiwan.

I feel like in the last few years there has been a whole genre of "war between the US and China is inevitable" literature that has perhaps made it almost seem like such a war really is inevitable.

I'm not surprised by the popularity of the genre. It is entertaining, it has a certain "back in a Cold War" charm, it benefits China hawks and defense manufacturers.

But I believe that if such a war does happen it will represent not the outcome of inevitability, but rather a massive failure of diplomacy.

That said, I don't have a good track record of geopolitical predictions.

Yeah China needs to maintain the capability to invade Taiwan in case they declare independence so they can make good on their threats. But the status quo is pretty comfy and China is only getting stronger so I don't know that they feel much egency.

As for Ukraine China is an inward looking place and despite being friendly to Russia still has decent relations with Ukraine and Europe. A war with Taiwan likely wouldn't involve Europe so I'm not sure they see the Ukraine war as useful to weakening their actual rivals in the Asia-Pacific especially since the US has reduced support and it's mainly Europe propping up Ukraine.

I mean, it seems obvious that China may be pro-Russia, but is unwilling to eat Russia's war bill because it's a big bill.

Also China bein friendly to Russia doesn't necessarily mean they are Anti-Ukraine

Sure, but China could help Russia much more than it currently is helping, without breaking its own bank in the process. For example, China could spin up a few military drone factories.

I listened to the radio today and CBS military analyst Mike Lyons (former Army Major and Desert Storm combat vetran) had a point about how this war is harming Chinese energy security in a way that is very bad for hypothetical Chinese military incursions. China buys almost all of Iran's oil and needs it very much.

China buys almost all of Iran's oil and needs it very much.

It's been very revealing how many Americans (sincerely) and Israelis (opportunistically) appeal to "China buys almost all of Iran's oil" and seem to believe this also means "Iran's oil is a big fraction of Chinese energy purchases". Well, it's known that Americans can't do fractions (see their per capita kryptonite), but still, I've updated in the direction of even greater disbelief in American capacity to reason quantitatively.

At $80/barrel (probably the sustainable market cost if this situation creates lasting damage to Gulf infra), Iranian volume of oil sales would amount to like $40B annually. China has $1.2T trade surplus. Yes, they've been buying oil at a huge discount, paying something like $4B instead. But this is all such small potatoes.

This military analyst on the radio could be correct. It depends on the marginal impact of losing that portion of their oil. I get they still have most of their supply of oil. But is that enough? Can they simply replace the loss by purchasing from other sources or would it be too expensive? I naively doubt it is going to be easy to replace a significant minority of all of China's oil consumption. There will be a global price impact at least.

China imports about 70% of its oil. About 13% of that imported oil is from Iran. That means about 9-10% of China's oil supply is being cut off here.

China, or any other country, cannot just snap their fingers and go to war. Spinning up the war machine takes time and is very visible. If there were any inkling that they were seriously moving towards a war footing, this pseudo regime change op would end.

The bigger relevance is that of volume. How many interceptors does the US have, and how many can it produce? Any Chinese invasion would be kicked off with missiles aimed at every US airfield in the region; can they be protected? What does the supply of radars look like? Etc.

I'd say that the Trump admin's actions in the middle east (the little kids on the playground) are way less indicative of what the US would do with China (the big kid) than the admin's actions with Russia, who is the medium sized kid.

And what we have with Russia is a lot of appeasement and cowardice. Instead of just going in and bombing them, the Trump admin has consistently tried to coax Ukraine into abandoning territory they control in pursuit of a "deal". And when Putin continues to refuse and keeps trying with his invasion, Trump does ... basically nothing.

If it's not morals, and it's not rules of engagement and it's not international law or polling or anything else that holds the admin back from using power and force whenever they want wherever they want them it suggests one of two things when they don't take action 1. They actually support Russia somewhat or 2. They're too scared and don't think they have the power and force to meaningfully win. What else is there?

If this is how we treat the medium kid, with shaky fear and inaction then what will happen when the big kid comes in to bully? If Trump and Hegseth wanted to show actual power and courage against meaningful threats, they'd metaphorically punch Putin in the face and take it to Russia instead of acting like wimps who only take on the preschool next door, and a lot of that seems to only be with our emotional support Israel to comfort and guide us through the scary times.

The difference lies in direct exposure and proxies. Ukraine offers a sort of weird middle ground, semi-proxy war of the type we've seen several times throughout the Cold War to varying degrees. Iran, we fundamentally expect to get punched back, directly, not even exclusively through Iran's proxies. Thus a fight over Taiwan, where we expect the punches to land directly face to face is much closer to Iran situationally. Taiwan is currently a latent proxy, but there is really only a few, very implausible scenarios where we'd support Taiwan only by proxy. If China makes a go at it, either we leave them to try to handle it themselves or we get directly in the fight.

In other words: we've seen Ukraine-like situations before a couple times and not much happened most all of those times. We've seen Iran though recently, and to an extent not previously seen (the Soleimani response and then even the 12-day 'war' response were qualitatively different) since Iraq.

There's once big exception to the rule: proxy wars don't usually escalate to direct wars. The Korean War. This actually works in my argument's favor, though, because the US put themselves directly in the fight and it led to direct confrontation.

Picture the following scale:

  1. Two powers fight each other directly
  2. Two powers fight each other within a specific theater only
  3. One power fights another's proxy (which is materially supported by the other power)
  4. One power's proxy fights another power's proxy (both are materially supported)
  5. One power's proxy fights another's proxy (but only one is provided support)
  6. Unrelated wars (w/r/t the two powers)

WW2 was a Type 1 war. These have not happened since WW2 for a reason. The Korean War was a Type 2 war. It's really the only Type 2 war, though Sino-Soviet border clashes might count if you squint, or India-Pakistan if you stretch. A Taiwan-triggered war would probably be closer to a Type 2 war than a type 1 war, but it definitely wouldn't be a Type 3 war. If you count Ukraine as a US proxy, then that was a Type 3 war. To understand what Type 3 wars usually look like, let's look at history, because these are much better understood:

Vietnam: the US thought about flirting with an upgrade (it's worth noting that Type 2 only actually happens if one side strikes and the other side fights back) but decided against it pretty deliberately. Yom Kippur (arguably), the Soviets threatened to put a trigger force into a collapsing Egypt. Both sides went on nuclear alerts but basically both sides pumped the brakes. Soviet-Afghan war, both sides avoided escalation, even though Pakistan was a US ally in the middle of getting their own nukes. The Syrian Civil War was a kind of Type 3.5 war, because air power blurs the lines a bit. No escalation occurred and both parties were pretty careful to avoid an upgrade.

In this context, Ukraine is very much a 'known quantity'. So yeah, even though it seems counterintuitive that a small, direct fight between a power and a small(ish) country is better as a signal than a big, direct fight against a proxy, Ukraine is virtually guaranteed in practical terms to remain a Type 3, while a Taiwan clash jumps from nothing straight to a Type 2 or even Type 1 (if China decided to do a first-strike kind of action, including in space), do not pass go, do not collect $200. This makes Iran a much better signal of how willing the US is to get into a big, direct fight, with direct exposure, because it is a direct conflict, and Iran has a population bigger than the size of Germany, and twice the size of Ukraine! So yes, it's a decent assessment of the risk appetite the US currently has as well as its competence.

The instant jump to a Type 2 war, or more serious, is because Taiwan is an island (and quite close to China), thus after combat begins no pure-proxy assistance is possible. There is no such thing as a protected airlift or sealift out of Taiwan, or meaningful weapon-smuggling into a warzone around it. You either break a blockade with force or you don't. Taiwan is fundamentally incapable of being a Type 3 conflict for this reason.

Where does the American Revolution, wrt Britain and France, fit in this schema?

By the end it was a type 2 verging on type 1. You had direct French vs. England naval and land conflict within the 13 colonies, and were starting to see limited naval engagements popping up around the world (the last battle of the American Revolutionary War was off the coast of India, and didn’t involve any Americans). The escalation risk was part of why Britain threw in the towel.

Not to be a pessimist, but my prediction has long been that ROC and PRC would reunify in the near future, but that it would be primarily peaceful and political with minimal violence amounting to protests or riots rather than open war.

Accepting ad arguendo that the USA has demonstrated an ability to engage in impressive acts of violence. The Axis of Resistance basically hasn't had shit-all for the Western bloc in Iran and Ukraine.

But there's also been enormous signals of the decline of a unified Western bloc during the past year.

If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.

However, on a more how-the-real-world-works level, war is less likely. Trump demonstrated quite clearly that the US military is far more capable and combat-ready than observers had assumed.

As one of those observers, and as someone strongly opposed to the previous foreign policy consensus, imagine the counterfactual world, where the US military was not in good shape, and we only found out about it after committing to a serious, high-stakes war with China, of the sort that has been generally assumed we were going to have within a decade.

One of the few silver linings to this whole debacle is getting an objective picture of our actual capabilities against a fairly serious opponent.

So for Iran the big US interests in regime change is moving Iran into the Western coalition which historically they have done. Plus locking down Argentina hard and Venezuela lightly adds new allies too. Then you basically cut off all oil to China and even if that fails our hemisphere is safe.

I kind of think Iran is for the Jews, but turning them neutral or Western is a huge coup for America. Even if you can’t win Taiwan you completely cut China off.

I don't know how countries like Argentina could possibly not have already been considered quite allied with the US. Milei himself was certainly already allied with Trump.

More importantly, I am somewhat concerned about counting chickens early on making Iran an Israeli/Western ally. Why are we so certain that air superiority will mean regime change ibstead of a bunch of terrorism?

Peronism was communism light. Definitely unaligned for a while. Now 100% US on current government though vote share is less.

A leftist government does not make a country unaligned with a country or not. An authoritarian regime might, but Argentinian voters just made bad choices on electing irresponsible leftist populists for many years (I am not very educated on if the alternatives were much better). Argentina was still closely allied with the US throughout, a marked contrast with authoritarian leftists elsewhere.

Let’s say that by 2030, a significant proportion of global chip production has moved out of Taiwan. China invades or otherwise ‘reunifies’ (use whatever euphemism you prefer) with Taiwan, with minimal or no US intervention. What happens? What are the actual consequences for the world?

China has no stated designs on Japan or even South Korea. Their relationship with North Korea, which actually does have designs on the latter, has in any event deteriorated over the years. The “nine dash line” (or eleven for Taiwan) in the South China Sea is one of the few things both the ROC and PRC agree on as far as territorial claims go, so that isn’t affected - and it’s a much less emotive issue for Chinese nationalists than Taiwan is.

So all in all, why should America care?

Let’s say that by 2030, a significant proportion of global chip production has moved out of Taiwan. China invades or otherwise ‘reunifies’ (use whatever euphemism you prefer) with Taiwan, with minimal or no US intervention. What happens? What are the actual consequences for the world?

That depends on what kind of government exists in China. I would be a lot less worried if the unified Chinese government were a multi-party democracy with strong civil liberties.

What are the actual consequences for the world?

Fish stocks collapse even faster than the already are

Put simply, it increases China's power, especially locally, to a dramatic degree. China gains the ability to meaningfully project power further in the region without real restraint, including ruling the seas there completely. Historically, this kind of naval+regional dominance always leads to the power getting used or abused. It's naive and wrong to think that wars only start of territorial greed, and therefore no territorial ambitions means no risk of war, though I'm not sure if that's what you were implying or not.

At any rate, I think there's a pretty reasonable case to make that China getting more powerful and influential is bad for the world. I don't think it's awful for the world, but definitely bad in relative terms, and bad for America as well. Global power isn't really zero-sum, but I think American power would diminish at least proportionally in a lot of areas simply because we've nearly 100% occupied a few particular global niches for a while, which leads to some similar dynamics.

Diplomatically, and this is probably the big one, there's no way this wouldn't result in a hit to American reliability, already somewhat in question. This kind of soft diplomatic capital is really hard to replace, and really valuable. Speaking frankly, there's always this element of reputation+raw power that serves as a background to even seemingly unrelated negotiations. The US has leveraged this to our advantage over the years; it can work in reverse, too. It's like a meta-multiplier.

While it's clear that ideological dominos isn't really a thing, I would argue that it's possible to kick off a cascade of weakened alliances. Like it or not the US has essentially provided some degree of security guarantee for decades and decades to Taiwan. On top of NATO doubts, this means that functionally all of our 'guarantees' are increasingly seen as pure convenience. Mechanistically, this is bad because alliances have synergistic effects based on mutual trust that dissipate when trust decreases. As an illustration, think of a vendor relationship. A little wiggle room based on trust can be mutually beneficial to adapt to changing circumstances, or even provide material improvement like how banks give better lending terms to certain outfits; once the trust is gone, though, lawyers start to enter the room, threats start to happen, and transactions shrink in size and scope.

Economically, I think you're underrating the knock-on effects. Sure, we've reduced our reliance on China a bit, but where has that reliance gone? Its neighbors, mostly. If China suddenly gets a stronger grip on Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, etc. this greatly reduces trade leverage, even if our relationship with South Korean and Japan were to remain identical.

More subjectively, it would also be morally quite sad. Taiwan is a functioning, independent democracy with strong claims to self-determination.

It's also likely to kick off a regional nuclear arms race, although you might view this as being good. I am at least modestly open to our relatively stable allies getting access to nuclear weapons (at this point North Korea has them anyway, so it's hardly like it's setting a bad regional precedent.)

This does however reduce US power compared to the rest of the world, and thus is arguably against US interests.

Personally I'm against expansion in the number of nuclear-armed states, full stop, no matter how virtuous. Because the nukes don't easily go away, if at all, and I do worry about tail risks. Mostly of the variety: some idiot breaks the strong taboo and drops a "tactical" nuclear bomb, and then the taboo is way weaker and more shit can happen (direct response or down the road), though you can't entirely discount accidents/misunderstandings/etc as a potential source of disaster. The way it seems to work is risk scale much more strongly with the number of independent actors involved, not number of nukes, so while a mutual US-Chinese nuclear arms race would be bad, I think it's bracketed for me within the 'normal' level of badness. Way less risky in relative terms than allowing someone like, say, Japan (lol) to get nukes even if they seem trustworthy in the near and medium term. There's something to be said for the (sadly now defunct) Cold War arms treaties limiting stuff like intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles simply for the human fact that a 5-minute snap decision is quantitatively and qualitatively much worse than a 15-minute snap decision, though I'm hopeful this logic is clear enough most actors don't meaningfully arm missiles with nukes at those ranges even if the treaty is dead.

As to whether the relative risk of an emboldened China contributing to generalized nuclear tension is greater than the risk of a conventional fight over Taiwan escalating to nuclear exchange(s), that I'm not quite sure. I think a purely nuclear POV probably says that direct global powers at war is the higher risk. As to whether China believes that Taiwan is so 1000% "China proper" that they'd be willing to risk using nukes? On paper they do, but I think it's mostly clear that in practice they don't.

Yeah, I think there's something to be said for the argument that increased nuclear weapons reduces war by increasing risk...but also there's something to be said for the argument that reducing war by increasing risk is still increasing risk.

There's something to be said for the (sadly now defunct) Cold War arms treaties limiting stuff like intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles

I feel compelled to point out that such treaties left SLBMs in place. You can fire a sub-launched ICBM on a depressed trajectory, and you could probably put those ~anywhere you could put land-based missiles. That's not to say the treaty did nothing - Trident II is going to be more expensive than a Tomahawk on a truck, or something - but for better or for worse the US and possibly the USSR could still have put people in a 5-minute decision dilemma.

As to whether the relative risk of an emboldened China contributing to generalized nuclear tension is greater than the risk of a conventional fight over Taiwan escalating to nuclear exchange(s), that I'm not quite sure.

I definitely wonder if a China that's strong and aggressive enough to take Taiwan might become the same China that says "you know what? I don't think you've got the guts for it, and we have missile defense" in some spat with a nuclear Vietnam or Japan a decade down the road.

That's fair, but usage of subs is a substantially higher bar both operationally as well as in the decision-making of things. Notably, an SLBM launch tends to generate substantially fewer false positives (as an absolute number, more relevant here for nuclear risk) than INF-type intermediate-range missiles (which already proliferate not just in presence but usage as well) simply because it generates dramatically fewer positives to begin with. Not that e.g. China ever participated in said INF treaty, though, but the logic still applies to actually being willing to mount, or actually mounting, these types with nuclear warheads. I hope. Unfortunately AFAIK their IRBMs and the like are capable of quick swap, and recent trends towards a launch-on-warn, hair-trigger profile bodes poorly. So the hope comes in the form of: China being smart enough to never ever get caught mounting them (or ideally even thinking about doing so). Thankfully due to physical realities, mainland US is far enough away from Russia that this kind of thing is, well not quite a non-issue, but less worrisome, so maybe it's half-moot.

So yeah, in theory those short windows still exist, but risk-wise the two things are orders of magnitude apart.

The SK-Japan-China axis is especially hard to gauge, because to be honest none of them have really managed to set aside historical grievances or fears. China is big and scary, Japan did some horrific stuff in WW2, SK doesn't want to be the little kid on the block anymore, and then there's ancient history too, lol. I lowkey think that dynamic is way harder to predict in the next 50 years than NK is. Still my feeling is the same: fewer actors -> less risk.

Bringing up Japan is a good point. If Japan as seems likely were to help the US defend Taiwan, that would fundamentally change the Chinese-Japanese relationship far beyond the current trends. However, I'm skeptical that even a more warlike Japan would get their own nukes. Nuclear sharing is the most on the table and that's not that weird - it's still a US-Chinese dynamic. I will grant that what I've ignored here is the substantially closer physical proximity to these allies and time zone issues means that nuclear dynamics on this local axis (with presumed remote US decision making) is a major challenge that can't really be mitigated easily.

Along the lines of spreading nukes around to allies, if the US actually were to follow through and let Saudi Arabia get nukes, that would be absolutely disastrous. That's in my mind the most likely path to countries like Vietnam wanting to sign up too.

Yes, I think you're right that shore-launched conventional ballistic missiles are much more common. I believe the South Koreans have tactical non-nuclear SLBMs but you're right about the lower "false positive" set.

I'm skeptical that even a more warlike Japan would get their own nukes.

Maybe! Japan can likely produce them quite quickly, and they seem to view Taiwan as a red line of sorts. If Taiwan did fall I think they might seriously reconsider their stance on nuclear weapons.

if the US actually were to follow through and let Saudi Arabia get nukes

I think the rumored understanding is that Saudi Arabia already has nukes, they are just stored in Pakistan.

In both of the above cases, though, I think the nuclear breakout is unlikely unless the US demonstrates the inability or unwillingness to be an adequate replacement. So the US shellacking Iran right now probably has made the Saudis feel more comfortable leaving their nuclear weapons parked elsewhere. Similarly, it seems to me that Japan is unlikely to reach for nuclear weapons as long as Taiwan remains outside of CCP control.

Japan and our little brown brothers in the Philippines have many reasons to be very concerned, and we're the global hegemon.

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