This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unlikely, CSIS has done public simulations of Taiwan blockades, and some of the players are or were in said cabal.
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.
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.
But is the US military actually involved in decision-making, or is it more people like Hegseth and Laura Loomer? CSIS and RAND are serious about strategy. Are their reports actually read by the decisionmakers? The serious strategists have been saying for years that the US needs more cost-efficient SHORAD and anti-drone weapons and large-scale production of munitions yet the message doesn't seem to have filtered through.
If the US and Chinese Navies sink eachother in a Taiwan fight, the Chinese build a new navy much faster and win. They also bomb Taiwan's ports and energy infrastructure to threaten or actually inflict intolerable suffering on the island.
How are big, slow, flammable cargo ships supposed to get through to a port if the Chinese decide to sink them with missiles or just wreck the ports? These are the east coast ports not needed for invasion... How is Taiwan supposed to produce its own food without fertilizer, without power for food processing and refrigeration, without fuel for food distribution? How are the fuel storages and food storages supposed to survive bombing? All of those things go away if the Chinese decide to hit them with their huge arsenal of missiles and drones. The world's biggest drone producer is not going to have a shortage of drones.
That's where I disagree with the CSIS wargames, they assume a very rosy picture:
How are inventories going to be sustained and distributed under a constant bombing campaign? Hardening fuel storage is good but what about the engine rooms and pumping machinery needed to get the fuel out of storage? That's tricky to harden, needs ventilation...
And what are the chances this conflict is over within nine months? This would be a great power war and they last for years and years. China's greatest strength is in industrial power and manpower, they would prefer a quick victory but will accept attritional, industrial warfare too.
Yes.
This isn't true at all, as you'd know if you've been reading my posts - the Navy's been testing improved ammo for the 5-inch gun, we've deployed lasers and we've used laser-guided rockets (which pretty much fix the cost curve for Shahed-type weapons). Similarly the large-scale production ramp up is (at least supposedly) underway.
If the US ramps up said production to 1,000 Tomahawks a year (stated goal) then it can just blow up their port infrastructure and call it a day.
Possibly! But it's not exactly an EZ win for the United States, either, which means people are paying attention.
We'll see how this works on Iran. So far it hasn't worked on Ukraine.
A war with China over Taiwan? If they launch an invasion and the war is still going on after nine months, it means the invasion failed. I would say it depends on a lot of factors, as a flat-out invasion is not the only outcome, nor does its failure terminate the war, but consider that if it lasts over a longer term the Chinese inability to sustain their domestic consumption of oil will start to increasingly hurt them, and all of the stuff you've said about inflicting hurt on Taiwan will start to work against China writ large.
So far as I can see, US lasers have mostly been shooting down US drones from other departments on the Mexican border. They are not visibly defending key installations in the Middle East where they're actually needed, substituting for expensive ballistic missile interceptors.
If the US military had all their ducks in a row, we wouldn't be seeing videos from soldiers of drones and missiles coming down on their bases, this stuff should have been sorted out before starting a war of choice. There should've been some destroyers sitting in the Gulf of Hormuz lasering down incoming missiles and small boats. But there aren't.
The large-scale ramp up doesn't just need to be 'underway', it needs to be yielding results. A few days into a war, there should be absolutely no talk about rebasing THAAD from Korea because there should already be enough munitions to fight that war. The US should also be able to outproduce Russia in shells outright, that is a baseline expectation for industrial warfare given the size of the US economy.
I don't think 3 Tomahawks a day would be sufficient to shut down all of China's naval production, assuming 80% penetration rate. Even if Chinese shipbuilding is suppressed, they can still drown Taiwan with their own missiles and drones. To win the US would need to suppress all of China's war industry, including arms production well inland.
Taiwan is a special case in that it's an island. Ukraine and Iran are/were energy exporters, Ukraine is a food exporter. Taiwan is the opposite, a huge and almost totally dependent on imports importer. China is merely a large importer of oil and food-secure in calories. If they rationalize consumption by killing herds, ration, halt most of their export industries, they can manage with what overland imports they retain access to. They only import 21% of their energy, not 95% like Taiwan.
China has enough domestic oil production for military usage and military-adjacent chemicals, only the civilian sector takes a hit.
You're shifting the goalpost from claiming that "the message hasn't filtered through" to claiming that things have not been moving fast enough for your liking (which is a fine criticism, but not the same thing.) It's worth noting that current known operational lasers in the US inventory are going to be either dazzlers or targeted mostly at subsonic weapons, not ballistic missiles. Nevertheless, on a quick Google, it looks at least one ship with an ODIN dazzler (USS Spruance), deployed with the Lincoln as we speak.
"If they had all their ducks in a row, we wouldn't be seeing any videos of them taking losses during a major regional war" is not a reasonable criticism of any military in the world. It wasn't reasonable when people made this criticism of Russia, and it's not reasonable when they make it of the United States, and it won't be if they make it of China.
It is - the US has successfully used the Falco laser-guided rocket, as I mentioned earlier, against "one-way attack drones" (slow cruise missiles). We also reverse-engineered the Shahed and shot it back at Iran. It's unclear to me how it's coming on the more bespoke ammunition (as far as I know the exact numbers there are classified).
Really? Have you done any baseline research to see if the US has, in the past, moved any munitions from different theaters before to fight in a war after the war started? Have you considered that if the US prepositioned all of its valuable THAAD ammunition in the theatre prior to the initiation of hostilities and it got destroyed during the Iranian's large opening salvo people would be using that as evidence of US stupidity and incompetence instead?
I agree with this, with the caveat that I don't actually care about shells quite as much as I care about cruise missiles.
This is a really cool vision for a novel. Imagine trying to navigate the hellscape that remains of Taiwan in 2081, as PLA missiles, rockets, and killdrones rain down over the island, fired at random after the US destruction of the Chinese satellite ISR network. The Chinese have been issuing demands to surrender for the past 50 years, unaware that there is no government left to speak for the island. The only justice is death, the only law is the sword!
But I have to ask: why would China bother to do that? It has old liquid-fueled silo-based nuclear weapons with marginal deterrence value, it could just use those instead. In fact, it could probably do that tomorrow, skip the entire risk of regional war. Just obliterate the major cities and helicopter in some guys in MOPP gear to plant the flag.
"China chooses to crash their economy during the critical period of their transition to a greyer society, permanently altering their progress curve for the worse, to take Taiwan, the economic value of which they utterly destroyed with a period of prolonged bombardment after it refused to surrender" does not exactly sound like a win for China. I suppose it is possible that this is what happens anyway, but this is very obviously not ideal for them.
You brought up these lasers and cheap, effective anti-drone weapons. If these weapons are so great, why don't we see them in action? If they're not mature, then the sensible thing to do is not to start a war of choice against a power with a huge drone and missile arsenal. Again, that brings us back to my main point about the wise planners being sidelined by the actual policymakers.
Trump doesn't understand any of this stuff. He said the Iranians Tomahawked their own school, he's not capable of gauging what might even be believable as a lie, let alone what is actually going on in the real world.
Losses is one thing, bases and strategic radars being destroyed is another. Russia quite clearly did not have their ducks in a row for the invasion of Ukraine, for what it's worth. The initial plan failed and Russia switched strategy to a war of attrition.
But why aren't these systems you brought up deployed and defending? If they're worth bringing up, then they ought to be adding value.
The first thing that should've been considered in a regime change operation in Iran is what the actual goal is. Trump wants to appoint a leader (with what ground troops?), Rubio wants to blow up the navy and the missile production facilities, Bibi seems to want to make a chaotic mess. Trump has been saying the war is over but the US has won and needs to win more, it's an incoherent mess.
The second thing that should've been considered is preventing Iran closing the straits of Hormuz. There should've been US ships actually there, physically escorting freighters. They should be using these cheap effective anti-drone and anti-missile weapons to great effect. Not sitting back hundreds of kilometres, implicitly showing the straits of Hormuz aren't under US control. But that hasn't been done because the US navy is rightly concerned about air and missile attack sinking their ships. Which is why this war shouldn't have been started.
An administration whose military strategy and political ideology explicitly called for a refocus away from Middle Eastern wars shouldn't be sacrificing more important theaters for the sake of a Middle East war.
If the US can't manage to decentralize and safely store munitions (or produce munitions at scale) then it has no business launching a massive bombing offensive. Prepositioning stores to survive ballistic missile waves is pretty obvious stuff that the US should already know how to do, there should be lots of planning for this.
China's goal is to annex Taiwan. Taiwan doesn't want to starve. Thus it may attempt to besiege the island via airpower, targeting food and energy imports to secure submission. They want the island for political and strategic reasons not economic reasons, China has plenty of wealth already.
China would much prefer a quick blitz but they'd take a pyrrhic victory to a destabilizing defeat. They'd do just what Putin did, double down if the blitz fails. I expect a blitz to fail, amphibious operations are hard... Power is zero-sum, beating America and taking Taiwan might well let them achieve hegemony in East Asia. Colby worried about just that. America also inflicting considerable pain on its Asian allies is very unhelpful here for coalition building.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link