site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35031 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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.

12
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

China to begin inspecting ships in the Taiwan Strait.

China's Fujian maritime safety administration launched a three-day special joint patrol and inspection operation in the central and northern parts of the Taiwan Strait that includes moves to board ships...The fleet, a joint special operation with East China Sea Rescue Bureau and the East China Sea Navigation Support Center, will continue to carry out cruise inspections in the central and northern parts of the Taiwan Strait over the next two days.

This is one of the most provocative moves China's made in living memory and a potential precursor to war. On the old site, I wrote:

But what will happen is a comparably light touch approach: the PRC will begin a blockade (an act of war, to be clear) in the guise of enforcing customs and immigration controls on Taiwan and interdict ships and planes going to Taiwan. And, as a key point, it will allow those vessels that capitulate to continue on to Taiwan. And so you have the Chinese Coast Guard doing all the heavy lifting, with PLAN and the PLARF standing guard at a distance.

Private entities will quickly resign themselves to the state of affairs: they have no choice. Which leaves Taiwan and its allies in a quandary, as they have to respond (giving China authority over all imports and exports is as good as having the PLA marching down the streets of Taipei). And so Taiwan will escalate, and in doing so make its forces vulnerable to low level harassment from the Coast Guard and paramilitary vessels. Sooner rather than later shots will be fired and ships sunk, but with far from the full force of the PLA bearing down on the situation.

It remains to be seen how committed to this move China is. As for now, it's comparatively limited, to last only a couple days and not covering the southern and eastern approaches to Taiwan. It's even possible that some ambitious regional authority is doing this on his own (see: possible explanations for the weather balloon). But it's absolutely an escalation, and it is as representative of China nibbling like a silkworm as anything.

The easy thing would be for Taiwan to offer vigorous protests and do nothing, which is China's expectation. Doing that simply encourages China to do this more and more, though; soon it becomes a regular occurrence, then just the reality on the ground.

Is this the time for China to make its move? Its vassalization of Russia continues. But other less-covered stories are in progress: it's peeling away Saudi Arabia from American influence and recently achieved a diplomatic coup in getting Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore relations.

On the other hand, it still seems too early to me. American forces can more likely than not win in a (costly) fight. China's hope is probably for Taiwan to acquiesce; if challenged, I think it would back down. But this is exactly the type of situation that could spiral out of control.

Called it!

I think I made similar comments in /r/TheMotte as well, but I can't find them. Oh well. Looks like you and I are on the same page though. China isn't dumb enough to just bullheadedly start a hot war over Taiwan. Especially not when they can just quietly smother Taiwan instead, and bring them to heel through choking off their trade.

He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Kennedy's 'quarantine' of Cuba may be coming back to haunt the US soon.

I'm also not persuaded that US diplomacy has been as good as it could. Was it really worth it making such a big fuss over Saudi Arabia chopping up a journalist, couldn't that have been swept under the carpet? Was it really wise to hector the Saudis about LGBT continuously? Nobody seems terribly concerned about hundreds of thousands of Yemeni children dying of starvation due to the fighting there. If that can be excused, why not everything else? The Chinese and Russians have no such concerns, a Russian warship just docked in Saudi Arabia for the first time.

Was it really wise to hector the Saudis about LGBT continuously?

Is the hectoring of foreign governments on behalf of sexual minorities beneficial to US policy objectives anywhere? It doesn't seem to be winning many friends in Africa or Asia either, except for vocal degenerates. I've thought this was signaling for domestic alphabet people and their allies.

progressive PMC types

Domestic alphabet people, and their allies.

There were a number of reasons not to prop-up the English, anti-colonialism may have been one. For Suez wanting to avoid escalation and Soviet involvement certainly pictured.

I was happier when our PMC were pushing, free enterprise, free speech and freedom of religion.

alphabet people

In both ways even.

It’s the same reason that people like Eisenhower refused to prop up the British or French empires after WW2, because they genuinely believed that America, as a former colony itself, must be on the “anti colonial” side.

Sometimes the west does stuff for ideological reasons, though just as or more often because of realpolitik. To pettily focus on just one part of your post, having just read his biography, Eisenhower (and the mid-century foreign policy blob in general) really didn't side against Britain and France in Suez for ideological reasons, but rather because:

1: He didn't want to lose undecided countries to become Soviet allies following the terrible PR of the invasion getting condemned everywhere.

2: To diffuse a situation that at worst could have spiraled towards nuclear war following the Soviet Union threatening to do anything to get them out - and the USSR was genuinely desperate to rehabilitate it's anti-imperialist credentials right after all the bad press they were getting from crushing the Hungarian uprising

3: Britain and France lied to the US about their intentions and plans and had their diplomats intentionally deceive ours while launching a military strategy we had expressly forbidden. If you're gonna be the hegemon you can't be tolerating that.

As for Vietnam, America just didn't want another Korean War.

Remember, this is the same guy who signed orders to coup anti-colonial leaders in between rounds of golf, he didn't identify with their movement.

Completely agreed Roosevelt had an unusual commitment to decolonization, but what about Nixon stands out to you? (past like the same kind of empty-but-supportive debate rhetoric that Kennedy also made when they were first running - and Kennedy of course went on to write up the interventions against the DR and Brazil later launched under LBJ). Insofar as Nixon's policies wrt colonization are memorable to me it's in the "Tar Baby" strategy of supporting the colonial-relic white minority governments in Southern Africa, even against growing domestic public sentiment in the US. His posture there feels like the opposite of "ideological impulse rather than practicality as necessary or if necessary".

Otherwise no huge objection - America did want to end colonialism and contributed somewhat towards hastening its end, I just don't think it was really all that important to us? The strongest direct actions I think we took were opposing Salazar and threatening to boot the Netherlands out of the Marshall plan if they didn't leave Indonesia - the rest was just not directly getting involved in the Empires' counter-revolutionary wars, which I think is too tall an ask for America fresh out of several wars.

Sometimes we ignored colonialism, sometimes we supported it in ways (sending Britain funds in Malaya and France materiel in Vietnam). When and where we did oppose colonialism feels for me less driven by ideology than by the same issues of Suez repeated elsewhere: weakening potential rivals and bolstering our credentials with the various non-aligned countries during the Cold War. If we truly felt ourselves to be kindred spirits with the other colonies, it's a little strange that we didn't feel dissonance putting those kindred spirits under new dictators that replicated the worst aspects of colonial rule - as long as they now reported back to us. As in, there might have been people that felt motivated by ideology, but it was a an ideology of such a self-serving sort that it's hard to distinguish from what someone would have done motivated by realpolitik alone.

I will read your link though (it may have answered my questions), I'm just trying to find a non-jstor version of it.

Nobody seems terribly concerned about hundreds of thousands of Yemeni children dying of starvation due to the fighting there

Isn't this a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran? Whose side should we take here?

We should take Saudi Arabia's side because they have lots of cheap oil and can cause us all kinds of problems if they get desperate. Saudi money finances the other basketcase Middle Eastern states, they're a turnkey nuclear power via Pakistan and their Chinese-imported ballistic missiles.

My point is that if we're prepared to sweep enormous civilian casualties under the carpet, we should also sweep Kashoggi's body parts under the carpet, along with LGBT. We should be consistent.

Was it really worth it making such a big fuss over Saudi Arabia chopping up a journalist, couldn't that have been swept under the carpet?

Jamal Khashoggi was most likely a CIA asset. So the foreign policy people in DC lost their best man for stirring up Muslims against Middle Eastern governments. That's why they were so upset.

Can we get more details and evidence of this?

The US, despite its hypocrisies, does let human rights significantly drive its foreign policy. But that makes it an unreliable partner. China more or less doesn't care about other countries' internal domestic policies and mostly wants them to remain stable. What's a poisoning or beheading between friends?

If I were a leader sitting on a powder keg, it would take an exceptionally sweet deal to make me choose a partner that would throw me under the bus at the first sight of anything unsavory.

The US, despite its hypocrisies, does let human rights significantly drive its foreign policy

I see no real evidence of this. I'd be curious if you could provide any. The US has de facto invaded Iraq and currently occupies a third of Syria illegally. It has imposed crushing sanctions on Venezuela (sanctions almost hit the poor in any country the most.. the elites tend to be fine). It has nothing to do with democracy. It has had amenable relations with plenty of authoritarian states. Saudi until recently and Egypt currently.

The lack of concern re Yemen is telling alright because the US empire has been part of the blockade causing the starvation.

There was no way to hide the disappearance of the journalist, a famous guy in the region. He went in and didn’t come out.

As for LGBT the US uses the absence of LGBT rights to attack its political enemies in Russia, China, Iran etc. this is fodder for the masses but even the masses will occasionally read an article or watch the news. And Saudi is one of the worst places in the world, in the history of the world, for LGBT rights. Some criticism is therefore necessary. No matter how performative.

What is it about the 5 or 10 year timeline that swings the calculus in China’s favor? What are they gaining from the delay? I’m assuming any island-hopping airbases are more for SCS control and wouldn’t feature into an invasion.

The US navy is shrinking and China's navy is growing. The US has to get rid of its oldest Arleigh Burke's and Ticonderega's soon, new shipbuilding isn't up to the challenge of replacing these warships in the short term.

Also China will introduce modern ballistic missile submarines soon, subs that can hit the US from friendly waters. They'll have a secure nuclear triad and many more land-based launchers.

They have recently inducted the JL-3 ICBM on their ballistic subs, which means they could hit the US mainland pretty close to their waters. They lacked this ability until recently for their underwater fleet.

I hadn't heard about that. The JL-3 is combat ready? I thought it would only come when the new missile subs came, that you couldn't put new missile tubes on old subs. Shows how much I know, Bloomberg seems to confirm.

Presumably, China's current odds of taking Taiwan are near zero. In five years the odds will either be the same (near zero) or higher. Waiting makes sense for that reason alone.

The question then becomes this: will China's odds increase? I say yes. For one, their economy is growing much faster than that of the U.S. Secondly, effective Chinese military spending (PPP adjusted) is probably at this point equal or greater than U.S. spending. The United States still has a large material advantage from decades of accumulation. But this gets reduced every day. In 5-10 years China will likely have missiles or other weapons systems capable of denying U.S. naval forces from the Taiwan Strait.

Of course, this all goes out the window with fast AI takeoff. But that's true of everything nowadays.

I’d be interested in seeing writeups on the military spending efficiency. We outspend them almost 3:1, or twice as much in %GDP. Maybe they really are getting that much more value; if so, I’d want to understand the mechanism.

The first adjustment we'd need to do is PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). This is an attempt to measure the actual production of an economy, not its market value. Things are cheaper in China. A meal costing $5 in the United States would cost $15 in the United States due to expensive labor and rent. China's PPP economy is already about 20% larger than the U.S. while its nominal economy is 28% smaller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

This adjustment alone reduces the advantage from 3/1 to 2/1.

To go beyond that, we'd need a sort of "military PPP". I think we can get partway there. The U.S. military is a giant jobs program. The Chinese army probably is too. In the U.S. an E-2 (Private First Class) with less than 2 years experience earns over 50k in pay, housing credits, and food credits. Medical care, pension, and other costs probably double this.

https://militarypay.defense.gov/Calculators/RMC-Calculator/

How much does the Chinese equivalent make? I would be surprised if it was even 20% as much. And right there, we can see that a huge source of the disparity just vanishes into air.

Another factor is that Chinese manufacturing and large projects are much more efficient. Hangzhou started building its metro system in 2012. Today its metro system has 254 stations making it roughly the same size as London and greater than Chicago and DC combined. I've seen numbers thrown around that the Chinese are able to build large infrastructure 10 times cheaper than the U.S. Certainly they are able to do it much much faster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems

So the U.S. spends 3 times as much as China?

  • Goods costs 60% more in the U.S. (PPP adjustment)

  • Military salaries are probably 400% higher or more in the U.S.

  • U.S. large projects could cost 1,000% as much.

It's likely that Chinese military spending already outstrips that of the United States in many ways that matter.

China has a huge corruption problem though (whereas the US has a smaller corruption problem). What China spends on paper is very different than what they are actually getting. They've spent multiple years (decades?) trying to get it under control (and largely failing).

There's a good chance a decent chunk of what China says it has either does not exist or is not up to the standards they think it is. Foreign penetration of Chinese military shipbuilding is also pretty good because you can slip it in with all the other corruption.

"The disgraced deputy head of the state-owned firm developing China’s first home-grown aircraft carrier may face the death penalty over his alleged involvement in passing its secrets to foreign intelligence agents."

They even had to arrest their own anti-corruption officer for...taking bribes.

"First to fall was Liu Changhong, the CSIC anti-corruption czar. Fired, expelled from the party, and arrested in September 2017, Liu was accused of accepting bribes and using the convenience of his position to “seek benefits for others in business operations as well as personnel selection and appointment.” "

Their research division was being investigated every two years and each report basically said, "Yup, still highly corrupt" no matter how many people they fired or imprisoned.

"CCDI inspectors again found little improvement when they returned for the third time in March 2019. Despite warnings, there were continued violations of Central Committee regulations on proper official conduct. Corruption was still ongoing and laws were regularly broken. "

And there is a reason for that:

If you haven't been in touch with Chinese bureaucracy directly (or Pakistani bureaucracy, my other area of experience) it is difficult to understate just how much graft and falsification goes on and how it is basically just part of the system. Fire someone and replace them and the chances are the replacements are just as corrupt. It's endemic.

I think PPP adjustment for judging military might makes no sense at all. It should probably go the other way: take nominal, and give a bonus to the highest gdp/cap. The richer country has access to technology and intelligence the poorer country cannot buy no matter how cheap the haircuts are. That's where the battle is won. My hypothesis is, highest gdp/cap country wins. e.g. , england's military history. I'd welcome some examples of PPP adjustments more accurately predicting the outcome of a conflict.

I take your point. Certainly China's larger GDP than England in 1700 didn't help them.

I don't think it applies to our current situation. China is the manufacturer of the world. Bringing up haircuts again... Those $80 haircuts in the U.S. might artificially inflate GDP, but it doesn't change the fact that China is making more stuff, and increasingly high quality stuff as well. How sure are you that the U.S. has a major technological advantage (outside of AI).

Are China's planes and missiles at U.S. levels? I think that is the question. U.S. military spending is a red herring. As you implied, it matters which country is producing more and better material. And spending doesn't tell us that. China is capable of making more weapons with their limited spending than we are with our massive spending.

Naturally the only way to tell if China is up to snuff is with a conflict. Let's hope we never find out.

If so, I’d want to understand the mechanism.

I’ll tell you right now. The mechanism is that our $10 billion dollar aircraft carriers can be taken out by a few $10 million dollar missiles.

We won WWII with aircraft carriers, so obviously this means we’ve been spending massively on bigger and better aircraft carriers ever since, not learning the general lesson that large warships are vulnerable to fast, agile, compact firepower.

Sure, but why does that take 5-10 years? If China can hypersonic a CVN to the bottom of the Pacific, what have they got to fear?

Is it that they can’t, but will be able to Soon^TM?

My guess? Better air defense. I suspect that Chinese missile installations are still susceptible to a first strike by air-launched standoff-munitions. Also the risk of nuclear escalation.

Also the risk of nuclear escalation.

That risk seems unlikely to go away anytime soon?

China could probably nuke a carrier group RFN -- if they somehow improve their missiles to the point where they can take out a carrier (and probably some of the other ships) with conventional missiles, that doesn't seem much safer in terms of "you blew up a bunch of our guys, we are going to respond in the strongest possible terms"?

Could it be that China wants to build up its nuclear capabilities to be a more credible deterrent/expects it to take 5-10 years for the US intelligence to realize they have more impressive strategic capacities than in 1970?

A carrier group getting nuked is a lot more likely to provoke nuclear war than a carrier group getting rekt by conventional missiles because our admirals thought it was still 1943. We aren't going to nuke China over Taiwan.

More comments

There are all kinds of problems with guiding hypersonic glide vehicles to hit moving targets. There's a lot of plasma around the missile that complicates guidance, a lot of electronic interference and countermeasures from the US. Nobody can know that they'd get through, nobody can quite be confident about this.

In principle you could obliterate the US's advantage in stealth aircraft by having satellites watch the whole area, physically picking out the aircraft in real-time, as they fly (let alone big slow warships). But doing that and acting on the results is a huge software and communications challenge, getting through cloud cover and whatever fighting is going on in space.

A couple reasons to delay:

  1. Closer to military parity with the US. It doesn't need full military parity, just enough to deny access to its regional waters. Even now the US would be wary of sending a CSG within easy range of the PLARF, but each year of delay means more and better missiles.

  2. Securing energy resources. Pipelines from Russia and Central Asia are being built and enhanced, and China has been building up its strategic reserves. Ensuring a constant supply of oil is pretty key to executing a war, as China will be under blockade via chokepoints outside its sphere of influence shortly after hostilities begin. (Its forays into Middle Eastern politics play a bit part here; the US isn't going to care too much about Iranian and Saudi whining in the case of an actual war.)

  3. US politics. China may believe US politics might be more conciliatory after the 2024 election.

On the other hand, reasons not to delay:

  1. Demographic pyramid. China isn't in a great demographic position. Better than Japan/Taiwan/SK, but worse than the US and India. Not too relevant but headwinds.

  2. Countries are shifting supply chains away from China. Those supply chains are going to be extremely powerful in the case of war. They'd be shut down, which hurts China, but also hurts the entire world, which would generate strong domestic pressures to find some understanding with China. The more those supply chains have been shifted to other countries, the less powerful those pressures would be.

Countries are shifting supply chains away from China

Yes, but China's share of world's manufacturing output keeps increasing anyway. This merely tells us that they are no longer as dependent on foreign suppliers as in the past and the domestic champions are outgrowing them.

The point there wasn't about China's overall manufacturing but about the pain a blockade would inflict on the rest of the world. As supply chains shift away from China, the pain the rest of the world would experience from a blockade decreases. If there were extraordinary pain, the world would quickly sue for peace; if there were no pain at all, the blockade could continue indefinitely. Time is shifting the dynamic from the former to the latter.

I think 2 is probably a big one, honestly- isn’t china working on a set of pipelines from Iran through Afghanistan? 5-10 years seems like a very realistic good case timeframe to complete a major infrastructure project through a 3rd world country with difficult terrain.

Pipelines are ultra-vulerable. In the event of war every relevant pipeline will be blown apart at some point along its length.

There are some plans for an oil pipeline from Gwadar to Xinjiang, and IIRC a gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan. The former, though, is pretty impractical and likely uneconomic. Pumping millions of barrels of oil per day over the Himalayas is... questionable, and aside from the elevation, rough terrain, and weather, there's just too much political disorder up around the Hindu Kush for it to be considered a reliable backstop. (The US wouldn't be above working with the Taliban and various terrorist groups in Pakistan if it would help kneecap the CCP. Call it a jihad to help free Muslim Uyghurs from atheist oppression.)

Or just ignoring the Taliban and blowing up pipelines through Afghanistan anyway. What are they going to do about it? The US may not have been able to create a stable secular government in Afghanistan, but it's perfectly capable of taking any given facility long enough to wreck it.

I don't think the path for any planned pipelines go through Afghanistan, though I admit I don't follow it too closely. Your point stands anyway though: the US would have the ability and the will to destroy whatever sites it wants in Pakistan.

It probably wouldn't even come to that, though: if Gwadar was sending oil to China, the US would just add it to the blockade. Same reason the Myanmar pipeline is worthless when it comes to Chinese energy security.

America might well tire of war as well. After X years of propping up Ukrainian military forces against Russia, as well as the billions in aide given, eventually the desire to enter yet another proxy war in Taiwan sending money and planes and ships will be unpopular. Already seeing people on Twitter showing homeless people on the streets, broken buildings, and objecting that we need the money at home.

people on Twitter showing homeless people on the streets

The homeless industrial complex is a bottomless pit for tax dollars. I'd frankly rather spend the money on weapons and then give the weapons to (sort of) friendly governments.

I’m not saying that homelessness can be solved by merely diverting funds. But I think it’s a shift in sentiment from “rah rah, whatever it takes to free Ukraine from Russians!” Ukrainian flags all over Facebook, and so on, to a “look at all the problems we have at home that we could be spending our taxpayer dollars on. Whether or not the redirection of those funds would make a difference in those specific issues isn’t really the point. The point is waning support for the spending on Ukrainian infrastructure and defense.

If we end up trying to do the same on two fronts, Taiwan and Ukraine, with waning support for any level of involvement, I don’t see it being publicly supported. And with the 2024 election coming, I think war is going to be a major campaign issue. If sentiment is moving against our involvement in these wars, then we can’t keep going.

Homelessness is a political problem, specifically relating to local politics, not a money problem. An extra $100 billion in the federal budget wouldn't do anything.

I'm not sure what you mean by "broken buildings". You could photograph cherry-picked decrepit buildings at any point in US history. It doesn't mean anything.

Wait until they see Sherman’s March to the Sea.

If the State Department's ostensible idea of exhausting Russia by funding endless war ends up costing America one of its major strategic goals instead, it'll have to be remembered as one of the most idiotic stratagems of history.

I'm not counting on it, but it wouldn't surprise me. It's commonly pointed out that despite being extremely enthusiastic about war, Americans can hardly sustain their interest in it, which is what cost them Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Playing for attrition when you're famous for losing against weak opponents that just waited you out didn't sound like the greatest of ideas in the first place.

Who knows what's gonna happen though.

Playing for attrition when you're famous for losing against weak opponents that just waited you out didn't sound like the greatest of ideas in the first place.

But the Ukraine-Russia war is more analogous to the USSR vs. the Mujahideen, in that the US is not the one sending its troops. The differences are that the Ukrainians are fighting on worse terrain, but with better equipment, and against a relatively weaker power (Russia is a faint shadow of the USSR).

All true statements.

Although I must say my original pronostic back at the old place was that Ukraine would certainly lose precisely because wins in this kind of configuration are historically very reliant on terrain advantage.

We'll see if the West can compensate with matériel and intelligence, but since this has turned into world war style static fronts and artillery battles it's really manpower that's going to be the deciding factor and I don't see how Ukraine has a possible win on that.

Although I must say my original pronostic back at the old place was that Ukraine would certainly lose precisely because wins in this kind of configuration are historically very reliant on terrain advantage.

I would agree, but for the fact that the conventional gap between Russia and Ukraine is relatively small.

I'm not sure how analogous the situations are. The Ukraine War is essentially a freebie for the United States: throw a pittance at Ukraine and watch Russia's soldiers get tossed into a meat grinder. A war over Taiwan would be far costlier both economically (which would increase domestic pressures to give up) and in terms of human life (which would increase domestic pressures to fight to the bitter end; tens of thousands of dead soldiers is a rallying cry). It wouldn't be a proxy war.

It seems about 5 years too early for the real deal, but this could be a test run of tactics that will be employed in a future blockade attempt.

We should give Taiwan to China in exchange for their signing of the Yudkowsky Airstrike Treaty.

The opportunity of a lifetime staring us in the face and all anyone can think of is “but Munich” and “muh Sudetenland”.

Or, perhaps, “muh semiconductors”

China is never going to invade Taiwan, it defies sense to attack an island with 22 million people, the size of a county. Storming it D-Day style would be a high risk, costly endeavour that would anger the world. Their tactic will be to gain control of the sea and pressure Taiwan into making agreements, while offering a reunification bonanza of government handouts along the way. Responding by attacking the Chinese navy would be too aggressive by the US, and this approach avoids a costly war.

The worst possible tactic is a naval blockade against a country that is far from self-sufficient.

Their tactic will be to gain control of the sea and pressure Taiwan into making agreements, while offering a reunification bonanza of government handouts along the way.

The impression I've gotten is that this might have been practical before the "one country, two systems" deal for Hong Kong was revealed to be less-than-advertised. Since then, Taiwan has been drifting away from China's orbit, and it's unclear what Xi could do to rebuild sufficient credibility to make a believable offer that sounds better than what the West can offer.

It's unclear to me that "control of the sea" is as practical as advertised. Blockade is (debatably) an act of war, and China's reliance on imports of food and oil are vulnerable to a tit-for-tat retaliation from the West.

China's reliance on imports of food and oil are vulnerable to a tit-for-tat retaliation from the West.

True, but Taiwan is even more dependent on those things and vulnerable to economic coercion. And much of the world is dependent on Chinese trade: South Korea's and Japan's supply chains are deeply rooted in China, and a blockade of China would send them into spiraling into depression. (Making the blockade leakier helps them, but also defeats the purpose.) If it came to some kind of long-lived stalemate, there would be a lot of pressure to wrap things up, even on terms favorable to China.

True, but Taiwan is even more dependent on those things and vulnerable to economic coercion.

Absolutely, there's a world of difference between China's food security issues and Taiwan's. China is 95% secure on the three major cereals: wheat, rice and corn. That means zero starvation in real terms, especially if they economize and ration. They're around 80% on total calories. China mainly imports soy feed for meat, which is a luxury. Herds usually get culled early on in great power warfare, if food security is a problem. China also has land access to Central Asia and good relations with Russia, a major food exporter. They have zero problems with food in real terms. Energy is a much more serious issue.

Meanwhile Taiwan has about 35% food security in total calories. Taiwan is an island and cannot expect resupply by sea. They are completely and totally fucked in a long war.

Japan is almost as fucked, 37% total calories, possibly falling. They can maybe still get some cargo shipping in wartime but there will be serious problems.

Energy is a much more serious issue

Sea routes from the Middle East to China are pretty controlled by US Allies or de facto Allies, so this is probably a very big issue.

Indeed, China's been working land routes for energy, self-sufficiency and so on. It really depends how much energy they need. I imagine a lot of their industry would be shut down if they're at war with the US and allies, so there are savings there. 65% of their energy is used in industry. Whether many of those workers could switch to war work is another question, I doubt China could find ways to employ them all or resources to produce with them.

Between domestic production and Russia, they have enough oil for war use. It's an interesting question as to how much oil is needed for civilian uses in wartime though, or what level of mobilization they choose.

they have enough oil for war use

Citation needed.

Also, an energy blockade of China would be unlikely to just last for the duration of the war. The US proved with Cuba that it can impose sanctions for a long time if it doesn't get what it wants.

Finally, the Chinese government's legitimation heavily comes from its provision of prosperity in return for obedience. The younger generations in China have never known a recession or war. They rapidly forced the government's hand over comparatively undemanding covid policies. I doubt that Xi wants to test just how tough they are again.

Per day, China currently consumes 15M barrels of oil. It produces 4M domestically and can probably import 2M via relatively safe overland routes from Russia. It has at least 700M in state and private reserves. Under a blockade, most of its industry would be idle, and the government would institute rationing; call that a 40% cut in consumption. So it probably has around 350 days before it draws down the reserves. At that point, it would be forced to go from a 40% cut to a 60% cut, though probably it would dynamically adjust its rationing target up as the war dragged on. If China could end the war within a couple months (more pertinently, if it believed it could), it would believe it had secured enough oil to win.

Although China would undoubtedly be in really bad economic shape, so would the rest of the world, including the US and particularly its allies in the region. China is not Cuba, because a fifth of the economy was never reliant on Cuba. The question is which domestic political system would better be able to handle mass unemployment and economic depression. How many people in the US would be willing to sacrifice years of prosperity for Taiwan, especially if China was focused entirely on just controlling trade and not landing soldiers on the land or bombing cities?

More comments

Citation needed.

China is the sixth biggest oil producer on the planet. Four million barrels per day. Plus they're friendly with Russia.

More comments

People usually make the argument that the US managed to supply West Berlin through a blockade; why wouldn't it be able to do the same with Taiwan?

Population West Berlin, 1948:

2.5M

Population Taiwan, 2022:

24M

Taiwan would also be attempting to fight a war, and resupply planes would be being shot at by Chinese forces.

agree. there will be no escalation, including blockade, which is what I have been predicting for years but people keep thinking its imminent. There is too much at stake.

I think I agree, though I don't quite get your last sentence. Do you mean a naval blockade (or a ratchet to it) is the most effective way of cowing Taiwan into submission? I agree, if so.

Control of territory in Taiwan would require establishing regional control of the seas. But assuming China's established regional control of the seas, there's no need to land troops on the ground; it can dictate whatever results it wants under the threat of shutting down Taiwan's economy with no bloodshed.

I agree that a blockade would be the wisest approach for them, but it should be noted that if states only ever pursued sensible objectives then we would have world peace already, and the CCP's own record leaves something to be desired in the logic department.

For US national security and AGI arms race reasons, I hope the US military plan is that if China is about to conquer Taiwan, we first destroy all Taiwanese computer chip factories.

@ESYudkowsky would be happy

Should they also kill all the people working there?

Trolley problems are fun, until they get real.

Evacuating a few hundred or thousand high ranking semiconductor engineers would hardly stretch logistics.

Operation Paperclip 2.0.

Perhaps set up a new govt in exile in Arizona? The island itself doesn't mean much.

That is one way to stop AGI!

Slow it down for 3 months you mean. We've already seen software improvements that let people run 2021 state-of-the-art LLMS on a Macbook.

I'll take 2025 software on 2020 hardware over the opposite any day.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats