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

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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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.

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.

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.

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