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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34982 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.

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.

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