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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1631 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 22, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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I found the latest Douthat piece on Ukraine to be quite interesting: https://archive.is/xVlg2 Basically he argues that there is a real tradeoff between helping to defend Ukraine and Taiwan. It's not a question of money, so much as physical equipment. China is doing an intensive modernization of its military, aimed to be done in 2027. That might not mean anything, but it could also be a prelude to invading Taiwan. Which, Douthat argues, would be a much bigger loss for world order than Ukraine.

It's a tough tradeoff. Lots of angles to consider:

  • a real, here-and-now war, vs a potential future war
  • an "emerging" democracy vs a much more stable democracy
  • vague promises to both countries, but no formal treaties
  • the role of Europe and Asian allies in both respective theaters (again, lots of vague promises but no formal treaties)
  • would depleting the US arsenal by sending everything to Ukraine make China more likely to invade?
  • or, would not supporting Ukraine make China more likely to invade?

For what it's worth, Manifold has the odds at 21% now. Not super high but much higher than I would like.

... on the other hand, in my darker moments, I can't say that I'd really hate to see the end of the US-led world cathedral of global liberal capitalism.

According to Wikipedia, US-led alliances have a total GDP (PPP) of 80 trillion USD. The China-Russia-Iran one has a GDP (PPP) of 43 trillion. Even if I generously add every -stan to it (and I'm being really generous, I really doubt Pakistan would join, since it's trying to avoid anything that would cause India to align itself with the US), it's still just 55. The US could easily outproduce China if it really wanted to.

GDP is an imperfect measurement of production capacity- my understanding is that an outsize percentage of the heavy industry which can be converted to war production on short notice is in the Russo-Chinese alliance.

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