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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1544 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.

It's not clear to me that Taiwan and Ukraine require the same kinds of weapons. The former needs naval and air assets while the latter needs artillery shells and tanks. Any war between China and US allies in the Pacific (outside of Korea) would be a quick and deadly exchange of missiles and planes that ends with one navy still afloat and one at the bottom of the sea, Battle of Midway style, rather than the kind of unending slugfest that a war between two nations that share a land border can devolve into. By the time you find yourself fighting a ground battle on the island itself, a war for Taiwan would have already been lost.

China doesn't need a navy to fire missiles at Taiwan. It's only 120 miles off their coastline. It could continue firing them as long as it could produce them well after it's navy was gone.

Artillery shells or tanks still won't do anything against missiles. Sure, China can keep shooting missiles but they have no chance of mounting an invasion if their navy is at the bottom of the ocean.

Taiwan is something like 80-90% reliant on food/energy imports. Unlike China, they have no overland substitution routes. After a few months of blockade they'll run into very serious problems, regardless of whether China has amphibious capability remaining.

They don't really need to though? I mean I think the main reason China hasn't tried to take Taiwan is that it recognizes it would end up destroying Taiwan and that it can just wait for US influence to continue declining due to internal issues.

When it comes to actual capability it wouldn't be a problem for them. The Houthi's are still disrupting shipping lanes in the red sea despite American Navy presence and it's a big problem for the US. Iran can produce missiles for far cheaper than the missiles the navy uses to intercept them. Operating a navy that far from home has massive increases in cost due to logistics in resupplying etc. Would be the same with Taiwan. China can churn out missiles for far cheaper and can lob them from it's home turf while the US has to supply an island or a navy on the other side of the world. It's like a long range war of attrition / siege. If the US tried to actually put boots on the ground in China to counter production it would be laughably stupid even ignoring the threat of nuclear escalation. The US military is a lot less of a deterrent to China than the economic consequences of trade disruption. Which is probably why China is pushing overland trade routes so hard and otherwise just waiting.

They don't really need to though? I mean I think the main reason China hasn't tried to take Taiwan is that it recognizes it would end up destroying Taiwan and that it can just wait for US influence to continue declining due to internal issues.

Yes, which is why supplying Ukraine with what it needs (artillery & tanks) has next to no effect on being able to intervene in potential China - Taiwan conflict.

They need anti-air, until they can regularly shoot down Russian aviation at range they will get glide bombed into oblivion. This is something Taiwan will also need an impossible amount of. Both conflicts are not winnable at current levels of production and cost of production.

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