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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2375 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.

This Russia-Ukraine war should really be a wakeup call for simply assuming that GDP (or PPP) is the same as military production. Russia, by itself, is producing more artillery shells than all of NATO. China is massively outproducing the US in warships right now. Perhaps the US could change that "if it really wanted to," but that's not something you turn on overnight. It doesn't really have a lot of shipyards or heavy manufacturing left at this point.

There's also the small detail that most of the US-allied countries are in Europe, about as far from the Pacific as its possible to get. I don't see most of them helping out in this scenario.

Russia, by itself, is producing more artillery shells than all of NATO.

Slow and placid Western defense companies need a very long time to scale up production. They’ve been starting that process for 18 months, I don’t think extrapolating current production trends to 2027 is valuable because Western defense suppliers will be producing substantially more in a few years.

Starting the process, but what scale goal do they have? I doubt the European governments, mine among them, are wise enough to seriously prepare for a war against Russia without any US support, which might happen.

Even with a materiel advantage, Russia doesn’t have the manpower to mount an invasion of Europe.

Not all of Europe, no. But a small country perhaps? If the USA pulls out, Putin might want to test Europe's commitment to Article 5 by taking parts of a small country like Estonia.

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