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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1630 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.

I like this article overall and appreciate he’s trying to strike a balance between competing concerns.

The problem with his analysis is that it’s wrong. DoD efforts re: Ukraine are not zero-sum with deterring China. (And Putin paying a heavy price sends a warning to China, too.)

The West in general, even the US, has let military production capacities contract significantly over several decades, as China has massively expanded the quality and quantity of its armaments and production.

People pointing out our shortfalls of say manufacturing artillery shells in a sustained conflict (or worse, ships) didn’t get very far. These problems are not new, but not seen as urgent.

Putin invading Ukraine did three great things for the West. First, it committed Russian forces to a very costly war. Second, it reminded the West that real wars can still happen and led to more unity. Third, it’s demonstrating some of the aforementioned shortfalls and “priming the pump” for the US to reestablish production capacities. The money we spend on armaments for Ukraine is going to US companies.

If you really care about our ability to deter China and win a war, you should support building warships as fast as possible at scale for Ukraine. That way, we’re capable of actually doing that for us. Or we could build the new ones for us and donate older ones to Ukraine.

I’m only half-kidding. We need more warships and we are so slow at production now.

At any rate, any China hawk who is against our support to Ukraine is bad at geopolitics and logistics.

That's fair. Though, it doesn't seem like our production of warships is increasing. Even if it's not a limit on physical production, there is a limited amount of political capital to be spent on increasing military production, and right now that's all being used on Ukraine.

I cannot emphasize enough that it’s not a zero-sum game of political capital either.

The US should be concerned with Russia and China. This is not a new thing.

What is a newish thing is the US focusing on potential conflict with near-peer rivals instead of insurgents/terrorists.

What is also a new thing is that a wing of the GOP is soft on Russia. The true objection is not that we are supporting Ukraine in a way that actually inhibits our ability to deter China.

Ukraine is, from our perspective, a tiny conflict. We are not mobilizing troops or significantly shifting our defensive posture or strategy. We have tons of old equipment to give them. It also turns out we have let our 155mm shell production atrophy. Let’s fix that.

The GOP used to be full of people very concerned about appearing weak to any adversary, because they understood deterrence means being threatening. Now they’ll say we should let Putin have what he demands.

China will take it as a positive sign if US infighting reduces support for Ukraine because they want the same kind of infighting regarding Taiwan.

Is there a wing of the Democratic party that wants to dramaticly ramp up shipbuilding capacity? If so I haven't seen it.

I vaguely remember Romney talking about building more ships in the 2012 debates, and getting laughed off the stage.

I think politicians struggle to justify our current level of military spending ($800 billion (mr evil stance) per year), let alone a big increase. That's where I mean that the political capital, and to some extent just money, is limited.

But yes, in general I agree with you. It's crazy that the US has more money than ever, yet struggles to maintain the fleet it had in the 80s. It doesn't need to invent new technology, it just has to actually build shit.

It’s not just warships.

The Jones Act hurt all US shipbuilding.

I’m not saying Dems on average are excited about military spending. But it’s not that Ukraine support has anything to do with that.

The Jones Act really does seem like a massive own-goal, with the potential to ruin the US.

offshore manufacturing and transition to a service economy? OK, controversial decision, but I can see the logic of it. We'll just pay other countries to build stuff for us.

Oh, but we're now required by law to build ships in the US? Despite there being no one left in the US who can actually do that kind of shipbuilding? That's going to be a big problem. It's one giant bottleneck in the entire US economy, and especially its navy.

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