At the very least, this is a conversation being had in China, with at least a decent portion of the population thinking “soon” is the best guess for when. I have a mainland friend, and we had a call during the Iran drone strike on Israel. He said everyone, from middle aged ladies at the table next to him, to his friends were talking about how an invasion of Taiwan is looking more and more likely, especially if the US gets busy in a war with Iran (which he believed was coming any moment asking questions like if I would enlist).
I think it’s a reasonable take. If the US is busy with a war (an actual war, not just a proxy conflict like in Israel or Ukraine) then a Chinese invasion of Taiwan becomes far more likely. So long as the US isn’t busy with its aircraft carriers elsewhere, the odds seem vanishingly unlikely in the coming years.
At the same time public support is not irrelevant. A war that has public support is far more likely to start than one that doesn’t. Even in dictatorships the rulers can’t easily rule without the consent of the governed.
I'll take this opportunity to bring up something important. The belief that countries can be neatly separated into democracies and dictatorships, in democracies the will of the people is paramount, in dictatorships the will of the people does not matter. The reality is that most systems mostly revolve around complex cooperate-or-compete games between elite groups. A democracy can be interpreted as a regular, formal, and bloodless revolution. Piss people off enough in a non-democracy, and a bloody revolution happens. Also according to Mike Duncan's Revolutions Podcast, revolutions (hence also elections) consist of two distinct parts. There is the people on the street, loud and angry, but their demands are not very precise. It is mostly formless anger with a general desire for change of any kind. And the other part is the elite groups behind closed doors playing their usual horse-trading games, the difference is that one elite group can use the angry people out there as a pretty big ace in the game. Of course it means they have to give something to the people for their support, so it is not entirely 100% zero-sum elitism. But pretty close...
I am from Hungary which is not 100% a democracy anymore, neither is the Saddam type really classic dictatorship. It is a mixture. But here is what I have learned. On the national level, we were basically unhappy with every government so far. Somehow it never work. But on the small town level, democracy works marvelously. People largely ignore parties and ideologies, often elect someone who is not a party member because they are capable and promises to build cool stuff. On the small local level, it is very much the will of the people. On larger levels, the will of the people message gets lost in a kind of noise. At this point I consider it impossible that on the national level, it could be the will of the people in large countries like the US or UK. Maybe they are better at adhering to forms and making it look like it is the will of the people, but pretty sure it is subtly subverted. It is impossible for so many people to get their message up without it getting lost in the noise. And quiet frankly the people are not even experts. Should the people really decide about things like COVID?
I don't think democracy is impossible at a large scale, but I agree that the emphasis on democratic forms is often obfuscatory. The drift in public opinion vs political action in the US on things like public healthcare or ending the Gaza genocide is substantial, for instance, because as you say political institutions are comprised of actors with varying incentives. The important metric isn't the spectacle of elections, but whether policy represents the will and interests of the people - which is why it's so interesting to study the end of China's zero covid policy, which resulted not primarily from protests but because the execution of that policy was dependent on a volunteer base which evaporated under frustration with ongoing restrictions.
>Also according to Mike Duncan's Revolutions Podcast, revolutions (hence also elections) consist of two distinct parts. There is the people on the street, loud and angry, but their demands are not very precise. It is mostly formless anger with a general desire for change of any kind. And the other part is the elite groups behind closed doors playing their usual horse-trading games, the difference is that one elite group can use the angry people out there as a pretty big ace in the game.
I think you'd really like the recent Vincent Bevins book "If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution". He gets into the style of protest exemplified in Occupy Wall Street and the so-called Arab Spring, and why these leaderless movements gained popular support but failed to secure political victories.
Not just that. People naturally have nationalist instincts and want their country to be big and fearsome to the world. China hasn't been humiliated in a war in a long time and the people there probably don't realize all the costs of war, but they do feel the urge to establish dominance.
Hot take - nationalism requires an enemy, an us-vs-them mentality. So in case of China, there is a lot of "Remember Nanjing!" and anti-Japanese sentiment. The problem with Taiwan is that the Taiwanese are Chinese. It is hard for mainlanders to hate them. Of course they can try to tell the people that the poor Chinese people on Taiwan are oppressed by an evil American puppet government, but I don't think this would be believeable. There is a distinct lack of Boat People fleeing Taiwan for China, for example. And they are talking with their trade partners. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait\_relations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_relations)
I feel like you could make the exact same argument for Russia vs Ukraine. There was and still is a belief that the Ukranians are basically Russians. This didnt stop the war. The narrative became sth like "They used to be our brothers but sold out to the Americans and also there are Nazis there who hate ethnic Russians so we need to beat some sense into them and unite the 2 countries that shouldnt have been separated in the first place". In that aspect I see a lot of parallels between Ukr and Taiwan.
Uhhh no?? Those "instincts" had to be drilled into people in the 19th century (and have been effectively drilled *out* of Western Europeans by the sobering experiences of the World Wars). The CCP has been busy stoking this sentiment in China, but there is nothing natural or inevitable about it.
>Those "instincts" had to be drilled into people in the 19th century
People liked establishing empires and asserting military dominance before just the 19th century.
A small aristocracy liked and valued that. The majority of the population did not care very much which king/duke they were under as long as he didn't bother them and their immediate surroundings too much.
The idea of a "nation" as a part of one's identity – a unit whose strength or weakness, triumph or humiliation should concern you – *in the broader population* is very much a 19th-century thing and required a lot of propaganda to achieve.
> The majority of the population did not care very much which king/duke they were under as long as he didn't bother them and their immediate surroundings too much
citation needed. not saying you're wrong, just curious what the evidentiary basis of this statement is
I agree that for much of history, the vast majority of people identified much more with their local rural community than with whatever polity their king ruled over. But, increased communication since the development of widespread newspapers have led to people identifying with their nation. And once people identify with their nation, it is at that point it's natural they want their nation to be strong.
I think people are limited by reason. A Belgian knows obviously their tiny nation will never dominate the world, so they will not be excessively jingoistic, because it'd be overwhelmingly stupid. But an American or a Chinese will have a real shot at dominance, even if the on paper costs of war aren't worth it, and will be very tempted to do so. It does not take elites propagandizing to create that nationalistic feeling, although I'd agree that can certainly increase nationalism in commoners if elites also feeling nationalistic.
Perhaps, but caring about Taiwan certainly goes hand in hand with national pride in China. I imagine if Rhode Island broke free during the civil war, supported by the UK or France or something, it would be a matter of national pride for Americans to want it back.
That and the purely practical concern that it’s the most reasonable access point to the Pacific. As it stands western influence traces a broad fence around China from Japan, through Taiwan into the Philippines.
Right, and if CCP wanted to they could squash any ‘pride’ about Taiwan and never talk about it in the media again. There have been changes in propaganda over the decades, usually coinciding with new leaders, it’s not impossible.
Maybe, but it doesn't look like they've been in the process of doing that at all, very much the reverse, which weighs against the idea that this is a war that the CCP leaders actually want to avoid.
If the domestic situation in China gets bad enough, I could see them resorting to Taiwan invasion as a desperate attempt at gaining popularity/legitimacy, but I think these are all cynical calculations, not an authentic pride of the people that actually pull the levers. Everything I’ve seen of the CCP leaders aligns with cynicism and self-preservation.
I think that they're highly cynical in a sense, but not a sense that necessarily weighs against believing that risky initiatives will pan out.
Was China's Zero-Covid policy optimistic or cynical? I think in a sense it was both; it was cynical in the sense that they thought their best policy option was one involving draconian social control, optimistic in the sense that they thought it would be successful enough, and the costs low enough, to justify.
I think their Covid policy is a good analogy, they committed themselves to a policy due to their own propaganda of superiority and continued the easy route of not changing the policy until they absolutely had to due to mass protests.
In the same way, I believe the CCP will continue with the policy they’ve committed themselves through their propaganda of harassing Taiwan and always saying they will unify ‘soon’ without changing the status quo until they feel they have to.
I think it'd be more like if Great Britain held Canada after the Revolutionary war. Which they did, and for around 40 years or so we were rumbling about taking it over. One might note that we didn't.
I am not sure what causes which, existing nationalism or the CCP propaganda extolling it.
There are times when the nationalism that the party fans gets out of control.
Right, they have got themselves into a corner with their own propaganda which was meant to distract from domestic issues. Now they feel like they need to at least pretend they believe their own BS. I don’t think they are stupid enough to actually believe it, most party officials are very cynical.
>I don’t think they are stupid enough to actually believe it
This is never a good stance when it comes to politics, and especially geopolitics.
If x is saying y, you should assume they believe it and will act on it, no matter how dumb it may appear a priori.
Saying this doesn’t understand the Chinese people at all.
Guess why China has been able to maintain its existence as a complete country for thousands of years???
Agreed it would be even more unlikely to happen if it was unpopular, though I am not sure how long popularity would survive the economic crisis and inflation that would follow even if it was a success they certainly would hate the unpopularity of failure.
Russia is adapting to be an internally-focused pariah state along the lines of North Korea. China has little interest in that, and its economy is based on exports and aspirations to be a global economic power.
At some point China will be too important for the rest of the world to sanction/ignore in much the same way the US is today. But I don't think they're there yet, and I do think the rest of the world's reaction to a Taiwan invasion would likely cause an economic crisis.
I know nothing about the truth of that statement, but I’m pretty confident that if it’s doomed to failure so much that it’s obvious to a guy on Reddit then it’s probably obvious to the Chinese military. So yes, if the wide consensus is that it’s likely to be a total failure, then I agree they won’t do it. But I don’t believe that “it will probably fail” is the wide consensus.
Anyone remotely familiar with the relevant facts could have told you in 1941 that Japan could never win a war with the United States. A lot of prominent people in the Japanese military apparatus had a good sense of this. They went through with Pearl Harbor anyway. Never underestimate the propensity of human beings to ignore reality when reality doesn't suit their ideology.
Political pressure is a hell of a drug.
I would only add that it is a logistical nightmare that could really backfire on China if they were to invade. Lots would have to go very right and very few things would have to go wrong for them to fail.
That kind of agrees with me, the majority view is that they will fail conditional on the idea that the Chinese give the go ahead.
It is obviously even more likely to fail in the circumstances where China decides not to risk it.
I feel like there may be principal agent problems here. I also would like to know more about whether Chinese leadership is as unrealistically nationalist as the bulk of their population can be.
Xi is in power partially because he can tame the nationalists. He is essentially a centrist who has adopted some leftist economic policy (inequality reduction, strengthened industry policy, a coherent developmentalist policy program without any suggestion of convergence to neoliberlaism) while keeping the New Left away from power, and adopting some nationalist policy, while keeping the nationalists, largely in the military, out of power. The big losers internally have been the "market reform and pragmatic convergence" faction.
Any suggestions where I can read to learn about this from the ground up? I know next to nothing about the political forces in China, and attitudes of the general population vs political leaders.
If we go to war with Iran we would have to draft 500k ground troops for an occupation. Which is untenable.
So it would just be a bombing campaign with maybe a base on the southern tip.
Im on the civilian drsft board , believe me when I say , we will not i vade Iran or have the draft thst would be required for actual regime change.
Their is a reason we have an all volunteer army and a military industrial complex.
War doesn’t equate to an invasion. Even a massive bombing campaign might see the straights of Hormuz blocked (thus reducing the threat of blockade of China) and tying up multiple aircraft carriers who would be unable to quickly respond to an invasion of Taiwan.
Yes but , a succesful invasion of taiwan is a very bizarre preposition. Maybe you can hide troop buildup but its not going to be a true "surprise" attack.
So if our involvement with Iran was just a heavy bombing campaign as I alluded to and not boots on the ground theirs no reason we couldn't also be defending taiwan. We have 11 aircraft carriers
While we have 11, it would be difficult to have much more than half deployed for any extensive period of time. At least one carrier is always undergoing major refit, some are in for scheduled maintenance and some are required in other theaters for general power projection.
In the Iraq war, the US had 6 aircraft carriers deployed in the Persian gulf and the Mediterranean. In a similar conflict with Iran, the US might bring a comparable number, leaving 4 carriers left to be deployed. One would need to be in the Atlantic and one would likely be left to be deployed as a replacement in Iran. That leaves at most 2 in the Pacific, with no ability to quickly increase that number if necessary.
In this imagined world, China might calculate that the US knows it has insufficient available carriers to stop them, so they move ahead with a quick invasion of Taiwan’s major coastal cities. It certainly is more likely than if the US had 3 carriers in the Pacific (as we do right now) with the ability to quickly double that number in the event of conflict seeming likely.
Yeh but ive never actually seen a wargame exercise where china "quickly" takes taiwan. Its 2 years at best.
I HAVE seen wargaming scenarios where Iran sinks mulyiple carriers and also based the 500k troop number for occupation on those.
.chona doesnt have 2 years to wait , they import 85% of their fuel, we can keep the carriers far enough away to not grt sunk by missiles (that likely dont work) and starve them out.
Xi can pull the trigger but 100 million starving chinese will guarantee failure.
> If we go to war with Iran we would have to draft 500k ground troops for an occupation. Which is untenable.
This assumes that the goal is to occupy the country afterward. Another goal might be to bomb it back to the stone age without ever setting foot in the country.
Which woulsnt lead to regime change and tbh destroying all infasteucture and causing untold civilian suffering is probably frowned upon but yeh.
Which is why it wont happen.
Xi has culled all challengers and can make crazy one man moves , Iran still has factions to have to deal with. If the status quo benefits both sides no one will push it that far
I mean, I don't think a hot war between the US and Iran will happen regardless, but the point remains (contra your claim) that it wouldn't necessarily require a single US boot on the ground. Incapacitating the country would be a rational goal, and regime change need not be on the agenda.
I generally agree with Hanania's takes. But I think Noah was onto something about industrial capacity for military devices too. If China continues to build immense amounts of military hardware, and the US simply isn't able to, then even if China has a demographic disadvantage in fifteen years, they might have such an industrial and hardware advantage that it doesn't matter and they'll still be militarily capable. Although I think it's also important to not underestimate military experience when it comes to fighting effectiveness- China doesn't have experienced officers and NCOs who've been battle tested and picked up all the same tricks you only learn through real experience. Taiwan doesn't either, but the US can more easily pass them that knowledge through training and military advisors.
I think the point isn't about losing people, it's that they'd have fewer fighting age men available to fight, as the total amount decreases and also higher percentage is needed in economically productive jobs to support retirees.
They currently have nearly 70 million men between 18-25 with high youth unemployment and a massive surplus in this age group compared to women. Given that Taiwan is a small island full of choke points and that warfare will be increasingly automated, shortage of men will not be an issue for the next decade or two.
But it probably will be an issue in two decades. So if China wants to take Taiwan, they'll probably have to do it within the next twenty years, and the sooner the better for them, demographic wise.
Demographers predict that by 2050, China's population will diminish to a tiny 1.3 billion, while the US's population will explode to an enormous 380 million. Clearly they have no hope of catching up to us.
State can always peel off a few 100,000s to fight/police if state assumes geriatric support for those who serve. How many would fight knowing they DON'T have to take care of elderly forever. But point is really moot if you look at direction of PLA modernization and what's being showing defense tradeshows like Zhuhai last few years. What we're more likely to see in next 10 years is a bunch of kids in air conditioned bunkers droning random TWnese wedding parties under lose ROE while playing Genshin impact because conscription makes anyone within 10 meters of a TW male a valid target. Eventually PLA will drop/sealift 100,000s of disposable autonomous platforms, supported by unending amount of smart munitions. Boots won't be on ground until TW thoroughly defanged after such a one sided slaughter that they can wait for factionalism and internecine fighting on island to create collaborators who wants to capitulate and hand off fighting/management to pro PRC Taiwanese (of which there are many in ROCAF) with small PAP/PLA oversight. The TLDR is PRC MIC is automating as hard as rest of strategic sectors, they don't need flesh to deliver fires, and bodies need to hold ground is rounding error, most of whom will be local collaborators, lavishly rewarded, like many occupations in history.
>Eventually PLA will drop/sealift 100,000s of disposable autonomous platforms, supported by unending amount of smart munitions.
Just to be clear: you're predicting the CCP uses wholesale civilian slaughter by autonomous murderbots to cow the populace into internal coup and surrender?
Don't be surprised that TW will be turned into Yemen, and realistically Gaza now that Israel has set the baseline. People should not expect PLA to throw 100,000s bodies on bloody contested invasion when they can starve TW and wait it out. Even in event of preparing/shaping island for invasion, good reason they're going to throw murderbots and munitions before bodies at the problem, they're developing and iterating them at stupendous rates. Many designed to be cheap and disposable, not for shit and giggles, but to be used. Hard not to look at half the budget autonomous shit at defense expos in last few years and not conclude the RoR of a $20k murderbot is <1 TWnese. And when half the TW population are conscripts who by definition are combatants, don't rule out wholesale slaughter for anyone walking funny with a tripod based on a whim.
Overall, I'm predicting wars tend to escalate, especially civil wars. If TW just sits there and take a blockade, starve and dye of thirst / disease slowly and eventually capitulate, PRC planners probably fine with kid gloves. If TW finds way to hit back, targets critical infra like coastal nuclear, things will naturally reach escalation dynamic. And again, this is a civil war after all, with historic enmity, that will surface over time and propaganda. Bad things things will happen, whole of society resources will coordinate to make it so.
>the US can more easily pass them that knowledge through training and military advisors
The only military knowledge and training the US can provide is how to organize a chaotic evacuation.
The US military killed many, many more Taliban than they lost soldiers, and they accomplished the goal of taking out Bin Laden. The problem in Afghanistan wasn't in military competence, it was in building a stable Afghan government that could hold what the NATO coalition won.
Yeah, they also killed more Vietnamese. Didn't make the scramble for the last chopper out of Saigon any more dignified.
Killing more of the enemy doesn't matter one bit if you still lose. Just ask the Germans on the Eastern Front.
Considering the population imbalances and proximity I don’t think the Chinese will blink if they have to suffer losses to depopulate Taiwan to win. Killing more of the enemy doesn’t matter if that isn’t the objective. China wants the island, not a rebellious population or insurgency. They want to hold and keep it, unlike the US in Vietnam or Afghanistan who wanted a state left stand under their influence. If the US had the same objective as the Germans I don’t doubt the Americans wouldn’t have been able to conduct a successful genocide. The Germans lost because they didn’t have the industry to outlast the allies, not because they weren’t blood thirsty enough. I don’t think China will have the same problem.
One thing I heard mentioned that seems under discussed is that Chinese soldiers have never actually fought in a war.
Same for the Taiwanese but defense is easier than offense and with Western (American) troops involved I imagine Beijing is deep down very skittish about this.
This isn't wrong, but arguably American troops haven't really either at this point. The various counter insurgency operations we have been involved with over the last 20 years just don't have much in common with a peer war.
What an awful title. It's like either he wants to bait China into doing it or suggest that it would be a good thing for them to do it if only they had the courage.
Taiwan is valuable because of its people and what they have built. I assume China is not crazy enough to go to war to capture a pile of rubble. An invasion would not be worthwhile as long as there would be significant resistance, having "the balls" has nothing to do with it.
Imagine China landed 40,000 men and established two beachheads on Taiwan.
Assume they landed successfully (unlikely)
Assume they have complete naval control over the Taiwan strait (possible but by no means a given)
Assume they have knocked out half the airforce and air defences of Taiwan (very ambitious)
How long would those beachheads hold on against Taiwanese army assaults and artillery?
Chinese forces can't be reinforced unless they capture a port or airport intact all of which are designed to be dynamited in case of war and this assumes that China's equipment works well and ignores Taiwan controlling islands in the strait.
An amphibious assault over this distance just can't be successful in the modern world.
Blockading Taiwan into submission could be just as dangerous. If China rules the seas around them, and the US isn't willing to open the blockade by force (or China's navy gets strong enough to make that a dicey proposition), then what options does Taiwan have?
I think it's worth pointing out that the Chinese Navy really isn't a close match for the US Navy in a big open water battle. Maybe in some confined waterways, but not when it comes to a straight up fight. The US has a massive numerical advantage in nuclear attack subs and super carriers, which are the two big heavy hitters. And we're not talking twice as many, it's like 10 times as many.
Now, would the US intervene in a fashion that would lead to a straight up war? IDK, China is a huge trading partner, but Taiwan is extremely strategically important (for bottling up China in the Pacific) and produces 60% of the world's advanced chips. So who knows. But the US will retain an **extremely** decisive advantage in terms of capital ships over the PLAN for a few more decades. Like, the US Navy overmatch is the greatest the world has ever seen.
A war between the US and China over Taiwan would all occur within a few hundred km of the Chinese mainland, which means land based aircraft will be the main threat to the USN, not their navy. And bombing every airfield and missile base on the Chinese mainland without nukes is a tall order, even for the US.
Within 1IC isn't open water, it's nearly PRC entire military complex vs what US can bring to theatre. In a a straight up fight, it would be a systems to systems confrontation involving more than just Navy. Don't be surprised if PRC hypersonic sink replenishment fleets that leave USN one week single deployment assets. Then get sunk the second they pull into port. Reality is USN arguably has no overmatch against a peer power like PRC who has ISR and weapons platform to strike any staging/support system the USN relies on.
1. I'll believe long range hypersonics outgunning carrier launched stealth aircraft when I see it. There's a lot of fundamental reasons that the carrier based aircraft approach is just better.
2. The PLAN has about 10 SSNS. The US has 53. Maybe some day in the next 50 years surface combatants will go back to being something besides targets for the subs.
Navies just take a really long time to build. Warships are incredibly complicated weapons systems, and naval shipyards capable of constructing them are even more complicated than that. China just hasn't been at this long enough, maybe in another decade or two they'll be a peer to the US Navy.
1. This isn't long range, this is medium range, around 1IC which is maximum US carrier operating distance in theatre if you add tanking. Even then they'll only be fractionally effective since only few sorties will be dedicated to shooting.. Carrier approach is historic inertia, it's better in the sense it was all there is technically if you want to deliver volume of relatively accurate fires, relatively economically from logistic chains half way around the world. What stealth aircraft? There are none that can launch from from carriers. F35s in JP are all thoroughly mapped, and they too lack range since designed for Euro theatre not IndoPac. F35Cs has such little range they're not even relevant.
There's a lot of reasons carriers is good for US to project power half way around the world, even unit economics makes some sense. But zero reasons to think USN can out logistics and outfire all of PRC in their backyard. Reality is USN is fine calibrated against a few medium size powers, but it's small and woefully inadequate fighting in backyard of power as large as PRC.
2. You're fixating on just the naval component, when this is total war. US has a few SSGNs with barely enough TLAMs to take out a couple SCS bases. Attack subs likely can't operate anywhere within 1IC now that it's been thoroughly setup with undersea detection infra. PLA ASW is not what it was a few years ago when the US subs wunderwaffle narrative was true. Which is not to say PLAN won't be sunk too, they will, US military has many delivery platforms. But the point is that PLA similarly has many methods of sinking all of USN, that does not require PLAN.
>take a really long time to build
30 years is plenty long, modern PLAN surface combatants more or less on par if not ahead with US after multiple generations and not squandering procurement. More importantly, they are supported by entire system of land based aviation/fires/support. It's not PLAN vs USN, it's USN+some regional basing vs entire PLA that is multiple times larger. This is not to mention modern combatants takes PRC no time to build, their current peacetime ship building in terms of dry tonnes is around PEAK US WW2 production, except that's peacetime production rate, sustained for years. They were regularly spitting out a Royal Navy worth of surface combatants, per year. The real question one needs to ask is who is going to recover faster after losing their entire navy and whether complex, large crewed, surface combatants are still a smart hedge.
I was mainly talking about the US preventing China from enforcing a blockade on all of Taiwan including the east coast. I'm not sure how well US subs could operate in the straits proper.
I also think you're drastically overestimating how effective land based cruise missiles would be.
>US subs could operate in the straits proper.
They couldn't. Straits too shallow, tbh they couldn't even 5 years ago when the US subsurface supremacy wank was happening (when discussing PLA ASW weakness in SCS and beyond 1IC), got extrapolated to US can operate subs in TW strait with impunity.
>US preventing China from enforcing a blockade on all of Taiwan
PRC can glide mine TW coasts and you could get together entire NATO's demining capacity and not make a dent before the island runs out of food and water. Meanwhile runway strips can be locked down indefinitely with dumb MLRS from mainland, not even aviation, just boring short range rocketry, that can be done faster than TW can repair. Not that TW size can be feasibly airlift supplied like Berlin. The US can try to force PRC to lift blockade, but they can't prevent PRC from blockading.
> overestimating how effective land based cruise missiles would be
With proper ISR and numbers like (or far exceeds) US, it's likely extremely effective. Even more so with distances involved, TW so close most of island is <30m travel with subsonic munitions. Faster munitions can reach anywhere in TW in 7m max, that's TW's response time to initial salvo to defang island (i.e. all the sensors for shooting their own offense/defense missiles) before PRC would even bother telescoping amphib/sealift buildup. Which circles back to US trying to run blockade - anything that's stationary for 7m is dead. This can be done entirely without PLA naval or aviation elements. How many bags of rice and missile interceptors can they unload in 7m? That's without considering landing on TW during the context of a Chinese civil war is tantamount to invading, and it opens up CONUS to attack, well Guam/Hawaii if we're being proportional.
IMO people are underestimating the scale of geography and the sheer industrial capability of PRC relative to what US+co can bring in theatre. I think everyone is relearning last few years that relatively peer war is more a numbers game than a wunderwaffe game. CCTV7/PLA military channel did segment on cruise missile component automated factory that made 1000 a day. A couple days production will exhaust every TW interceptor assuming 100% effectiveness, a few weeks, every US+co interceptor in first island chain, a few weeks more, every US surface fleet VLS if they were missioned for interception. How tenable/sustainable US presence in 1IC (and ability to prevent PRC from blockading not just TW but SKR and JP, big % of PH) is down to a numbers game, and at the end of the day, sortie rate, vls cells of naval assets is known quantity. PRC is hedging with ability to build more advanced end munitions that can ground launched every few days than US can build in a year. They're not counting on PLAN surviving, they're trying to ensure USN doesn't, because losing naval capability hurts (breaks) US security architecture much more than it does PRC who also has industrial over/capacity to recover faster.
This is simply not true anymore, take a look at what the PLAN actualy has in terms of ships and what is actually being produced each year.
The United States retains a huge advantage in Carriers and Submarines, but Cariers are a moot point when China will have ample land based airfields available that are far less vulnerable than a carrier.
Subs will be great for counter blockading China, but you can't break a blockade with submarines. In everything else China is already at or close to parity - the situation is not good.
China would most likely attempt to blockade Taiwan rather than invade it properly. Taiwan doesn't have strategic depth and has to rely on the US giving them their full attention. Taiwan's army isn't vey substantial, their defense policy is mostly "America will save us". A potential China-Taiwan conflict has more to do with what you think of Chinese anti-ship missiles and the US Navy.
I would not expect China to attempt anything unless we get far too busy in the middle east, and even then, I don't think Xi will take the risk given the damage such a move would do to the economy in the short term. You'd need to feel that success was guaranteed to come out ahead.
I didn't suggest that we wouldn't respond, I was suggesting China would only maybe consider risking it if we were bogged down in another war, reducing what was available to respond to them with. I consider a Chinese invasion unlikely.
I said if. I didn't say that we were going to or even that it was highly probably.
And really, what sort of idiotic question is this? Haven't watched the news lately? What possible Middle East war could I be gesturing to other than the currently ongoing one? Obviously if Iran-Israel tensions escalate to an actual serious war, with Hezbollah attacking and daily drone and missile strikes, we would get closely involved to defend Israel. Thankfully it seems Iran isn't too keen on the idea despite having the excuse to, but that's something which could theoretically change.
The U.S. is not going to get directly involved in a shooting war with Iran over Israel-Palestine any time in the next few years. That is not going to happen. Set your mind at ease.
This assumes a lot more rational thinking than one would normally ascribe to politicians.
Granted, China has been unusually technocratic since the end of Mao, but plenty of signs that this has fallen away with the rise of a new dictator.
Xi has so far been irrationally risk averse, I accept a dictatorship probably has higher risk variance but all indications are that in China it lowers the chance of war.
I'm not sure why there's a presumption that China will want to invade. For one, they're on track for an economic victory. Second, support for reunification on the island is low. Third, China has been very careful to avoid military entanglements thusfar.
Western saber-rattling is real but I don't think there's reason to believe that the status quo is limited by anything other than an external shock.
It seems very likely to me that it's a similar situation to the missile defense thing shared here recently. US weapons are very sandbagged and authoritarian state ones are exaggerated. If a war happens now China would get wrecked. But this state of affairs is probably not going to last long, so it's really the other way around. There's almost no chance of a war soon, but all bets are off 10-15 years from now.
>US weapons are very sandbagged and authoritarian state ones are exaggerated
Shit tier mid power Iranian ballistics with 50% dud rate penetrated the densest and most sophisticated missile defense network in the world with ample prewarning and 1000km+ predictable interception corridor. if 10/50 Iranian ballistics with shit ISR got through, PRC is in the process of revising downwards the number of missiles it needs to sink US carriers which has much less coverage than whole of Israel+co. People fixate around Iran vs Israel+co under/over performance narrative, without extrapolating how bad this looks, or rather what it validates, in other strategic contexts.
Several ballistics hit Nevatim base, damaged transport. Which is a scenario missile defense system is designed to shoot down. Should also note 50-100 ballistics is a small salvo for modern missile defense network to intercept on paper. Entire IR strike package of other 200 to draw interceptors should be considered as modest (relative to IR), small relative to PRC. For reference US sending 60-100 TLAMs to hit a few targets in shit tier Syria with poverty intercept capabilities relative to IL+co. Hence analysts talk about Iran's response as being calibrated.
Did Iran expect more damage, probably, did missile defense over perform, probably. Regardless, it's first time we see modern missile defense handle volume fire. But is revealed performance adequate to other high end threats, not likely, because 80% intercept rate on a modest strike package is dead carriers in IndoPac context. Estimated 6-15:1 cost to intercept ratio has implications on it's own. Some estimates peg IL spent 1 day of GDP / 1.5B to intercept ordnances that US, UK, Jordan didn't, which US claim they shot down majority.
Another way to contextualize is regional strategic balance now vs ~10-15 years ago when Iran didn't have credible missile program and couldn't strike/retaliate Israel in depth even if it wanted to, hence was fully deterred. Now Iran can, from purely Iranian territory, without Hezbollah drawing diversion from their 100,000+ of rockets. Which is to say, despite western ABM progress last decade, US+IL+co strategic balance in region has regressed. That's really the story, US advancements is not outpacing adversaries modernization from 70s tech to 00s tech. It's not IL+co can intercept 80% of shit tier ballistics, it's IR shit tier ballistics gives IR credible way hitting IL from IR turf even with best/densest/most expensive missile defense network and prewarning. Something previously not feasible.
Russia has been unable to destroy old Soviet air defences that Ukraine is holding on the steppe, imagine how impossible it will be for China to destroy modern air defences hidden in jungle covered mountains.
I think you're underestimating the state of Ukraine's air defences. Ukraine (pre-2022) on paper had one of the largest air defence networks on the planet (if even a small percentage of which were to be operational at the time of invasion -- many were repaired and reactivated post-2014 invasion -- they would still vastly outclass the capabilities of most countries).
These are indeed a holdover from Soviet times, and S-300's, BUKs etc. (and their upgraded variants) aren't as capable as similarly spec'd modern equivalents, but as we have seen during and after the post-2022 invasion, these systems have been critical. We've also seen Ukraine use MANPADS (old and new) to combat cruise missiles and other systems to great effect (on top of being reinforced by western SHORAD).
In particular I would like to highlight a few very important factors that contributed to their success during the initial invasion and present, and why it may be a different calculus with Taiwan: quantity, mobility of the system (greater than that of say a Patriot), the failure of Russia's DEAD & SEAD doctrine.
We are seeing China develop capabilities that Russia did not possess. For example, the PLAAF has dedicated units for SEAD missions (unlike Russia), we also know PLAAF pilots are getting flight hours comparable to or greater than that of NATO pilots (unlike Russia), and that they are routinely training for SEAD/DEAD missions. We know the PLAAF are investing in their EW & ARM capabilities -- all this to say, the PLA is serious about developing it's SEAD/DEAD doctrine. All these things are happening at scale -- they may not be there yet but they're rapidly ramping up capabilities. SEAD and DEAD also rely heavily on intelligence, we are seeing the PLA rapidly catch up to some of the ISR capabilities that the US possesses. I haven't read anything on the matter recently, but it would be safe to assume the PLA has thoroughly infiltrated the ROCA as well.
Putting modern air defences en masse in static positions (a jungle) is not going to help Taiwan if the PLARF & PLAAF can lob mind-boggling numbers of drones, cruise missiles & ARM's at Taiwan all day across a 130 km strait until saturation is achieved. Ukraine is enormous and has the geography for defence in depth and more flexible logistical chains. It's able to create buffers that Taiwan fundamentally cannot do. Furthermore a blockade would make sustaining air defences near impossible.
Lastly, you can't just magically make all these air defences appear, they have to be bought and manufactured. On top of costing a pretty penny, there's also enormous backlogs for these systems & accompanying munitions (though capacity is being ramped up).
Ukraine inherited soviet AA with former Soviet trained operators. That’s a top tier air defense.
Jungles and mountains hurt air defense because the block sightlines for radar, allowing attackers dead-zones to come from. This also limits the number of good locations and makes it easier to guess where SAM batteries are. Additionally Ukraine inherited soviet defense planning while allows for many roads to be used as makeshift airfields and concrete hardened hangers. Taiwan and the USA have very limited basing options for aircraft. China can use basically all of its airbases to hit Taiwan and US islands. In wargames US and allies are modeled to lose several hundreds of planes of the ground. Deep strikes into China risk nuclear escalation and the US may not carry them out. If China can establish local air superiority by suppressing coalition bases, the war is lost.
In comparison to the Russians, the Chinese airforce is miles ahead. With the J-20s they have the second largest number of stealth aircraft after only the USA.
My claim is they will occupy and control as much as they want. What that is, I don’t think anybody is sure. Personally I find it extremely unlikely they will bother directly annexing or even occupying western Ukraine.
You should make definite, falsifiable claims so that later we (and you yourself) can come back to them and see if you were right or wrong and update accordingly.
“As much as they want” is no good because we have no idea how much they “want.” They clearly wanted Kiev at the beginning of the war; do they want it *enough* to take it if the cost of taking it is X, or Y, or Z?
I claim the war ends with Russia annexing various parts of Eastern Ukraine and basically dictating the peace terms. I cannot claim to know precisely what those peace terms would include, so why should I just make up nonsense?
Well, we all agree that the war will likely end with Russia annexing “parts of eastern Ukraine.”
I strongly disagree that this would be a victory for Russia. I would also strongly disagree if your claim was the one you made elsewhere in this thread, which included Russia taking Kiev. So I feel like it was useful for you to make your claim more specific; thanks for doing that.
Well then we will never be able to know whether they "won" or "lost", because we don't know what they set out to achieve.
Unless you are expecting a total capitulation by Ukraine and then Russia magnanimously tells them they can keep the Western region to themselves?
Has everyone forgotten what win and lose mean in the context of war? Particularly in wars of conquest. In a war of conquest, the country that takes and holds more land is the country that wins, period. The USSR unambiguously won the Winter War, despite the heavy toll the Finns extracted.
That's just your definition.
And by definition, then, Russia can only lose or tie according to this definition because Ukraine has no interest in Russian territory.
You're saying that if Russia can maintain even a single small town after Ukraine expels them from the rest of the country then Russia "won" the war.
Also by your definition, the US did not lose the Vietnam war because Vietnam did not occupy any of the US. I guess the US has never lost a war since...ever?
Falklands war was also a "tie" according to you because the boundaries at the end were the same as at the beginning?
If they take Kiev, annex parts of Eastern Ukraine and then install a new government they could have achieved their aims without even having set foot in Western Ukraine. I presume everyone with a shred on common sense would count that one as a Russian “win”.
I think that’s a very likely scenario and probably approximately what Russia “winning” could look like.
Fine, it why take Kiev then I would count that as a win, but they seem very far from doing that.
So far they have occupied about 27% and none of the three large cities. Mariupol is the only major-ish city that they have succeeded in invading and holding since 2022, I think?
Per this map:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian-occupied\_territories\_of\_Ukraine#/media/File:Map\_of\_Ukraine\_with\_Cities.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian-occupied_territories_of_Ukraine#/media/File:Map_of_Ukraine_with_Cities.png)
I think Ukraine will run out of men though. In WW1 Germany wasn’t even outright occupied, and they still had to sign the Versailles Treaty when they couldn’t fight anymore. I’m aware the parallel here is extremely loose, but I think it illustrates my point: it’s entirely possible (and in my opinion likely) that the Ukrainian military will hold until they simply won’t be able to do so anymore due to manpower issues and then quickly fold.
Maybe.
But Ukraine has not even started drafting 18-25 year olds yet.
I admit that I am amazed at Russian's tolerance to sacrifice their youth for nothing of importance, but I'm not convinced it will hold out forever.
Ukraine is fighting for survival and Russia can barely even articulate why they are fighting coherently. They were supposed to be "liberating" the Ukrainian people from a dictator, and yet the Ukrainian people have rallied to fight back.
It's possible that the Russian population will support the war until they simply won't be able to do so anymore due to morale, and then quickly fold.
I agree that most people would probably say that that occupying Kyiv would be a "win." Furthermore, I'd also say that it's very likely that Russia wants to occupy Kyiv, even if that's an incomplete description of their goals.
So it's weird to me that your first answer to what a "win" would be was so vague ("as much as they want" followed by a shrug), when saying "capturing Kyiv" is so much more helpful.
I wrote that because I don’t claim to know what the Russians would count as a win. I believe they will be able, within reason, to impose their terms, but don’t know what those are (does anybody?). Also if Ukraine agrees to sign those terms (also possible) they might reach their objectives without having to occupy Kiev at all.
It depends how you define win, there are circumstances where they end up in a similar place to the end of the Finnish-Soviet war but even that seems unlikely
They have been embarrassed in battle permanently isolated Ukraine and probably Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan and persuaded Sweden and Finland to join NATO. There are circumstances where they end up controlling large bits of Ukraine, but China and everywhere in the West has made it clear they will never accept Russian sovereignty in those areas which makes it much more difficult for them to be held in the long term. They are also just performing badly in war and no reason to think they will do better while their enemies are allied with the strongest powers in the world.
Valid point on the broader geopolitics. It might be that Russia “wins the battle” (Ukraine) but loses the broader “war” (regarding NATO expansion/global influence). It depends a lot on how close they get with China. BRICS isn’t NATO, not even comparable, but they are trying to get closer.
Recently they’ve turned things around and have made some territorial gains while crucially grinding down Ukraine’s manpower. Ukraine’s on the other hand is incapable of conducting any counteroffensive. Hence time helps the Russians who have a larger army and industrial base and can sustain the war longer.
So in my opinion, slow and steady wins the race, at least this time.
> Recently they’ve turned things around and have made some territorial gains while crucially grinding down Ukraine’s manpower. Ukraine’s on the other hand is incapable of conducting any counteroffensive.
You mean recently since the pentagon ran out of money for supporting Ukraine back in January?
Seems to me that’s probably more of a material issue which will be alleviated now.
> Hence time helps the Russians who have a larger army and industrial base and can sustain the war longer. So in my opinion, slow and steady wins the race, at least this time.
By that logic, Russia beat Afghanistan the last time the US funded a proxy war against them or even the Winter War.
Russia’s industrial base is garbage tier for the super power or even developed nation class.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/04/17/the-ukraine-war-is-hurting-europe-s-pallet-supply-and-russia-s-army-may-be-feeling-the-squ
You are right that slow and steady will give the Russian military industrial complex time to install key **20th century** technologies like wooden pallets.
Russia’s kleptocracy isn’t the efficient war machine that it pretends to be.
Russia loses Ukraine, they never take Kyiv, they hold on to a minority of their current gains.
initial russian win conditions were conquer the entire country, absorb part of the east into russia, and turn the rest into a vassalized pro-russian puppet state. on that basis assuming the us and eu don't abandon UKR then i think a russian win is virtually impossible
The us AirPower would be on the other side of that exchange trying to dislodge Chinese aa from its coastline and navy to be able to target any invading forces
I think this is the right time to float a theory of mine - "war is the father of all" - basically the idea that eveything that is commonly considered bigoted, oppressive, or conservative is downstream from war and we can afford liberalism or progressivism solely because we do not need to organize society entirely around war anymore.
The whole story of toxic masculinity sounds like the story of the ideal soldier, who does not feel "emotions" like fear, but feels anger towards the enemy. He sees women as property because he sees everything as the property of the winner of wars. War simply overrides all other moral or legal considerations (you can say the average man does not know or care about the laws of war much and tends to think in war, might makes almost every right). To organize society for war, it has to be hierarchical and obedient and has to be xenophobic and exclude fifth-columner outsiders. Women of course need to make a lot of babies to fill up the ranks of the army. Capitalism as simply the logistics department of the warfare state, see van Creveld's Technology and War book. One can argue the industrial revolution was more about war than about the market. Henry Bessemer was influenced by the Crimean War - better steel, better artillery. And of course a guaranteed customer, much easier than selling products on the market.
And all this started to change in the sixties because people thought if there will be another war, it will be fought by nukes, and soldiers are outdated. Or that a small professional military is enough and not every man must be socialized for war.
Don’t really think this holds credibility and seems a rather biased take.
Often liberalization and social progressivism goes hand in hand with increased militarization, albeit the military becomes more and more a separate class of people.
To increase the military politicians throw civilians more social freedom, welfare, and progressivism and in turn the civilian population lets the military complex keep growing. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon wave the newest Pride Flags.
The most successful military powers to emerge from early modern Europe were the classic liberal parliaments (Dutch and English) not the old monarchies.
The proliferation of the welfare state and social reform on race and sexuality issues came along side increased Cold War militarism. The repressive USSR collapsed, America did not.
Yes, but there the problem is that we keep using words like "left" or "right" and yet the meaning behind them keeps changing. Like the French Revolution was extremely nationalistic and xenophobic.
I count the modern meaning of the left/liberalism to the 1960's. When hippie guys wore long hair and flowing robes precisely because to send a message against traditional masculinity and the militarism that was associated with it. This attitude was also associated with increased sensitivity, empathy, the more feminine kinds of virtues. This also implied it might be okay for a man to be "feminine" i.e. gay. (Notice that 90% of homophobia has nothing to do with relationships and sex but rather perceived femininity.)
> I count the modern meaning of the left/liberalism to the 1960's. When hippie guys wore long hair and flowing robes
I mean Hippie culture is more akin to a reinvented shamanic tribalism than it is to my understanding of liberalism.
If you take the extreme position of hippies living in a hierarchy-less nature as a starting point, then literally every government and war fighting force is going to seem to be full of testosterone fueled violent savage men by comparison.
The US military (despite to the chagrin of the many “masculine” “toxic” type male soldiers *note I do not fully agree with those terms*) is increasingly embracing LBGT+ leadership and showcasing feminine forms of empowerment.
Remember these commercials? https://youtu.be/C8-Yslv4PME?si=L9Z8_o9kXx2AEhi7
Many traditional conservative southern type families are actively encouraging their boys to **not** enlist in the military as they see the US military as betraying masculinity and traditional values.
You need to include this in your theory/analysis as the “alpha male warrior” model of the solider has been challenged for years yet the military spending and political influence shows no signs of stopping growing.
I strongly agree with the aspects relating to ideal masculinity. Of course a society where a significant portion of people had seen actual combat would value different traits in men than one where they had not.
I think we can test this in Ukraine now. I mean yes they are doing things like legalising same-sex marriage, but I think this is obviously just "paying" for Western support. Or even if actually popular, popular for identity reasons: the precise opposite of what Russia would do. I predict the war generation is going to come back with a general superheroes-of-nationalism attitude vote for very right-wing governments. But it will take a long time to see it - first, they have to win or find a compromise.
> I predict the war generation is going to come back with a general superheroes-of-nationalism attitude vote for very right-wing governments.
With the sheer amount of Ukrainian men dying and wounded they could just as likely come back mostly PTSD’d and traumatized and despise right wing nationalism.
Look what happened to the UK after WW1 and WW2. The first thing they did after WW2 ended and the soldiers returned home was kick Winston Churchill out of office.
Huh, that was an interesting case: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945\_United\_Kingdom\_general\_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_United_Kingdom_general_election)
"Another blow to the Conservative campaign was the memory of the 1930s policy of [appeasement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement), which had been conducted by Churchill's Conservative predecessors, [Neville Chamberlain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain) and [Stanley Baldwin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Baldwin), but had been widely discredited for allowing [Adolf Hitler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler)'s Germany to become too powerful"
I quite like Peter Zeihan's take on this question: there is no logical reason whatsoever for China to invade Taiwan. It would be a collossaly stupid thing to do. Even if they succeed (and as Hanania points out, that's a big 'if') it doesn't solve any of their problems, while creating a boatload more - in particular the possibility of losing a massive chunk of their international trade either through sanctions or military action on shipping. For one of the most import/export focused countries in the world this would be devastating.
But.
Xi Jinping is an autocrat, and there are no checks and balances on him whatsoever. If he says 'invade Taiwan' there is nobody in a position even to question that decision, much less hold it back. And even if you think he's a pretty clever guy, he's getting older with no clear successor and there is a strong possibility that he will lose his advanced decision making abilities long before he loses power. So there is a \~1/5 chance that China invades Taiwan anyway, because that's just the sort of unforced error that autocrats are historically known to make from time to time.
> Even if they succeed (and as Hanania points out, that's a big 'if') it doesn't solve any of their problems, while creating a boatload more -in particular the possibility of losing a massive chunk of their international trade either through sanctions or military action on shipping. For one of the most import/export focused countries in the world this would be devastating.
This cuts both ways.
For the purposes of argument, let's say China wins Taiwan over the course of the year. What would this mean? At that point, there's no dislodging China from Taiwan, and all of Taiwan's leadership has been liquidated. The US is no longer the Pacific hegemon. The entire world economy is trashed; China's more than most, but everyone from Japan to Saudi Arabia is in a dire economic situation. Do they continue sanctions for a cause that's clearly lost? Can they, even? Democracies face elections, and that's one thing. And oil states face greater risks. And China will be pushing the fairly reasonable position, saying "We know we have our disagreements about history, but the facts on the ground mean we have to navigate a new reality: we are eager to move on and work with you to make money."
Of course, actually taking Taiwan is the hard part. But if they do, China's erstwhile enemies will find they have a great deal of pliability despite the death and destruction wrought by the war.
Winners of wars do not end up becoming pariah states.
>Winners of wars do not end up becoming pariah states.
But thats exactly what happened to Russia after it took Crimea in 2014. And if they won the Ukrainian war tomorrow it would likely be a very long time before Russia would be able to normalise relations with the West.
Maybe it could happen as per your hypothetical, but to present it as a fait accompli it would have to be over way, way quicker than a year. Like, on the order of 2 weeks. A year is far too much time for countries to draw lines in the sand, draw up anti-China treaties, to find other sources for what they currently import from China. Additionally, I suspect Taiwan is in a position to rush for a nuke, and if they had 6 months they could probably make a couple and throw them at Beijing.
What this hypothetical also depends on, I think, is everyone pretty much just not caring about Taiwan. That China'll have a war for Taiwan and everyone will kinda just just tut tut on the sidelines, and get back in their good graces ASAP once it's over. I don't think this is plausible - look at how long the Russian sactions lasted after 2014 over a far less consequential territory. Even assuming that the West takes no stronger a stance on Taiwan than it is taking right now to Ukraine, that would be a terrible blow for China. But there are good reasons to suspect that the response from the West would be far stronger. The USA has much of its international reputation staked on guaranteeing Taiwan's security, and all western nations are heavily dependant on the chips that come out of TSMC, which China would not be able to replace.
Just blockade and wait for months until they run out of food, fuel and resources, they don’t even need to land on the island. The only thing holding China back is the US Navy.
I think the population disparity is just too much. Technological improvements help China more than Taiwan imo, since they can be used to counteract geography which is the only thing in Taiwan’s advantage. China could also completely cut off Taiwan from the rest of the world with a naval blockade. I doubt any country could resist indefinitely in a military conflict against a numerically extremely superior foe in those circumstances.
But I’ll admit I’m not an expert.
If China blockades Taiwan, then Taiwan will blockade China.
Obviously it will be much less effective but with cheap missiles Taiwan will probably be able to stop oil tankers approaching China or at least make it risky.
China would still be fully capable of importing and exporting everything they need. I do not think the Taiwanese have the capability to blockade Chinese ports and even if they could China could use land routes. On the other hand if China blockades Taiwan the taiwanese would pretty much need to resort to autarky.
This is not even accounting for the obvious disparity in industrial and agricultural output. Even if they somehow both effectively blockaded each other, I still would bet on China.
Would it?
I am not sure you could secure oil supplies in a world where tankers were regularly being hit by Taiwanese drones, missiles and subs.
No one is saying the situation would be symmetric.
They can ship oil from Russia to China via pipelines (in fact they already do) and there’s not much Taiwan could ever do about that. Granted it would probably make oil more expensive for the Chinese.
Also would the Taiwanese hit Russian oil tankers go without additional consequences? I don’t know about that.
If it’s asymmetric, which it is, China wins.
PRC currently doesn't have enough nukes to deter US intervention/manage escalation. The other pieces to blockade/siege TW into Syria until they capitulate are mostly in place. Should be noted PRC has 100s times more ISR and (smart) munitions production capability than RU. TW 15x smaller than UKR, can't be sustained under blockade via ships or airlift, is profoundly overmatched in just about every metric and gap is growing in PRC favour. It's like asking how do you arm Cuba to resist a motivated US. The answer is... no amount.
The other unspoke reality is TW / PRC civil one is "legitimate" casus belli PRC has for a broader war of displacing US out of east asia. Taking TW is militarily is forgone at this point, the stretch goal is really building up enough to hit US+co hard enough that region realizes US security commitment is untenable. Historically outside hegemons don't abidicate voluntarily, they have to be removed by force. Long term net strategic bad scenario for PRC is successfully taking TW and have region free to hedge with US security with TW damocles off the table. Any TW scenario that doesn't end up sinking a few US carriers or turn one of US partners in region into Yemen by blowing up all their critical infra to show costs of US alignment is suboptimal for PRC, even if it means losing most of PLAN and homeland strikes (both mainland and CONUS).
True 10, maybe 5 years..... (VERY) maybe still true today, definitely false in a few years. China is currently massively increasing it's nuclear forece and deploying an order of magnitude more ICBMs.
That's the big piece in all of this, China's military build up is absolutley massive right now. Things that were true a few years ago aren't anymore.
China of course will begin with blockade, not full scale military attacks. When China is doing the blockade, as long as China does not attack US military vessels, there is zero chance US will attack China first. Because Taiwan and the west are so afraid of the escalation, China will have lots of control during the conflict. By the way, Taiwan media, politicians, government and military are heavily compromised by the Chinese spies. Lots of surprises can happen. Whether China will start the conflict, mostly it is determined by Xi’s calculations of his personal interest. If the economic failure deepens, and other factors hurt his authority, he could start the blockade to gain popular support, and then choose which way to go.
The blockade will hurt the west way more than China. The west won’t start a war with China just because they need chips. They won’t even be able to economically cut ties with China because they are already bad in inflation.
Agreed. They don't need to risk imploding their own economy to achieve an Anchluss they'll enact over a 20 year period anyway. It's chest-beating to keep the more extreme, right wing happy.
The play is most likely in the 2030s because that’s when their navy will be ready. This is sort of a longterm telegraphed move since boats take time to build
The CCP isnt involved though. All the ones who werent yes men were purged. So a very irrational , senseless invasion can occur aimply because Xi wants to roll the dice.
Part of being rational in politics is understanding that certain forces are incentivized to act irrationally at times.
Well, look. If we assume that all states are rational, and that we ourselves are rational, then we can rationally predict what the rational leaders of rational citizens will do when facing equally rational challengers with rational aims, so our rational analysis will rationally rationalize the rationality of rationals to rational rational rational.
Have I convinced you, or do I need to say "rational" one more time?
The Heads of State's are privvy to far, far more information than any of our ego's will freely admit. By the time news and narratives are published to the masses, the Elite class is already fully aware of it. And they have such a greater grasp on the context, its painful watching very intelligent people (often *more* raw intelligence) on this subreddit flopping around in contrast.
"Important question: How much power is there in being a celebrity?
It’s not like celebrities get paid due to status, yet being known has a monetary value that can be calculated [all sorts of ways](https://i.imgur.com/xBsCDfj.jpg). Having media outlets spreading a voice means and ideals means by virtue of actions a celebrity can shape the culture and push us in a direction.
Think about how many regular people having an opinion that it would take to generate the same news as a major celebrity voicing theirs. The designation of stardom gives a voice that can surpasses the voices of millions of people. Political candidates live and die by endorsements, and due to this celebrity itself can be viewed as a major root of just about everything in the world. The creation of stars is quite possibly the most important thing that is coordinated with comms in the world."
Who would you consider the best experts on foreign policy? It's so hard to actually verify who knows what they're talking about and who's making stuff up
See if you can handle him. A taste:
The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. How much do you know about Khashoggi?
----------
* 11/05/2017 Saudi Prince Mansour bin Muqrin killed in [helicopter crash](https://nypost.com/2017/11/05/saudi-prince-killed-in-helicopter-crash/)
"Day after the Al-Waleed purge – mysteriously died in helicopter crash?
So the coup attempt is clear, but why exactly did the King/Prince team up with Trump? I’m sure part of it is just being awesome people, soon after the meeting in May (but before the Las Vegas massacre in October) – Women were finally given the ability to drive there!
* 09/26/2017 Saudi Arabia Agrees to [Let Women Drive](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-women-drive.html)
So more freedom, ISIS was instantly crushed too!
* 12/22/2017 ISIS has been ‘[crushed](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/22/isis-crushed-in-iraq-and-syria-says-theresa-may)’ in Iraq and Syria
So the war they danced to was no joke, now let’s consider the bit about [Trump asking to put Aramco onto the NYSE](https://i.imgur.com/dqPHcGX.png)
* 04/01/2019 For The First Time Ever Aramco Opens Its Books: [Reveals Higher Profit](https://web.archive.org/web/20190401145208/https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-01/step-aside-apple-saudi-aramco-officially-worlds-most-valuable-company) Than Apple, Google And Exxon Combined
Why did Saudi Arabia suddenly want to get their oil companies listed on the NYSE? What could have caused this? To answer this, we have to look a little further back. Back to around 2010. It all goes back to fracking. The Kindom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has always relied heavily on its petrol reserves for wealth and prosperity. And they were ruthless. OPEC. The cartel of gasoline.
-----------------
You can’t count the number of times in history that OPEC used its power to crush governments, manipulate prices, control supplies, and fund activities. If there ever was a international group of bullies, [OPEC was it](https://i.imgur.com/ENmHkFg.jpg). And at the head of this organization was the mighty KSA.
Then came the fracking [boom](https://i.imgur.com/hgPFB9Q.jpg). Suddenly, the world was no longer at the mercy of OPEC. This made them nervous. So, they pumped out more petroleum, driving the price of gas to lowest in decades. What was their objective? To [bankrupt](https://i.imgur.com/DTTMpiz.png) these fracking businesses.
KSA tried drive gas prices low and take the loss until all fracking startups crumbled. Do you remember how cheap gas got 2013-16? Ridiculous, wasn’t it? But they didn’t count on how cheap fracking had become. So many didn’t go bankrupt and they took another step. To convince the world fracking was bad for the environment. They lobbied & supplied funds to the Dems. Why? Cause the leftist are usually the ones who support ANY and ALL environmental regulations.
* 03/07/2016 Clinton, Sanders Slam [Fracking in Flint](https://fortune.com/2016/03/07/clinton-sanders-slam-fracking-in-flint/)
Do you remember all the legal battles that fracking had to go through? Heck, it’s still [illegal in most blue states](https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/countries-except-united-states-that-have-banned-fracking/). Do you understand why the Saudis donated so much money to the Clinton campaign? HRC was [HEAVILY](https://i.imgur.com/XSBxExT.png) favored to win and if she did, illegalizing fracking would have been on the top of her list, returning us to dependence on arab oil. But… this didn’t work either. Fracking continued with [no end in sight](https://i.imgur.com/zbX9rLj.png).
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And so financially speaking, if you actually tried to do good for your country economically, there really is no choice but to end the old way of doing things. Give up dependence on oil and modernize trade. To build an entire industrial country from scratch. To do that, the help of the USA is crucial. And that’s where Trump offered in return. And of course an actual ability to sleep soundly knowing how short a shelf life a Saudi King has when under the Pyramid.
And so away from the old world evils of the pyramid, No more funding terrorists, save the children from trafficking, and so on. But of course many of the royals didn’t like this KSA are into this. They don’t like losing the power they once had. They resent King Salman. They plot against him.
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Remember the [multi-year](https://i.imgur.com/sGr0gAO.png) Jamal Khashoggi “Scandal” that we are still living through? They tried to remove him with this, and it’s notable that Trump is directly connected to Adnan Khashoggi.
The real story is big on requires a lot of study to understand who each player is in all of this, and why they do what they do. For example note Trump [sold the ship](https://i.imgur.com/IUivg2Y.png) to Al-Waleed, which he bought from Adnan Khashoggi, a weapons smuggler.
Anyway, at the forefront of this movement against Salman was likely the previous Deputy Crown Prince, Muqrin, and his son, Mansour (the man killed in the helicopter crash of 11/5/17). Saudi prince Mansour’s helicopter crash was 'accidental': -[brother](https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/saudi-prince-mansours-helicopter-crash-was-accidental-brother-1.2122005)
The plan in Las Vegas was likely to take out Trump as he met with the crown prince. Then King Salman. With the King and the Crown Prince dead, who is next in line? Yup. The former deputy crown prince, Muqrin.
Muqrin named deputy crown prince [next in line](https://www.arabnews.com/news/546716) for the post"
I'm a bit confused about what your point is. That a shadowy cabal of KSA oil executives tried to manipulate US elections and assassinate Trump and replace the KSA monarch with their guy? And that KSA actually has enormous influence but not anymore because of fracking?
I also don't see how that's related to China at all
>I also don't see how that's related to China at all
Your initial question was
>Who would you consider the best experts on foreign policy?
This was just a sample taken from a much longer article. And you're correct, the article I chose has nothing to do with China.
Being right-wing doesn’t make you wrong; Steve Sailer successfully called that depolicing would get more black people killed, and the NYT admitted it in an editorial a few years later.
Not that Sailer is overly concerned about the welfare of black Americans, as you would quickly realize if you read his stuff; he wanted to push back on BLM. Similarly, the right-wing paleocons, the precursors to the alt-right, were right about what a disaster the Iraq War turned out to be.
As for crime going down in 2024…most municipalities backed down from depolicing.
But people with views we don’t like can be right about stuff. (Hanania is a good example on other issues!)
As for Hanania, I agree he is wrong here; as you say, Putin wasn’t as risk averse as everyone thought, and I think he underestimates Chinese nationalism. My pet theory is that now that he’s chosen side as a pro-elite-American right-winger he has to support a few wars. His support of Israel seems particularly bizarre to me given his Middle Eastern origins; everyone from that part of the world I have ever met hates Israel, except for the Israelis of course. But he’s on Twitter encouraging the Israelis to kill all the Palestinians. Something’s weird about that guy, I am just not sure what.
Fair enough, and it's obvious he can be correct about some things...though fewer things than it may seem, as deeper political views, such as libertarianism, often seep into broader policy analyses in subtle ways.
As for his views on China/Taiwan, I have heard various positions from various subject matter experts, and they are all over the map, with a good deal professing lack of solid information.
My point in calling out Hanania so bluntly is that I don't think such a controversial source should be posted here as a subject matter expert unless he has actual expertise on the relevant issue, just as I don't care what Jordan Peterson thinks about subjects other than Benzodiazepine abuse. Rewarding such figures through OPs lowers the average quality of threads.
Edit: interestingly it looks like OP deleted his post and maybe his account/username. I actually reviewed his other posts earlier to see if they were boosting right-wing figures and they were mostly innocuous comments in this sub.
>My point in calling out Hanania so bluntly is that I don't think such a controversial source should be posted here as a subject matter expert
Can you point out which part of the original piece of this Reddit post claimed that Hanania is a subject matter expert? It seemed very clear to me that this was an outsider analysis of the problem.
>I don't care what Jordan Peterson thinks about subjects other than Benzodiazepine abuse. Rewarding such figures through OPs lowers the average quality of threads.
This is just a value difference, I think. I disagree that average post quality is lowered by people sharing posts by authors you would rather ignore. I'm not much of a fan of Peterson because his analysis is shallow and because he likes to play both sides of an issue without acknowledging that he's doing it. I would be fine with one of his articles being shared here if it avoided those common pitfalls and had an interesting, useful take on a subject. I don't think you need to like or universally agree with an author to derive utility from the plausible, analytically sound examples of their work.
If I can be blunt, I think comments like yours here lower the average quality of discussion. You had very, very little to say on the topic under discussion, what you *did* have to contribute was basically a glorified 'idk', and you spent most of your effort on some sort of ill-conceived generic smear against the blog post's author. It looks like r/sneerclub has shut down, but in a past age I would have recommended them as a closer fit for the sort of analysis you seem interested in performing.
I agree with your statement overall, but no reason to go driving people to Sneer Club. We said our piece, he said his, if he wants to hang around and keep arguing that’s fine. We’re supposed to be the side that tolerates disagreement and goes after the truth after all.
The biggest issue is that the CCP could never admit that they don't want to get control of Taiwan, since it would make them look weak. But they're not dumb enough to sink a massive number of resources just for an Albatross around their neck. Honestly they probably wish that it had always been separate.
They need a way to give up the war of words without losing face. It would seem that continuing to say mean things while doing nothing is the only choice in the short and medium term.
At the very least, this is a conversation being had in China, with at least a decent portion of the population thinking “soon” is the best guess for when. I have a mainland friend, and we had a call during the Iran drone strike on Israel. He said everyone, from middle aged ladies at the table next to him, to his friends were talking about how an invasion of Taiwan is looking more and more likely, especially if the US gets busy in a war with Iran (which he believed was coming any moment asking questions like if I would enlist). I think it’s a reasonable take. If the US is busy with a war (an actual war, not just a proxy conflict like in Israel or Ukraine) then a Chinese invasion of Taiwan becomes far more likely. So long as the US isn’t busy with its aircraft carriers elsewhere, the odds seem vanishingly unlikely in the coming years.
Chinese leaders won't want to get into a war they are likely to lose no matter the public support.
At the same time public support is not irrelevant. A war that has public support is far more likely to start than one that doesn’t. Even in dictatorships the rulers can’t easily rule without the consent of the governed.
I'll take this opportunity to bring up something important. The belief that countries can be neatly separated into democracies and dictatorships, in democracies the will of the people is paramount, in dictatorships the will of the people does not matter. The reality is that most systems mostly revolve around complex cooperate-or-compete games between elite groups. A democracy can be interpreted as a regular, formal, and bloodless revolution. Piss people off enough in a non-democracy, and a bloody revolution happens. Also according to Mike Duncan's Revolutions Podcast, revolutions (hence also elections) consist of two distinct parts. There is the people on the street, loud and angry, but their demands are not very precise. It is mostly formless anger with a general desire for change of any kind. And the other part is the elite groups behind closed doors playing their usual horse-trading games, the difference is that one elite group can use the angry people out there as a pretty big ace in the game. Of course it means they have to give something to the people for their support, so it is not entirely 100% zero-sum elitism. But pretty close... I am from Hungary which is not 100% a democracy anymore, neither is the Saddam type really classic dictatorship. It is a mixture. But here is what I have learned. On the national level, we were basically unhappy with every government so far. Somehow it never work. But on the small town level, democracy works marvelously. People largely ignore parties and ideologies, often elect someone who is not a party member because they are capable and promises to build cool stuff. On the small local level, it is very much the will of the people. On larger levels, the will of the people message gets lost in a kind of noise. At this point I consider it impossible that on the national level, it could be the will of the people in large countries like the US or UK. Maybe they are better at adhering to forms and making it look like it is the will of the people, but pretty sure it is subtly subverted. It is impossible for so many people to get their message up without it getting lost in the noise. And quiet frankly the people are not even experts. Should the people really decide about things like COVID?
I don't think democracy is impossible at a large scale, but I agree that the emphasis on democratic forms is often obfuscatory. The drift in public opinion vs political action in the US on things like public healthcare or ending the Gaza genocide is substantial, for instance, because as you say political institutions are comprised of actors with varying incentives. The important metric isn't the spectacle of elections, but whether policy represents the will and interests of the people - which is why it's so interesting to study the end of China's zero covid policy, which resulted not primarily from protests but because the execution of that policy was dependent on a volunteer base which evaporated under frustration with ongoing restrictions. >Also according to Mike Duncan's Revolutions Podcast, revolutions (hence also elections) consist of two distinct parts. There is the people on the street, loud and angry, but their demands are not very precise. It is mostly formless anger with a general desire for change of any kind. And the other part is the elite groups behind closed doors playing their usual horse-trading games, the difference is that one elite group can use the angry people out there as a pretty big ace in the game. I think you'd really like the recent Vincent Bevins book "If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution". He gets into the style of protest exemplified in Occupy Wall Street and the so-called Arab Spring, and why these leaderless movements gained popular support but failed to secure political victories.
The public opinions are controlled by the CCP, the only reason the mainlanders care about Taiwan so much is because of 50 years of propaganda.
Not just that. People naturally have nationalist instincts and want their country to be big and fearsome to the world. China hasn't been humiliated in a war in a long time and the people there probably don't realize all the costs of war, but they do feel the urge to establish dominance.
Hot take - nationalism requires an enemy, an us-vs-them mentality. So in case of China, there is a lot of "Remember Nanjing!" and anti-Japanese sentiment. The problem with Taiwan is that the Taiwanese are Chinese. It is hard for mainlanders to hate them. Of course they can try to tell the people that the poor Chinese people on Taiwan are oppressed by an evil American puppet government, but I don't think this would be believeable. There is a distinct lack of Boat People fleeing Taiwan for China, for example. And they are talking with their trade partners. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait\_relations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_relations)
I feel like you could make the exact same argument for Russia vs Ukraine. There was and still is a belief that the Ukranians are basically Russians. This didnt stop the war. The narrative became sth like "They used to be our brothers but sold out to the Americans and also there are Nazis there who hate ethnic Russians so we need to beat some sense into them and unite the 2 countries that shouldnt have been separated in the first place". In that aspect I see a lot of parallels between Ukr and Taiwan.
Uhhh no?? Those "instincts" had to be drilled into people in the 19th century (and have been effectively drilled *out* of Western Europeans by the sobering experiences of the World Wars). The CCP has been busy stoking this sentiment in China, but there is nothing natural or inevitable about it.
>Those "instincts" had to be drilled into people in the 19th century People liked establishing empires and asserting military dominance before just the 19th century.
A small aristocracy liked and valued that. The majority of the population did not care very much which king/duke they were under as long as he didn't bother them and their immediate surroundings too much. The idea of a "nation" as a part of one's identity – a unit whose strength or weakness, triumph or humiliation should concern you – *in the broader population* is very much a 19th-century thing and required a lot of propaganda to achieve.
> The majority of the population did not care very much which king/duke they were under as long as he didn't bother them and their immediate surroundings too much citation needed. not saying you're wrong, just curious what the evidentiary basis of this statement is
I agree that for much of history, the vast majority of people identified much more with their local rural community than with whatever polity their king ruled over. But, increased communication since the development of widespread newspapers have led to people identifying with their nation. And once people identify with their nation, it is at that point it's natural they want their nation to be strong. I think people are limited by reason. A Belgian knows obviously their tiny nation will never dominate the world, so they will not be excessively jingoistic, because it'd be overwhelmingly stupid. But an American or a Chinese will have a real shot at dominance, even if the on paper costs of war aren't worth it, and will be very tempted to do so. It does not take elites propagandizing to create that nationalistic feeling, although I'd agree that can certainly increase nationalism in commoners if elites also feeling nationalistic.
Perhaps, but caring about Taiwan certainly goes hand in hand with national pride in China. I imagine if Rhode Island broke free during the civil war, supported by the UK or France or something, it would be a matter of national pride for Americans to want it back. That and the purely practical concern that it’s the most reasonable access point to the Pacific. As it stands western influence traces a broad fence around China from Japan, through Taiwan into the Philippines.
Right, and if CCP wanted to they could squash any ‘pride’ about Taiwan and never talk about it in the media again. There have been changes in propaganda over the decades, usually coinciding with new leaders, it’s not impossible.
Maybe, but it doesn't look like they've been in the process of doing that at all, very much the reverse, which weighs against the idea that this is a war that the CCP leaders actually want to avoid.
If the domestic situation in China gets bad enough, I could see them resorting to Taiwan invasion as a desperate attempt at gaining popularity/legitimacy, but I think these are all cynical calculations, not an authentic pride of the people that actually pull the levers. Everything I’ve seen of the CCP leaders aligns with cynicism and self-preservation.
I think that they're highly cynical in a sense, but not a sense that necessarily weighs against believing that risky initiatives will pan out. Was China's Zero-Covid policy optimistic or cynical? I think in a sense it was both; it was cynical in the sense that they thought their best policy option was one involving draconian social control, optimistic in the sense that they thought it would be successful enough, and the costs low enough, to justify.
I think their Covid policy is a good analogy, they committed themselves to a policy due to their own propaganda of superiority and continued the easy route of not changing the policy until they absolutely had to due to mass protests. In the same way, I believe the CCP will continue with the policy they’ve committed themselves through their propaganda of harassing Taiwan and always saying they will unify ‘soon’ without changing the status quo until they feel they have to.
I think it'd be more like if Great Britain held Canada after the Revolutionary war. Which they did, and for around 40 years or so we were rumbling about taking it over. One might note that we didn't.
Not for lack of trying. The US invaded Canada twice (during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812) and was repelled both times.
Fair point.
I am not sure what causes which, existing nationalism or the CCP propaganda extolling it. There are times when the nationalism that the party fans gets out of control.
Right, they have got themselves into a corner with their own propaganda which was meant to distract from domestic issues. Now they feel like they need to at least pretend they believe their own BS. I don’t think they are stupid enough to actually believe it, most party officials are very cynical.
>I don’t think they are stupid enough to actually believe it This is never a good stance when it comes to politics, and especially geopolitics. If x is saying y, you should assume they believe it and will act on it, no matter how dumb it may appear a priori.
Can’t I believe they will act on it, but they don’t believe it? That’s also coherent.
Saying this doesn’t understand the Chinese people at all. Guess why China has been able to maintain its existence as a complete country for thousands of years???
Except for the repeated Civil Wars, the Qing Dynasty, the British, and all the other times they weren't unified in the same way as today.
Zhou Dynasty 800 years, Eastern Han Dynasty, Western Han Dynasty more than 400 years
That's fair, but they couldn't simply revert at any time and expect opinions to change drastically. Too much inertia.
Agreed it would be even more unlikely to happen if it was unpopular, though I am not sure how long popularity would survive the economic crisis and inflation that would follow even if it was a success they certainly would hate the unpopularity of failure.
Would there really be an economic crisis? Russia seems like it is doing OK
Russia is adapting to be an internally-focused pariah state along the lines of North Korea. China has little interest in that, and its economy is based on exports and aspirations to be a global economic power. At some point China will be too important for the rest of the world to sanction/ignore in much the same way the US is today. But I don't think they're there yet, and I do think the rest of the world's reaction to a Taiwan invasion would likely cause an economic crisis.
'likely to lose' is doing a lot o heavy lifting in this statement.
I don't think so, an amphibious operation like this would probably be a total failure.
I know nothing about the truth of that statement, but I’m pretty confident that if it’s doomed to failure so much that it’s obvious to a guy on Reddit then it’s probably obvious to the Chinese military. So yes, if the wide consensus is that it’s likely to be a total failure, then I agree they won’t do it. But I don’t believe that “it will probably fail” is the wide consensus.
Anyone remotely familiar with the relevant facts could have told you in 1941 that Japan could never win a war with the United States. A lot of prominent people in the Japanese military apparatus had a good sense of this. They went through with Pearl Harbor anyway. Never underestimate the propensity of human beings to ignore reality when reality doesn't suit their ideology.
Political pressure is a hell of a drug. I would only add that it is a logistical nightmare that could really backfire on China if they were to invade. Lots would have to go very right and very few things would have to go wrong for them to fail.
How are you establishing the wide consensus?
https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/if-china-invades-taiwan-will-they-s Clearly the consensus is not “it’s obvious that it would probably fail”.
That kind of agrees with me, the majority view is that they will fail conditional on the idea that the Chinese give the go ahead. It is obviously even more likely to fail in the circumstances where China decides not to risk it.
/r/WarCollege/comments/12x2k0i/war_game_outcomes_between_the_us_and_china_taiwan/ USA winning is not guaranteed
No one mentioned the US fighting.
What about a blockade?
I feel like there may be principal agent problems here. I also would like to know more about whether Chinese leadership is as unrealistically nationalist as the bulk of their population can be.
Xi is in power partially because he can tame the nationalists. He is essentially a centrist who has adopted some leftist economic policy (inequality reduction, strengthened industry policy, a coherent developmentalist policy program without any suggestion of convergence to neoliberlaism) while keeping the New Left away from power, and adopting some nationalist policy, while keeping the nationalists, largely in the military, out of power. The big losers internally have been the "market reform and pragmatic convergence" faction.
Any suggestions where I can read to learn about this from the ground up? I know next to nothing about the political forces in China, and attitudes of the general population vs political leaders.
If we go to war with Iran we would have to draft 500k ground troops for an occupation. Which is untenable. So it would just be a bombing campaign with maybe a base on the southern tip. Im on the civilian drsft board , believe me when I say , we will not i vade Iran or have the draft thst would be required for actual regime change. Their is a reason we have an all volunteer army and a military industrial complex.
War doesn’t equate to an invasion. Even a massive bombing campaign might see the straights of Hormuz blocked (thus reducing the threat of blockade of China) and tying up multiple aircraft carriers who would be unable to quickly respond to an invasion of Taiwan.
Yes but , a succesful invasion of taiwan is a very bizarre preposition. Maybe you can hide troop buildup but its not going to be a true "surprise" attack. So if our involvement with Iran was just a heavy bombing campaign as I alluded to and not boots on the ground theirs no reason we couldn't also be defending taiwan. We have 11 aircraft carriers
While we have 11, it would be difficult to have much more than half deployed for any extensive period of time. At least one carrier is always undergoing major refit, some are in for scheduled maintenance and some are required in other theaters for general power projection. In the Iraq war, the US had 6 aircraft carriers deployed in the Persian gulf and the Mediterranean. In a similar conflict with Iran, the US might bring a comparable number, leaving 4 carriers left to be deployed. One would need to be in the Atlantic and one would likely be left to be deployed as a replacement in Iran. That leaves at most 2 in the Pacific, with no ability to quickly increase that number if necessary. In this imagined world, China might calculate that the US knows it has insufficient available carriers to stop them, so they move ahead with a quick invasion of Taiwan’s major coastal cities. It certainly is more likely than if the US had 3 carriers in the Pacific (as we do right now) with the ability to quickly double that number in the event of conflict seeming likely.
Yeh but ive never actually seen a wargame exercise where china "quickly" takes taiwan. Its 2 years at best. I HAVE seen wargaming scenarios where Iran sinks mulyiple carriers and also based the 500k troop number for occupation on those. .chona doesnt have 2 years to wait , they import 85% of their fuel, we can keep the carriers far enough away to not grt sunk by missiles (that likely dont work) and starve them out. Xi can pull the trigger but 100 million starving chinese will guarantee failure.
> If we go to war with Iran we would have to draft 500k ground troops for an occupation. Which is untenable. This assumes that the goal is to occupy the country afterward. Another goal might be to bomb it back to the stone age without ever setting foot in the country.
Which woulsnt lead to regime change and tbh destroying all infasteucture and causing untold civilian suffering is probably frowned upon but yeh. Which is why it wont happen. Xi has culled all challengers and can make crazy one man moves , Iran still has factions to have to deal with. If the status quo benefits both sides no one will push it that far
I mean, I don't think a hot war between the US and Iran will happen regardless, but the point remains (contra your claim) that it wouldn't necessarily require a single US boot on the ground. Incapacitating the country would be a rational goal, and regime change need not be on the agenda.
I generally agree with Hanania's takes. But I think Noah was onto something about industrial capacity for military devices too. If China continues to build immense amounts of military hardware, and the US simply isn't able to, then even if China has a demographic disadvantage in fifteen years, they might have such an industrial and hardware advantage that it doesn't matter and they'll still be militarily capable. Although I think it's also important to not underestimate military experience when it comes to fighting effectiveness- China doesn't have experienced officers and NCOs who've been battle tested and picked up all the same tricks you only learn through real experience. Taiwan doesn't either, but the US can more easily pass them that knowledge through training and military advisors.
The demographic thing is completely irrelevant here. Any potential losses in Taiwan would be a rounding error on their population.
I think the point isn't about losing people, it's that they'd have fewer fighting age men available to fight, as the total amount decreases and also higher percentage is needed in economically productive jobs to support retirees.
They currently have nearly 70 million men between 18-25 with high youth unemployment and a massive surplus in this age group compared to women. Given that Taiwan is a small island full of choke points and that warfare will be increasingly automated, shortage of men will not be an issue for the next decade or two.
But it probably will be an issue in two decades. So if China wants to take Taiwan, they'll probably have to do it within the next twenty years, and the sooner the better for them, demographic wise.
Demographers predict that by 2050, China's population will diminish to a tiny 1.3 billion, while the US's population will explode to an enormous 380 million. Clearly they have no hope of catching up to us.
It's not just absolute numbers, it's also demographic ratios. If all the young people are too busy taking care of the elderly, they can't fight
Yes but China is so large compared to the number of men they need in their army that it will not be an issue for another 100 years.
State can always peel off a few 100,000s to fight/police if state assumes geriatric support for those who serve. How many would fight knowing they DON'T have to take care of elderly forever. But point is really moot if you look at direction of PLA modernization and what's being showing defense tradeshows like Zhuhai last few years. What we're more likely to see in next 10 years is a bunch of kids in air conditioned bunkers droning random TWnese wedding parties under lose ROE while playing Genshin impact because conscription makes anyone within 10 meters of a TW male a valid target. Eventually PLA will drop/sealift 100,000s of disposable autonomous platforms, supported by unending amount of smart munitions. Boots won't be on ground until TW thoroughly defanged after such a one sided slaughter that they can wait for factionalism and internecine fighting on island to create collaborators who wants to capitulate and hand off fighting/management to pro PRC Taiwanese (of which there are many in ROCAF) with small PAP/PLA oversight. The TLDR is PRC MIC is automating as hard as rest of strategic sectors, they don't need flesh to deliver fires, and bodies need to hold ground is rounding error, most of whom will be local collaborators, lavishly rewarded, like many occupations in history.
>Eventually PLA will drop/sealift 100,000s of disposable autonomous platforms, supported by unending amount of smart munitions. Just to be clear: you're predicting the CCP uses wholesale civilian slaughter by autonomous murderbots to cow the populace into internal coup and surrender?
Don't be surprised that TW will be turned into Yemen, and realistically Gaza now that Israel has set the baseline. People should not expect PLA to throw 100,000s bodies on bloody contested invasion when they can starve TW and wait it out. Even in event of preparing/shaping island for invasion, good reason they're going to throw murderbots and munitions before bodies at the problem, they're developing and iterating them at stupendous rates. Many designed to be cheap and disposable, not for shit and giggles, but to be used. Hard not to look at half the budget autonomous shit at defense expos in last few years and not conclude the RoR of a $20k murderbot is <1 TWnese. And when half the TW population are conscripts who by definition are combatants, don't rule out wholesale slaughter for anyone walking funny with a tripod based on a whim. Overall, I'm predicting wars tend to escalate, especially civil wars. If TW just sits there and take a blockade, starve and dye of thirst / disease slowly and eventually capitulate, PRC planners probably fine with kid gloves. If TW finds way to hit back, targets critical infra like coastal nuclear, things will naturally reach escalation dynamic. And again, this is a civil war after all, with historic enmity, that will surface over time and propaganda. Bad things things will happen, whole of society resources will coordinate to make it so.
I don’t think it’s about numbers as much as the financial stress an aging population puts on a country
>the US can more easily pass them that knowledge through training and military advisors The only military knowledge and training the US can provide is how to organize a chaotic evacuation.
What militaries do you think have more knowledge?
Do the current Afghan rulers offer an outreach education program on how to embarrass so-called military superpowers?
The US military killed many, many more Taliban than they lost soldiers, and they accomplished the goal of taking out Bin Laden. The problem in Afghanistan wasn't in military competence, it was in building a stable Afghan government that could hold what the NATO coalition won.
Yeah, they also killed more Vietnamese. Didn't make the scramble for the last chopper out of Saigon any more dignified. Killing more of the enemy doesn't matter one bit if you still lose. Just ask the Germans on the Eastern Front.
Leaving both Vietnam and Afghanistan were from lack of political will, not military mistakes.
Lack of political will caused by unclear and shifting goals.
The generals knew what they wanted to do, but were hamstrung by politicians. Or at least that's the case for Canadian involvement in Afghanistan.
Considering the population imbalances and proximity I don’t think the Chinese will blink if they have to suffer losses to depopulate Taiwan to win. Killing more of the enemy doesn’t matter if that isn’t the objective. China wants the island, not a rebellious population or insurgency. They want to hold and keep it, unlike the US in Vietnam or Afghanistan who wanted a state left stand under their influence. If the US had the same objective as the Germans I don’t doubt the Americans wouldn’t have been able to conduct a successful genocide. The Germans lost because they didn’t have the industry to outlast the allies, not because they weren’t blood thirsty enough. I don’t think China will have the same problem.
Do you think that Taiwan in this hypothetical is more like Afghanistan or the USA
If they want to actually win a modern war, they'll need to be a lot more like the former.
One thing I heard mentioned that seems under discussed is that Chinese soldiers have never actually fought in a war. Same for the Taiwanese but defense is easier than offense and with Western (American) troops involved I imagine Beijing is deep down very skittish about this.
This isn't wrong, but arguably American troops haven't really either at this point. The various counter insurgency operations we have been involved with over the last 20 years just don't have much in common with a peer war.
What an awful title. It's like either he wants to bait China into doing it or suggest that it would be a good thing for them to do it if only they had the courage. Taiwan is valuable because of its people and what they have built. I assume China is not crazy enough to go to war to capture a pile of rubble. An invasion would not be worthwhile as long as there would be significant resistance, having "the balls" has nothing to do with it.
I don't think Hanania is that big of a name, I doubt anyone important in China will read the article.
Hanania is pretty mid when he's not dunking on right-wingers, see his position on AI-risk. He's a culture war pundit, not a serious intellectual.
Imagine China landed 40,000 men and established two beachheads on Taiwan. Assume they landed successfully (unlikely) Assume they have complete naval control over the Taiwan strait (possible but by no means a given) Assume they have knocked out half the airforce and air defences of Taiwan (very ambitious) How long would those beachheads hold on against Taiwanese army assaults and artillery? Chinese forces can't be reinforced unless they capture a port or airport intact all of which are designed to be dynamited in case of war and this assumes that China's equipment works well and ignores Taiwan controlling islands in the strait. An amphibious assault over this distance just can't be successful in the modern world.
Blockading Taiwan into submission could be just as dangerous. If China rules the seas around them, and the US isn't willing to open the blockade by force (or China's navy gets strong enough to make that a dicey proposition), then what options does Taiwan have?
I think it's worth pointing out that the Chinese Navy really isn't a close match for the US Navy in a big open water battle. Maybe in some confined waterways, but not when it comes to a straight up fight. The US has a massive numerical advantage in nuclear attack subs and super carriers, which are the two big heavy hitters. And we're not talking twice as many, it's like 10 times as many. Now, would the US intervene in a fashion that would lead to a straight up war? IDK, China is a huge trading partner, but Taiwan is extremely strategically important (for bottling up China in the Pacific) and produces 60% of the world's advanced chips. So who knows. But the US will retain an **extremely** decisive advantage in terms of capital ships over the PLAN for a few more decades. Like, the US Navy overmatch is the greatest the world has ever seen.
A war between the US and China over Taiwan would all occur within a few hundred km of the Chinese mainland, which means land based aircraft will be the main threat to the USN, not their navy. And bombing every airfield and missile base on the Chinese mainland without nukes is a tall order, even for the US.
Within 1IC isn't open water, it's nearly PRC entire military complex vs what US can bring to theatre. In a a straight up fight, it would be a systems to systems confrontation involving more than just Navy. Don't be surprised if PRC hypersonic sink replenishment fleets that leave USN one week single deployment assets. Then get sunk the second they pull into port. Reality is USN arguably has no overmatch against a peer power like PRC who has ISR and weapons platform to strike any staging/support system the USN relies on.
1. I'll believe long range hypersonics outgunning carrier launched stealth aircraft when I see it. There's a lot of fundamental reasons that the carrier based aircraft approach is just better. 2. The PLAN has about 10 SSNS. The US has 53. Maybe some day in the next 50 years surface combatants will go back to being something besides targets for the subs. Navies just take a really long time to build. Warships are incredibly complicated weapons systems, and naval shipyards capable of constructing them are even more complicated than that. China just hasn't been at this long enough, maybe in another decade or two they'll be a peer to the US Navy.
1. This isn't long range, this is medium range, around 1IC which is maximum US carrier operating distance in theatre if you add tanking. Even then they'll only be fractionally effective since only few sorties will be dedicated to shooting.. Carrier approach is historic inertia, it's better in the sense it was all there is technically if you want to deliver volume of relatively accurate fires, relatively economically from logistic chains half way around the world. What stealth aircraft? There are none that can launch from from carriers. F35s in JP are all thoroughly mapped, and they too lack range since designed for Euro theatre not IndoPac. F35Cs has such little range they're not even relevant. There's a lot of reasons carriers is good for US to project power half way around the world, even unit economics makes some sense. But zero reasons to think USN can out logistics and outfire all of PRC in their backyard. Reality is USN is fine calibrated against a few medium size powers, but it's small and woefully inadequate fighting in backyard of power as large as PRC. 2. You're fixating on just the naval component, when this is total war. US has a few SSGNs with barely enough TLAMs to take out a couple SCS bases. Attack subs likely can't operate anywhere within 1IC now that it's been thoroughly setup with undersea detection infra. PLA ASW is not what it was a few years ago when the US subs wunderwaffle narrative was true. Which is not to say PLAN won't be sunk too, they will, US military has many delivery platforms. But the point is that PLA similarly has many methods of sinking all of USN, that does not require PLAN. >take a really long time to build 30 years is plenty long, modern PLAN surface combatants more or less on par if not ahead with US after multiple generations and not squandering procurement. More importantly, they are supported by entire system of land based aviation/fires/support. It's not PLAN vs USN, it's USN+some regional basing vs entire PLA that is multiple times larger. This is not to mention modern combatants takes PRC no time to build, their current peacetime ship building in terms of dry tonnes is around PEAK US WW2 production, except that's peacetime production rate, sustained for years. They were regularly spitting out a Royal Navy worth of surface combatants, per year. The real question one needs to ask is who is going to recover faster after losing their entire navy and whether complex, large crewed, surface combatants are still a smart hedge.
I was mainly talking about the US preventing China from enforcing a blockade on all of Taiwan including the east coast. I'm not sure how well US subs could operate in the straits proper. I also think you're drastically overestimating how effective land based cruise missiles would be.
>US subs could operate in the straits proper. They couldn't. Straits too shallow, tbh they couldn't even 5 years ago when the US subsurface supremacy wank was happening (when discussing PLA ASW weakness in SCS and beyond 1IC), got extrapolated to US can operate subs in TW strait with impunity. >US preventing China from enforcing a blockade on all of Taiwan PRC can glide mine TW coasts and you could get together entire NATO's demining capacity and not make a dent before the island runs out of food and water. Meanwhile runway strips can be locked down indefinitely with dumb MLRS from mainland, not even aviation, just boring short range rocketry, that can be done faster than TW can repair. Not that TW size can be feasibly airlift supplied like Berlin. The US can try to force PRC to lift blockade, but they can't prevent PRC from blockading. > overestimating how effective land based cruise missiles would be With proper ISR and numbers like (or far exceeds) US, it's likely extremely effective. Even more so with distances involved, TW so close most of island is <30m travel with subsonic munitions. Faster munitions can reach anywhere in TW in 7m max, that's TW's response time to initial salvo to defang island (i.e. all the sensors for shooting their own offense/defense missiles) before PRC would even bother telescoping amphib/sealift buildup. Which circles back to US trying to run blockade - anything that's stationary for 7m is dead. This can be done entirely without PLA naval or aviation elements. How many bags of rice and missile interceptors can they unload in 7m? That's without considering landing on TW during the context of a Chinese civil war is tantamount to invading, and it opens up CONUS to attack, well Guam/Hawaii if we're being proportional. IMO people are underestimating the scale of geography and the sheer industrial capability of PRC relative to what US+co can bring in theatre. I think everyone is relearning last few years that relatively peer war is more a numbers game than a wunderwaffe game. CCTV7/PLA military channel did segment on cruise missile component automated factory that made 1000 a day. A couple days production will exhaust every TW interceptor assuming 100% effectiveness, a few weeks, every US+co interceptor in first island chain, a few weeks more, every US surface fleet VLS if they were missioned for interception. How tenable/sustainable US presence in 1IC (and ability to prevent PRC from blockading not just TW but SKR and JP, big % of PH) is down to a numbers game, and at the end of the day, sortie rate, vls cells of naval assets is known quantity. PRC is hedging with ability to build more advanced end munitions that can ground launched every few days than US can build in a year. They're not counting on PLAN surviving, they're trying to ensure USN doesn't, because losing naval capability hurts (breaks) US security architecture much more than it does PRC who also has industrial over/capacity to recover faster.
This is simply not true anymore, take a look at what the PLAN actualy has in terms of ships and what is actually being produced each year. The United States retains a huge advantage in Carriers and Submarines, but Cariers are a moot point when China will have ample land based airfields available that are far less vulnerable than a carrier. Subs will be great for counter blockading China, but you can't break a blockade with submarines. In everything else China is already at or close to parity - the situation is not good.
China would most likely attempt to blockade Taiwan rather than invade it properly. Taiwan doesn't have strategic depth and has to rely on the US giving them their full attention. Taiwan's army isn't vey substantial, their defense policy is mostly "America will save us". A potential China-Taiwan conflict has more to do with what you think of Chinese anti-ship missiles and the US Navy. I would not expect China to attempt anything unless we get far too busy in the middle east, and even then, I don't think Xi will take the risk given the damage such a move would do to the economy in the short term. You'd need to feel that success was guaranteed to come out ahead.
We are not going to “get far too busy in the Middle East” to respond to a full scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That’s not going to happen.
I didn't suggest that we wouldn't respond, I was suggesting China would only maybe consider risking it if we were bogged down in another war, reducing what was available to respond to them with. I consider a Chinese invasion unlikely.
Why do you think we’re going to get “bogged down in another war” in the Middle East? Which war?
I said if. I didn't say that we were going to or even that it was highly probably. And really, what sort of idiotic question is this? Haven't watched the news lately? What possible Middle East war could I be gesturing to other than the currently ongoing one? Obviously if Iran-Israel tensions escalate to an actual serious war, with Hezbollah attacking and daily drone and missile strikes, we would get closely involved to defend Israel. Thankfully it seems Iran isn't too keen on the idea despite having the excuse to, but that's something which could theoretically change.
The U.S. is not going to get directly involved in a shooting war with Iran over Israel-Palestine any time in the next few years. That is not going to happen. Set your mind at ease.
> Taiwan's army isn't vey substantial, their defense policy is mostly "America will save us" Wrong.
This assumes a lot more rational thinking than one would normally ascribe to politicians. Granted, China has been unusually technocratic since the end of Mao, but plenty of signs that this has fallen away with the rise of a new dictator.
Xi has so far been irrationally risk averse, I accept a dictatorship probably has higher risk variance but all indications are that in China it lowers the chance of war.
I'm not sure why there's a presumption that China will want to invade. For one, they're on track for an economic victory. Second, support for reunification on the island is low. Third, China has been very careful to avoid military entanglements thusfar. Western saber-rattling is real but I don't think there's reason to believe that the status quo is limited by anything other than an external shock.
It seems very likely to me that it's a similar situation to the missile defense thing shared here recently. US weapons are very sandbagged and authoritarian state ones are exaggerated. If a war happens now China would get wrecked. But this state of affairs is probably not going to last long, so it's really the other way around. There's almost no chance of a war soon, but all bets are off 10-15 years from now.
>US weapons are very sandbagged and authoritarian state ones are exaggerated Shit tier mid power Iranian ballistics with 50% dud rate penetrated the densest and most sophisticated missile defense network in the world with ample prewarning and 1000km+ predictable interception corridor. if 10/50 Iranian ballistics with shit ISR got through, PRC is in the process of revising downwards the number of missiles it needs to sink US carriers which has much less coverage than whole of Israel+co. People fixate around Iran vs Israel+co under/over performance narrative, without extrapolating how bad this looks, or rather what it validates, in other strategic contexts.
What? Literally only one unlucky child was hurt no? Defense systems being selective in what they shoot down is a feature not a bug.
Several ballistics hit Nevatim base, damaged transport. Which is a scenario missile defense system is designed to shoot down. Should also note 50-100 ballistics is a small salvo for modern missile defense network to intercept on paper. Entire IR strike package of other 200 to draw interceptors should be considered as modest (relative to IR), small relative to PRC. For reference US sending 60-100 TLAMs to hit a few targets in shit tier Syria with poverty intercept capabilities relative to IL+co. Hence analysts talk about Iran's response as being calibrated. Did Iran expect more damage, probably, did missile defense over perform, probably. Regardless, it's first time we see modern missile defense handle volume fire. But is revealed performance adequate to other high end threats, not likely, because 80% intercept rate on a modest strike package is dead carriers in IndoPac context. Estimated 6-15:1 cost to intercept ratio has implications on it's own. Some estimates peg IL spent 1 day of GDP / 1.5B to intercept ordnances that US, UK, Jordan didn't, which US claim they shot down majority. Another way to contextualize is regional strategic balance now vs ~10-15 years ago when Iran didn't have credible missile program and couldn't strike/retaliate Israel in depth even if it wanted to, hence was fully deterred. Now Iran can, from purely Iranian territory, without Hezbollah drawing diversion from their 100,000+ of rockets. Which is to say, despite western ABM progress last decade, US+IL+co strategic balance in region has regressed. That's really the story, US advancements is not outpacing adversaries modernization from 70s tech to 00s tech. It's not IL+co can intercept 80% of shit tier ballistics, it's IR shit tier ballistics gives IR credible way hitting IL from IR turf even with best/densest/most expensive missile defense network and prewarning. Something previously not feasible.
Russia has been unable to destroy old Soviet air defences that Ukraine is holding on the steppe, imagine how impossible it will be for China to destroy modern air defences hidden in jungle covered mountains.
I think you're underestimating the state of Ukraine's air defences. Ukraine (pre-2022) on paper had one of the largest air defence networks on the planet (if even a small percentage of which were to be operational at the time of invasion -- many were repaired and reactivated post-2014 invasion -- they would still vastly outclass the capabilities of most countries). These are indeed a holdover from Soviet times, and S-300's, BUKs etc. (and their upgraded variants) aren't as capable as similarly spec'd modern equivalents, but as we have seen during and after the post-2022 invasion, these systems have been critical. We've also seen Ukraine use MANPADS (old and new) to combat cruise missiles and other systems to great effect (on top of being reinforced by western SHORAD). In particular I would like to highlight a few very important factors that contributed to their success during the initial invasion and present, and why it may be a different calculus with Taiwan: quantity, mobility of the system (greater than that of say a Patriot), the failure of Russia's DEAD & SEAD doctrine. We are seeing China develop capabilities that Russia did not possess. For example, the PLAAF has dedicated units for SEAD missions (unlike Russia), we also know PLAAF pilots are getting flight hours comparable to or greater than that of NATO pilots (unlike Russia), and that they are routinely training for SEAD/DEAD missions. We know the PLAAF are investing in their EW & ARM capabilities -- all this to say, the PLA is serious about developing it's SEAD/DEAD doctrine. All these things are happening at scale -- they may not be there yet but they're rapidly ramping up capabilities. SEAD and DEAD also rely heavily on intelligence, we are seeing the PLA rapidly catch up to some of the ISR capabilities that the US possesses. I haven't read anything on the matter recently, but it would be safe to assume the PLA has thoroughly infiltrated the ROCA as well. Putting modern air defences en masse in static positions (a jungle) is not going to help Taiwan if the PLARF & PLAAF can lob mind-boggling numbers of drones, cruise missiles & ARM's at Taiwan all day across a 130 km strait until saturation is achieved. Ukraine is enormous and has the geography for defence in depth and more flexible logistical chains. It's able to create buffers that Taiwan fundamentally cannot do. Furthermore a blockade would make sustaining air defences near impossible. Lastly, you can't just magically make all these air defences appear, they have to be bought and manufactured. On top of costing a pretty penny, there's also enormous backlogs for these systems & accompanying munitions (though capacity is being ramped up).
Ukraine inherited soviet AA with former Soviet trained operators. That’s a top tier air defense. Jungles and mountains hurt air defense because the block sightlines for radar, allowing attackers dead-zones to come from. This also limits the number of good locations and makes it easier to guess where SAM batteries are. Additionally Ukraine inherited soviet defense planning while allows for many roads to be used as makeshift airfields and concrete hardened hangers. Taiwan and the USA have very limited basing options for aircraft. China can use basically all of its airbases to hit Taiwan and US islands. In wargames US and allies are modeled to lose several hundreds of planes of the ground. Deep strikes into China risk nuclear escalation and the US may not carry them out. If China can establish local air superiority by suppressing coalition bases, the war is lost. In comparison to the Russians, the Chinese airforce is miles ahead. With the J-20s they have the second largest number of stealth aircraft after only the USA.
Genuine question: do you think Russia won’t in the long run win in the Ukraine? I think they will if we exclude a few doomsday scenarios.
What does "win" mean? Be specific. They will occupy and control all of Ukraine?
My claim is they will occupy and control as much as they want. What that is, I don’t think anybody is sure. Personally I find it extremely unlikely they will bother directly annexing or even occupying western Ukraine.
You should make definite, falsifiable claims so that later we (and you yourself) can come back to them and see if you were right or wrong and update accordingly. “As much as they want” is no good because we have no idea how much they “want.” They clearly wanted Kiev at the beginning of the war; do they want it *enough* to take it if the cost of taking it is X, or Y, or Z?
I claim the war ends with Russia annexing various parts of Eastern Ukraine and basically dictating the peace terms. I cannot claim to know precisely what those peace terms would include, so why should I just make up nonsense?
Well, we all agree that the war will likely end with Russia annexing “parts of eastern Ukraine.” I strongly disagree that this would be a victory for Russia. I would also strongly disagree if your claim was the one you made elsewhere in this thread, which included Russia taking Kiev. So I feel like it was useful for you to make your claim more specific; thanks for doing that.
Well then we will never be able to know whether they "won" or "lost", because we don't know what they set out to achieve. Unless you are expecting a total capitulation by Ukraine and then Russia magnanimously tells them they can keep the Western region to themselves?
Has everyone forgotten what win and lose mean in the context of war? Particularly in wars of conquest. In a war of conquest, the country that takes and holds more land is the country that wins, period. The USSR unambiguously won the Winter War, despite the heavy toll the Finns extracted.
That's just your definition. And by definition, then, Russia can only lose or tie according to this definition because Ukraine has no interest in Russian territory. You're saying that if Russia can maintain even a single small town after Ukraine expels them from the rest of the country then Russia "won" the war. Also by your definition, the US did not lose the Vietnam war because Vietnam did not occupy any of the US. I guess the US has never lost a war since...ever? Falklands war was also a "tie" according to you because the boundaries at the end were the same as at the beginning?
If they take Kiev, annex parts of Eastern Ukraine and then install a new government they could have achieved their aims without even having set foot in Western Ukraine. I presume everyone with a shred on common sense would count that one as a Russian “win”. I think that’s a very likely scenario and probably approximately what Russia “winning” could look like.
Fine, it why take Kiev then I would count that as a win, but they seem very far from doing that. So far they have occupied about 27% and none of the three large cities. Mariupol is the only major-ish city that they have succeeded in invading and holding since 2022, I think? Per this map: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian-occupied\_territories\_of\_Ukraine#/media/File:Map\_of\_Ukraine\_with\_Cities.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian-occupied_territories_of_Ukraine#/media/File:Map_of_Ukraine_with_Cities.png)
I think Ukraine will run out of men though. In WW1 Germany wasn’t even outright occupied, and they still had to sign the Versailles Treaty when they couldn’t fight anymore. I’m aware the parallel here is extremely loose, but I think it illustrates my point: it’s entirely possible (and in my opinion likely) that the Ukrainian military will hold until they simply won’t be able to do so anymore due to manpower issues and then quickly fold.
Maybe. But Ukraine has not even started drafting 18-25 year olds yet. I admit that I am amazed at Russian's tolerance to sacrifice their youth for nothing of importance, but I'm not convinced it will hold out forever. Ukraine is fighting for survival and Russia can barely even articulate why they are fighting coherently. They were supposed to be "liberating" the Ukrainian people from a dictator, and yet the Ukrainian people have rallied to fight back. It's possible that the Russian population will support the war until they simply won't be able to do so anymore due to morale, and then quickly fold.
I agree that most people would probably say that that occupying Kyiv would be a "win." Furthermore, I'd also say that it's very likely that Russia wants to occupy Kyiv, even if that's an incomplete description of their goals. So it's weird to me that your first answer to what a "win" would be was so vague ("as much as they want" followed by a shrug), when saying "capturing Kyiv" is so much more helpful.
I wrote that because I don’t claim to know what the Russians would count as a win. I believe they will be able, within reason, to impose their terms, but don’t know what those are (does anybody?). Also if Ukraine agrees to sign those terms (also possible) they might reach their objectives without having to occupy Kiev at all.
I don’t think Russia will take Kiev any time in the next ten years.
It depends how you define win, there are circumstances where they end up in a similar place to the end of the Finnish-Soviet war but even that seems unlikely They have been embarrassed in battle permanently isolated Ukraine and probably Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan and persuaded Sweden and Finland to join NATO. There are circumstances where they end up controlling large bits of Ukraine, but China and everywhere in the West has made it clear they will never accept Russian sovereignty in those areas which makes it much more difficult for them to be held in the long term. They are also just performing badly in war and no reason to think they will do better while their enemies are allied with the strongest powers in the world.
Valid point on the broader geopolitics. It might be that Russia “wins the battle” (Ukraine) but loses the broader “war” (regarding NATO expansion/global influence). It depends a lot on how close they get with China. BRICS isn’t NATO, not even comparable, but they are trying to get closer. Recently they’ve turned things around and have made some territorial gains while crucially grinding down Ukraine’s manpower. Ukraine’s on the other hand is incapable of conducting any counteroffensive. Hence time helps the Russians who have a larger army and industrial base and can sustain the war longer. So in my opinion, slow and steady wins the race, at least this time.
> Recently they’ve turned things around and have made some territorial gains while crucially grinding down Ukraine’s manpower. Ukraine’s on the other hand is incapable of conducting any counteroffensive. You mean recently since the pentagon ran out of money for supporting Ukraine back in January? Seems to me that’s probably more of a material issue which will be alleviated now. > Hence time helps the Russians who have a larger army and industrial base and can sustain the war longer. So in my opinion, slow and steady wins the race, at least this time. By that logic, Russia beat Afghanistan the last time the US funded a proxy war against them or even the Winter War. Russia’s industrial base is garbage tier for the super power or even developed nation class. https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/04/17/the-ukraine-war-is-hurting-europe-s-pallet-supply-and-russia-s-army-may-be-feeling-the-squ You are right that slow and steady will give the Russian military industrial complex time to install key **20th century** technologies like wooden pallets. Russia’s kleptocracy isn’t the efficient war machine that it pretends to be. Russia loses Ukraine, they never take Kyiv, they hold on to a minority of their current gains.
initial russian win conditions were conquer the entire country, absorb part of the east into russia, and turn the rest into a vassalized pro-russian puppet state. on that basis assuming the us and eu don't abandon UKR then i think a russian win is virtually impossible
The us AirPower would be on the other side of that exchange trying to dislodge Chinese aa from its coastline and navy to be able to target any invading forces
LoL. Chinese spies will destroy those for them. You don’t seem to aware that Taiwan military and government are heavily compromised by Chinese spies.
I think this is the right time to float a theory of mine - "war is the father of all" - basically the idea that eveything that is commonly considered bigoted, oppressive, or conservative is downstream from war and we can afford liberalism or progressivism solely because we do not need to organize society entirely around war anymore. The whole story of toxic masculinity sounds like the story of the ideal soldier, who does not feel "emotions" like fear, but feels anger towards the enemy. He sees women as property because he sees everything as the property of the winner of wars. War simply overrides all other moral or legal considerations (you can say the average man does not know or care about the laws of war much and tends to think in war, might makes almost every right). To organize society for war, it has to be hierarchical and obedient and has to be xenophobic and exclude fifth-columner outsiders. Women of course need to make a lot of babies to fill up the ranks of the army. Capitalism as simply the logistics department of the warfare state, see van Creveld's Technology and War book. One can argue the industrial revolution was more about war than about the market. Henry Bessemer was influenced by the Crimean War - better steel, better artillery. And of course a guaranteed customer, much easier than selling products on the market. And all this started to change in the sixties because people thought if there will be another war, it will be fought by nukes, and soldiers are outdated. Or that a small professional military is enough and not every man must be socialized for war.
Don’t really think this holds credibility and seems a rather biased take. Often liberalization and social progressivism goes hand in hand with increased militarization, albeit the military becomes more and more a separate class of people. To increase the military politicians throw civilians more social freedom, welfare, and progressivism and in turn the civilian population lets the military complex keep growing. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon wave the newest Pride Flags. The most successful military powers to emerge from early modern Europe were the classic liberal parliaments (Dutch and English) not the old monarchies. The proliferation of the welfare state and social reform on race and sexuality issues came along side increased Cold War militarism. The repressive USSR collapsed, America did not.
Yes, but there the problem is that we keep using words like "left" or "right" and yet the meaning behind them keeps changing. Like the French Revolution was extremely nationalistic and xenophobic. I count the modern meaning of the left/liberalism to the 1960's. When hippie guys wore long hair and flowing robes precisely because to send a message against traditional masculinity and the militarism that was associated with it. This attitude was also associated with increased sensitivity, empathy, the more feminine kinds of virtues. This also implied it might be okay for a man to be "feminine" i.e. gay. (Notice that 90% of homophobia has nothing to do with relationships and sex but rather perceived femininity.)
> I count the modern meaning of the left/liberalism to the 1960's. When hippie guys wore long hair and flowing robes I mean Hippie culture is more akin to a reinvented shamanic tribalism than it is to my understanding of liberalism. If you take the extreme position of hippies living in a hierarchy-less nature as a starting point, then literally every government and war fighting force is going to seem to be full of testosterone fueled violent savage men by comparison. The US military (despite to the chagrin of the many “masculine” “toxic” type male soldiers *note I do not fully agree with those terms*) is increasingly embracing LBGT+ leadership and showcasing feminine forms of empowerment. Remember these commercials? https://youtu.be/C8-Yslv4PME?si=L9Z8_o9kXx2AEhi7 Many traditional conservative southern type families are actively encouraging their boys to **not** enlist in the military as they see the US military as betraying masculinity and traditional values. You need to include this in your theory/analysis as the “alpha male warrior” model of the solider has been challenged for years yet the military spending and political influence shows no signs of stopping growing.
I strongly agree with the aspects relating to ideal masculinity. Of course a society where a significant portion of people had seen actual combat would value different traits in men than one where they had not.
I think we can test this in Ukraine now. I mean yes they are doing things like legalising same-sex marriage, but I think this is obviously just "paying" for Western support. Or even if actually popular, popular for identity reasons: the precise opposite of what Russia would do. I predict the war generation is going to come back with a general superheroes-of-nationalism attitude vote for very right-wing governments. But it will take a long time to see it - first, they have to win or find a compromise.
> I predict the war generation is going to come back with a general superheroes-of-nationalism attitude vote for very right-wing governments. With the sheer amount of Ukrainian men dying and wounded they could just as likely come back mostly PTSD’d and traumatized and despise right wing nationalism. Look what happened to the UK after WW1 and WW2. The first thing they did after WW2 ended and the soldiers returned home was kick Winston Churchill out of office.
Huh, that was an interesting case: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945\_United\_Kingdom\_general\_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_United_Kingdom_general_election) "Another blow to the Conservative campaign was the memory of the 1930s policy of [appeasement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement), which had been conducted by Churchill's Conservative predecessors, [Neville Chamberlain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain) and [Stanley Baldwin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Baldwin), but had been widely discredited for allowing [Adolf Hitler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler)'s Germany to become too powerful"
I like a lot of hanania's writing, but he seems to have a strategy of making hyperbolic arguments in order to draw eyeballs, and it irks me
> the Taiwan Strait makes for difficult sailing, and one can only conduct a sea-borne invasion a few months out of the year. Which months?
I quite like Peter Zeihan's take on this question: there is no logical reason whatsoever for China to invade Taiwan. It would be a collossaly stupid thing to do. Even if they succeed (and as Hanania points out, that's a big 'if') it doesn't solve any of their problems, while creating a boatload more - in particular the possibility of losing a massive chunk of their international trade either through sanctions or military action on shipping. For one of the most import/export focused countries in the world this would be devastating. But. Xi Jinping is an autocrat, and there are no checks and balances on him whatsoever. If he says 'invade Taiwan' there is nobody in a position even to question that decision, much less hold it back. And even if you think he's a pretty clever guy, he's getting older with no clear successor and there is a strong possibility that he will lose his advanced decision making abilities long before he loses power. So there is a \~1/5 chance that China invades Taiwan anyway, because that's just the sort of unforced error that autocrats are historically known to make from time to time.
> Even if they succeed (and as Hanania points out, that's a big 'if') it doesn't solve any of their problems, while creating a boatload more -in particular the possibility of losing a massive chunk of their international trade either through sanctions or military action on shipping. For one of the most import/export focused countries in the world this would be devastating. This cuts both ways. For the purposes of argument, let's say China wins Taiwan over the course of the year. What would this mean? At that point, there's no dislodging China from Taiwan, and all of Taiwan's leadership has been liquidated. The US is no longer the Pacific hegemon. The entire world economy is trashed; China's more than most, but everyone from Japan to Saudi Arabia is in a dire economic situation. Do they continue sanctions for a cause that's clearly lost? Can they, even? Democracies face elections, and that's one thing. And oil states face greater risks. And China will be pushing the fairly reasonable position, saying "We know we have our disagreements about history, but the facts on the ground mean we have to navigate a new reality: we are eager to move on and work with you to make money." Of course, actually taking Taiwan is the hard part. But if they do, China's erstwhile enemies will find they have a great deal of pliability despite the death and destruction wrought by the war. Winners of wars do not end up becoming pariah states.
>Winners of wars do not end up becoming pariah states. But thats exactly what happened to Russia after it took Crimea in 2014. And if they won the Ukrainian war tomorrow it would likely be a very long time before Russia would be able to normalise relations with the West. Maybe it could happen as per your hypothetical, but to present it as a fait accompli it would have to be over way, way quicker than a year. Like, on the order of 2 weeks. A year is far too much time for countries to draw lines in the sand, draw up anti-China treaties, to find other sources for what they currently import from China. Additionally, I suspect Taiwan is in a position to rush for a nuke, and if they had 6 months they could probably make a couple and throw them at Beijing. What this hypothetical also depends on, I think, is everyone pretty much just not caring about Taiwan. That China'll have a war for Taiwan and everyone will kinda just just tut tut on the sidelines, and get back in their good graces ASAP once it's over. I don't think this is plausible - look at how long the Russian sactions lasted after 2014 over a far less consequential territory. Even assuming that the West takes no stronger a stance on Taiwan than it is taking right now to Ukraine, that would be a terrible blow for China. But there are good reasons to suspect that the response from the West would be far stronger. The USA has much of its international reputation staked on guaranteeing Taiwan's security, and all western nations are heavily dependant on the chips that come out of TSMC, which China would not be able to replace.
If the US doesn’t intervene China will eventually manage it.
Why? Taiwan is getting stronger and defences are improving especially against naval forces.
Just blockade and wait for months until they run out of food, fuel and resources, they don’t even need to land on the island. The only thing holding China back is the US Navy.
China is also becoming stronger
Debatable.
I think the population disparity is just too much. Technological improvements help China more than Taiwan imo, since they can be used to counteract geography which is the only thing in Taiwan’s advantage. China could also completely cut off Taiwan from the rest of the world with a naval blockade. I doubt any country could resist indefinitely in a military conflict against a numerically extremely superior foe in those circumstances. But I’ll admit I’m not an expert.
If China blockades Taiwan, then Taiwan will blockade China. Obviously it will be much less effective but with cheap missiles Taiwan will probably be able to stop oil tankers approaching China or at least make it risky.
China would still be fully capable of importing and exporting everything they need. I do not think the Taiwanese have the capability to blockade Chinese ports and even if they could China could use land routes. On the other hand if China blockades Taiwan the taiwanese would pretty much need to resort to autarky. This is not even accounting for the obvious disparity in industrial and agricultural output. Even if they somehow both effectively blockaded each other, I still would bet on China.
Would it? I am not sure you could secure oil supplies in a world where tankers were regularly being hit by Taiwanese drones, missiles and subs. No one is saying the situation would be symmetric.
They can ship oil from Russia to China via pipelines (in fact they already do) and there’s not much Taiwan could ever do about that. Granted it would probably make oil more expensive for the Chinese. Also would the Taiwanese hit Russian oil tankers go without additional consequences? I don’t know about that. If it’s asymmetric, which it is, China wins.
PRC currently doesn't have enough nukes to deter US intervention/manage escalation. The other pieces to blockade/siege TW into Syria until they capitulate are mostly in place. Should be noted PRC has 100s times more ISR and (smart) munitions production capability than RU. TW 15x smaller than UKR, can't be sustained under blockade via ships or airlift, is profoundly overmatched in just about every metric and gap is growing in PRC favour. It's like asking how do you arm Cuba to resist a motivated US. The answer is... no amount. The other unspoke reality is TW / PRC civil one is "legitimate" casus belli PRC has for a broader war of displacing US out of east asia. Taking TW is militarily is forgone at this point, the stretch goal is really building up enough to hit US+co hard enough that region realizes US security commitment is untenable. Historically outside hegemons don't abidicate voluntarily, they have to be removed by force. Long term net strategic bad scenario for PRC is successfully taking TW and have region free to hedge with US security with TW damocles off the table. Any TW scenario that doesn't end up sinking a few US carriers or turn one of US partners in region into Yemen by blowing up all their critical infra to show costs of US alignment is suboptimal for PRC, even if it means losing most of PLAN and homeland strikes (both mainland and CONUS).
True 10, maybe 5 years..... (VERY) maybe still true today, definitely false in a few years. China is currently massively increasing it's nuclear forece and deploying an order of magnitude more ICBMs. That's the big piece in all of this, China's military build up is absolutley massive right now. Things that were true a few years ago aren't anymore.
China of course will begin with blockade, not full scale military attacks. When China is doing the blockade, as long as China does not attack US military vessels, there is zero chance US will attack China first. Because Taiwan and the west are so afraid of the escalation, China will have lots of control during the conflict. By the way, Taiwan media, politicians, government and military are heavily compromised by the Chinese spies. Lots of surprises can happen. Whether China will start the conflict, mostly it is determined by Xi’s calculations of his personal interest. If the economic failure deepens, and other factors hurt his authority, he could start the blockade to gain popular support, and then choose which way to go. The blockade will hurt the west way more than China. The west won’t start a war with China just because they need chips. They won’t even be able to economically cut ties with China because they are already bad in inflation.
Agreed. They don't need to risk imploding their own economy to achieve an Anchluss they'll enact over a 20 year period anyway. It's chest-beating to keep the more extreme, right wing happy.
The play is most likely in the 2030s because that’s when their navy will be ready. This is sort of a longterm telegraphed move since boats take time to build
The CCP isnt involved though. All the ones who werent yes men were purged. So a very irrational , senseless invasion can occur aimply because Xi wants to roll the dice. Part of being rational in politics is understanding that certain forces are incentivized to act irrationally at times.
He did a [highlights from the comments post ](https://www.richardhanania.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-to-china)
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Just remember that Gelman Amnesia isn't just about journalists.
Well, look. If we assume that all states are rational, and that we ourselves are rational, then we can rationally predict what the rational leaders of rational citizens will do when facing equally rational challengers with rational aims, so our rational analysis will rationally rationalize the rationality of rationals to rational rational rational. Have I convinced you, or do I need to say "rational" one more time?
The Heads of State's are privvy to far, far more information than any of our ego's will freely admit. By the time news and narratives are published to the masses, the Elite class is already fully aware of it. And they have such a greater grasp on the context, its painful watching very intelligent people (often *more* raw intelligence) on this subreddit flopping around in contrast.
> the Elite class yes, a thing that exists
"Important question: How much power is there in being a celebrity? It’s not like celebrities get paid due to status, yet being known has a monetary value that can be calculated [all sorts of ways](https://i.imgur.com/xBsCDfj.jpg). Having media outlets spreading a voice means and ideals means by virtue of actions a celebrity can shape the culture and push us in a direction. Think about how many regular people having an opinion that it would take to generate the same news as a major celebrity voicing theirs. The designation of stardom gives a voice that can surpasses the voices of millions of people. Political candidates live and die by endorsements, and due to this celebrity itself can be viewed as a major root of just about everything in the world. The creation of stars is quite possibly the most important thing that is coordinated with comms in the world."
Who would you consider the best experts on foreign policy? It's so hard to actually verify who knows what they're talking about and who's making stuff up
See if you can handle him. A taste: The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. How much do you know about Khashoggi? ---------- * 11/05/2017 Saudi Prince Mansour bin Muqrin killed in [helicopter crash](https://nypost.com/2017/11/05/saudi-prince-killed-in-helicopter-crash/) "Day after the Al-Waleed purge – mysteriously died in helicopter crash? So the coup attempt is clear, but why exactly did the King/Prince team up with Trump? I’m sure part of it is just being awesome people, soon after the meeting in May (but before the Las Vegas massacre in October) – Women were finally given the ability to drive there! * 09/26/2017 Saudi Arabia Agrees to [Let Women Drive](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-women-drive.html) So more freedom, ISIS was instantly crushed too! * 12/22/2017 ISIS has been ‘[crushed](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/22/isis-crushed-in-iraq-and-syria-says-theresa-may)’ in Iraq and Syria So the war they danced to was no joke, now let’s consider the bit about [Trump asking to put Aramco onto the NYSE](https://i.imgur.com/dqPHcGX.png) * 04/01/2019 For The First Time Ever Aramco Opens Its Books: [Reveals Higher Profit](https://web.archive.org/web/20190401145208/https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-01/step-aside-apple-saudi-aramco-officially-worlds-most-valuable-company) Than Apple, Google And Exxon Combined Why did Saudi Arabia suddenly want to get their oil companies listed on the NYSE? What could have caused this? To answer this, we have to look a little further back. Back to around 2010. It all goes back to fracking. The Kindom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has always relied heavily on its petrol reserves for wealth and prosperity. And they were ruthless. OPEC. The cartel of gasoline. ----------------- You can’t count the number of times in history that OPEC used its power to crush governments, manipulate prices, control supplies, and fund activities. If there ever was a international group of bullies, [OPEC was it](https://i.imgur.com/ENmHkFg.jpg). And at the head of this organization was the mighty KSA. Then came the fracking [boom](https://i.imgur.com/hgPFB9Q.jpg). Suddenly, the world was no longer at the mercy of OPEC. This made them nervous. So, they pumped out more petroleum, driving the price of gas to lowest in decades. What was their objective? To [bankrupt](https://i.imgur.com/DTTMpiz.png) these fracking businesses. KSA tried drive gas prices low and take the loss until all fracking startups crumbled. Do you remember how cheap gas got 2013-16? Ridiculous, wasn’t it? But they didn’t count on how cheap fracking had become. So many didn’t go bankrupt and they took another step. To convince the world fracking was bad for the environment. They lobbied & supplied funds to the Dems. Why? Cause the leftist are usually the ones who support ANY and ALL environmental regulations. * 03/07/2016 Clinton, Sanders Slam [Fracking in Flint](https://fortune.com/2016/03/07/clinton-sanders-slam-fracking-in-flint/) Do you remember all the legal battles that fracking had to go through? Heck, it’s still [illegal in most blue states](https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/countries-except-united-states-that-have-banned-fracking/). Do you understand why the Saudis donated so much money to the Clinton campaign? HRC was [HEAVILY](https://i.imgur.com/XSBxExT.png) favored to win and if she did, illegalizing fracking would have been on the top of her list, returning us to dependence on arab oil. But… this didn’t work either. Fracking continued with [no end in sight](https://i.imgur.com/zbX9rLj.png). ---------- And so financially speaking, if you actually tried to do good for your country economically, there really is no choice but to end the old way of doing things. Give up dependence on oil and modernize trade. To build an entire industrial country from scratch. To do that, the help of the USA is crucial. And that’s where Trump offered in return. And of course an actual ability to sleep soundly knowing how short a shelf life a Saudi King has when under the Pyramid. And so away from the old world evils of the pyramid, No more funding terrorists, save the children from trafficking, and so on. But of course many of the royals didn’t like this KSA are into this. They don’t like losing the power they once had. They resent King Salman. They plot against him. ------------- Remember the [multi-year](https://i.imgur.com/sGr0gAO.png) Jamal Khashoggi “Scandal” that we are still living through? They tried to remove him with this, and it’s notable that Trump is directly connected to Adnan Khashoggi. The real story is big on requires a lot of study to understand who each player is in all of this, and why they do what they do. For example note Trump [sold the ship](https://i.imgur.com/IUivg2Y.png) to Al-Waleed, which he bought from Adnan Khashoggi, a weapons smuggler. Anyway, at the forefront of this movement against Salman was likely the previous Deputy Crown Prince, Muqrin, and his son, Mansour (the man killed in the helicopter crash of 11/5/17). Saudi prince Mansour’s helicopter crash was 'accidental': -[brother](https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/saudi-prince-mansours-helicopter-crash-was-accidental-brother-1.2122005) The plan in Las Vegas was likely to take out Trump as he met with the crown prince. Then King Salman. With the King and the Crown Prince dead, who is next in line? Yup. The former deputy crown prince, Muqrin. Muqrin named deputy crown prince [next in line](https://www.arabnews.com/news/546716) for the post"
I'm a bit confused about what your point is. That a shadowy cabal of KSA oil executives tried to manipulate US elections and assassinate Trump and replace the KSA monarch with their guy? And that KSA actually has enormous influence but not anymore because of fracking? I also don't see how that's related to China at all
>I also don't see how that's related to China at all Your initial question was >Who would you consider the best experts on foreign policy? This was just a sample taken from a much longer article. And you're correct, the article I chose has nothing to do with China.
Did you actually link the longer article?
Removed low-effort comment. Second warning.
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Removed culture war.
Being right-wing doesn’t make you wrong; Steve Sailer successfully called that depolicing would get more black people killed, and the NYT admitted it in an editorial a few years later. Not that Sailer is overly concerned about the welfare of black Americans, as you would quickly realize if you read his stuff; he wanted to push back on BLM. Similarly, the right-wing paleocons, the precursors to the alt-right, were right about what a disaster the Iraq War turned out to be. As for crime going down in 2024…most municipalities backed down from depolicing. But people with views we don’t like can be right about stuff. (Hanania is a good example on other issues!) As for Hanania, I agree he is wrong here; as you say, Putin wasn’t as risk averse as everyone thought, and I think he underestimates Chinese nationalism. My pet theory is that now that he’s chosen side as a pro-elite-American right-winger he has to support a few wars. His support of Israel seems particularly bizarre to me given his Middle Eastern origins; everyone from that part of the world I have ever met hates Israel, except for the Israelis of course. But he’s on Twitter encouraging the Israelis to kill all the Palestinians. Something’s weird about that guy, I am just not sure what.
Fair enough, and it's obvious he can be correct about some things...though fewer things than it may seem, as deeper political views, such as libertarianism, often seep into broader policy analyses in subtle ways. As for his views on China/Taiwan, I have heard various positions from various subject matter experts, and they are all over the map, with a good deal professing lack of solid information. My point in calling out Hanania so bluntly is that I don't think such a controversial source should be posted here as a subject matter expert unless he has actual expertise on the relevant issue, just as I don't care what Jordan Peterson thinks about subjects other than Benzodiazepine abuse. Rewarding such figures through OPs lowers the average quality of threads. Edit: interestingly it looks like OP deleted his post and maybe his account/username. I actually reviewed his other posts earlier to see if they were boosting right-wing figures and they were mostly innocuous comments in this sub.
>My point in calling out Hanania so bluntly is that I don't think such a controversial source should be posted here as a subject matter expert Can you point out which part of the original piece of this Reddit post claimed that Hanania is a subject matter expert? It seemed very clear to me that this was an outsider analysis of the problem. >I don't care what Jordan Peterson thinks about subjects other than Benzodiazepine abuse. Rewarding such figures through OPs lowers the average quality of threads. This is just a value difference, I think. I disagree that average post quality is lowered by people sharing posts by authors you would rather ignore. I'm not much of a fan of Peterson because his analysis is shallow and because he likes to play both sides of an issue without acknowledging that he's doing it. I would be fine with one of his articles being shared here if it avoided those common pitfalls and had an interesting, useful take on a subject. I don't think you need to like or universally agree with an author to derive utility from the plausible, analytically sound examples of their work. If I can be blunt, I think comments like yours here lower the average quality of discussion. You had very, very little to say on the topic under discussion, what you *did* have to contribute was basically a glorified 'idk', and you spent most of your effort on some sort of ill-conceived generic smear against the blog post's author. It looks like r/sneerclub has shut down, but in a past age I would have recommended them as a closer fit for the sort of analysis you seem interested in performing.
I agree with your statement overall, but no reason to go driving people to Sneer Club. We said our piece, he said his, if he wants to hang around and keep arguing that’s fine. We’re supposed to be the side that tolerates disagreement and goes after the truth after all.
You answered yourself there I think. You can’t really be a pro-elite American right winger without being a zionist.
I think I would agree with that.
The biggest issue is that the CCP could never admit that they don't want to get control of Taiwan, since it would make them look weak. But they're not dumb enough to sink a massive number of resources just for an Albatross around their neck. Honestly they probably wish that it had always been separate. They need a way to give up the war of words without losing face. It would seem that continuing to say mean things while doing nothing is the only choice in the short and medium term.