Writing this from my office in the building next to the political HQ building for the DPP, a block away from the Legislative Yuan (ie Congress). I've been resident here for 14 years, and started teams in the PRC during the 2000s. Full-time software company founder of one of the more popular services in Taiwan (with direct gov't investment from the Taiwan National Development Fund), but part-timer at INDSR (https://indsr.org.tw/en/index) for Cyberdefense (where retiring SecDefs go when they get out of uniform). A few of us developers with white-hat skills have hosted cyber wargaming red-blue exercises with the Taiwan MND. Also, my little sis runs the engineering teams at HII that builds new carriers and does RCOH's. Bottom line: I actually have to maintain business continuity readiness specifically in the various PLA aggression scenarios.
A major internet attack with island-wide effects within the next 1 year: 50%
A major internet attack with island-wide effects within the next 3 years: 70%
A blockade attempt within the next 1 year: 40%
A blockade attempt within the next 3 years: 60%
100+ missiles land on Formosa proper within the next 1 year: 20%
100+ missiles land on Formosa proper within the next 3 years: 40%
The primary differences for my estimates for 1 vs 3 years:
- preparedness of the missile corps within the "Rocket Force" is not ready yet to sustain operations
- naval scale, particularly #subs, will not be large enough to sustain a 5000-6000 mile-long double perimeter on from north to east to southern Taiwan, along with a perimeter through the Bashi strait and up the west coast.
No one can know Xi's mind, only read the actions the PRC takes. If you saw the sorties and medium-scale practice blockading every few weeks/months with your own eyes, the reality of the preparation is more clear. Also, the volume of hacks against SOEs and gov't in Taiwan is already gigantic, at least an order of magnitude larger than the total organic internet traffic - but continuing to grow.
Agree with a lot of this, particularly the point around perceptions of the situation changing over time playing a key role - can see this in both outbreak of WW2 (US oil embargo on Japan leading them to take the view their situation would only get worse, better war now than war later) and WW1 (any chance of German success required mobilising first and knocking France out before Russia had time to fully mobilise and commit to the war). Both of which were key in starting the war and weren’t really understood by the other side.
However having lived in HK and spent a fair amount of time in China, I wouldn’t underestimate the genuine strength of feeling amount ordinary Chinese people over Taiwan. Remember being in a meeting where a colleague giving a presentation used a map of China that didn’t include Taiwan. The reaction in the room felt similar to someone using a racial slur in the west, with the colleague being torn a new one by our otherwise unfailing polite hosts.
Would say there does seem a lack of will among Taiwanese to fight and die for independence. They only recently increased their military service from four months to one year. Spend only 2.6% of GDP on their military and their military focus doesn’t really seem to be on belligerently defending themselves from China. E.g. mining the living daylights out of all the bridges, tunnels, roads, factories and sea routes, filling in the beaches to make them unusable, tons of anti-ship missiles, a bunch of subs, underground bases at the bottom of mountains, every male keeping a rifle at home, massive stockpiles of kit, missiles, ammo and food, planned guérilla campaign against occupying force. Instead them seem to purchase just generic military stuff (ships, tanks, planes etc) most of which would be completely pointless were China to invade. The general vibe seems to be let the Americans do it all (to be fair given their American backing and China’s lack of development they weren’t under much threat until the last ten years or so) in contrast countries under far less threat of invasion take things far more seriously (e.g Korea, Finland, Switzerland, Singapore).
Do also think it is hard to see a conflict with Taiwan not involving the US directly, unless the US essentially ceeds Taiwan, given the balance of forces. You can argue this makes conflict less likely as China would maybe be unwilling to risk it, but does increase the chances of escalation if it does. It would also be very tempting for China to launch a first strike on US bases in the pacific (and US satellites as they come over the horizon) as the US would take a fair amount of time to get more kit over there, wouldn’t be able to launch cross strait invasion with US planes running sorties and US pretty likely to enter the war anyway.
Agree blockade perhaps more likely than full invasion, but again hard not to see it escalating. US can essentially either run the blockade, blockade some Chinese ships or do some sanctions etc. Running the blockade seems likely to escalate to war, blockading Chinese ships (e.g. in the straits) also likely to lead to war and sanctions unlikely to get China to back down (although could be costly). Would question (and think China does too) whether the American public is genuinely willing to accept the costs of defending Taiwan (thousands of casualties just in the outbreak of hostilities, massive economic disruption) and whether if it came down to it an American president would essentially fold.
Hard to see who would win in a conflict. China has benefits of being close by, more willing to absorb loses, better at marshalling whole of society, amazing manufacturing capacity. But very vulnerable as essentially island nation, massive importer of energy and raw materials, physical exports generate all their cash. US has pretty safe homeland, better kit (although it would struggle to replenish it) and network of allies.
For me the two key areas are essentially how the militaries work and which side allies and international community land on. In theory America has advantaged of established and experienced military, but generally the history of war has been new technology enables completely new strategies, military vociferously resists them, eventually one country implements them and goes around whomping everyone until they copy it. E.g. Napoleon (simple guns enable mass infantry, tons of canon which has got way better and not putting thick aristos in charge) Prussia (great long range rifles remove need for canon, push decision making to bottom of chain) WW2 (tanks and lorries mean can punch through faster than opponents can react, aircraft carriers and subs rinse battleships). In pretty much every situation their opponents had the same technologies but refused to either widely adopt it or change the way in which their militaries were organised and operated around it. You can argue that the German military being decreased to almost nothing by the treaty of Versailles and then rebuilt was the reason why they adapted and rebuilt around new technology, whilst the vested interests in the allied forces (and the intoxication of past success) prevented them doing the same.
Don’t really understand militaries but the US seems clearly stuck in a WW2 paradigm, aircraft carriers, ships and tanks which seem to be sitting ducks against a peer competitor, artillery which seems pointless if you have enough missiles, incredibly resistant to adopting drones, ridiculously long procurement cycles etc. Don’t really know enough about China’s military but their failure in Vietnam, seeing desert storm and the massive recent increase in funding would perhaps suggest they might be a bit more adaptable. They do seem to have gone for a ton of missiles and drones which suggests they are probably adapting a bit more than the US.*
The other key one is which way the allies will swing. Hard to know without the exact circumstances of the outbreak of the war, but likely Japan, Australia and Korea to be pretty committed. Does make China’s belligerence towards its neighbours a bit confusing though, given if you were planning to take Taiwan you’d think your top foreign policy objective would be pushing neighbours towards your camp and trying to limit the commitment of the ones in the US’s camp. In contrast a bunch of random islands and natural resources they are beefing with some of their neighbours over seems pretty pointless. But you could also argue that the US’s lack of commitment to Ukraine also seems pretty irrational from this perspective, as backing America to the hilt only for it to lose interest is the worst nightmare of Japan, Korea etc.
*If you asked me to guess current paradigm is everything is visible and anything can be hit with a missile. Basically you only have two categories of thing, either a sensor (planes, satellites, drones, a single or small group of soldiers, even civilians covertly working for you) or a missile (guess includes drones and artillery). A ship is essentially a disposable holder of missiles (with a tiny crew or none at all) or a very small aircraft carrier (e.g. with five planes (probably unmanned) for sensors. Everything needs to be dispersed and everything needs to be disposable. Subs are good though as seem to be the one thing that aren’t always visible and aren’t easily hit by a missile. Pack them full of missiles. Generally this paradigm would suggest the defenders have an advantage as attacking requires concentrating forces (and manoeuvring them) which makes them very vulnerable. Launching a cross strait invasion with a ton of very vulnerable transport vessels would seem very risky, given ships are so hard to hide.
Also no one seems to be using the ton of information, facial recognition and targeting abilities to really mess with the incentives of the other side. In normal life the whole of society functions through a complicated web of incentives but militaries don’t seem to be using this at all. For instance could publish the list of individual enemy soldiers to be priority targeted (e.g. loitering drones or missiles go for them first) in advance. Can imagine the impact of names being published and then half of those on the list not coming back after a few days. If they wanted to be really smart they would say this is based on how hard that individual or unit is fighting or how much initiative it is showing beyond following orders (which an algorithm could probably have a fairly good crack at using satellite and sensor data). Imagine being a squad and seeing you are scoring in the 60-90th percentile for initiative and aggressiveness, and that those in the 90-99th have had a 70% casualty rate over the last month (and knowing that to be true from previous times they have posted this information). You could even extend this to targeting families (a war crime but doesn’t mean neither side would do it). Imagine hearing that the first unit to take some objective will see half their family members killed (and knowing it to be true from seeing it happen to other units). Or mid ranking officers getting a message that either they delay sending out an order slightly or make some sort of easily explainable accident or their families will be killed. Or a worker in an armament factory. You could wreck the moral and fighting ability of a military. The only defence is to completely prevent information from the outside coming in (difficult if your enemy is creative), stopping the enemy from gathering this sort of information (seems difficult) or being able to prevent the enemy from being able to kill a decent number of specific civilians (seems hard against a peer competitor assuming you can’t stop most the missiles).
I think a lot of the perception of China in the US- particularly on the populist right- is driven by people projecting their anxiety onto the ambiguous snippets of Chinese life/culture that travel make their way into American discourse. The reality is that they’re observing a very different culture through and American lens and failing to recognize the context.
America, of all developed nations, probably has the strongest remnants of what can be described as an honor culture/warrior ethos. Our most popular sport is football, where playing through injury is still celebrated and downplaying the extent of physical pain is the expectation. Contrast this with European soccer, where players exaggerate their injuries all the time as a strategy for drawing cards. I think this is part of the reason soccer never fully caught on in America, the culture of the game just doesn’t match the American ethos. The NBA used to be more like the NFL, and it’s no surprised the influx of euros has lead to a change in the culture towards more flopping etc.
I say this because for all the talk of soy boys and wokeness, the US still has a fairly masculine culture, esp on the right. So when they see developments in China such as them limiting video game use or investing in physical fitness for boys, they assume China is coming from the same starting point. But from what I can gather, China’s culture doesn’t have the emphasis on traditional masculine virtues like physical strength, competitiveness, and dominance baked into it like the US does. This was validated through conversations with Chinese coworkers recently. So when China limits video game time, it’s not because they caught their hyper masculine young men slipping a little bit when they need to be hardened for war. It’s because they’re having trouble cultivating any masculine virtues in men at all.
I say this tongue in cheek, but I always joke that there’s no way China would be a threat in a war when they are a country of 1.4 billion people yet have only had 3 boxing world champions. Japan is a tenth the size, I imagine similar genetically, and has had 50+ world champs. China sinks billions of dollars into developing their soccer program, and can’t get a single player in the top European leagues, let alone a World Cup spot. Japan just beat Germany in the World Cup.
Obviously war is a completely different animal and I’m doing “bro social science”. But the point is that China has a culture that, for whatever reason, can’t produce great athletes. Even in combat sports where there are weight classes, their all time greatest fighter is a woman. It seems like men in their culture just share a different mindset from their western counterparts, and I do believe that political strategy in the country is downstream from that on some level.
Richard touches on the window of opportunity with specific reference to China vs. Taiwan, but an equally important question is whether China thinks there is a window of opportunity in its position relative to *the US*.
I used to think China was going to keep getting stronger than the US for a long time, and some people still believe this (including, perhaps, most people in China), but now I doubt it. Despite my misgivings about where this country is headed, I think it will still mostly function and remain in the technological and economic lead, with a growing population that is mostly put to productive use even if its average human capital is declining. While China's population is now shrinking and aging rapidly and its economy has stagnated. Which implies that the window to beat the US in a naval war may be closing.
The idea of a closing window of opportunity driving desperate actions is an important one to understand. It's ultimately what caused both world wars: Russia and the US were both getting stronger faster than Germany.
But on the side of China not acting: one important difference with the Taiwan affair is that Taiwan, being so small, ultimately isn't that important materially. Despite an outsized role in semiconductor supply chains at this specific moment, Taiwan's main importance is symbolic and spiritual. In percentage terms, it's much less materially valuable to China than Austria and the Sudetenland were to the Third Reich, let alone the potential upside of dominating all of continental Europe. It's also much less important than Ukraine is to Russia.
Unlike Germany, whose future status relative to Russia was uncertain in the early 20th century and to some degree remains uncertain even today, China is going to be the dominant power in its neighborhood for the foreseeable future, regardless of what happens.
My Mainland friend has a related hypothesis--the Party cherishes Taiwan as a source of national unity, historical narrative and patriotic mission. Why risk all that for a highly uncertain outcome?
If Putin were head of the PRC, there would already be loads of "little green men" on the smaller ROC island agitating for reunification. Some of the small islands are nearly swimming distance from the mainland. I'd imagine if China were serious about invading Taiwan in the next 5 years, we'd be hearing about paramilitary activity on the small islands today.
"Western civilization taking a stronger stand against its enemies is likely to make for healthier societies at home and abroad."
Our society at home isn't healthy at all. What are you on about? What evidence of this do you have. Things get worse and worse every year and the we're at 130% debt to GDP. By 2028 debt is projected to be ~74 trillion.
"The liberal democratic system is worth defending, which means it is good to support Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel"
Why is the LDS worth defending? Seems pretty shit to me. I'm robbed every day so politicians can buy votes from people who hate me. Gay centrists need to actually create a society worth defending before asking White men to defend it.
"The mistake of realists and small-minded MAGA types is in assuming that morality can or should be separated from considerations of power politics."
Nobody ever said this. In fact, I would say that the liberal is the one who says you shouldn't legislate morality, e.g. abortion. It's just not moral to steal our money to give to causes that have nothing to do with us while our own society collapses. My enemy is in DC not Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, or PC.
You're overestimating Taiwan's capabilities. The country is far from being "armed to the teeth," and its military is quite trash actually. I recommend following Paul Huang on Twitter to get an idea of what I'm talking about. In the opening hours of the war, China would knock out all of Taiwan's airfields in addition to its puny navy, leaving their massive fleet free to approach the island largely unmolested.
Framing the conflict from China’s point of view is important: China does not see taking Taiwan as an invasion in the way that most foreigners do. It is more like a civil war. And China has had some very bloody civil wars to bring the country under rule by one leader or another. It doesn’t shy away from civil war.
There is simply no way the US will go to war and spill the blood of our young people to prevent the ultimate and inevitable reunification of China and Taiwan. We would only support the Taiwanese in the same way as Ukraine. Any president who attempted to do otherwise would be impeached.
Bona fides for Taiwan v PRC:
Writing this from my office in the building next to the political HQ building for the DPP, a block away from the Legislative Yuan (ie Congress). I've been resident here for 14 years, and started teams in the PRC during the 2000s. Full-time software company founder of one of the more popular services in Taiwan (with direct gov't investment from the Taiwan National Development Fund), but part-timer at INDSR (https://indsr.org.tw/en/index) for Cyberdefense (where retiring SecDefs go when they get out of uniform). A few of us developers with white-hat skills have hosted cyber wargaming red-blue exercises with the Taiwan MND. Also, my little sis runs the engineering teams at HII that builds new carriers and does RCOH's. Bottom line: I actually have to maintain business continuity readiness specifically in the various PLA aggression scenarios.
A major internet attack with island-wide effects within the next 1 year: 50%
A major internet attack with island-wide effects within the next 3 years: 70%
A blockade attempt within the next 1 year: 40%
A blockade attempt within the next 3 years: 60%
100+ missiles land on Formosa proper within the next 1 year: 20%
100+ missiles land on Formosa proper within the next 3 years: 40%
The primary differences for my estimates for 1 vs 3 years:
- preparedness of the missile corps within the "Rocket Force" is not ready yet to sustain operations
- naval scale, particularly #subs, will not be large enough to sustain a 5000-6000 mile-long double perimeter on from north to east to southern Taiwan, along with a perimeter through the Bashi strait and up the west coast.
No one can know Xi's mind, only read the actions the PRC takes. If you saw the sorties and medium-scale practice blockading every few weeks/months with your own eyes, the reality of the preparation is more clear. Also, the volume of hacks against SOEs and gov't in Taiwan is already gigantic, at least an order of magnitude larger than the total organic internet traffic - but continuing to grow.
Agree with a lot of this, particularly the point around perceptions of the situation changing over time playing a key role - can see this in both outbreak of WW2 (US oil embargo on Japan leading them to take the view their situation would only get worse, better war now than war later) and WW1 (any chance of German success required mobilising first and knocking France out before Russia had time to fully mobilise and commit to the war). Both of which were key in starting the war and weren’t really understood by the other side.
However having lived in HK and spent a fair amount of time in China, I wouldn’t underestimate the genuine strength of feeling amount ordinary Chinese people over Taiwan. Remember being in a meeting where a colleague giving a presentation used a map of China that didn’t include Taiwan. The reaction in the room felt similar to someone using a racial slur in the west, with the colleague being torn a new one by our otherwise unfailing polite hosts.
Would say there does seem a lack of will among Taiwanese to fight and die for independence. They only recently increased their military service from four months to one year. Spend only 2.6% of GDP on their military and their military focus doesn’t really seem to be on belligerently defending themselves from China. E.g. mining the living daylights out of all the bridges, tunnels, roads, factories and sea routes, filling in the beaches to make them unusable, tons of anti-ship missiles, a bunch of subs, underground bases at the bottom of mountains, every male keeping a rifle at home, massive stockpiles of kit, missiles, ammo and food, planned guérilla campaign against occupying force. Instead them seem to purchase just generic military stuff (ships, tanks, planes etc) most of which would be completely pointless were China to invade. The general vibe seems to be let the Americans do it all (to be fair given their American backing and China’s lack of development they weren’t under much threat until the last ten years or so) in contrast countries under far less threat of invasion take things far more seriously (e.g Korea, Finland, Switzerland, Singapore).
Do also think it is hard to see a conflict with Taiwan not involving the US directly, unless the US essentially ceeds Taiwan, given the balance of forces. You can argue this makes conflict less likely as China would maybe be unwilling to risk it, but does increase the chances of escalation if it does. It would also be very tempting for China to launch a first strike on US bases in the pacific (and US satellites as they come over the horizon) as the US would take a fair amount of time to get more kit over there, wouldn’t be able to launch cross strait invasion with US planes running sorties and US pretty likely to enter the war anyway.
Agree blockade perhaps more likely than full invasion, but again hard not to see it escalating. US can essentially either run the blockade, blockade some Chinese ships or do some sanctions etc. Running the blockade seems likely to escalate to war, blockading Chinese ships (e.g. in the straits) also likely to lead to war and sanctions unlikely to get China to back down (although could be costly). Would question (and think China does too) whether the American public is genuinely willing to accept the costs of defending Taiwan (thousands of casualties just in the outbreak of hostilities, massive economic disruption) and whether if it came down to it an American president would essentially fold.
Hard to see who would win in a conflict. China has benefits of being close by, more willing to absorb loses, better at marshalling whole of society, amazing manufacturing capacity. But very vulnerable as essentially island nation, massive importer of energy and raw materials, physical exports generate all their cash. US has pretty safe homeland, better kit (although it would struggle to replenish it) and network of allies.
For me the two key areas are essentially how the militaries work and which side allies and international community land on. In theory America has advantaged of established and experienced military, but generally the history of war has been new technology enables completely new strategies, military vociferously resists them, eventually one country implements them and goes around whomping everyone until they copy it. E.g. Napoleon (simple guns enable mass infantry, tons of canon which has got way better and not putting thick aristos in charge) Prussia (great long range rifles remove need for canon, push decision making to bottom of chain) WW2 (tanks and lorries mean can punch through faster than opponents can react, aircraft carriers and subs rinse battleships). In pretty much every situation their opponents had the same technologies but refused to either widely adopt it or change the way in which their militaries were organised and operated around it. You can argue that the German military being decreased to almost nothing by the treaty of Versailles and then rebuilt was the reason why they adapted and rebuilt around new technology, whilst the vested interests in the allied forces (and the intoxication of past success) prevented them doing the same.
Don’t really understand militaries but the US seems clearly stuck in a WW2 paradigm, aircraft carriers, ships and tanks which seem to be sitting ducks against a peer competitor, artillery which seems pointless if you have enough missiles, incredibly resistant to adopting drones, ridiculously long procurement cycles etc. Don’t really know enough about China’s military but their failure in Vietnam, seeing desert storm and the massive recent increase in funding would perhaps suggest they might be a bit more adaptable. They do seem to have gone for a ton of missiles and drones which suggests they are probably adapting a bit more than the US.*
The other key one is which way the allies will swing. Hard to know without the exact circumstances of the outbreak of the war, but likely Japan, Australia and Korea to be pretty committed. Does make China’s belligerence towards its neighbours a bit confusing though, given if you were planning to take Taiwan you’d think your top foreign policy objective would be pushing neighbours towards your camp and trying to limit the commitment of the ones in the US’s camp. In contrast a bunch of random islands and natural resources they are beefing with some of their neighbours over seems pretty pointless. But you could also argue that the US’s lack of commitment to Ukraine also seems pretty irrational from this perspective, as backing America to the hilt only for it to lose interest is the worst nightmare of Japan, Korea etc.
*If you asked me to guess current paradigm is everything is visible and anything can be hit with a missile. Basically you only have two categories of thing, either a sensor (planes, satellites, drones, a single or small group of soldiers, even civilians covertly working for you) or a missile (guess includes drones and artillery). A ship is essentially a disposable holder of missiles (with a tiny crew or none at all) or a very small aircraft carrier (e.g. with five planes (probably unmanned) for sensors. Everything needs to be dispersed and everything needs to be disposable. Subs are good though as seem to be the one thing that aren’t always visible and aren’t easily hit by a missile. Pack them full of missiles. Generally this paradigm would suggest the defenders have an advantage as attacking requires concentrating forces (and manoeuvring them) which makes them very vulnerable. Launching a cross strait invasion with a ton of very vulnerable transport vessels would seem very risky, given ships are so hard to hide.
Also no one seems to be using the ton of information, facial recognition and targeting abilities to really mess with the incentives of the other side. In normal life the whole of society functions through a complicated web of incentives but militaries don’t seem to be using this at all. For instance could publish the list of individual enemy soldiers to be priority targeted (e.g. loitering drones or missiles go for them first) in advance. Can imagine the impact of names being published and then half of those on the list not coming back after a few days. If they wanted to be really smart they would say this is based on how hard that individual or unit is fighting or how much initiative it is showing beyond following orders (which an algorithm could probably have a fairly good crack at using satellite and sensor data). Imagine being a squad and seeing you are scoring in the 60-90th percentile for initiative and aggressiveness, and that those in the 90-99th have had a 70% casualty rate over the last month (and knowing that to be true from previous times they have posted this information). You could even extend this to targeting families (a war crime but doesn’t mean neither side would do it). Imagine hearing that the first unit to take some objective will see half their family members killed (and knowing it to be true from seeing it happen to other units). Or mid ranking officers getting a message that either they delay sending out an order slightly or make some sort of easily explainable accident or their families will be killed. Or a worker in an armament factory. You could wreck the moral and fighting ability of a military. The only defence is to completely prevent information from the outside coming in (difficult if your enemy is creative), stopping the enemy from gathering this sort of information (seems difficult) or being able to prevent the enemy from being able to kill a decent number of specific civilians (seems hard against a peer competitor assuming you can’t stop most the missiles).
I think a lot of the perception of China in the US- particularly on the populist right- is driven by people projecting their anxiety onto the ambiguous snippets of Chinese life/culture that travel make their way into American discourse. The reality is that they’re observing a very different culture through and American lens and failing to recognize the context.
America, of all developed nations, probably has the strongest remnants of what can be described as an honor culture/warrior ethos. Our most popular sport is football, where playing through injury is still celebrated and downplaying the extent of physical pain is the expectation. Contrast this with European soccer, where players exaggerate their injuries all the time as a strategy for drawing cards. I think this is part of the reason soccer never fully caught on in America, the culture of the game just doesn’t match the American ethos. The NBA used to be more like the NFL, and it’s no surprised the influx of euros has lead to a change in the culture towards more flopping etc.
I say this because for all the talk of soy boys and wokeness, the US still has a fairly masculine culture, esp on the right. So when they see developments in China such as them limiting video game use or investing in physical fitness for boys, they assume China is coming from the same starting point. But from what I can gather, China’s culture doesn’t have the emphasis on traditional masculine virtues like physical strength, competitiveness, and dominance baked into it like the US does. This was validated through conversations with Chinese coworkers recently. So when China limits video game time, it’s not because they caught their hyper masculine young men slipping a little bit when they need to be hardened for war. It’s because they’re having trouble cultivating any masculine virtues in men at all.
I say this tongue in cheek, but I always joke that there’s no way China would be a threat in a war when they are a country of 1.4 billion people yet have only had 3 boxing world champions. Japan is a tenth the size, I imagine similar genetically, and has had 50+ world champs. China sinks billions of dollars into developing their soccer program, and can’t get a single player in the top European leagues, let alone a World Cup spot. Japan just beat Germany in the World Cup.
Obviously war is a completely different animal and I’m doing “bro social science”. But the point is that China has a culture that, for whatever reason, can’t produce great athletes. Even in combat sports where there are weight classes, their all time greatest fighter is a woman. It seems like men in their culture just share a different mindset from their western counterparts, and I do believe that political strategy in the country is downstream from that on some level.
One minor correction: China fought a big battle with Vietnam in 1984 at Vi Xuyên/Laoshan. The clashes with Vietnam continued until 1989
Richard touches on the window of opportunity with specific reference to China vs. Taiwan, but an equally important question is whether China thinks there is a window of opportunity in its position relative to *the US*.
I used to think China was going to keep getting stronger than the US for a long time, and some people still believe this (including, perhaps, most people in China), but now I doubt it. Despite my misgivings about where this country is headed, I think it will still mostly function and remain in the technological and economic lead, with a growing population that is mostly put to productive use even if its average human capital is declining. While China's population is now shrinking and aging rapidly and its economy has stagnated. Which implies that the window to beat the US in a naval war may be closing.
The idea of a closing window of opportunity driving desperate actions is an important one to understand. It's ultimately what caused both world wars: Russia and the US were both getting stronger faster than Germany.
But on the side of China not acting: one important difference with the Taiwan affair is that Taiwan, being so small, ultimately isn't that important materially. Despite an outsized role in semiconductor supply chains at this specific moment, Taiwan's main importance is symbolic and spiritual. In percentage terms, it's much less materially valuable to China than Austria and the Sudetenland were to the Third Reich, let alone the potential upside of dominating all of continental Europe. It's also much less important than Ukraine is to Russia.
Unlike Germany, whose future status relative to Russia was uncertain in the early 20th century and to some degree remains uncertain even today, China is going to be the dominant power in its neighborhood for the foreseeable future, regardless of what happens.
My Mainland friend has a related hypothesis--the Party cherishes Taiwan as a source of national unity, historical narrative and patriotic mission. Why risk all that for a highly uncertain outcome?
If Putin were head of the PRC, there would already be loads of "little green men" on the smaller ROC island agitating for reunification. Some of the small islands are nearly swimming distance from the mainland. I'd imagine if China were serious about invading Taiwan in the next 5 years, we'd be hearing about paramilitary activity on the small islands today.
"Western civilization taking a stronger stand against its enemies is likely to make for healthier societies at home and abroad."
Our society at home isn't healthy at all. What are you on about? What evidence of this do you have. Things get worse and worse every year and the we're at 130% debt to GDP. By 2028 debt is projected to be ~74 trillion.
"The liberal democratic system is worth defending, which means it is good to support Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel"
Why is the LDS worth defending? Seems pretty shit to me. I'm robbed every day so politicians can buy votes from people who hate me. Gay centrists need to actually create a society worth defending before asking White men to defend it.
"The mistake of realists and small-minded MAGA types is in assuming that morality can or should be separated from considerations of power politics."
Nobody ever said this. In fact, I would say that the liberal is the one who says you shouldn't legislate morality, e.g. abortion. It's just not moral to steal our money to give to causes that have nothing to do with us while our own society collapses. My enemy is in DC not Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, or PC.
I am curious about your willingness to bet here
You're overestimating Taiwan's capabilities. The country is far from being "armed to the teeth," and its military is quite trash actually. I recommend following Paul Huang on Twitter to get an idea of what I'm talking about. In the opening hours of the war, China would knock out all of Taiwan's airfields in addition to its puny navy, leaving their massive fleet free to approach the island largely unmolested.
Framing the conflict from China’s point of view is important: China does not see taking Taiwan as an invasion in the way that most foreigners do. It is more like a civil war. And China has had some very bloody civil wars to bring the country under rule by one leader or another. It doesn’t shy away from civil war.
Tiawan imports 97% of its energy. Its three LNG terminals are all on the China-facing side of the island.
Electricty generation is not like food – being almost there isn't enough. If grid freuqency drops 1%, the entire system trips out.
In 2022 a fault at one power plant blacked out 5 million homes, including in the capital.
How long do you suppose they'll hold out without electricity, fuel or heating?
from the linked article:
"because we all know that if Ukraine falls, the Baltics, Moldova, and eventually Poland are likely to be next on Putin’s menu."
"but if Ukraine falls, Putin will probably begin dismantling Europe."
I realize this was every shitlib's timeline two years ago, but they're really still on this?
"the territorial integrity norm is very important and worth defending"
Should Israel give back the Golan Heights?
> The West can impose sanctions
Those have limited effectiveness. We've had them on Cuba for decades, and we tried them on Russia in response to Ukraine.
> Finally, I think we should all get past the idea that we can have a geopolitical environment where vibes don’t matter.
What is the evidence that vibes matter?
> The mistake of realists and small-minded MAGA types is in assuming that morality can or should be separated from considerations of power politics.
What is the evidence that morality can't be separated from power politics?
There is simply no way the US will go to war and spill the blood of our young people to prevent the ultimate and inevitable reunification of China and Taiwan. We would only support the Taiwanese in the same way as Ukraine. Any president who attempted to do otherwise would be impeached.