This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Worse than that: this was clear as early as 2022 if not from Jan 6 2021, so the (highly non-trivial) preparations for war could be made. Indeed, back in late 2022 when I posted this, my unstated conclusion was "the Five Eyes have detected an in-progress Chinese plan to attack Taiwan" (I'm still not 100% confident of that, but I can't see any other likely scenarios in which "a linear path" leads to "great-power conflict" and an active decision to avert it is required).
With that said, the chance is not 100%. As Symon noted, we can turn off a linear path; leaders can make decisions. An in-progress Chinese plan to attack Taiwan means only that Xi thinks the option of an attack is worth the cost of the preparations; he could still very easily call "no-go" before the trigger's pulled if circumstances look less than favourable.
I think the "indirect control" plan, if it can even be called a "plan", is bananas and unworkable; the PRC has no jurisdiction over the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (which is a formal member of the WTO) and any attempt to declare border controls would be a legal nullity and would be ignored. I'm not saying they won't claim to be doing this - the PRC claims a lot of things - but they would have to back it up with at least an actual blockade (either shooting or mining) and they know this. So that leaves us with three real options:
...with the latter two both having the option of pre-emptive strikes on US/Korean/Japanese assets in East Asia, or not doing that out of hope of keeping them neutral. Frankly, I'm not enough of a tactician to figure out which they're planning on; there've been exercises relating to all three primary scenarios so it's entirely possible they're intending on some degree of flexibility depending on how the situation develops.
Overall numbers - with the horizon of 12 months, I'd say a very uncertain 50%. I'm anchoring on the Paul Symon interview with WWIII being the default case (note that I think it's like 80% that the West comes in conditional on a Taiwan play, and 90% that cities get nuked conditional on the West intervening in a Taiwan play), but I've heard some noises more recently saying it might be more like 2027 so I've shaved a bit off.
More options
Context Copy link