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-_-_-_-_-  13d ago (noahpinion.blog)   1801 thread views

Noah Smith: Manufacturing is a war now

noahpinion.blog

Industrial policy has been a frequent subject on Smith's blog, for those who don't follow it. (He's for it, and thinks that Biden's industrial policy was mostly good - it's worth following the links in this post.) This post focuses on defense-related geopolitical industrial policy goals and pros and cons of anticipated changes under the incoming Trump administration and Chinese responses. Particularly, he highlights two major things China can do: Restrict exports of raw materials (recently announced) and use their own industrial policy to hamper the West's peacetime industrial policy (de facto policy of the last 30 years). These are not extraordinary insights, but it's a good primer on the current state of affairs and policies to pay attention to in the near-future.

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  • China is about 10x as strong
  • China does not seem to want more than taiwan and access to the ocean
  • Russia has a (recent) record of using military means and nuclear threats to expand its borders – China’s relative peacefulness (100x) should be rewarded and Russia’s behaviour punished . If nothing else, to avoid nuclearization.

China does not seem to want more than taiwan and access to the ocean

Dude ... why do they want access to the ocean? You're answering your own implied question here.

They don't want to get blockaded to shit every time they displease Current Hegemon?

right, now follow the thread further.

If you don't want to be beholden to the whims of Current Hegemon, the only way to guarantee that is to be roughly equivalent in overall power and capability to Current Hegemon. If you grow to that size, however, Current Hegemon will suspect you're a rival - which you are.

That precarious balance of power creates a tension that can go cold to hot very quickly.

China having a "history of peaceful behavior" (I would contest this assertion) does nothing to resolve this.

If you don't want to be beholden to the whims of Current Hegemon, the only way to guarantee that is to be roughly equivalent in overall power and capability to Current Hegemon.

I would say that this is not only legitimate but the right and proper aim of any nation. As opposed to the British strategy, which is to bleat endlessly about the ‘special relationship’ and hope America throws us some scraps.

I see it fas a fundamentally legitimate demand, they don’t want to be at the mercy of their rival. I’m not fighting a world war to deny them that modest amount of autonomy.

Your reasoning doesn’t seem to allow for any legitimate demand on their part, they’re just supposed to accept being beholden to the whims of current hegemon forever. Like, if they build a fort in the suburbs of beijing, the US will seemingly go: “wowowow, hold on, your capital is now less vulnerable to my potential attacks, I can’t order you around anymore, that is an obvious threat to my hegemony, you’re now a rival for world domination, let’s have a war”.

From that perspective, you could say that just china strengthening and no longer starving is ‘destabilizing’ and causing war. For my part, I don’t think the growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspires the Lacedaemon, makes war inevitable.

A hegemon who wishes to keep any potential rival too weak to ever present a challenge (for example, I sometimes hear the idea that the US should have bombed China into the stone age in the 80s, while it still could) is a terrible tyrant who should be overturned.

The PRC wants the South China Sea, Taiwan, Senkaku, Ryukyu (they've openly put out feelers, even if they haven't officially demanded it yet), and a few territories along the Indian border, plus maybe Korea, plus some degree of control over the policy of ~everywhere (see e.g. the Fourteen Demands).

Japan and South Korea will nuclearise if Taiwan falls unfought. Pure if-then. In a world where the USA is not willing to defend East Asia and the PLAN has Pacific Ocean access unobstructed by the First Island Chain, Beijing would otherwise be able to dictate terms to them due to the threat of blockade (neither country is remotely close to food security).

Unless we feel like performing the kowtow, we're probably going to have to fight the PRC, and if so we should fight it while our allies are all intact and the geography works against it.

I don’t care if South Korea and Japan have nukes and would probably consider it a good thing. I’m very confident that Xi Jinping does not personally want to rule over the Japanese the way Putin dreams of reconstituting the Russian Empire, so I don’t really care.

I don't care .... I don't really care

I care .... I really, really care.

the Great Man theory of history really is some midwit shit. This isn't about Xi or Putin, this is about large scale economic-military-political spheres of control and influence that will outlive both of these men. The post WW2 world order was started by a bunch of Americans that are now very dead and has been sustained for going on 80 years because of a system maintained and reinforced by cultural, political, economic, and military forces.

China is not seeking Taiwan as an end state. They are seeking to create a Chinese system (of cultural, political, economic, and military means) that similarly self-sustains and self-supports for centuries. That can only come with a reduction in both the relative and absolute power of the West, especially the United States. Such a drastic shift in power will necessarily alter our cultural values and operation. I don't want Beijing's incredibly global presence to dictate cultural norms to any extent (aside: Ban TikTok).

The world hasn't gotten any smaller, but nations (in the conceptual sense) have become larger and can move faster and further. There is no "over there" any more.

Who’s next?

Just like Japan and Korea’s fear of being cut off from the ocean is understandable, so is China’s. Even a reasonable and peaceful China would do everything to remove this knife from their throat. I’m uncomfortable getting into a massive war without trying appeasement first. You can speculate on China’s ultimate goals, but there is no record of defection and increasing demands like there is with Russia. Every power gets one tschekoslovakia, one free defect, that’s my rule.

Are you perhaps forgetting Hong Kong? They agreed to preserve Hong Kong's political systems from 1997-2047; that didn't even last until 2022.

They also have been building villages inside Bhutan, apparently confident that Bhutan can't do anything about it and nobody will call them out on it. I think there was one inside India as well.

Let's not forget their long-standing habit of taking hostages to extort their home countries' governments, and of controlling their diaspora by holding their non-diaspora families hostage.

I seem to recall a recent incident where they lit up an Australian ship with targeting radar (usually considered sufficient cause to fire back), but I can't find a citation.

The PRC is currently playing defect-bot*. A lot of these incidents are "nothingburgers" because the other side just cries and takes it, but that just means it's playing defect-bot successfully.

(Also, Japan and South Korea have far, far more to worry about from blockade than China; China has a much-better land:people ratio and it has access to land imports; Japan has no land borders and South Korea's only one is with North Korea i.e. a close Chinese ally that would take part in any such blockade. China would feel some pain from a sea blockade, but it's a long way from "lol state failure as people eat each other".)

*Its strategy is probably technically "Spiteful-Bully", but eh.

We can't tell how efficient the Chinese armed forces are. Their performance was surely not exactly stellar the last time they were sent into combat, between 1979-88 in the Chinese-Vietnamese border region. Their navy is pretty much an unknown entity in that regard in particular. There's nothing to suggest that they'd turn out to be more impressive than their Russian counterparts.

Also, you're comparing apples to oranges. The Russian Federation exists on the ruins of an empire that lost her entire periphery in 1991. This never happened to Communist China. Of course they're going to appear to be more peaceful.

There's nothing to suggest that they'd turn out to be more impressive than their Russian counterparts.

Economic, industrial and demographic might.

The Russian Federation exists on the ruins of an empire that lost her entire periphery in 1991. This never happened to Communist China. Of course they're going to appear to be more peaceful.

I don't care if it had a rough childhood. It has proven itself incapable of behaving in a civilized manner and should be incapacitated whether it has moral responsibility or not (rabid bear).

It has proven itself incapable of behaving in a civilized manner and should be incapacitated whether it has moral responsibility or not (rabid bear).

This standard means the US empire needs to be incapacitated as well. What the US has done in Libya, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc is well beyond the bounds of 'civilized' behavior. You don't get to talk about the evil Russian empire while defending the same empire that dumped agent orange on Vietnam.

Vietnam was before Russia had its own Afghanistan debacle, ancient history. I’ll grant that the US has a weaker record of peacefulness than China. I don’t want to get into a discussion of the US’ moral responsibility and war justifications either, it’s largely irrelevant. Most of the reasons why Russia should be fought and China let off the hook apply to the US as well: order of magnitude stronger, no expanding-expansionist goals, no nuclear threats.

Pretty sure that the US has been trying to expand into Russia and China for the last half century.

To quote @netstack

The legacy of WWII was that you don’t have to literally occupy a territory to get value from it. Set up the right rules, and the subsequent international order serves your interests.

The US is very keen to make Russia and China follow US rules, and I'm pretty sure they would bring about regime change if they could.

The rabidness of the Russian Bear should not cause us to discount the hunger of the Chinese Bear. Xi Jinping has made it clear that he wants China to have prestige and respect, and for all the power it has built up and all the subterfuge it has done, China does not yet have the same level of world-historical importance as the US. Anything and everything to reverse the Century of Humiliation should be considered as on the table for such a goal.

We have centuries of Chinese history in which imperialism was highly limited, contra centuries of Russian imperialism in which it very much was not.

Yes, but I suspect the point of view of China's current rulers is that these choices in its history were mistakes that they will consciously not make, which potentially means "take the opposite actions"--again, see the Century of Humiliation. Modern China will not do something as hindsightedly retarded as "ban oceanworthy ships."

This doesn't preclude China constraining itself in ways that are objectively counterproductive (overjuiced real estate, zero-COVID policy), but they seek to be the next hegemon, to embrace the Imperial history instead of trying to make it disappear, and thus we must assume they will not abstain from things that states try to do when they feel they have no limits.

True, if you were to have knowledge of Putin vs Xi’s wildest territorial dreams if they could get away with anything, I think I’d be quite sure the latter’s would be Taiwan, nine-dash-line and the US out of Korea (and probably also the end of the Kim regime, which the CCP has long been ambivalent about). Putin’s wildest territorial dreams clearly go way beyond Eastern Ukraine.

I find all this to be a bit far-fetched. When exactly did the Chinese Communists express any intent to unify Korea after expelling the Americans? Their intervention in the Korean War didn't go to such lengths either. We might as well say that their wildest dreams include Vladivostok. And what Russian ambitions are 'way beyond' Eastern Ukraine? Don't tell me it's Moldova of all places.

Their intervention in the Korean War didn't go to such lengths either.

Uh, yeah, it did? Mao was absolutely trying to unify Korea under Kim Il-Sung. They captured Seoul and would have taken all of South Korea had the UN forces not driven them back.

I don't think we can say that with certainty. The intervention happened when North Korea was on the verge of complete defeat and I'd be surprised to learn that it had goals more ambitious then restoring the status quo.

I think you might need to read up a bit more on Mao Zedong. The Sino-Soviet split occurred because Mao thought Khrushchev wasn't being aggressive enough in spreading communism; Mao was very aggressive, and was involved in the planning of the initial North Korean invasion of South Korea.

It's debatable whether Mao would have come in if the UN hadn't invaded North Korea, but once he did he absolutely intended to unify Korea under Kim.

(To be clear, this particular incident has little bearing on modern Chinese intentions; Xi Jinping is not Mao and has different objectives. He is also aggressive, but in a different fashion.)

Rhetoric is one thing, actions are another. Altogether I find it a bit of a stretch to say that Chinese foreign policy was markedly aggressive during Mao, either compared to that of the USSR or the Qing Dynasty for that matter.

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