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To be clear, I don’t think a nuclear strike on the Philippines is intrinsically likely, but conditional on the war going nuclear, the Philippines might well be prioritised over Guam as a first target primarily because it wouldn’t set the precedent of targeting American soil.
For example, imagine the US loses a carrier, and decides to respond with an SLCM-N strike on a Chinese command vessel. China decides it needs a symbolic strike to respond, but doesn’t want to move too far up the escalation ladder too fast, so it hits an isolated but operationally significant US base in the Philippines. Civilian casualties might be comparatively low; if you hit Fort Magsaysay Airfield for example civilisation casualties might be in the low thousands, similar to what you’d get from hitting Guam.
Right, but will the Chinese interpret (and expect the Americans, and other observers, to interpret) Guam as American soil for this purpose? In a limited (non-MAD) nuclear exchange, it seems that optics/bystander moral buy-in would matter nontrivially for escalatory decisions, and accepting any civilian nuclear casualties in the Philippines (and of course fallout, which is still itself treated as beyond the moral pale to inflict upon someone) would surely, in descending order of confidence, (1) be seen as making China more deserving of retaliation in the eyes of third-party bystanders and (2) the same in the eyes of the American public. It would also put everyone else hosting American bases on high alert - Japan might grit its teeth and mostly sit out a Taiwan invasion, but how would that calculus change if it also had to make a snap decision between kicking the Americans out and having Okinawa nuked?
(On that matter, there is perhaps some argument that if the Chinese do prefer to fire a warning shot at American overseas bases, the Japanese ones would be preferable over the Philippine ones? In a CN-TW conflict scenario, Japanese hearts and minds would be as lost to the Chinese as Polish ones are to the Russians over RU-UA; the same can't be said of the Filipinos)
You think there’s a scenario where nukes fly and Japan responds by kicking America out and declaring neutrality rather than by building a working nuclear arsenal literally overnight.
I don't think that they could build it overnight. Actually enriching the fissile material and building such a complex system still takes time - timelines on the internet for Japan to go nuclear range from 6 months to 1 year. Either way, even if they build them, what can they do? There is no obvious non-escalatory course for them to retaliate (what would they do? Nuke China's overseas bases in Djibouti or Cambodia?), and if Japan escalates in this scenario they would probably get nuked by China in earnest with nobody coming to help them.
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Maybe just read this post again and take a breath. How would this post sound to an objective person?
This is not going to happen anytime soon. The Philippines are not a priority for China. There's not going to be a nuclear war between US and China. Etc.. Etc...
It might be a good time to think about your social media diet.
I don’t think a nuclear conflict is necessarily likely, but a conventional engagement over Taiwan has a much much higher chance at spiraling out of control than the Ukraine War does for a few reasons.
Any invasion of Taiwan is going to start with a massive blockade of the island. The US can’t just sit back and ship over ammo and weapons systems. If the US decides to intervene it would require directly engaging the Chinese fleet in a way that ensures thousands of deaths on both sides in a very short period of time. Keep in mind one aircraft carrier going down with all hands would cause more deaths than 9/11.
The time scale here is brutally fast compared to Ukraine. Everyone knows where everyone else’s ships and bases are. This isn’t like Midway where the fleets are going to take weeks to find each other. Both sides have extremely long range weapons and could start hitting fleets and bases within minutes of a conflict starting. One side could find itself effectively losing the conflict in a matter of hours. This vastly increases the risk of panic and the use of tactical nuclear weapons to try and even things out.
Using a tactical nuclear weapon on a fleet in the middle of the ocean has effectively zero risk of civilian casualties, so there is a much better psychological excuse for the early launches than you would have for a land war.
There’s a hell of a lot more money on the table. Between the chip fabs in Taiwan and control of the South China Sea, one side is coming out of this economically ruined. Adding to the pressure, both the American and Chinese stock markets are going to immediately get heemed the minute the conflict starts, creating an intense pressure to get this over with fast.
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Counterpoint- if the specter of WW3 with Russia is enough for Trump-aligned parties to want to cut ties with Ukraine to hedge risk and cut potential costs, the specter of WW3 with China is enough for non-Trump aligned parties to want to cut ties with Trump-aligned parties to hedge risk and cut potential costs.
I'm fully open with calling both of them hyperbolic, but hyperbole has a lot of sway in the governing coalition of the current white house, and those who embrace hyperbole on one side of the world don't exactly get to claim that others are being unreasonable for similar framings of concern on the other. The use of the framing as legitimate enough to drive sudden shifts in US policy likewise legitimizes the use of framings by other parties, including in directions against american preferences.
Are they really worried about WW3 or does that just sound better than telling everyone that it's an inherited forever-war that's been unwinnable at any worthwhile cost for over a year and they don't feel like squandering air defense munitions on it indefinitely with China looming?
I have been repeatedly assured that fears of WW3 are sincere and responsible, with all the negative moral accusations or insinuations that skepticism to that thesis entails. I have not seen any particular evidence or compelling reason to believe that Ukraine was/is a forever war, given how the Russian sustainment has been by the very much finite depletion of Cold War stockpiles and generally observable quality issues.
Which air-defense munitions particularly useful against China do you believe were being squandered, given that the Ukrainians weren't exactly being given from the US Navy or indo-pacific stockpiles?
Particularly when the key lesson of the Ukraine War was that the armament production base- not stockpiles- was needed, with support for said conflict being the political/congressional basis for funding expansion of production?
The 'the US can't afford to keep supporting Ukraine' argument has never carried fiscal weight, particularly in the China context. Ukraine had been the bipartisan basis for expanding defense production to overcome a shortage- if that was too much fiscally for the advocates of cutting off Ukraine, there's no particular reason to believe they are willing to fund the much larger, more expensive, and more enduring industrial ramp up needed for a China contingency.
To me, one of the most reliable indicators of a Forever War is attempts to engage in "limited" warfare in pursuit of a nebulous goal. Ukraine certainly seems to be an example of "limited" warfare in pursuit of a nebulous goal, so it trips my Forever War sense.
The expected rejoinder is that the Ukraine conflict has concrete goals: defeat Russia, restore Ukraine's pre-war borders, prevent Russia from trying anything like this again.
Restoring Ukraine's pre-war borders is the most concrete of these, but it's dependent for it's meaning on defeating Russia and preventing Russia from trying anything like this again. As people frequently point out, rolling the borders back does no good if Russia just re-invades next year.
Preventing Russia from trying anything like this again is pretty nebulous. Russia has a lot more leverage on its immediate neighbors than we do, simply due to distance. A functional Russia is a Russia that can do stuff like this again. Maybe if Russia is defeated, though, it might lose sufficient capability to prevent further extraterritorial ambitions?
So that brings us to defeating Russia. What does that look like, concretely? Can you give some recent examples of what "defeating" an enemy looks like? We "defeated" the Taliban, drove them from power, had them hiding in caves and living like hunted men for two decades, we directly killed a large percentage of their leadership and many, many of their rank-and-file. And yet, twenty years later, the Taliban rule Afghanistan. Okay, maybe we didn't use enough firepower. How about Ghaddafi? Ghaddafi was overthrown and sodomized to death with a bayonet on live TV; I think it's fair to say that we "defeated" him. What was gained by that victory? How did the world improve? How about Saddam? We smashed his army, occupied his nation, dragged him out of a rat-hole and hung him. We purged his party from the Iraqi government, hunted those who resisted relentlessly, and took absolute control of their territory. We pretty clearly defeated Saddam. What was gained by that victory? How did the world improve?
If we kill off the whole Russian army, what happens next? If we successfully sneak a missile into one of Putin's cabinet meetings and wipe out his entire inner circle, what happens next? If we humiliate him badly enough that the Russians rise up and overthrow him, what happens next? How do things shake out? How is the world improved? My guess is that the likely outcome is something like Libya, only significantly worse: all the ambitious bastards whose names we've never heard of because Putin has been sitting on them get to make their play, and we get large-scale chaos, quite possibly with a fun stir-in of loose nukes.
Suppose, for a moment, that Russia collapsing into significant chaos might actually have some bad consequences for the rest of the world. Now you don't just want to defeat Russia, you want to sort of defeat Russia, but without actually compromising its stability too badly. How does that work? I have no idea, but maybe you or someone else can lay it out in a straightforward manner.
In one of our recent conversations, you linked this document as an example of the consensus thinking on our recent wars. One of the first lines:
...Why should I believe that this is true? I mean, I don't particularly disagree, the theory seems sound, but why are we entering this conversation with the assumption that "Ultimate success in COIN" is a thing that we have any understanding of at all? Where would that understanding come from? Which COIN successes are providing the grounds for anyone to speak with any authority at all? And this question seemed directly relevant to every sentence of the entire document. It's pure B-type thinking, outside-looking-in, illusion-of-control.
And so it is here. I do not believe that killing Russian soldiers makes the world a better place in any sort of linear fashion. Certainly the amount we have assisted in killing to date does not seem to have improved things, and I am deeply skeptical that killing more will suddenly begin making a difference. I do not think "defeating" Russia in some weak sense will make the world a better place. I do not think defeating Russia in a strong sense will make the world a better place either. I used to believe that stomping on villains was a straightforward way to improve the world. Then I watched that belief be implemented in a succession of examples, and I watched the results, and I updated my beliefs based on the new evidence.
If we are worried about an aggressive Russia, the proper way to handle that is to pick a line and declare that whatever Russia crosses it with, we will destroy with the full power of our entire empire. Crucially, this line should probably not be on Russia's immediate border, nor should it steadily move closer to Russia's border year after year. Then if Russia wants to cross the line, we drive them straight back, and if they are crazy enough to escalate to tactical nukes, we tactical-nuke them back, and if they decide to initiate doomsday, well, you can't win 'em all. But the key here is predictability and stability: we want things to settle into a static position, and then stay there.
This is not the strategy we've been pursuing; in fact, we have been doing the exact opposite for some decades now. I think this is very foolish, and to the extent that you disagree, I'm curious as to why.
...?
Elaboration- you are all over the place in that, so much so that I don't particularly see any particular place to begin. You certainly aren't describing 'my' position in any meaningful sense, currently or over the last few years of re-giving it, but I also don't think you're particularly interested in it either, given the length you go to not describe it and then raise issues I have repeatedly raised myself in various forms over the years. (To pick one- Gaddafi. My thoughts on the Libya intervention have never exactly been circumspect. I believe the closest I have ever come to a positive word for it was along the lines of 'I understand why some of the European states wanted it.')
So if you're not going to address my position, and just want to raise history with many ?-marks on issues we have been known to agree on, I will go...
...?
...and, for the sake of your final question, point you back to what you quoted.
This has two parts- a position statement (I have seen no particular evidence or compelling reason to believe that Ukraine was/is a forever war), and a justification statement (finite and depleting Cold War stockpiles enabling Russian sustainment of their invasion and large-scale combat operations).
And looking at what you've posted, the most direct response to it was-
-and a variety of paragraphs that ignore the justification statement's premise, which is a shortage of soviet stockpile equipment to sustain the current war indefinitely.
Ukraine does in fact appear to be a "forever war": a conflict with no clear, obviously-desirable victory condition, where commitments secure no material benefit and an ever-growing sunk-cost fallacy makes disengagement ever-more difficult.
Ukraine does not have a clear, obviously-desirable victory condition, and the people who argue for (further) engagement have been engaging in a type of shady thinking that has repeatedly led to disaster in the past.
I am generally skeptical of our current consensus on what constitutes expertise regarding warfare, for similar reasons to my skepticism of our current consensus on expertise as such: people build elaborate models of reality which become unmoored from reality, leading to disaster. I think Ukraine in particular seems to have a ton of opportunity for disaster, while the pro-Ukraine faction seems to believe that securing victory is something approximating an act of will.
In short, I think I disagree with you, and am trying to lay out in some detail why. Does this summary help?
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Ukraine has burned through 10 percent of all the Patriot batteries that exist in the entire world. Part of the reason they need those Patriot batteries so much is to protect their very vulnerable power infrastructure. That vulnerable power infrastructure was supposed to be protected by heavy concrete bunker complexes, but unfortunately they just stole all the money the United States gave them to build those bunker complexes and funneled it into some Swiss bank account somewhere.
TBF fortifying power infrastructure with bunkers isn't realistic, especially retrofitting existing ones. So the money was always intended as a slush fund for building a party member's new ski resort or something.
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Which, in turn, are not exactly part of the US Navy or the indo-pacific stockpiles, unless you think 90% of all Patriot batteries are intended for a war with China and not also for a war with Russia.
Which, also in turn, goes back to the armament production base requirement, and not simply stockpiles.
Which, in turn, goes to the fiscal affordability flub, now with new variation.
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