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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   29579 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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Russia is our biggest foreign military threat, and is the biggest threat to our allies as well.

This is only arguably true at all because they have a huge nuclear arsenal. China is much larger economically and their military is comparably sized (I don't think this would be true in a normal year but Russia's military is unusually large right now). China also has a very good territorial claim to Taiwan, which is (from what I can gather) viewed as a red line by our ally Japan. If China moves to take it, there's a very good chance they start with ballistic missile strikes on Japan. So I suspect China might actually be the bigger threat to us-and-our-allies here, in part because they hold the stronger hand, relative to Russia. (Or they seem to. I think we might live in a world where LRASM just works fantastically and we actually sink the entire Chinese fleet in a week and go home, which ironically would likely mean the Russians win their war, for a certain value of winning, and the Chinese lose theirs for any reasonable value of losing.)

Every day that the war continues is another day that the Russian military continues to deteriorate without any loss of American life?

This would be a better argument IMHO if Western generals didn't keep coming out and saying "well the Russian army is more capable now than before the invasion" which isn't startling if you know a thing or two about war: wars typically make militaries more capable, not less. Unless you lose decisively, or hit economic trouble. I'd say the calculus for giving arms to Ukraine really varies a lot on the ultimate outcome. If the West can win the war, or deal a very bad economic hit, it begins to look like a decent deal. If the West throws its own tanks into Ukraine for them to get ground up and Russia to come out stronger than ever before while European NATO is weaker than before, well, you've made yourself weaker and your enemy stronger and that seems less than ideal. I don't think Ukraine will win the war outright, but it does seem plausible there will still be bad economic consequences for Russia.

In World War I, Germany, with about the same population, lost close to 2 million war dead. Ukraine's population was similar at the beginning of World War II and they lost 1.6 million war dead, in addition to over 5 million civilians. In 3 years of fighting, Ukraine has lost about 100,000 soldiers and a few thousand more civilians. This war can continue for a very long time.

A quick Google suggests that the median age in Germany during World War one was likely about 28; the media age in Ukraine is about 42 now. I think this matters even if Ukraine can absorb the same number of causalities on paper.

Second, if you want to do this, don't talk about realism, and don't talk about how you personally don't give a fuck about whether Ukraine survives because you only care about America. These views simply aren't compatible.

At the risk of steelmanning a view that may diverge from my own, it seems to me that "America first" implicitly suggests other nations to count, just...second. Or third. Or fifteenth.

I think almost everything you say about China is true, except for this:

If China moves to take it, there's a very good chance they start with ballistic missile strikes on Japan.

I would be surprised if China took this approach. I think they're just biding their time and patiently waiting to outgrow the US to the point that the gap in military capability and logistics insofar as it relates to Taiwan will be too obvious for the US to want to defend it. The U.S. is already making moves to secure semiconductor production at home in order to wind down the strategic importance of Taiwan, so the writing is starting to be put on the wall.

There's also a strong likelihood that when Democrats come back into power, they'll have another Mark Milley type chairman who will tuck his tail and submit to the will of China. I think China is banking on the cost-benefit calculus becoming too lopsided for the US, and in this scenario all they have to do is wait it out a little longer.

I’d be interested to read any argument against this scenario. I’m curious if there are angles I’m not seeing.

I’m curious if there are angles I’m not seeing.

You're not seeing China's atrocious demographic structure and their stalling economic growth. China's fertility rates are worse than Japan's, and unlike Japan, China will get old before (and more probably without) getting rich. Welcome to the middle income trap.

I think they're just biding their time and patiently waiting to outgrow the US to the point that the gap in military capability and logistics insofar as it relates to Taiwan will be too obvious for the US to want to defend it. The U.S. is already making moves to secure semiconductor production at home in order to wind down the strategic importance of Taiwan, so the writing is starting to be put on the wall.

Sure, I think this is plausible. I am not convinced that China will make an opening move. But if they do, missile strikes on Japan (to hit fighters and airbases there, and ships in harbor) make sense if you're not willing to wait for a counterpunch.

I’d be interested to read any argument against this scenario.

I've discussed this before a bit on here. I am not firmly convinced the Chinese will take one route or the other, but I think the argument against is that every year that goes by, it might actually grow harder to take the island by force. US anti-ship weapons stockpiles grow deeper and more sophisticated, as we begin to deploy hypersonic missiles and next-generation stealth bombers, and Australia begins to acquire nuclear submarines. Taiwan might begin to focus on area denial weapons instead of prestige equipment such as ships, tanks, and fighter aircraft, and from what I understand every year Taiwanese begin to think of themselves as more "Taiwanese" and less "Chinese." China's potential aging problems have also been discussed. All that being said, I think there might be a window of time where China's chance to retake the island militarily peaks and they might act during that time.

I also think the cheap drone revolution (and AI revolution, to the degree it's applicable) don't help China as much as people think in this scenario. In fact I think they might cut against China. If China can make a million cheap suicide drones per year and has 1,000 ships, then you just need (let's say) 2,000 drones and 2,000 mines to hold off an amphibious attack, and the fact that China can kill a million people with drones, while scary, doesn't get them any closer to successfully invading Taiwan than having nuclear weapons does.

Now, as you say, maybe this will all be moot since China won't invade. But China's chances of coercing Taiwan rise with their chances of being able to successfully invade (whether or not a single shot is fired) so I can see it mattering regardless.

from what I understand every year Taiwanese begin to think of themselves as more "Taiwanese" and less "Chinese."

I wouldn't count on that remaining the case forever. This form of self-identification is pretty far downstream from information diet, and we might still be in the phase where we are seeing the delayed effects of the 1950s-1990s period in which Mainland China was a relative memetic non-entity, and Taiwan looked to itself (and Japan, and the US) for narratives. In recent years, though, the PRC's output has grown so much that it is pushing to dominate certain segments (live-service games, in particular) even in non-Chinese-speaking locales. What would that be like if you are primarily a Chinese, rather than English, speaker? All my Chinese diaspora friends watch PRC films, listen to PRC music and play PRC games, even if they have no family ties to the mainland, and among them are many suckers for shared cultural patrimony wanks.

VERY interesting. Yes, I think that "the West" is just now realizing that perhaps we're locked in here with them, with here being the internet and them being the entire population of China (both as consumers and producers).

A quick Google suggests that the median age in Germany during World War one was likely about 28; it's about 42 now. I think this matters even if Ukraine can absorb the same number of causalities on paper.

That's not the issue. The issue is what the current Ukrainian median age is compared to the imperial German median age at 1914. There are a myriad of other contentious issues which undercut this parallel completely. Like, how many people does the Kievan government actually have real sovereignty over as of now? How many of those are fighting-age men? How many men will it be able to draft in the coming years? I'm pretty sure nobody has an exact idea of any of those.

I misspoke, the current Ukrainian median age is about 42 now.

But which way does the China/Taiwan thing actually land?

On the one hand, focusing on Russia as a major competitor in world power detracts from focus on China. Sanctions on Russia by the west only cement China's grip and trade.

On the other, playing hard-headed realist with Ukraine makes the Philippines think we'd do the same with them. And makes everyone believe that backing the US against China in a proxy war runs the risk of being left out to dry every 4-8 years.

For my money's worth, this is why clearly signaling your commitments is ideal if you can do it.

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