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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   974 thread views

Transnational Thursday for April 10, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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If the US-China trade war continues and results in a severing of trade across the Pacific, it seems like China loses a major business case for peace. How much does this change the Chinese calculus for an invasion of Taiwan, and should we be worried?

Asking here because I have seen very little serious discussion of this aspect of the trade war from major outlets.

High levels of bilateral trade didn't prevent WW1, whilst fairly meagre trade between Eastern and Western blocs (US-Soviet trade peaked at around $4 billion a year) didn't prevent peace.

Deciding to go to war is mostly about balance of power, political objectives and security fears, not trade. Xi is not a bean counter. He does not care about 'green line go up' economics, quite the opposite given the crackdowns on finance and various companies. Xi has taken considerable efforts to securitize the Chinese economy, advance autarky in materials, food and energy. These programs are expensive (and still incomplete), building a big fleet is expensive, getting into a confrontation with the US is expensive. Chinese Communist Party elites are most interested in power, not profitmaxxing.

Also, the global balance of power is shifting toward China. They've made big strides in many fields of technologies, their industrial output is huge. China dominates the drone industry for instance, they dominate shipbuilding. Meanwhile the US navy is still shrinking and political dysfunction is worse than before.

I think the Chinese plan is something like 'build up a huge qualitative and quantitative military superiority, then wage utterly unfair wars against fundamentally weaker foes or just pressure them to accept our hegemony peacefully'. Only if the US started to get stronger faster than China (superintelligence) would they consider going in early.

I am not a qualified expert on the topic of "trade as a force for peace," but I will say that it sure has seemed like China has always wanted to take Taiwan by hook or by crook, completely orthogonally to their entanglement in global trade. If anything, global trade has seemingly helped China conclude that taking Taiwan is in the possibility space thanks to the benefits they have reaped from it, and now that they are in a position of strength, they can happily abandon the power of trade in the name of taking Taiwan if they need to.

News on my mind this week:

Trump/China trade war intensifying. S&P 500 breaks. I was regretting not buying the dip. Trump/China trade war intensifying

Trump threatens Iran if talks don't go well

Iran and the US having talks on the nuclear file through Omani mediation

Satellite imagery shows US aircraft carrier in proximity to Iran

90% of Rafah's residential neighborhoods destroyed by Israel, Gaza authorities say

Trump to not prosecute crypto fraud

Treasury imposes sanctions on enablers of Iran's nuclear program

New Sanctions Targeting Iran's Nuclear Program (another gov source)

Custom AI malware?

Israel would be 'leader' of strike if Iran doesn't give up nuclear weapons program, Trump warns

Israel's Ambassador Expelled from African Union Conference Amid Tensions Over Gaza Conflict

Israel's Smotrich says 'not even a grain of wheat' will enter Gaza

B-2 Stealth Bombers Deployed To Diego Garcia Have Been Striking Targets In Yemen

Houthis attack US and Israeli forces, mostly ineffectively

INDOPACOM boss warns PLA is conducting 'dress rehearsals' for Taiwan invasion

Taiwan fears that PLA drills may escalate into real attack 'with no time to respond'

US to revoke all South Sudan visas over failure to accept repatriation of citizens: Rubio

Zelensky says at least 155 Chinese citizens are fighting for Russia in Ukraine

Bangladeshi court sends 70 pro-Awami League lawyers to jail, on seemingly trumped up charges

Ethiopia on the brink of war?

Is War Between Ethiopia, Eritrea Brewing In Tigray?

US producing new nuclear weapons faster

Squirrels might be natural reservoirs for mpox

RFK Jr. endorses measles, mumps and rubella vaccine

Petraeus: A US strike on Iran wouldn’t stop at nuclear sites

US Space Command wants orbital weapons for 'space superiority'

Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia , might try to secede again and join Serbia.

Islamic terrorists kill over 300 villagers in Burkina Faso

Cleaned up version of this comment into a brief here: https://blog.sentinel-team.org/p/global-risks-weekly-roundup-152025

RFK Jr. endorses measles, mumps and rubella vaccine

Anti-vaxxer gets mugged by reality? Better late than never.

I'm also curious about to what extent he changed his mind vs got pressured to make noises he doesn't agree with.

Or you've been misled about his true stance on the issue?

Was RFK not on the side of the "vaccines cause autism"/homeopathy memeplex? I thought he was on that wagon even before COVID.

Yes, which is why it's interesting that he has backpedaled on this.

Certainly that's what the people that hate him say -- I don't know myself though; it's entirely possible that his position is more nuanced than "all vaccines are bad".

Two Chinese nationals fighting in Russian units were just captured in Ukraine. Potentially as many as 16 have been captured so far, and the Ukrainian intelligence services have identified approximately another 150. The Chinese government issued a somewhat milk-toast advisory about how Chinese citizens should avoid traveling to foreign war zones, but otherwise took no action.

It is possible that these men were simply private citizens who chose to join the conflict. There are adventure seekers, soldiers of conscience, professional mercenaries and penniless drop outs with no better options from many nations fighting on both sides of the conflict already. But the volume, and fact that there don’t seem to have been any Chinese nationals fighting until just recently makes me think that it might actually be People’s Liberation Army troops secretly but officially deployed to the conflict.

In my opinion, China has already been a firm supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they have just kept their support quiet and mostly laundered it through private companies in order to avoid retaliation. At this point China and Russia’s geopolitical interests align much more than they differ. America is stepping on the hopes and dreams of both, and it is in China’s best interest to keep America tied up in Europe for as long and to the greatest extent as possible. Redditors constantly point to a couple of border squabbles from 60 years ago as evidence that the two countries are constantly waiting to stab each other in the back, but the main interests of each are quite far apart: Russia’s in Europe, and China’s in the Pacific.

Given the recent tariffs, China might not have as much incentive to hide their support nearly as much. Full sanctions from the US are untenable, and they are already being tariffed as much as the US economy will bear.

16 verified and 150 "according to Zelensky" in a war with something like 500-700k per side is volume to you? There were far more North Koreans than that and even that was nonsense propaganda trying to drum up more public support since they seemed to just be in it for the chance at real combat experience not as a real supplementary force. If China wasn't being mostly neutral Ukraine would be wiped out by now. There'd be 1000 grean swarms daily with their industrial capacity.

support since they seemed to just be in it for the chance at real combat experience not as a real supplementary force.

while not disagreeing, it might be that they were intended as real force but found out than NK isn't ready for modern war due to isolation and lack of recent wars

The reports I've seen seem to indicate that the Norks were actually quite competent and adaptable soldiers who, if properly equipped and led, would have a much better chance of breaking Ukrainian lines than the Russian penal battalions. Despite being sent to the front with only small arms and encountering combat drones for the first time, they were in many cases able to bait them into the open and shoot them down with precise rifle fire.

Source and more information on the topic, please. Seeing North Koreans abroad is a little surreal.

This is the latest report, but I first came across these details on Twitter last month.

Sadly paywalled. Thanks anyways.

Open Sesame

Thanks!

What is current public opinion in China like regarding the tariffs? Are Americans public enemy number 1 yet?

There are some restaurants and stores in China putting up signs like "all Americans pay 104% extra here", but many Chinese people these days still desperately want to immigrate to the US, so it will take a great deal to ruin our reputation there. There's an old Chinese joke about WWIII, where the strategic missile command asks for American targets and keeps hearing objections like "you can't strike there, my daughter is attending college in Boston!", "I just bought a house in San Francisco!", "my nephew lives in New York!", and in the end they decide to nuke Guizhou (the poorest province in China) instead.

Germany: The new federal government coalition has formed, and it is the maximally unsurprising fifth iteration of a Conservative CDU/CSU plus Social Democrat SPD compromise deal.

Also Germany: The populist-right AfD is now matching the CDU in polls at 24%.

I wonder if the people picking AfD in polls now have finally discovered conflict theory, or if they are still mistake theorists that will all evaporate next election when the CDU lies to them again.

Hard to predict the future. The AfD is held together by contrarian spite and, appropriately enough, a lack of right-wing alternatives. There isn't really much positive valence associated with it; it's a thin organisational membrane around what is otherwise an empty hole in the political spectrum in Germany. And in my estimate, that membrane isn't too sturdy - polite society hasn't yet found the right kind of tool with which to cut into it, but once they find something that works there won't be much holding the AfD as such together. To be sure, as long as that aforementioned hole remains, some political force will form around it, but it needn't be the AfD with its current branding and personnel. It's ascendant now, but protest voters are fickle creatures.

That said, I obviously hope it continues to grow, trashes the "establishment", then nukes itself because their platform is nothing more than a placeholder and their people are politically incompetent, and from the ashes something better can grow. Or something worse, more likely. Things can always get worse.

Things can always get worse.

Ah! A fellow optimist!

People are born into the world and expect it to develop tangentially to how it was during their formative years. Then the world keeps turning, but those expectations remain constant. Disappointment invariably sets in. The next generation is better-adapted to the revolved world, and can appreciate what it does better. But for the old guard, all they see is the distance between the world and their outdated expectations.

I am very disappointed.

As I said last time - a large part of the AfDs policy plans are sufficiently unappealing for many people so that it's easy to rather grit your teeth and give the CDU a last chance. But the CDU has been rapidly exceeding even the most cynical expectations.

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