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 -
Hardly. Militarily indefensible, economically more interested in entangling than curtailing, and politically more interested in getting the Americans out of Europe than in being on the American side of a US-China fight. Russia would be a bigger France than France in trying to subvert the European pillar of the Atlanticist alliance in the name of 'strategic autonomy' of Europe from the US, except with even less interest in, well, the things the US and France actually agree and care about.
There are bad alliances where the ally costs more than they could possibly offer, there are bad alliances that have toxic internal dynamics, and there are bad alliances where one has nothing to offer the other. A post-Soviet US-Russia alliance would have been all three.
I mean I disagree with your view of the alliance.
Russia Can offer the US a lot. It flanks China. We offer them economic development or atleast the elite get rich selling us commodities.
Toxic internal dynamics are either Russia interfering in US foreign relations or US exporting you need to say you love gays. Both can be handled.
And three I already said Russia offers the west the ability to surround China.
And I maintain I have a better position on this topic than you.
And why do you think that benefits the US? What, exactly, do you think it enables the US to do beyond the privilege of placing US forces in more advantageous range of the chinese military? Is the US military supposed to invade nuclear Beijing from the north, across a logistics train through Siberia and the Mongolian steppe? Have a pitched defense of Vladivostok, a position that must only be defended because Russia is a party on the American side?
This does not require an alliance. This happened despite being geopolitical adversaries. This still happens despite the Ukrainian conflict, where russian commodities are among the categories of NOT sanctioned items.
In fact, this is the primary reason for a divergence of interests. The russian commodities are functionally fungible in the global market. The biggest consumer of Russian commodities in a US-Russia alliance would be China, because that's how the American world order trade system works. The Russian interest wouldn't be in selling to the Americans, but to whoever would pay most, and global commodity prices are driven by China, giving Russia an incentive to keep selling- and keep the US from coming into conflict with China. This would decrease the credibility of the alliance as a Chinese deterrent, because Russia would have economic AND security reasons not to let the US come into conflict with China, upto and including political, informationally, economically, and diplomatically sabotaging the US in any buildup and coalition-building for a China containment.
This is a case of 'don't buy a cow when you get the milk for free,' except in this case the cow is selling the milk to everyone regardless of whether you buy or not, and has an incentive to unionize against you if you cut off the biggest milk market.
If Russia interferes with the US foreign relations with other US allies, it is a zero-sum alliance dynamic with other US alliance opportunities and interests. This can only be handled by losing value in other alliances... many of which are higher in value, economic and depth of cooperation, than what Russia is being described as offering in this scenario, even as an alliance with Russia undermines the interest in other parties to maintain an alliance with the US. All parties that were using the US to hedge against Russia will continue to have Russian concerns, and be in search of other parties to assist them...
...such as China, the nominal target of this alliance, introducing new influence vectors not present when the alliance members are already against any Russian alliance group.
You already said this, but repeatedly failed to actually identify what advantage this is supposed to provide that's not outweighed the cost of having to provide security guarantees to all the territory surrounding china.
A major American alliance advantage against China is that it does not have a land-border to be steamrolled across by weight of numbers and internal lines of communication. This forces China to militarily compete in the sea, a major American advantage, and via the global commons, where US-European (sans Russia) have extensive advantages in established markets and alliances, which would be undermined by a major US-European rebalance of alliances due to triangulation in response to a US-Russia alliance. Meanwhile, in purely campaign terms, allying with Russia gives China an obvious target, and gives the US an obligation to defend an unfavorable position, in exchange for... for...
The opportunity to try and fail to convince the Europeans to conscript citizens and send them across the Siberian railroad to fight on the far-eastern front? An even stronger European coalition that would prefer the US take a loss to China on Taiwan or other topics to preserve even stronger European trade relations with China? Market-access to Russian commodities that we know would be sold on the global market even if the US and Russia were at all-but-war? Triangulation of European security politics against the US-Russia axis?
Geopolitics is not a tactical RPG where flanking gives +20% to damage or accuracy. Unless you intend to fight a land war in asia, there's no particular advantage in adjacent territory to your foe, and quite a few risks.
Russia could shutdown exports to China during say a Taiwan conflict. That seems like a big deal. So any china war machine would have no way of supplying itself with Russia not exporting and the US controlling the seas. That’s a big deal.
Obviously part of an alliance would be Russia no longer interfering with US foreign policy. That’s what allies do.
You're still not addressing what flanking is supposed to provide.
Why would it seem like a big deal to anyone familiar with global trade?
If the commodities are fungible on the global supply level, a commodity cutoff would have no effect, because China would just buy from someone else. Since the Chinese economic system is centered on the south and eastern coasts, not overland, they already are dependent on maritime exports, which are the easiest to change suppliers of on the global market due to how cheap ocean travel is. The most significant Russian commodities of note, even in the Russia-China are allied scenario, are overwhelmingly fungible items that it doesn't matter who buys or sells them specifically.
If the commodities are NOT fungible, then China has less ability to adapt suppliers... but so do the Russians, who of course are taking it to the chin, because they can't just re-sell it as well. This does apply to some things, like the Russia-China natural gas pipeline, but this is notably a pipeline that was only built by Putin at a significant export loss for geopolitical purposes of an alliance, and even then it's not actually a critical cutoff to the Chinese economy. There are no current non-fungible commodities the Russian market provides China that are critical requirements for the Chinese economy.
Either way, you're either not having an effect, or not having a critical effect, due to the nature of the global market.
And this is if a cut-off occurs at all during a Taiwan conflict, vis-a-vis pressing the US to accept a fait accompli and getting back to trade as normal, or not actually cutting off at all and daring the Americans to do anything about it, which would be quite possible in the name of Strategic Autonomy like the Germans and French have already been pursuing.
Why would anyone familiar with the Chinese war machine or American pacific strategy think it's a big deal?
A Taiwan conflict isn't going to be based on long-term economic production, but on immediate available resources and stockpiles measured in many cases in months to years. The Chinese strategy would remain a fait accompli, not a global war of attrition.
Nor are the Americans going to launch a blockade of China in a sudden conflict. Not only will they not have the buildup to marshal support in the leadup given the likely nature of a Chinese attempt as a sudden action, but enforcing it would require a willingness for interceptions- actual casus belli interceptions of ships in international waters- with numerous neutral and even allied countries.
And that's assuming Russia doesn't maintain economic ties with China during a conflict in the same way that the Germans and Italians are maintaining economic ties to Russia in the current Ukraine war.
Why would anyone familiar with contemporary or historic international relations think that?
Wait what? America controls all shipping lanes. There’s no oil getting in. You get russia into the alliance then there’s no Russian energy getting in either.
I agree oil is fungible. But then we could have every foreign producer on our team to ban exports to China. It’s fungible when your not effectively blockaded in every direction. Like real things are still real in this world. And the ones not on our team would have to ship tankers in but we own the seas.
So we sink a few oil ships far from Chinese shores or just confiscate them. That’s not a hard thing to do.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link