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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   25102 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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Do Americans have it in them to setup a durable blockade that can escalate to a nuclear war for long enough to make it meaningful? Do they have it in them to completely wreck their (and the world's) economy and to scramble to get local industrial capacity back online?

Every time I read about a sustained conflict between modern great powers, the first two moves sound reasonable and after that it's basically reading like the end of the world as we know it, even in the scenarios that are explicitly not nuclear.

Do Americans have it in them to setup a durable blockade

If neither side fully escalates it is a matter of who is willing to escalate further. If both sides are willing to escalate, but stop short of nuclear weapons, there is no existent navel force, or combination of navel forces, which can sustain a Taiwanese blockade in the face of Chinese opposition.

Do Americans have it in them to setup a durable blockade that can escalate to a nuclear war for long enough to make it meaningful?

If China's asking, the answer is "fuck around and find out". A "blockade" is not the limit of what the US can do, anyway -- the US could also sink every Chinese ship capable of taking troops to Taiwan.

Do they have it in them to completely wreck their (and the world's) economy and to scramble to get local industrial capacity back online?

Not doing so is not a choice. The alternative to defending Taiwan by force is not just letting China take over and then business as usual. It's the usual dumbass sanctions regime that hurts the US just as much as a Chinese embargo would, without actually helping anyone.

Every time I read about a sustained conflict between modern great powers, the first two moves sound reasonable and after that it's basically reading like the end of the world as we know it, even in the scenarios that are explicitly not nuclear.

Yes, a sustained conflict between modern great powers is not a reasonable thing. Why would you expect it to be?

Why would you expect it to be?

I suppose all previous ones were also completely unreasonable. Fuck.

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