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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2162 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 22, 2024

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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I found the latest Douthat piece on Ukraine to be quite interesting: https://archive.is/xVlg2 Basically he argues that there is a real tradeoff between helping to defend Ukraine and Taiwan. It's not a question of money, so much as physical equipment. China is doing an intensive modernization of its military, aimed to be done in 2027. That might not mean anything, but it could also be a prelude to invading Taiwan. Which, Douthat argues, would be a much bigger loss for world order than Ukraine.

It's a tough tradeoff. Lots of angles to consider:

  • a real, here-and-now war, vs a potential future war
  • an "emerging" democracy vs a much more stable democracy
  • vague promises to both countries, but no formal treaties
  • the role of Europe and Asian allies in both respective theaters (again, lots of vague promises but no formal treaties)
  • would depleting the US arsenal by sending everything to Ukraine make China more likely to invade?
  • or, would not supporting Ukraine make China more likely to invade?

For what it's worth, Manifold has the odds at 21% now. Not super high but much higher than I would like.

... on the other hand, in my darker moments, I can't say that I'd really hate to see the end of the US-led world cathedral of global liberal capitalism.

According to Wikipedia, US-led alliances have a total GDP (PPP) of 80 trillion USD. The China-Russia-Iran one has a GDP (PPP) of 43 trillion. Even if I generously add every -stan to it (and I'm being really generous, I really doubt Pakistan would join, since it's trying to avoid anything that would cause India to align itself with the US), it's still just 55. The US could easily outproduce China if it really wanted to.

This Russia-Ukraine war should really be a wakeup call for simply assuming that GDP (or PPP) is the same as military production. Russia, by itself, is producing more artillery shells than all of NATO. China is massively outproducing the US in warships right now. Perhaps the US could change that "if it really wanted to," but that's not something you turn on overnight. It doesn't really have a lot of shipyards or heavy manufacturing left at this point.

There's also the small detail that most of the US-allied countries are in Europe, about as far from the Pacific as its possible to get. I don't see most of them helping out in this scenario.

Yes, this has been the case for quite awhile. For all the hand-wringing about the U.S. spending more on defense than the "entire world combined", a simple PPP adjustment already gets us to the point where China is spending as much as the U.S.

America's nominal GDP is 15x that of Russia. We should be able to easily overwhelm their military production. But we can't. Because our military spending is fake and mostly wasted on salaries for useless mouths.

To be fair large chunks of spending by Russia and China is also fake. Mainly because of corruption. China particularly has huge amounts of their spending just vanish. Which is they are always going on anti-corruption drives, appointing a new anti-corruption czar..and then discovering said tzar is themselves corrupt, firing and replacing them.

If you've never been in China for any length of time it is difficult to understand just how corrupt it is. The only place I have spent any amount of time that was worse was Pakistan. Though the Chinese version is slightly better hidden.

How many of those Chinese ships and missiles and electronics are built with sub-standard parts so someone could skim? How many missiles do they think they have vs how many they actually have that are functional?

"We now have new revelations of corruption in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army resulting in, among other things, “missiles filled with water instead of fuel” and missile silos “with lids that don’t function.” According to U.S. officials, this latest bout of corruption “led to an erosion of confidence in the [PLA’s] overall capabilities” and made President Xi Jinping “less likely to contemplate major military action.” Xi responded by purging at least a dozen PLA leaders implicated in the scandal."

I broadly agree but

missiles filled with water instead of fuel

My understanding is that this is a mistranslation. This means that there is corruption in the missile service and that missiles might lack fuel or have insufficient fuel, not that missiles are literally filled with water.

Still very bad of course but not as pants on head retarded as literally filling missiles with water.

This is a very good point and I think we'll just have to wait until there is a kinetic conflict to see what happens.

Russia is clearly getting more bang for their buck than the U.S. is. They just don't have a lot of bucks.

When it comes to China, they will soon have quite a large material and spending (PPP adjusted) advantage over the U.S. On the other hand, nobody has any idea what will happen if China ever tries to actually do anything. I have a feeling it won't go well for them. They have no actual war-fighting experience. If they truly want to invade Taiwan, they should start fighting some minor conflicts to gain experience. The logistical difficulty of taking Taiwan with a hostile U.S. fleet against them is off the charts.

a lot of shipyards

I actually wonder how useful USVs/UUVs will be against the USN or the PLAN. PLAN has a boatload of ships but hasn't fought a real war yet. Taiwan could build 10x more USVs/UUVs for a fraction of the cost.

If I were Kawasaki or Bombardier, I would be very interested in defense contracts right now.

Russia, by itself, is producing more artillery shells than all of NATO.

Slow and placid Western defense companies need a very long time to scale up production. They’ve been starting that process for 18 months, I don’t think extrapolating current production trends to 2027 is valuable because Western defense suppliers will be producing substantially more in a few years.

This has almost nothing to do with the defense companies and almost all to do with the slow and placid governments. To make the investments they need long term commitments, which they have been very slow to get.

Starting the process, but what scale goal do they have? I doubt the European governments, mine among them, are wise enough to seriously prepare for a war against Russia without any US support, which might happen.

Even with a materiel advantage, Russia doesn’t have the manpower to mount an invasion of Europe.

Not all of Europe, no. But a small country perhaps? If the USA pulls out, Putin might want to test Europe's commitment to Article 5 by taking parts of a small country like Estonia.

That depends on what you mean by outproduce, or production. The US axis produces stuff that as of Feb 2024 is considered more valuable than the stuff that the China axis produces. But it's not necessarily more of the same stuff, and it's not necessarily more of the stuff that we might really need if there is another large war.

GDP is an imperfect measurement of production capacity- my understanding is that an outsize percentage of the heavy industry which can be converted to war production on short notice is in the Russo-Chinese alliance.

It's not clear to me that Taiwan and Ukraine require the same kinds of weapons. The former needs naval and air assets while the latter needs artillery shells and tanks. Any war between China and US allies in the Pacific (outside of Korea) would be a quick and deadly exchange of missiles and planes that ends with one navy still afloat and one at the bottom of the sea, Battle of Midway style, rather than the kind of unending slugfest that a war between two nations that share a land border can devolve into. By the time you find yourself fighting a ground battle on the island itself, a war for Taiwan would have already been lost.

You might be right, but that is far from clear. Some of the wargames they run do end up with a protacted ground war on the island itself. In this one: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/01/csis-wargame-chinas-invasion-of-taiwan-in-2026/ they assumed that China would be able to land troops initially, but be met by a strong response from the Taiwanese army. It stresses the need to have that ground army in place and ready.

Q: Did CSIS model a wargame where the U.S. allies won against the Taiwan invasion but China hunkered down for a protracted war afterwards and strangled Taiwan with a long-term blockade?

CSIS: Mark Cancian: Great question and that is something CSIS needs to follow up and work on in the future.

Q: Did arming Ukraine take away from arming Taiwan?

CSIS: Mark Cancian: “No. Ukraine is a ground war whereas the CSIS Taiwan wargame is an air and naval war.”

So that guy at least seems to agree with you, but it almost seems like a contradiction there in his answers.

This one: https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/dangerous-straits-wargaming-a-future-conflict-over-taiwans did end up in a protracted conflict, with the Chinese side even detonating a nuke off Hawaii as a threat/deterrent.

China doesn't need a navy to fire missiles at Taiwan. It's only 120 miles off their coastline. It could continue firing them as long as it could produce them well after it's navy was gone.

Artillery shells or tanks still won't do anything against missiles. Sure, China can keep shooting missiles but they have no chance of mounting an invasion if their navy is at the bottom of the ocean.

Taiwan is something like 80-90% reliant on food/energy imports. Unlike China, they have no overland substitution routes. After a few months of blockade they'll run into very serious problems, regardless of whether China has amphibious capability remaining.

They don't really need to though? I mean I think the main reason China hasn't tried to take Taiwan is that it recognizes it would end up destroying Taiwan and that it can just wait for US influence to continue declining due to internal issues.

When it comes to actual capability it wouldn't be a problem for them. The Houthi's are still disrupting shipping lanes in the red sea despite American Navy presence and it's a big problem for the US. Iran can produce missiles for far cheaper than the missiles the navy uses to intercept them. Operating a navy that far from home has massive increases in cost due to logistics in resupplying etc. Would be the same with Taiwan. China can churn out missiles for far cheaper and can lob them from it's home turf while the US has to supply an island or a navy on the other side of the world. It's like a long range war of attrition / siege. If the US tried to actually put boots on the ground in China to counter production it would be laughably stupid even ignoring the threat of nuclear escalation. The US military is a lot less of a deterrent to China than the economic consequences of trade disruption. Which is probably why China is pushing overland trade routes so hard and otherwise just waiting.

They don't really need to though? I mean I think the main reason China hasn't tried to take Taiwan is that it recognizes it would end up destroying Taiwan and that it can just wait for US influence to continue declining due to internal issues.

Yes, which is why supplying Ukraine with what it needs (artillery & tanks) has next to no effect on being able to intervene in potential China - Taiwan conflict.

They need anti-air, until they can regularly shoot down Russian aviation at range they will get glide bombed into oblivion. This is something Taiwan will also need an impossible amount of. Both conflicts are not winnable at current levels of production and cost of production.

I like this article overall and appreciate he’s trying to strike a balance between competing concerns.

The problem with his analysis is that it’s wrong. DoD efforts re: Ukraine are not zero-sum with deterring China. (And Putin paying a heavy price sends a warning to China, too.)

The West in general, even the US, has let military production capacities contract significantly over several decades, as China has massively expanded the quality and quantity of its armaments and production.

People pointing out our shortfalls of say manufacturing artillery shells in a sustained conflict (or worse, ships) didn’t get very far. These problems are not new, but not seen as urgent.

Putin invading Ukraine did three great things for the West. First, it committed Russian forces to a very costly war. Second, it reminded the West that real wars can still happen and led to more unity. Third, it’s demonstrating some of the aforementioned shortfalls and “priming the pump” for the US to reestablish production capacities. The money we spend on armaments for Ukraine is going to US companies.

If you really care about our ability to deter China and win a war, you should support building warships as fast as possible at scale for Ukraine. That way, we’re capable of actually doing that for us. Or we could build the new ones for us and donate older ones to Ukraine.

I’m only half-kidding. We need more warships and we are so slow at production now.

At any rate, any China hawk who is against our support to Ukraine is bad at geopolitics and logistics.

That's fair. Though, it doesn't seem like our production of warships is increasing. Even if it's not a limit on physical production, there is a limited amount of political capital to be spent on increasing military production, and right now that's all being used on Ukraine.

I cannot emphasize enough that it’s not a zero-sum game of political capital either.

The US should be concerned with Russia and China. This is not a new thing.

What is a newish thing is the US focusing on potential conflict with near-peer rivals instead of insurgents/terrorists.

What is also a new thing is that a wing of the GOP is soft on Russia. The true objection is not that we are supporting Ukraine in a way that actually inhibits our ability to deter China.

Ukraine is, from our perspective, a tiny conflict. We are not mobilizing troops or significantly shifting our defensive posture or strategy. We have tons of old equipment to give them. It also turns out we have let our 155mm shell production atrophy. Let’s fix that.

The GOP used to be full of people very concerned about appearing weak to any adversary, because they understood deterrence means being threatening. Now they’ll say we should let Putin have what he demands.

China will take it as a positive sign if US infighting reduces support for Ukraine because they want the same kind of infighting regarding Taiwan.

Is there a wing of the Democratic party that wants to dramaticly ramp up shipbuilding capacity? If so I haven't seen it.

I vaguely remember Romney talking about building more ships in the 2012 debates, and getting laughed off the stage.

I think politicians struggle to justify our current level of military spending ($800 billion (mr evil stance) per year), let alone a big increase. That's where I mean that the political capital, and to some extent just money, is limited.

But yes, in general I agree with you. It's crazy that the US has more money than ever, yet struggles to maintain the fleet it had in the 80s. It doesn't need to invent new technology, it just has to actually build shit.

Is there a wing of the Democratic party that wants to dramatically ramp up shipbuilding capacity?

No? Every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on the education-managerial complex.

And it is the education-managerial complex that's actually on the back foot here because the vast majority of its power rests upon the existence of cheap Chinese manufacturing (both chips and otherwise). Their time is over as soon as the Chinese missiles leave their launchers no matter which way you slice it.

Why invest in a pre-emptive solution that would require you give more power back to the middle class (which is one of the things a large manufacturing base is famous for doing) when you could just do nothing and enrich yourself in the meantime? If China never tries to take back Taiwan, you'll still keep your power and didn't have to spend a dime to do it; if China tries to take back Taiwan and explodes the EMC's money-making machinery, now you've put your political enemy in a more difficult position, which is good because should they win and fix everything they'll be less able to resist you 20 years down the line. Same dynamics as climate change but with the political valence reversed.

Progressives' job is ultimately to convince China to leave their money printer alone specifically because their rule weakens the US. If China disregards that advice and the US ends up turfing its hyper-conservative (as in "no new development ever") ruling class as a result of the financial problems that destruction would create they're going to be a lot harder to fight.

It’s not just warships.

The Jones Act hurt all US shipbuilding.

I’m not saying Dems on average are excited about military spending. But it’s not that Ukraine support has anything to do with that.

The Jones Act really does seem like a massive own-goal, with the potential to ruin the US.

offshore manufacturing and transition to a service economy? OK, controversial decision, but I can see the logic of it. We'll just pay other countries to build stuff for us.

Oh, but we're now required by law to build ships in the US? Despite there being no one left in the US who can actually do that kind of shipbuilding? That's going to be a big problem. It's one giant bottleneck in the entire US economy, and especially its navy.

The weirdest thing that happened was surely the mysterious Russian nuclear space device that may or may not be launched. The US has apparently been trying to get China and India to influence Russia against launching - why China would want to advance US foreign policy goals is unclear to me. The US is the most satellite-dependant power, they have the most to lose.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-officials-have-warned-russia-not-to-deploy-nuclear-armed-space-weapon-dc3480b4 (paywalled)

Nuclear weapons in space are banned per treaty, they have extremely powerful effects on unshielded satellites (which is the vast majority of them). I imagine this would be an obvious counter to Starlink that's been causing so much trouble for Russia.

There's also been speculation that the Russians are thinking of a nuclear powered energy weapon, electronic warfare or laser attacks with a bit more grunt than solar. Alternately, it could serve in an anti-ICBM role - nuclear pumped lasers are a good way of shooting down missiles. They've also been experimenting with nuclear powered cruise missiles and nuclear powered torpedoes, there's an atompunk theme going on.

Have fun shooting down our constellation of Starlink satellites that let Ukraine get through your jamming and launch drone attacks on your facilities. SpaceX can outlaunch your ASAT for pennies on the dollar

Let's see how you handle our nuclear-powered electronic warfare, good luck drowning that out. You can, of course, fire a missile at our flying nuclear facility - do you want to take that risk?

By "nuclear-pumped," does this mean like literally focusing the neutron radiation of a nuclear explosion into a directed-energy beam, a la GENESIS?

basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur

which that might be based off.

why China would want to advance US foreign policy goals is unclear to me

My best guess: the US believe China has more to lose than gain if Russia were to use destructive satellite weaponry and that their Chinese counterparts will reach the same conclusion. Russia and China may have a 'special relationship', that doesn't meant they're on the same page.

Are you still doing these, @Soriek? Yours were always great.

Anyway, among the recent news that I've seen was that Milei was able to cut Argentina's spending across the board by passing what amounts to a continuing resolution unilaterally, without needing to consult the legislature, to the point that the budget is now balanced. The reason why this is a cut is because of inflation—if you pay people the same number, but it's now worth half as much, then you're effectively paying less (and since the taxes scale, it works out).

I'm not sure how this affects things politically, but having the option of this seems to avoid some of the problems of government shutdowns that we hav. in the US. I hadn't considered that continuing resolutions could act as a way to constrain spending, whel inflation is so high, as I thought of them rather as a part of the current, problematic US system.

Hey sorry, I’ve been pretty slammed the past few weeks and haven’t had time to really sit down and grind these out, they take a while.

I do have to admit my enthusiasm has been waning a little lately, here and on forum in general. I’ve never been really into the culture war side of things, but I like the userbase here and noticed a lot of people like to talk foreign policy, so this was an attempt to create a central place for that kind of discussion. The hope was for TT to develop into something more community driven / self-sustaining without me, if users were into it. But after nine months it looks likely we won’t reach that; I think last week had zero posts and today has one. Which is fine, if people’s interests just lie elsewhere, not every swing is a hit.

Yeah, I have to admit I've been a consumer of your posts rather than a contributor. But it was immensely interesting to read what you brought up! Thanks for it.

I look forward to these threads, and your contributions to them, even if I rarely have much to add! I don't follow Indian news, largely for my own mental health, so it pains me to have to passively consume most of the time, but consider me another one of the many people who would be sad to see you not continue, even if all we do is upvote and go hmm.

I didn't post in those threads because I'm pretty ignorant on most countries and I don't want to speak just to speak, but I always looked forward to them. I hope you'll find time and energy to keep posting some of it.

I guess the interest has always been somewhat low, but I feel like the downturn might also be because of the mollywhop that was the site rollback.

I like these, for what it's worth.

Understandable. For what it's worth, as someone who is mostly a lurker, these threads are one of the things that keep me lurking.

It's consistently been among the most valuable things I get out of themotte.

Thanks, I'm glad to hear they've been resonating!

I don't post much here in general but I have to say, like many things on The Motte, your Transnational Thursdays are like nothing else I've seen on the internet. I love reading about foreign affairs, and a lot of these countries, you just don't hear about them except for these threads.

If you want to take a break or quit entirely, by all means, go for it. I would just be interested in where you got all the material for your posts in the first place.

Much appreciated!

It's a combination of the news and personal knowledge / connections. I'll pick a country I've been following and read as many articles across as many outlets as possible till I feel like I understand what's going on, then combine it with personal knowledge of the history of the area via books or wikipedia or whatnot. I've also lived in quite a few different countries so know some of their issues from a more personal lens; can talk to my friends about what things look like on the ground.

Try The Economist. It comes out weekly and deals mostly with international affairs.

Ah the Economist! Always predicting the future of the 80s no matter what decade we're in!

I think they should always have been in the main CW thread, which already regularly hosts culture war happenings from other lands.

If there wasn't a standalone place there might have been more engagement on my posts, but I think there would have been less reason for other people to feel like they also had a dedicated place to contribute their own posts. This was borne out after the transition; submissions-other-than-mine did go up a fair amount after making the independent thread, though ofc they're still low. More to the point, I don't like how bitter the culture war thread has become and didn't want every attempt to talk foreign policy to get overwhelmed with the customary hobby horses of complaining about immigrants or the perfidious deep state.

If we'd left them there, yeah, there might have been more traffic.

The hope was for TT to develop into something more community driven / self-sustaining without me, if users were into it. But after nine months it looks likely we won’t reach that; I think last week had zero posts and today has one. Which is fine, if people’s interests just lie elsewhere, not every swing is a hit.

Yeah, I feel bad. International happenings are usually not as viscerally interesting as the latest domestic scissor event, at least not to the people who self-selected to be here.

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