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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2089 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 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.

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