site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2084 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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats