I would like to see you lay out a proposal for how the US should be preparing. What the cost would be, how we could finance this (cuts to entitlements, taxes), and perhaps a theory of why the Biden Administration is currently so far off base. Would be a good piece!
Also, the US just approved almost $900 billion in military expenditures. What are we spending that money on? What should be cut? What should be improved?
Biden talks like it’s 1941 but budgets like it’s 1999. This, to me, seems obviously like the largest failing of his administration—and if a conflict breaks out in Asia in the near future his Admin will be regarded as a historic failure. I cannot understand what they’re doing.
It's obvious what Biden has been doing: trying to get America working again after a horrific pandemic. It's a heavy lift, and we're still not over all the negative consequences of it - look at grocery prices. Also, Biden is facing a super tough reelection campaign against Agent Orange.
You said yourself, in your top comment, that preparing for war will likely mean either taxes or entitlement cuts, both of which poll about as well as diarrhea with the American public. How do you expect Biden to say "hey everyone, let's raise your taxes and cut your benefits to prepare for a war that might never come" in an election year?
I mean, hell, you can barely get the GOP to agree to any aid for Ukraine, and that is a real, actual, current war, not a hypothetical.
I'm not dismissing the threat, Noah makes a persuasive and scary case, just, how does this work politically?
^^ This. The reason Biden is budgeting like it's 1999 is that the measures that would be appropriate to the moment would open him up to political attacks that would appeal to low-information voters.
Fundamentally the problem is the fact that a large slice of the electorate trusts Fox News and its even-worse relatives at Newsmax, OAN, whatever BS Tucker Carlson is doing now, etc. That entire complex has decided to simply throw in with the authoritarians, celebrating Russia for suppressing queer people and feminists, fighting "wokeness", etc. If the West ends up in a shooting war against Russia and China, we face the serious possibility of having the January 6th insurrectionist types acting as a Fifth Column.
I'm not sure how we get back from here, to an environment where something like the Fairness Doctrine, and some kind of regulation on "news" sources to not massive distort the facts, can apply. You'll see the very-occasional left-wing authoritarian calling to round up Roger Ailes' proteges and toss them all in the clink for sedition, but obviously that'd be a pretty radical abrogation of the First Amendment, and authorizing that kind of thing would also create tools to be picked up by MAGA types.
But what _is_ a republic supposed to do, when a large slice of the voters are in thrall to seditious propaganda?
Democracy: Worst form of government, except for everything else we've tried.
I doubt much of the Jan 6 crowd will act like a 5th column. They can be crazy but are largely patriotic in their own way, and I suspect an external actor would galvanize them.
The vast majority of those types were fairly regular people, who, after watching a year of unchecked riots, arsons, etc., felt they could get in on the action. Most of the others (see the Shaman types) are nut jobs, but just like the people light buildings on fire, throw Molotov cocktails, shoot people who disagree with politics, and take over sections of Portland and Seattle in the riots, they cannot act without the cover form the more normal types). This basically true for both sides.
I would also argue that any conflict would likely involve a huge non-conventional attack prior (e.g., containerships into bridges, wide-spread cyber attacks, possibly even infrastructure attacks). This would further galvanize a broad-base of support.
As to what you do when a large portion of the electorate are in "thrall of seditious propaganda"? First, I would check my biases to ensure I am reading the situation correctly...second, I would actually work on moderating my own policy stances and convincing them to change their minds. That's kind of what we do in a democratic republic.
For what it is worth, I agree that equivalence is false when framed in the context of equally "bad" or "impactful." An attempt to use force to alter a national election is incredibly serious.
However, in the context of the original post, I think it is important to remember why the rule of law is a significant part of a successful democracy. From a rule of law perspective, it is not a false equivalency, at least not if you want to maintain the government's legitimacy.
We have a rule of law because we disagree about equivalencies. You and I may believe that interfering with an election is worse, but if the other side believes that an election was stolen (which many did), then from their perspective, it may be worse.
So, suppose we are concerned about things like insurrections. In that case, we really need to stop groups like the CHAZ (an autonomous zone that was very open about its insurrection status) from establishing formal insurrections, and we most certainly do not need politicians like Jenny Durkan (the mayor) joking about it when it occurs.
We, collectively, put rules in place that say we will not allow armed groups to interfere in the political process, full-stop, regardless of how we feel about their cause. Once we start breaking that taboo (which has now been broken a couple times), we start down a very dark path. Also, it's important to remember that even when it happens, we can still recover (this happened a fair amount in the 1980s with white supremacist nationalists trying to cede or even things like Waco).
The best way to stop these kinds of incidents from escalating is to engage in dialogue with those we disagree with, try to empathize with the beliefs of both sides. This does not mean agree with them, or even "forgive" them, it simply means attempting to see the world from their perspective (something that should arguably be easier for more liberal individuals). We then use that knowledge to concede on minor or inconsequential points, make arguments they might find compelling, and work to our best ability to employ the law in an even-handed fashion. This helps remove the more moderate members of this group, depriving them of resources, numbers, political cover, and legitimacy.
Finally, if I was in charge I would highlight not just those arrested for Jan. 6th but also those arrested for things like the arsons in Portland and the CHAZ. My understanding that a number of people from the CHAZ were charged...I would highlight that. I also know that the US DA at the time in Portland (Billy Williams) did charge a lot of the protestors for the most serious crimes (serious assaults, throwing Molotov cocktails, arson, etc.). Those seemed to have petered off, but I would certainly highlight what has been done and continue to prosecute individuals who committed serious offenses.
I agree that Biden's hands are tied when it comes to spending money, but there are significant administrative problems that could probably be addressed without spending increases. (The shipbuilding fiasco is one of many ongoing military procurement messes, and fixing these could well save money.) He's also not even talking up the potential of a conflict with China, which would be a prerequisite to increasing spending.
"It's obvious what Biden has been doing: trying to get America working again after a horrific pandemic. It's a heavy lift, and we're still not over all the negative consequences of it - look at grocery prices."
What is Biden doing to lower grocery prices? To get America working? We got our soft landing a while ago, and it's time to move on to other business. (It's not even clear to me that Biden had much to do with the soft landing.)
I think it would be helpful for the American public to be made widely aware of those RAND studies or whatever war games that consistently show the US RUNS OUT OF conventional missiles within like 2 weeks of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That’s such a sobering thought but also captures the lack of preparedness on our part.
I would like to see a followup piece addressing what a person can reasonably do to prepare for this risk in their personal life, not merely by political advocacy. Specifically:
1. Financial strategy. I have asked several different investment advisors whom I trust and respect what it looks like to hedge one's portfolio against the risk of war with China. Nobody has had an answer. Maybe that means it's impossible -- but if not, that is very useful to discuss.
2. Personal preparedness. I live in San Francisco, like you. Every once in awhile I think about what sequence of news events would cause me to leave for a rural area out of likely nuke range. There is a fine line between leaving "too early"-- i.e. when the real risk is very low and you will almost certainly be disrupting your whole life for nothing-- and "too late"-- I e. when everyone else wants the same thing and available resources to flee are oversubscribed. How do you think about navigating that tradeoff rationally?
Yep I'm having trouble thinking about this too. I own a lot of international stocks, so that's diversified. I own some crypto, though I'm not sure how useful that'll be. I don't own gold, but thinking maybe I should. As for prepper cabins etc., that's not something I intend to actually do, but perhaps buying assets to bet on prepper demand would be smart?
What would make for an interesting piece would be an sober exploration of the formal "dance" that would accompany war and nuclear exchange. People seem to think it's going to be full send all missiles but everything I've read indicates that there's almost a protocol that would unfold. One missile each, then another, in a slow escalation. I remember reading that the USSR had Boston designated as it's "demo" city, for lack of a better term. Kyiv was the city the US designated. Once those steps were taken it's assumed that it's "ok, we're both serious so let's get to work figuring this out."
Wouldn't it be defense contractors, commodities producers with American assets (energy, mining, forest products), machine tooling, chip makers with American assets, American logistics, American farm land, etc? Or are you thinking of a situation where we lose and you need to access cash in a post-US world?
Some stocks make sense on paper but are a terrible idea in practice. they are all guaranteed to collapse, all around the world, if a China-US war breaks out. The tried and tested hedges against disaster are treasuries, gold, the US dollar, Japanese yen and Swiss franc. At the onset of the pandemic, our last major challenge, all of these did reasonably well. But this will be very different. Nobody will buy US assets during a huge war involving the US. So treasuries and dollar doesn't make sense. I don't see the Japanese yen doing well either since in any geopolitical analysis Japan is on the front line of being screwed here.
The Swiss franc should do quite well here. Remember currencies aren't optional assets like stocks, bonds etc. If you sell one currency it has to go to another. They can't all be abandoned at once. And I think the Swiss might be the best option. Gold usually does well, but I'm not sure how well it would perform in a really bad situation. It doesn't really do anything other than be a store of value, which is only helpful when there's light at the end of the tunnel. Commodities are usually the worst performing asset because demand falls off a cliff in financial crises. But they should probably do pretty well here since oil, crops and metals will all be in extremely short supply.
Finally I'd take a look outside the box at an ETF called BTAL. It's basically a bet that more conservative stocks like utilities, consumer staples and healthcare will outperform more volatile stocks like autos, travel, consumer discretionary. All stocks will go down but that doesn't affect BTAL. BTAL is only affected by the relative performance of riskier vs less risky stocks. Seems like it would do well. And if you're looking to make an absolute fortune in the face of disaster, buying volatility is the way to go. An etf like VXX quintupled when the stock market fell at the covid onset. But it's super risky and timing is everything. If disaster doesn't come very soon after you buy VXX you could lose most, and eventually all, of your investment in a surprisingly short timeframe.
There is a company called Everbank that allows you to easily purchase foreign denominated assets. Exchange rates are decent and commissions reasonably low. It's not as good as a foreign denominated bank account, but it's better than nothing.
I'm not sure international stocks helps - a US China conflict would be terrible for the economy, causing a big risk off event, so on avg all risky assets would crash initially, I guess. (Including crypto too probably.)
Potential exceptions could be defence stocks and maybe commodities, and if you can pick them, particular companies that could benefit from onshoring.
Otherwise I think the main defence is to own fewer risk assets (and more gold, cash, index puts, prepper supplies), though then of course you're earning lower returns in the meantime.
On a personal level, I started putting about 0 .1% of my income into prepper-type stuff over a decade ago (we live in the NW, and my wife went to work presentation on the subduction zone and came home with some great info).
For what it's worth, this consisted of buying one or two 25-day footbox from Costco once a month (about $70 to $140), a 50-gallon water barrel every year or so, backing up medicines so that we now run about three months ahead, and other sundry type things. I also used this, along with other financial and climatic arguments, to convince my wife for us to get solar power (we generate about 23k kwh annually). It has not paid for itself yet but I feel kind of patriotic about it...if something really bad happened we play a small part in providing power to our community (this did put us over the 0.1% cutoff though).
I also started putting the excess (whatever was left of the 0.1%) into a little cash or silver coins every month (for the first few years this felt like throwing away but I justified it as a hedge and more recently is has paid for itself). After a decade, it's amazing what we have accumulated (although I do not really study this stuff, so I am probably missing obvious things).
Our attitude was to prepare for a natural disaster that impacted transportation networks for 3 to 6 months. I figured if it was so bad that things were not back to somewhat normal in 6 months, it was probably big enough that prepping was kind of worthless. There was no science behind this number—just a guess.
I am now thinking more deeply about this and have been thinking of getting a faraday bag for some basic electronics and possibly buying somehow-to books and prepper books. Again, I do not view this as a likely outcome but have always hedged and diversified when investing and I throw this into that category of expenses.
That said, I have not gone down the actually hard core prepper type road too far yet because 1) is it a path to madness? 2) It's a little scary 3) it seems like there is a lot to know but that when looking at the books I might buy they seem to have some scary political connections that make me a little nervous.
Makes a lot of sense to hedge with small percentage amounts of "insurance" like this. One challenge for many (including me) is storage space! This stuff takes a lot of room!
Also, past economic and military disasters show that it's often the "nice-to-have" things that are really what become scarce and longed after, rather than the bread-and-water necessities. So, should we stockpile new socks and birthday candles, too?
It also takes a lot of time and mental energy to do all the management of prepping: rotating stocks of consumables, practicing using everything, etc.
Lastly, the sheer number of eventualities that you might "prep" for is overwhelming. Yes, it could be war. But maybe it's also flooding or fire? Both of which put any dutifully acquired and maintained prepping supplies in peril.
1. There are a few important raw materials that feed into chip-making which would 10-50x overnight in case a war breaks out in the indo-pacific. I know this from a SF based VC, but he wouldn't tell me which raw materials exactly. Other than that, commodities, defense stocks, gold.
2. I am in the EU and am considering leaving for Switzerland. Fortunately my life is not settled where I am anyway right now. Moving to a different place is a process that will take a few years of investigation, buying property etc, I already have started the process gently, but will increase once my general health improves (I have some health isues).
Buying property on the Polish border is not recommended!
But for investments, timing is everything. As you said, any US-based semiconductor companies would appreciate massively if war breaks out...but possibly only barely survive if it doesn't. Same with any commodities used heavily in defense industries, like copper, aluminum, etc. This is also something I'm going to look into.
Well laid out argument. What is to Noah's argument, and most concerning to me, is that the entire logic chain does not have to take place to reach the same results. My fear is the growing Israeli / Iran conflict turning into an oil crisis -- the logical next step for Israeli if Iran commits to an open retaliation for Israeli's strike against their leadership in Syria is to destroy the Iranian oil terminals. When/if that happens, all will fall apart quickly in the aftermath.
Thanks for an unsettling morning read. Given China's demographic situation, I.e. declining population, the leadership may have concluded that it is now or never to assert global dominance. Since the current leader of the Republicans is unabashedly pro-authoritarian, rousing the US to resist is going to be a Herculean task.
"even if America never sends another penny, Europe will continue to support Ukraine, because for them the conflict is existential"
Hearing this from Noah is ironic, since it is exactly the case conservatives have been making for 2 years now: let Europe deal with Europe's problem.
"Putin wants all of Ukraine, and then he wants other European countries too."
"if Ukraine falls, the Baltics, Moldova, and eventually Poland are likely to be next on Putin’s menu."
"if America withdraws into isolationism it will give a green light to carry out more conquests"
This may be true, Noah, but you're asserting it without evidence. If it is true, it severely undercuts the "let Europe deal with it" case. But it is not nearly as obvious as you believe it to be. You need evidence here. And right now, most of the verbal and physical evidence is against this argument. Putin has publicly stated his aims and red lines on NATO expansion for over a decade (that's the verbal side). On the physical side, the Russian army has been shown utterly incapable of subduing a vastly weaker next door neighbor, such that, even if he had the will, it's unclear Putin has the military ability to invade even Estonia let alone Poland. You're the China expert -- can you really see the Chinese Red Army fighting in trenches in Latvia? Now if Macron does openly send divisions to fight for Ukraine, maybe. Absent that, China will let Russia do deliver the small blows they are capable of.
You said it yourself: "Americans like to believe that we’re still the hegemon we were in 1999 — this is fantasy. " Yes it is. For a dozen reasons, US hegemony is coming to an end, which requires adaptation to a multipolar world on our part. I believe, we can still thrive in that world very well, but not if we're all dead in a nuclear missile exchange with Beijing.
The fundamental case for a more isolationist US policy in this realm is this: the best way to not fight WWIII is for one of the primary belligerents (us) to refuse to fight WWIII.
I agree 100% about the S. China Sea. Taiwan would be a nice prize, but control of the S. China Sea is critical (maybe existential considering their oil imports) for China. Only NHK News is talking seriously about the skirmishes between China and Philippines; Western press ignores them (flyover ocean). It's all water canons right now, but the Chinese boats have real canons available. It almost looks like they're baiting Marcos to retaliate too far.
And can someone please tell Biden and Yellen and our PMC that "sanctions" not a plaything to throw at anyone we dislike; they are a low-grade act of war.
Despite my criticisms, I'm very happy you are sounding the alarm. Some one needs to.
Europe is mostly going to have to fight Russia on their own. The U.S. will need all its strength and more to stop China in Asia, so we won't be able to help Europe out as much as we'd like.
I want to upvote this 100x times. I actually side with the average MAGA republican on this one. Even though I'm an Oxford educated AI PhD holder.
The MAGA republicans are mostly right about Russia. I don't know how, but when I saw this MAGA moron in an interview definitively state "Russia is not our enemy" I was like "WOW". They are right, Russia IS NOT OUR ENEMY. China is.
The democratic educated elite is completely wrong about this one, and eventually they will figure it out. I am not sure exactly how an idiot southerner reaches the correct conclusion like this, but they have.
God the foreign policy failre wrt Russia of the USA makes me so angry. As a European I now have a Chinese/Russian gun to my head, thanks guys.
Oh also thanks for destabilizing the entire middle east, those refugees are surely making Europe a much more fun place!!! Great fucking job.
USA needs to really get its shit together.
Having said that. I disagree with your assessment of Taiwan. It is vital for the USA and the world that China is contained in the 1st island chain.
Conclusion:
***Sanctions bad
***Fighting russia bad
***War in middle east bad
Containing China in 1st island Chain --> Very good. Keep it up.
To say that Russia is not our enemy is to ignore everything they have done for a decade or more. Putin has long worked to re-establish the USSR. He invaded and absorbed Crimea and then did the same with parts of Georgia and eastern Ukraine. He dominates Belarus and other former USSR nation-states.
During the same period, Putin launched a massive effort to alter the 2016 election to avoid Clinton, who he saw as being opposed to his expansionist foreign policy, in favor of Trump, who he saw as malleable. At Trump’s behest, the Republican platform was changed to eliminate references to military and other support to Ukraine. Throughout the Third World, Russia has encouraged anti-American sentiments and supported corrupt regimes that look to Russia, not the US, for foreign policy and trade support.
Russia has encouraged and supported Iran as well as Syria, both of which train and arm terrorists throughout the Arab world. At home, Putin has murdered many opposition leaders, independent journalists, defectors and out-of-favor oligarchs while poisoning potential threats, including an opposition candidate in Ukraine in 2004. He has jailed American journalists and leveled much of Chechnya to bar its secession.
China’s economic clout and growing military strength are serious concerns but its overt actions to date pale in comparison with Russia’s.
Putin has already subordinated himself to China. Russia is now a de facto part of Red China's bloc. Just like Mussolini subordinated himself to Nazi Germany and its much larger industrial base. Which began right after the Anschluss in 1938, and even before they signed the Tripartite Pact. Putin needs Chinese electronics and consumer goods; China needs Russian petrochems, metals, wheat, lumber, etc. Both are dictatorships; it's a match made in heaven.
This is what "party realignment" looks like, man. A Christian, conservative, homeschooling Dad from California and an Oxford PhD discover they share a tribe. :-) And we can disagree on Taiwan without voting each other off the island.
Nah we really do have to contain China in Taiwan. Sorry. This is where the Oxford PhD and the Christian homeschooling dad from California disagree!
Unless you want your kids to learn mandarin because global maritime trade, and therefore all important financial institutions are controlled by China now. And the Yuan is the global reserve currency in that case, oh and also all semiconductor supply chains are controlled by China of which your most important companies like Microsoft/Google/Nvidia heavily depent on. Actually, even worse!
All supply chains that run through the Indo-Pacific are controlled by China in that case!
It is very very useful to control those supply chains. Especially in times of war. But also in times of peace.
Agree on Ukraine/Middle east. Foreign policy catastrophy/failure on the part of the USA, and you guys should basically leave. But defending Taiwan is the one thing you guys should really really do.
I dont actually mind if my kids learn Mandarin and foreign currencies. Sounds a lot better than fighting ww3. But if you disagree, will you enlist in the military? We're going to need every single soldier we can get, not just "supporters"
"The fundamental case for a more isolationist US policy in this realm is this: the best way to not fight WWIII is for one of the primary belligerents (us) to refuse to fight WWIII."
OK, sure. But if that's the policy of President Villanueva, we may we well put up a sign telling all expansionist powers to take whatever they like, because we're not going to do a damn thing about it. Taiwan at a minimum, Ukraine + all of Eastern Europe (because if we hadn't helped Ukraine bleed Russia out since 2022, that's what would be next), oh let's see, Israel gone, South Korea too probably....
Of course either can be taken too far. You can fail to oppose Hitler when you should, and you can bankrupt yourself playing world policeman over every petty, sibling dispute on the planet. You tell me: which of those two erroneous endpoints do you believe US foreign policy is closer to right now?
Most adversaries aren't Hitler. Most world problems don't need to involve us.
I'd say that historical evidence is on Noah's side, while Putin's "verbal evidence" is quite a weak argument, also historically speaking.
As for physical part, Russian army got two years of modern war practice (and nukes) that most of NATO countries don't have. And there's less than 100% probability that article 5 will be readily implemented. Especially if Trump is elected.
I didn't say anything about historical evidence. To be honest, beyond "assume that any world leader (including our own) might be lying" lessons from history on this subject area pretty limited. Each set of circumstances is too unique.
You re spot-on about the value of the last 2 years to the Russian military though. The combat lifespan of a 2nd Lt is short precisely because books are limited in their ability to impart the lessons of real war. (The smart ones lean on the Sergeants for a reason.) Russia is presently the only major nation in the world with commanders who have actual experience in large-scale, land warfare. Has any current NATO commander ever engaged in a real tank battle? Perhaps a few from Gulf War 2? But not many. And that was 20 years ago.
As imperfect as it is, historical parallels are the best "evidence" I can come up with. What kind of evidence would you consider convincing that Putin does plan to invade Baltic states?
His own statements about his intent in Ukraine (flawed as that is) count for something in my book, his own statements regarding the reasons for his past actions (specifically Crimea) also matter, and the physical inability of his army to actually defeat Ukraine. None of these are definitive obviously, but the latter in particular is pretty important.
As for evidence that would counter that: a military buildup on the border of NATO country. For example, as much as I doubt Putin would invade Poland, we would be foolish not to sent NATO equipment to Poland if he began massing force on the Polish border. In the era of satellites, these things are pretty easy to see in advance.
One thing that makes today different from pre-WW2 is that many states in the world have nukes. Nukes make an all out WW2 style war basically impossible (It will just be the end of civilization immediately).
But it makes many hot proxy conflicts around the world even more likely. Until we have another global hegemon I suspect that proxy conflicts such as the ones we have now will become the defacto standard and a constant background in todays world.
When we had 70,000 of them lined up and ready to go, we could have destroyed civilization, no problem. Now the whole world has less than 3500 deployed.
Ya, I also counted how many nuclear weapons the world still has haha.
I personally think we have enough deterrence to prevent WW3. As I believe we have about enough to destroy all the economic centers of China/Russia, and similarly Russia and China have about enough to destroy all the economic centers of NATO+Allies.
Land armies are still supreme, you need human bodies to secure a piece of geography/land. This means that if Russo-Sino Tank Divisions get close towards Warsaw then the USA/France would just nuke Moscow and that's the end of that. So I believe there is still enough MAD to prevent WW3.
The Koreans, yes, but the Japanese people will never accept nuclear weapons. Look at the difficulty the LDP/Komeito grand coalition has had in even getting permission to start rebuilding their military. Even the word "military" or "navy" is verboten in Japan; it's all "Self Defense Forces".
Vietnam, Philipines, Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal, Burma, South Korea--none of these have nukes. South Korea is the only one of these we're (possibly) prepared to use tactical nukes to defend.
India has nukes. But I've no idea how effective their delivery systems are. Or at what point of losing territory to a Chinese offensive they'd be willing to go nuclear.
The only certainty in this overall scenario is that on its current geopolitical trajectory China will move on Taiwan. It's not an "if", but a "when". When that happens, we and as many of our allies as we can corral, will be at war.
If China is smart, they'll initially keep it regional, and just take Taiwan. They don't (yet) have the amphibious capacity to seriously threaten Japan or the Phillippines. They could then peace out with us after a year or two; then start a new move on India or Vietnam. Or even push down to the Straits of Malacca.
It's grim isn't it. I also think it's almost certain China will move on Taiwan.
None of this is easy however. Amphibious operations are near impossible. If Taiwan is willing to defend itself I think it can looking at the Russio-Ukraine war. If the US is willing to defend Taiwan, then China will surely lose.
Also imagine them moving on Vietnam. China has invaded Vietnam a dozen times, and never succeeded. China would never 'win' in the indo-pacific. But it could be the light that starts the fire of WW3 and then we would all lose.
Best is to prevent all of this, I don't know how. Super intelligent and wise diplomacy from both chinese and usa's side would work. Let's pray for that.
Noah, with respect…have you thought this one through?
I invite you to contemplate the effect of just 100 appropriately targeted nuclear warheads on either the United States or China. The mass death and human suffering would make WWII look like a picnic.
My point being that I very much doubt that Xi Jinping and his military leadership regards the damage potentially unleashed by the US nuclear arsenal as in any way an acceptable cost of war. Nor would Vladimir Putin and the Russian military leadership.
The problem I have with this argument is that it rests on the assumption that people like Putin are rational actors with more or less correct assessments of reality. But if that were the case, would the war in Ukraine even start?
One of the great foreign policy flaws is the belief that your adversary must be irrational. Believing it gets you off the hook to understand their actions, but ignores Sun Tzu's axioms. Truly irrational people almost never rise to leadership of a major nation.
Starting the war in Ukraine was completely rational. If you don't understand why, go back and read the previous 10 years of Russian statements on NATO expansion into Ukraine.
Continuing the war in Ukraine once you've started it is completely rational, even if it's horribly expensive. Putin must either obtain a victory or will likely face a coup.
And to those who think a Russian coup would be a good thing, go look at the bench lineup and get back to me. We made this mistake with Mubarak and Ghaddafi; let's not repeat it with a nuclear armed Russia. To anyone who lived through 1991, governmental dissolution in a nuclear armed country is a terrifying prospect.
The war in Ukraine is rational if you believed it was going to be a '3-day special military operation'. Russia was surprised by how hard the Ukrainians fought back, they assumed the account of seperatist movements were true and they would be heralded as the heroes saving Ukraine.
I wonder about that.... both Putin and Xi are old enough that their legacies may mean more than their current life span. Additionally, it is pretty easy for both of them to create apocalyptic reasons to support these ideas (for Russia, it is already an apocalyptic message of western liberalism - Satan, fighting the last of the true church - Russian Orthodoxy; for China, it appears Xi is pretty ok with doing some terrible things - see the Uigurs, to advance the Han ethnicity, I am not sure how this plays out with him but it has the potential).
At some point, they may find that they have a choice between risking how history will view them and how much damage their nation is willing to suffer. I mentioned earlier that Margaret MacMillian's The War that Ended Peace has a lot to say about how the people (and nature of the times) influenced events leading up to WWI. One of my takeaways is that assuming you can figure out how people like Putin, XI (or, for that matter, Trump or Biden) and the systems around them will calculate costs is fraught with peril.
I am not saying you are wrong, only that there is a pretty decent chance you could be. Even if the likelihood that you are correct is 90%, there is still a non-trivial chance that things play out differently.
Disagree with you there, Noah. Assuming the warheads actually hit targets inside the US, even a dozen could cripple us. Wall Street, San Jose, Norfolk, Philly, Boston...you get the idea. This, however, is a topic you should explore with some of your Military College contacts: "How Many nuke hits would it take to cripple us economically?"
China is perhaps even more vulnerable in this regard, as 70% of their industrial base is on the coast.
I agree that this starts as a growing basket of proxy wars -- and wars where significantly stronger countries all around the world absorb their weaker neighbors as fast as they can. However, unfortunately about half those countries possessing nukes today will be on one side or the other in those wars and from past behaviors appear be more than willing to use their (limited) nuclear arsenals in the process. From there it gets ugly quickly.
This was obvious to me at the start of the Russio-Ukraine war: That it would inevitably become a proxy Nato/China war. I am actually flabbergasted at the incompetence of American leadership in pushing for expansion of Nato into Ukraine. If we'd be honest Realists we should have used Russia as a balancer wrt China (the actual threat) and engage in security negotiations with Putin like a decade ago. Putin is a moron however, so it may have been impossible anyway.
I have listened to celebratory talks of USA military leadership along the lines of 'we are afghanistan trapping Russia in Ukraine detoriating their economic and industrial base'. And my immediate thought was "China". Not Russia "China". Like, USA foreign policy feels like as if it is still fighting the Cold War with the USSR --> Instead of recognizing the much much greater threat that is China
Truth to be told. I think we have checkmated ourselves by moving our industrial base to China.
USA+Allies can not fight China's industrial base, China's ability as an authoritarian power to organise and concentrate power is much greater than our band of democratic misfits still quibbling over race/etnicity and so forth.
Perhaps if it becomes USA+Allies+The-Entire-World, then we will win. This may be the case, as the global liberal world order is working very well for basically everyone, making me feel quite assured Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Taiwan, SK, Japan, et al will all fight against the Chinese.
But.. who knows. The borders of the Ukraine war are far away from me, but, not far enough; I am moving towards buying some property in Switzerland.
Russia always wants its old empire in Eastern Europe to shore up its eternal geographic achilles heel it has with Poland. But what Russia wants and what Russia can get are very different.
I think with godtier levels of diplomacy the USA could have prevented the Sino-Russia alliance, but alas, it's probably too late now.
From Russia's perspective NATO started this war in Ukraine and therefore NATO does not listen to Russia's security needs (and therefore it forms an alliance with China). I know from our perspective it is the opposite, but I think it's good to look at things from the perspective of other nations (something the USA is not great at)
True, we're not good at that. But lately I'm becoming much more pessimistic about what we could have accomplished with Russia in the 90s...I'm starting to wonder if the USSR was always just sort of destined to give birth to a successor state like this, given the fact that the USSR killed all the institutions of society except the KGB and the army and killed all of the economy except for oil. Maybe a paranoid militarist petrostate was the only thing that Russia could have become after the USSR got done wrecking it...
Ya I agree. I think Putin is mostly full of shit when he laments 'oh but Russia tried to become part of Nato in the 90s/2010s and you kept rejecting us sadface:('
I think Germany tried very hard to have good relationships with Russia, and I think Puting kept being an asshole. There is no trust in this relationship and that is in large part due to Putin/Russia.
As the late John McCain said:
“Russia is a gas station run by a mafia that is masquerading as a country.”
Having said that, I personally think the time is right. Russia has checkmated itself with this war and with intelligent diplomacy we will get further than whatever this waste of time this war in Ukraine is (for all parties). It is not in Russia's interests to be a vassal state of China. The Chinese play a harder game than we do. Knowing this, we can negotiate.
The Chinese are already busily integrating 154million Russians into their 1.6 billion Chinese empire. Their Belt and Road initiative--a fair equivalent of our own Interstate Highway program--has already reached the 'Stans--the former Russian Central Asian SSR's--as well as India & Nepal.
Once more high-capacity oil & gas pipelines are completed between Russia and themselves in the next few years, they'll be pretty well set with an uninterdictable supply of petrochemicals.
Ya I agree. I think we should have basically courted Russia as much as possible to keep them out of the hands of the Chinese, and keep them within our sphere of influence. This may have been the greatest geostrategic blunder ever, both for the West in provoking Russia, and Putin for starting the war.
The Merscheimer view--that US/NATO "caused" Russia to invade Ukraine--is pretty ridiculous on its face. The breakup of the USSR produced a Ukraine that had large areas of Russian-majority population in the Donbas--which was also a steelmaking and heavy industrial hub. And Crimea--which housed the former USSR's most important naval base. Russia actually began its invasion in 2014, with Russian Special Forces pretending to be Russian-speaking Ukrainians taking parts of the Donbas, and an outright military seizure of Crimea.
The expansion of NATO into Poland, the Baltic States, etc.--all former Warsaw Pact countries--was because those countries all begged and pleaded for membership. Four hundred years of European history was a good prediction of what Russia would to them once it recovered from its' troubles.
Issue is that Russia doesnt actually believe this canard, its just a ready made excuse. Russia was never under threat (they have nukes after all), so all the posturing about Ukraine joining NATO being a threat is just a distraction from their imperialism.
"Truth to be told. I think we have checkmated ourselves by moving our industrial base to China." Perhaps, perhaps not. But we have certainly delayed our response to any crisis by years in doing so.
"Delayed our response by years" --> That's checkmate.
China's population size and industrial base is the most powerful conventional force the world has ever seen. If China and Russia want to they would outgun the Nato states within Europe.
We are not ready for 370 million (MILLION) military ages males supplied with a near infinite amount of tanks/artillery and ammunition. Europe-Nato has no chance against that man.
China's industrial base and population size is literally on 10000 Tsar Bomb nuclear levels of powerful. It is not talked about enough.
Big US corporations like Intel & Apple led a massive corporate investment into China-based manufacturing. Which is why China still has MFN-Most Favored Nation trade status with the US; to keep the profits of a select group of corporations high.
I definitely agree with you. However, I am probably more positive than many on this topic. China's ability to produce at scale still relies on overseas resources in unprecedented volumes. Any conflict beyond 6 months would likely see their manufacturing ability start to deteriorate rapidly. Recreating the infrastructure to deliver natural resources from conventional Eurasia and transporting them via the still rudimentary (but improving) transportation networks would be difficult.
Think of all the trouble the Nazis had with logistical requirements that were literally orders of magnitude less complex than our current manufacturing chains.
That said, I do not think we would necessarily win; only that it would be a highly competitive conflict.
I think China sees it this way too (hence the fact we are still at peace). I think if they decide to move, I believe it will be similar to Japan's Pearl Harbor-type strategy but much, much bolder in terms of attacking US infrastructure directly. This will put the US behind the curve even more (and makes an even greater case for your concerns), but I still think the conflict will boil down to naval power and the ability to protect/interrupt supply chains. Again, not saying the US is obviously the favorite in this regard but that we are at least competitive in the arena.
--> Germany's population was 80 million at the start of WW2.
The total military age male population of Germany was 25 million ish. Let that sink in.
The total military age male population of China is 340 million. Please consider this.
You guys think germany was bad? Germany almost fucked up the entire world.
China's industrial base, wealth and population size is on another level. They can probably build 100 tanks for every 1 tank we can build and I don't think that's an exaggeration.
The European Nato states can not win a war against China/Russia! We checkmated ourselves. I wonder when that will become clear. We are basically doomed (but maybe nukes?)
The real question is, does China want to fight a war with us? If it does, it will certainly win in the European theater (not sure about the indo-pacific, large bodies of water helps). But the victory will be pyrrhic, and perhaps nukes will fly, which is why they may not do it.
Something that became clearer in the last few years is that the alternative to eastern Europe in NATO is (and has always been) either eastern Europe under Russian "protection", or eastern Europe with its own nukes. Putin wants to turn 1 into 2, but the nightmare scenario for him is a very messy version of 3.
Poland should potentially have Nukes, and if the USA pulls out of NATO it's likely that they will. Or perhaps they will form a nuclear defense treaty with France/UK.
The problem with the later is that it would hitch Poland's security to the election outcomes in western Europe. The problem with the former is that the Russians would view that as suicide-by-cop. They are as afraid of a nuclear Poland as we are of them and would go to great lengths to prevent it if there is a time-limited opportunity to do so.
Excellent article and appropriately alarming. This makes 2024 election choices even more stark. Each morsel of attention given to culture war nonsense is a tribute to our adversaries and makes our defeat more likely. Instead we should be maniacally focused on rebuilding our defense capacity and shoring up our allies.
Writing it was not fun, I tried the previous day and felt so shitty about it that I had to quit, and distracted myself by re-reading the creepier parts of Blood Meridian
This is all I have been thinking about for the past months. I have some vague connections to some political elites here in my nation and think I should have a few conversations, but I am a bit unwell so don't have the energy just yet.
Sadly I saw all of what is happening right now months ago and probably should have start having these conversations. But also I'm not sure how much it would have helped, I partly didn't bother because it seemed to me that 'the die has been cast' and its kinda already too late.
When I feel healthy I will try anyway. I want our leaders to think about this stuff better anyway.
Reading this made me feel ill too, thoughts of nasty scenarios have dominated my thoughts since 2022 (autistic brain also not helping here I feel!). But thank you Noah for tackling the hard to hear subjects in an erudite and informative way, combining your big insights with lots of grainy detail - I always finish reading feeling better informed, if not calmer...
Not sure if anyone is interested in starting a reading list to help think about this issue but here are some books I have read or am reading:
Ian Toll's Pacific War Trilogy
Re-reading Barbra Tuchman's The Guns of August
Fareed Zakaria Age of Revolution
Magaret MacMillian The War that Ended Peace (interesting insights into how individual personalities play into geopolitical events- I think of leaders like Putin, Trump, Xi, Olaf Scholz, Biden, etc. and how their own foibles, blindspots, etc. could lead to bad outcomes).
David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts Conflict
Peter Zeihan's last couple books and some of his interviews
The Cambridge History of Warfare
re-reading Gary Klein's Source of Power (interesting ideas on decision-making in conditions of uncertainty...possibly too tactical but still interesting).
Anyone have other recommendations? I would be interested in some prepper type books that are not insane or do not require crazy investments (i.e., I am not building a bunker to live 20 years...if its that bad Ill just roll with it). Also interested in more recent/relevant geopolitical readings.
I'm a pretty long time reader at this point and civilian in the DoD. I thank you for bringing these things to more people's attention. I've even used the Gandalf analogy with some friends of mine about myself (not to overstate my importance or anything) and I think it's appropriate here. Lots of work needs to be done. I hope more people realize that as time goes on.
How do I help publicize this more? Even my best-read blog posts get only a million pageviews, and this one is unlikely to get even that many. How do I get a bigger megaphone?
The things you could do are so different from what I can I have to say I don't really know. I've tried to be supportive of the IR grad program I attended teaching people about war itself, not just broader geopolitics. I was lucky to get to attend the first course offering directly on military affairs in years when I was there. It's honestly shocking to me how little someone getting an IR degree is allowed to think about the possibility and practical ramifications of a major war.
What to do with the general audience though? Just keep mentioning it is all I've got.
Hey Noah -- Have you considered doing an Econ 102 (or other) podcast episode with Bob Wright and the NonZero News Network? I'd love to hear you guys discuss/debate this topic, with your economics perspective and Bob's cultural-evolution/greater-world-order perspective. Do you know Bob?
Yep, its getting closer and closer. My fear is that we go opposite way. Head in the sand, appease China, while our manufacturing dies a slow death. US keeps tech industry, Europe luxury and pharma and thats about it, while China laughs. Then China can start pressuring its neighbors one by one with only India willing to stand up to them (except if Japan gets nukes).
So like, although we don't have manufacturing we also got a lot richer in nominal terms over the decades. My vague hope is that somewhere all of these intangible goods make the West very powerful.
We went up the gross margin ladder for a reason. I do think a lot of Chinese industry would collapse without us as a lot of design is done by us. Furthermore, we are their main consumers. China is still more dependent on us than we are on them, although that would change if they increase domestic consumption by a lot.
But then again, a tank seems generally more powerful than the software an iphone runs on.
The way its going, China will rule battery, solar panel, wind turbine, hydrogen electrolyser, drones, EV car, cheaper semicon etc etc manufacturing. In each sector they bury the Western competition through combo of subsidies and IP theft. U think everyone in europe or US wants to be an academic or a Walmart cashier? Without industry there is no military power. In 10-20 years even the nuke shield may fail if we continue losing technological know how. Just check how the manufacturing of new nuke subs is going in US. So its not about “everyone working in manufacturing”, its about enough people doing that so we keep some know how and capacity. Without which, we are just richer Tajikistan (no offense to Tajiks, they just dont have much industry).
Noah, Any chance the good old US of A can hold on for a couple of decades (enhanced inflow of migrants on our part) while China starts to age out, or are they just too big and powerful and motivated? I am trying to use my 83+ years to reflect backward and review how we survived previous perilous times such as the 60's and 70's, which had me looking at New Zealand and Canada. While we were clearly No. 1 at that time, Japan was the big rising power. Did we do anything or was it just that Japan is of modest size economically and population-wise, when compared to China? Is there anything we should be doing better with India, another population and developmental behemoth, albeit with very unpleasant social and governmental issues of their own?
Pretty sure that Japan and S. Korea are aging out faster than China. Based on current trajectory, North Korea will simply waltz into the South, and Korea will be reunified.
Unlike Europe and the US, Japan and Korea are physically isolated from the migrating hordes from the ME, Africa, and all points south of the US border. So, unlikely immigration will come to their rescue.
Japan has an intelligent migration policy and will be fine. China is likely aging about as fast as SK, although they stopped reporting their numbers. Japan is also doing fine on fertility (better than EU if you take away migrant EU population TFR)
The fertility rate in Japan for 2024 is expected to be 1.39. 2.1 is replacement level. This is a net loss of close to a million people a year. I have a hard time believing they will make this up with immigrants, not matter how wise their policy may be.
Taiwan and S. Korea are at the bottom of the list. Barely over 1.0. That's basically losing half your population in a single generation. If China can be patient, Taiwan will just empty itself out.
Re EU - yep, I was surprised at how low some of their rates are. Especially Spain and Italy. We spent nearly a month in Spain last fall. One of the jokes I was told as that Spain's number one expert was Spanish students, and it's number one import was Irish criminals. At least, I think that was meant as a joke.
That would not surprise me. At least from what I have read (not specifically addressing fertility rate), is that one special child is typical of couples, and an over supply of males. You hardly need any males; just lots of females.
Note that China itself sees this as no problem. They have only urbanized about 400million of their population. That leaves 1bn left. They don't really care if old people in rural areas die, and they still have a billion of rural people to integrate within the modern economic system. So from their POV they don't really care, they have people overhang.
This is cool! My guess would be between 2030 and 2034: before the leader turns 80 and as succession politics combines with some kinds of economic crises.
A Brit here. Some people are noticing that the French are being quite friendly to us. In fact they sent some Republican Guards to help at Buckingham Palace. We sent some Coldstream guards to the Elysée in return, I think. This celebrates the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale. Militarily we will no doubt draw closer to France and indeed Germany.
Lloyd Austin just now enjoins Ukraine not to attack Russian oil refineries as it may make gas prices go up. Biden can't get Mike Johnson even to proceed to a vote on further Ukrainian support. The Majority Leader is too busy to see UK Foreign Secretary Lord (aka David) Cameron. Trump of course will not support Ukraine but Biden no longer seems able to. The war is not important to the US, let alone "existential".
Indeed, as some commentators here observe, there is a good argument for renewed American isolationism. For many in the US it must seem "horrible, fantastic, incredible" to contemplate joining "a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing". And, unlike Chamberlain in 1938, you have to factor in the possibility of nuclear war. So, the Ukraine war is not existential for the US, it is unclear that it is even very important.
The Ukraine war has and had nothing to do with NATO despite Putin's assertions to the contrary. The provocation that led to the 2014 occupation of Crimea and parts of the Donbass was the proposed EU/Ukraine agreement the consequent threat of an unfriendly government in Ukraine and maybe even unrest in Russia itself. The 2022 invasion is just the continuation of that. Essentially Ukraine has become the borderland between two weak but assertive "empires" - the EU and Russia. For the EU the war is therefore existential.
It looks to me that we are seeing the end of NATO - there is a divergence of interests. For Europe it is Russia that is the threat. For the US it is China. The sort of leadership of the West that might overcome that divide is at present wholly lacking.
Niall Ferguson's 2009 book "The War of the World" notes how declining empires, ethnic diversity, and economic volatility led to conflicts starting in the borderlands of those empires, which evolved into WW2. He notes, as Noah does, that WW2 started in many places at different times. He warns that the circumstances he describes, should they recur, may well lead to same effects. Noah is right to be scared.
Your last paragraph is interesting. Could you expand a bit on these circumstances that he describes? You mention declining empires, ethnic diversity, economic volatility?
❝The potential instability of assimilation and integration; the insidious spread of the meme that identifies some human beings as aliens; the combustible character of ethnically mixed borderlands; the chronic volatility of mid-twentieth-century economic life; the bitter struggles between old multi-ethnic empires and short-lived empire-states; the convulsions that marked the decline of Western dominance – these, then, are the principal themes that will be explored and elaborated on below.❞
Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred (pp. 62-63). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
The genocidal impulse is active in Israel/Gaza (both Arab and lately Jewish). Retreating US has allowed it to flourish. The GFC supplied the economic volatility. The crumbling of the Russian empire (aka USSR) continues. Here is another passage from the end of the book:
❝Yet the twin urge to rape and murder remains repressed in a civilized society. It is only when civilization breaks down or is broken down, as happened in both Bosnia and Rwanda, that the urge is unleashed. And only under certain circumstances does it escalate from pogrom to genocide. To repeat: economic volatility very often provides the trigger for the politicization of ethnic difference. Proximity to a strategic borderland, usually an imperial border, determines the extent to which the violence will metastasize.❞
Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred (p. 690). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition. The October 7th atrocities were far from unprecedented.
I would like to see you lay out a proposal for how the US should be preparing. What the cost would be, how we could finance this (cuts to entitlements, taxes), and perhaps a theory of why the Biden Administration is currently so far off base. Would be a good piece!
Will do. But note that Biden is actually doing less badly on this front than Trump did!
Yes. Although the risk seems much more evident in 2024 than 2017-21.
That’s missing from this article.
Also, the US just approved almost $900 billion in military expenditures. What are we spending that money on? What should be cut? What should be improved?
https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fy24_ndaa_conference_executive_summary1.pdf
Biden talks like it’s 1941 but budgets like it’s 1999. This, to me, seems obviously like the largest failing of his administration—and if a conflict breaks out in Asia in the near future his Admin will be regarded as a historic failure. I cannot understand what they’re doing.
"I cannot understand what they’re doing."
It's obvious what Biden has been doing: trying to get America working again after a horrific pandemic. It's a heavy lift, and we're still not over all the negative consequences of it - look at grocery prices. Also, Biden is facing a super tough reelection campaign against Agent Orange.
You said yourself, in your top comment, that preparing for war will likely mean either taxes or entitlement cuts, both of which poll about as well as diarrhea with the American public. How do you expect Biden to say "hey everyone, let's raise your taxes and cut your benefits to prepare for a war that might never come" in an election year?
I mean, hell, you can barely get the GOP to agree to any aid for Ukraine, and that is a real, actual, current war, not a hypothetical.
I'm not dismissing the threat, Noah makes a persuasive and scary case, just, how does this work politically?
^^ This. The reason Biden is budgeting like it's 1999 is that the measures that would be appropriate to the moment would open him up to political attacks that would appeal to low-information voters.
Fundamentally the problem is the fact that a large slice of the electorate trusts Fox News and its even-worse relatives at Newsmax, OAN, whatever BS Tucker Carlson is doing now, etc. That entire complex has decided to simply throw in with the authoritarians, celebrating Russia for suppressing queer people and feminists, fighting "wokeness", etc. If the West ends up in a shooting war against Russia and China, we face the serious possibility of having the January 6th insurrectionist types acting as a Fifth Column.
I'm not sure how we get back from here, to an environment where something like the Fairness Doctrine, and some kind of regulation on "news" sources to not massive distort the facts, can apply. You'll see the very-occasional left-wing authoritarian calling to round up Roger Ailes' proteges and toss them all in the clink for sedition, but obviously that'd be a pretty radical abrogation of the First Amendment, and authorizing that kind of thing would also create tools to be picked up by MAGA types.
But what _is_ a republic supposed to do, when a large slice of the voters are in thrall to seditious propaganda?
Democracy: Worst form of government, except for everything else we've tried.
I doubt much of the Jan 6 crowd will act like a 5th column. They can be crazy but are largely patriotic in their own way, and I suspect an external actor would galvanize them.
The vast majority of those types were fairly regular people, who, after watching a year of unchecked riots, arsons, etc., felt they could get in on the action. Most of the others (see the Shaman types) are nut jobs, but just like the people light buildings on fire, throw Molotov cocktails, shoot people who disagree with politics, and take over sections of Portland and Seattle in the riots, they cannot act without the cover form the more normal types). This basically true for both sides.
I would also argue that any conflict would likely involve a huge non-conventional attack prior (e.g., containerships into bridges, wide-spread cyber attacks, possibly even infrastructure attacks). This would further galvanize a broad-base of support.
As to what you do when a large portion of the electorate are in "thrall of seditious propaganda"? First, I would check my biases to ensure I am reading the situation correctly...second, I would actually work on moderating my own policy stances and convincing them to change their minds. That's kind of what we do in a democratic republic.
What complete nonsense false equivalence.
For what it is worth, I agree that equivalence is false when framed in the context of equally "bad" or "impactful." An attempt to use force to alter a national election is incredibly serious.
However, in the context of the original post, I think it is important to remember why the rule of law is a significant part of a successful democracy. From a rule of law perspective, it is not a false equivalency, at least not if you want to maintain the government's legitimacy.
We have a rule of law because we disagree about equivalencies. You and I may believe that interfering with an election is worse, but if the other side believes that an election was stolen (which many did), then from their perspective, it may be worse.
So, suppose we are concerned about things like insurrections. In that case, we really need to stop groups like the CHAZ (an autonomous zone that was very open about its insurrection status) from establishing formal insurrections, and we most certainly do not need politicians like Jenny Durkan (the mayor) joking about it when it occurs.
We, collectively, put rules in place that say we will not allow armed groups to interfere in the political process, full-stop, regardless of how we feel about their cause. Once we start breaking that taboo (which has now been broken a couple times), we start down a very dark path. Also, it's important to remember that even when it happens, we can still recover (this happened a fair amount in the 1980s with white supremacist nationalists trying to cede or even things like Waco).
The best way to stop these kinds of incidents from escalating is to engage in dialogue with those we disagree with, try to empathize with the beliefs of both sides. This does not mean agree with them, or even "forgive" them, it simply means attempting to see the world from their perspective (something that should arguably be easier for more liberal individuals). We then use that knowledge to concede on minor or inconsequential points, make arguments they might find compelling, and work to our best ability to employ the law in an even-handed fashion. This helps remove the more moderate members of this group, depriving them of resources, numbers, political cover, and legitimacy.
Finally, if I was in charge I would highlight not just those arrested for Jan. 6th but also those arrested for things like the arsons in Portland and the CHAZ. My understanding that a number of people from the CHAZ were charged...I would highlight that. I also know that the US DA at the time in Portland (Billy Williams) did charge a lot of the protestors for the most serious crimes (serious assaults, throwing Molotov cocktails, arson, etc.). Those seemed to have petered off, but I would certainly highlight what has been done and continue to prosecute individuals who committed serious offenses.
I agree that Biden's hands are tied when it comes to spending money, but there are significant administrative problems that could probably be addressed without spending increases. (The shipbuilding fiasco is one of many ongoing military procurement messes, and fixing these could well save money.) He's also not even talking up the potential of a conflict with China, which would be a prerequisite to increasing spending.
"It's obvious what Biden has been doing: trying to get America working again after a horrific pandemic. It's a heavy lift, and we're still not over all the negative consequences of it - look at grocery prices."
What is Biden doing to lower grocery prices? To get America working? We got our soft landing a while ago, and it's time to move on to other business. (It's not even clear to me that Biden had much to do with the soft landing.)
Oh grow up. America has been “working after a horrible pandemic” since early 2022.
I think it would be helpful for the American public to be made widely aware of those RAND studies or whatever war games that consistently show the US RUNS OUT OF conventional missiles within like 2 weeks of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That’s such a sobering thought but also captures the lack of preparedness on our part.
Yep.
I would like to see a followup piece addressing what a person can reasonably do to prepare for this risk in their personal life, not merely by political advocacy. Specifically:
1. Financial strategy. I have asked several different investment advisors whom I trust and respect what it looks like to hedge one's portfolio against the risk of war with China. Nobody has had an answer. Maybe that means it's impossible -- but if not, that is very useful to discuss.
2. Personal preparedness. I live in San Francisco, like you. Every once in awhile I think about what sequence of news events would cause me to leave for a rural area out of likely nuke range. There is a fine line between leaving "too early"-- i.e. when the real risk is very low and you will almost certainly be disrupting your whole life for nothing-- and "too late"-- I e. when everyone else wants the same thing and available resources to flee are oversubscribed. How do you think about navigating that tradeoff rationally?
Yep I'm having trouble thinking about this too. I own a lot of international stocks, so that's diversified. I own some crypto, though I'm not sure how useful that'll be. I don't own gold, but thinking maybe I should. As for prepper cabins etc., that's not something I intend to actually do, but perhaps buying assets to bet on prepper demand would be smart?
What would make for an interesting piece would be an sober exploration of the formal "dance" that would accompany war and nuclear exchange. People seem to think it's going to be full send all missiles but everything I've read indicates that there's almost a protocol that would unfold. One missile each, then another, in a slow escalation. I remember reading that the USSR had Boston designated as it's "demo" city, for lack of a better term. Kyiv was the city the US designated. Once those steps were taken it's assumed that it's "ok, we're both serious so let's get to work figuring this out."
Wouldn't it be defense contractors, commodities producers with American assets (energy, mining, forest products), machine tooling, chip makers with American assets, American logistics, American farm land, etc? Or are you thinking of a situation where we lose and you need to access cash in a post-US world?
Some stocks make sense on paper but are a terrible idea in practice. they are all guaranteed to collapse, all around the world, if a China-US war breaks out. The tried and tested hedges against disaster are treasuries, gold, the US dollar, Japanese yen and Swiss franc. At the onset of the pandemic, our last major challenge, all of these did reasonably well. But this will be very different. Nobody will buy US assets during a huge war involving the US. So treasuries and dollar doesn't make sense. I don't see the Japanese yen doing well either since in any geopolitical analysis Japan is on the front line of being screwed here.
The Swiss franc should do quite well here. Remember currencies aren't optional assets like stocks, bonds etc. If you sell one currency it has to go to another. They can't all be abandoned at once. And I think the Swiss might be the best option. Gold usually does well, but I'm not sure how well it would perform in a really bad situation. It doesn't really do anything other than be a store of value, which is only helpful when there's light at the end of the tunnel. Commodities are usually the worst performing asset because demand falls off a cliff in financial crises. But they should probably do pretty well here since oil, crops and metals will all be in extremely short supply.
Finally I'd take a look outside the box at an ETF called BTAL. It's basically a bet that more conservative stocks like utilities, consumer staples and healthcare will outperform more volatile stocks like autos, travel, consumer discretionary. All stocks will go down but that doesn't affect BTAL. BTAL is only affected by the relative performance of riskier vs less risky stocks. Seems like it would do well. And if you're looking to make an absolute fortune in the face of disaster, buying volatility is the way to go. An etf like VXX quintupled when the stock market fell at the covid onset. But it's super risky and timing is everything. If disaster doesn't come very soon after you buy VXX you could lose most, and eventually all, of your investment in a surprisingly short timeframe.
There is a company called Everbank that allows you to easily purchase foreign denominated assets. Exchange rates are decent and commissions reasonably low. It's not as good as a foreign denominated bank account, but it's better than nothing.
I'm not sure international stocks helps - a US China conflict would be terrible for the economy, causing a big risk off event, so on avg all risky assets would crash initially, I guess. (Including crypto too probably.)
Potential exceptions could be defence stocks and maybe commodities, and if you can pick them, particular companies that could benefit from onshoring.
Otherwise I think the main defence is to own fewer risk assets (and more gold, cash, index puts, prepper supplies), though then of course you're earning lower returns in the meantime.
On a personal level, I started putting about 0 .1% of my income into prepper-type stuff over a decade ago (we live in the NW, and my wife went to work presentation on the subduction zone and came home with some great info).
For what it's worth, this consisted of buying one or two 25-day footbox from Costco once a month (about $70 to $140), a 50-gallon water barrel every year or so, backing up medicines so that we now run about three months ahead, and other sundry type things. I also used this, along with other financial and climatic arguments, to convince my wife for us to get solar power (we generate about 23k kwh annually). It has not paid for itself yet but I feel kind of patriotic about it...if something really bad happened we play a small part in providing power to our community (this did put us over the 0.1% cutoff though).
I also started putting the excess (whatever was left of the 0.1%) into a little cash or silver coins every month (for the first few years this felt like throwing away but I justified it as a hedge and more recently is has paid for itself). After a decade, it's amazing what we have accumulated (although I do not really study this stuff, so I am probably missing obvious things).
Our attitude was to prepare for a natural disaster that impacted transportation networks for 3 to 6 months. I figured if it was so bad that things were not back to somewhat normal in 6 months, it was probably big enough that prepping was kind of worthless. There was no science behind this number—just a guess.
I am now thinking more deeply about this and have been thinking of getting a faraday bag for some basic electronics and possibly buying somehow-to books and prepper books. Again, I do not view this as a likely outcome but have always hedged and diversified when investing and I throw this into that category of expenses.
That said, I have not gone down the actually hard core prepper type road too far yet because 1) is it a path to madness? 2) It's a little scary 3) it seems like there is a lot to know but that when looking at the books I might buy they seem to have some scary political connections that make me a little nervous.
Makes a lot of sense to hedge with small percentage amounts of "insurance" like this. One challenge for many (including me) is storage space! This stuff takes a lot of room!
Also, past economic and military disasters show that it's often the "nice-to-have" things that are really what become scarce and longed after, rather than the bread-and-water necessities. So, should we stockpile new socks and birthday candles, too?
It also takes a lot of time and mental energy to do all the management of prepping: rotating stocks of consumables, practicing using everything, etc.
Lastly, the sheer number of eventualities that you might "prep" for is overwhelming. Yes, it could be war. But maybe it's also flooding or fire? Both of which put any dutifully acquired and maintained prepping supplies in peril.
I have thought about these questions personally.
1. There are a few important raw materials that feed into chip-making which would 10-50x overnight in case a war breaks out in the indo-pacific. I know this from a SF based VC, but he wouldn't tell me which raw materials exactly. Other than that, commodities, defense stocks, gold.
2. I am in the EU and am considering leaving for Switzerland. Fortunately my life is not settled where I am anyway right now. Moving to a different place is a process that will take a few years of investigation, buying property etc, I already have started the process gently, but will increase once my general health improves (I have some health isues).
Buying property on the Polish border is not recommended!
But for investments, timing is everything. As you said, any US-based semiconductor companies would appreciate massively if war breaks out...but possibly only barely survive if it doesn't. Same with any commodities used heavily in defense industries, like copper, aluminum, etc. This is also something I'm going to look into.
bitcoin on cold storage wallet would be a great hedge.
I doubt the effectiveness of moving out of likely nuke range. If nukes go flying we likely all just die, it's mostly a matter of timing.
Well laid out argument. What is to Noah's argument, and most concerning to me, is that the entire logic chain does not have to take place to reach the same results. My fear is the growing Israeli / Iran conflict turning into an oil crisis -- the logical next step for Israeli if Iran commits to an open retaliation for Israeli's strike against their leadership in Syria is to destroy the Iranian oil terminals. When/if that happens, all will fall apart quickly in the aftermath.
Thanks for an unsettling morning read. Given China's demographic situation, I.e. declining population, the leadership may have concluded that it is now or never to assert global dominance. Since the current leader of the Republicans is unabashedly pro-authoritarian, rousing the US to resist is going to be a Herculean task.
"even if America never sends another penny, Europe will continue to support Ukraine, because for them the conflict is existential"
Hearing this from Noah is ironic, since it is exactly the case conservatives have been making for 2 years now: let Europe deal with Europe's problem.
"Putin wants all of Ukraine, and then he wants other European countries too."
"if Ukraine falls, the Baltics, Moldova, and eventually Poland are likely to be next on Putin’s menu."
"if America withdraws into isolationism it will give a green light to carry out more conquests"
This may be true, Noah, but you're asserting it without evidence. If it is true, it severely undercuts the "let Europe deal with it" case. But it is not nearly as obvious as you believe it to be. You need evidence here. And right now, most of the verbal and physical evidence is against this argument. Putin has publicly stated his aims and red lines on NATO expansion for over a decade (that's the verbal side). On the physical side, the Russian army has been shown utterly incapable of subduing a vastly weaker next door neighbor, such that, even if he had the will, it's unclear Putin has the military ability to invade even Estonia let alone Poland. You're the China expert -- can you really see the Chinese Red Army fighting in trenches in Latvia? Now if Macron does openly send divisions to fight for Ukraine, maybe. Absent that, China will let Russia do deliver the small blows they are capable of.
You said it yourself: "Americans like to believe that we’re still the hegemon we were in 1999 — this is fantasy. " Yes it is. For a dozen reasons, US hegemony is coming to an end, which requires adaptation to a multipolar world on our part. I believe, we can still thrive in that world very well, but not if we're all dead in a nuclear missile exchange with Beijing.
The fundamental case for a more isolationist US policy in this realm is this: the best way to not fight WWIII is for one of the primary belligerents (us) to refuse to fight WWIII.
I agree 100% about the S. China Sea. Taiwan would be a nice prize, but control of the S. China Sea is critical (maybe existential considering their oil imports) for China. Only NHK News is talking seriously about the skirmishes between China and Philippines; Western press ignores them (flyover ocean). It's all water canons right now, but the Chinese boats have real canons available. It almost looks like they're baiting Marcos to retaliate too far.
And can someone please tell Biden and Yellen and our PMC that "sanctions" not a plaything to throw at anyone we dislike; they are a low-grade act of war.
Despite my criticisms, I'm very happy you are sounding the alarm. Some one needs to.
Europe is mostly going to have to fight Russia on their own. The U.S. will need all its strength and more to stop China in Asia, so we won't be able to help Europe out as much as we'd like.
I want to upvote this 100x times. I actually side with the average MAGA republican on this one. Even though I'm an Oxford educated AI PhD holder.
The MAGA republicans are mostly right about Russia. I don't know how, but when I saw this MAGA moron in an interview definitively state "Russia is not our enemy" I was like "WOW". They are right, Russia IS NOT OUR ENEMY. China is.
The democratic educated elite is completely wrong about this one, and eventually they will figure it out. I am not sure exactly how an idiot southerner reaches the correct conclusion like this, but they have.
God the foreign policy failre wrt Russia of the USA makes me so angry. As a European I now have a Chinese/Russian gun to my head, thanks guys.
Oh also thanks for destabilizing the entire middle east, those refugees are surely making Europe a much more fun place!!! Great fucking job.
USA needs to really get its shit together.
Having said that. I disagree with your assessment of Taiwan. It is vital for the USA and the world that China is contained in the 1st island chain.
Conclusion:
***Sanctions bad
***Fighting russia bad
***War in middle east bad
Containing China in 1st island Chain --> Very good. Keep it up.
To say that Russia is not our enemy is to ignore everything they have done for a decade or more. Putin has long worked to re-establish the USSR. He invaded and absorbed Crimea and then did the same with parts of Georgia and eastern Ukraine. He dominates Belarus and other former USSR nation-states.
During the same period, Putin launched a massive effort to alter the 2016 election to avoid Clinton, who he saw as being opposed to his expansionist foreign policy, in favor of Trump, who he saw as malleable. At Trump’s behest, the Republican platform was changed to eliminate references to military and other support to Ukraine. Throughout the Third World, Russia has encouraged anti-American sentiments and supported corrupt regimes that look to Russia, not the US, for foreign policy and trade support.
Russia has encouraged and supported Iran as well as Syria, both of which train and arm terrorists throughout the Arab world. At home, Putin has murdered many opposition leaders, independent journalists, defectors and out-of-favor oligarchs while poisoning potential threats, including an opposition candidate in Ukraine in 2004. He has jailed American journalists and leveled much of Chechnya to bar its secession.
China’s economic clout and growing military strength are serious concerns but its overt actions to date pale in comparison with Russia’s.
Putin has already subordinated himself to China. Russia is now a de facto part of Red China's bloc. Just like Mussolini subordinated himself to Nazi Germany and its much larger industrial base. Which began right after the Anschluss in 1938, and even before they signed the Tripartite Pact. Putin needs Chinese electronics and consumer goods; China needs Russian petrochems, metals, wheat, lumber, etc. Both are dictatorships; it's a match made in heaven.
How is Russia not our enemy? They may not be worth focusing our attention on, but that's a completely different point.
"Oh also thanks for destabilizing the entire middle east, those refugees are surely making Europe a much more fun place!!! Great fucking job."
Our bad. Sorry.
Weren't those Syrian refugees flooding into Europe mostly fleeing from Assad's and Putin's bombs though, not ours?
This is what "party realignment" looks like, man. A Christian, conservative, homeschooling Dad from California and an Oxford PhD discover they share a tribe. :-) And we can disagree on Taiwan without voting each other off the island.
Nah we really do have to contain China in Taiwan. Sorry. This is where the Oxford PhD and the Christian homeschooling dad from California disagree!
Unless you want your kids to learn mandarin because global maritime trade, and therefore all important financial institutions are controlled by China now. And the Yuan is the global reserve currency in that case, oh and also all semiconductor supply chains are controlled by China of which your most important companies like Microsoft/Google/Nvidia heavily depent on. Actually, even worse!
All supply chains that run through the Indo-Pacific are controlled by China in that case!
It is very very useful to control those supply chains. Especially in times of war. But also in times of peace.
Agree on Ukraine/Middle east. Foreign policy catastrophy/failure on the part of the USA, and you guys should basically leave. But defending Taiwan is the one thing you guys should really really do.
I dont actually mind if my kids learn Mandarin and foreign currencies. Sounds a lot better than fighting ww3. But if you disagree, will you enlist in the military? We're going to need every single soldier we can get, not just "supporters"
Nah, I'm moving to Switzerland.
"The fundamental case for a more isolationist US policy in this realm is this: the best way to not fight WWIII is for one of the primary belligerents (us) to refuse to fight WWIII."
OK, sure. But if that's the policy of President Villanueva, we may we well put up a sign telling all expansionist powers to take whatever they like, because we're not going to do a damn thing about it. Taiwan at a minimum, Ukraine + all of Eastern Europe (because if we hadn't helped Ukraine bleed Russia out since 2022, that's what would be next), oh let's see, Israel gone, South Korea too probably....
Of course either can be taken too far. You can fail to oppose Hitler when you should, and you can bankrupt yourself playing world policeman over every petty, sibling dispute on the planet. You tell me: which of those two erroneous endpoints do you believe US foreign policy is closer to right now?
Most adversaries aren't Hitler. Most world problems don't need to involve us.
I'd say that historical evidence is on Noah's side, while Putin's "verbal evidence" is quite a weak argument, also historically speaking.
As for physical part, Russian army got two years of modern war practice (and nukes) that most of NATO countries don't have. And there's less than 100% probability that article 5 will be readily implemented. Especially if Trump is elected.
I didn't say anything about historical evidence. To be honest, beyond "assume that any world leader (including our own) might be lying" lessons from history on this subject area pretty limited. Each set of circumstances is too unique.
You re spot-on about the value of the last 2 years to the Russian military though. The combat lifespan of a 2nd Lt is short precisely because books are limited in their ability to impart the lessons of real war. (The smart ones lean on the Sergeants for a reason.) Russia is presently the only major nation in the world with commanders who have actual experience in large-scale, land warfare. Has any current NATO commander ever engaged in a real tank battle? Perhaps a few from Gulf War 2? But not many. And that was 20 years ago.
As imperfect as it is, historical parallels are the best "evidence" I can come up with. What kind of evidence would you consider convincing that Putin does plan to invade Baltic states?
His own statements about his intent in Ukraine (flawed as that is) count for something in my book, his own statements regarding the reasons for his past actions (specifically Crimea) also matter, and the physical inability of his army to actually defeat Ukraine. None of these are definitive obviously, but the latter in particular is pretty important.
As for evidence that would counter that: a military buildup on the border of NATO country. For example, as much as I doubt Putin would invade Poland, we would be foolish not to sent NATO equipment to Poland if he began massing force on the Polish border. In the era of satellites, these things are pretty easy to see in advance.
Yes, but, the world has Nuclear Bombs now.
One thing that makes today different from pre-WW2 is that many states in the world have nukes. Nukes make an all out WW2 style war basically impossible (It will just be the end of civilization immediately).
But it makes many hot proxy conflicts around the world even more likely. Until we have another global hegemon I suspect that proxy conflicts such as the ones we have now will become the defacto standard and a constant background in todays world.
Up next: the Indo-Pacific region.
I don't like to say this too loud, but nukes aren't actually as powerful as people think.
https://twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/1769820252051759306
When we had 70,000 of them lined up and ready to go, we could have destroyed civilization, no problem. Now the whole world has less than 3500 deployed.
But...I don't like to say this too loud.
Ya, I also counted how many nuclear weapons the world still has haha.
I personally think we have enough deterrence to prevent WW3. As I believe we have about enough to destroy all the economic centers of China/Russia, and similarly Russia and China have about enough to destroy all the economic centers of NATO+Allies.
Land armies are still supreme, you need human bodies to secure a piece of geography/land. This means that if Russo-Sino Tank Divisions get close towards Warsaw then the USA/France would just nuke Moscow and that's the end of that. So I believe there is still enough MAD to prevent WW3.
I hope so. But man, Japan and South Korea need their own. And quick.
Yeah, we need to remilitarize Japan. Maybe offer them the spoils of their former Chinese colonies
The Koreans, yes, but the Japanese people will never accept nuclear weapons. Look at the difficulty the LDP/Komeito grand coalition has had in even getting permission to start rebuilding their military. Even the word "military" or "navy" is verboten in Japan; it's all "Self Defense Forces".
Vietnam, Philipines, Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal, Burma, South Korea--none of these have nukes. South Korea is the only one of these we're (possibly) prepared to use tactical nukes to defend.
India has nukes. But I've no idea how effective their delivery systems are. Or at what point of losing territory to a Chinese offensive they'd be willing to go nuclear.
The only certainty in this overall scenario is that on its current geopolitical trajectory China will move on Taiwan. It's not an "if", but a "when". When that happens, we and as many of our allies as we can corral, will be at war.
If China is smart, they'll initially keep it regional, and just take Taiwan. They don't (yet) have the amphibious capacity to seriously threaten Japan or the Phillippines. They could then peace out with us after a year or two; then start a new move on India or Vietnam. Or even push down to the Straits of Malacca.
It's grim isn't it. I also think it's almost certain China will move on Taiwan.
None of this is easy however. Amphibious operations are near impossible. If Taiwan is willing to defend itself I think it can looking at the Russio-Ukraine war. If the US is willing to defend Taiwan, then China will surely lose.
Also imagine them moving on Vietnam. China has invaded Vietnam a dozen times, and never succeeded. China would never 'win' in the indo-pacific. But it could be the light that starts the fire of WW3 and then we would all lose.
Best is to prevent all of this, I don't know how. Super intelligent and wise diplomacy from both chinese and usa's side would work. Let's pray for that.
Noah, with respect…have you thought this one through?
I invite you to contemplate the effect of just 100 appropriately targeted nuclear warheads on either the United States or China. The mass death and human suffering would make WWII look like a picnic.
It's not something I like to harp on
My point being that I very much doubt that Xi Jinping and his military leadership regards the damage potentially unleashed by the US nuclear arsenal as in any way an acceptable cost of war. Nor would Vladimir Putin and the Russian military leadership.
I hope you are right about that.
The problem I have with this argument is that it rests on the assumption that people like Putin are rational actors with more or less correct assessments of reality. But if that were the case, would the war in Ukraine even start?
One of the great foreign policy flaws is the belief that your adversary must be irrational. Believing it gets you off the hook to understand their actions, but ignores Sun Tzu's axioms. Truly irrational people almost never rise to leadership of a major nation.
Starting the war in Ukraine was completely rational. If you don't understand why, go back and read the previous 10 years of Russian statements on NATO expansion into Ukraine.
Continuing the war in Ukraine once you've started it is completely rational, even if it's horribly expensive. Putin must either obtain a victory or will likely face a coup.
And to those who think a Russian coup would be a good thing, go look at the bench lineup and get back to me. We made this mistake with Mubarak and Ghaddafi; let's not repeat it with a nuclear armed Russia. To anyone who lived through 1991, governmental dissolution in a nuclear armed country is a terrifying prospect.
The war in Ukraine is rational if you believed it was going to be a '3-day special military operation'. Russia was surprised by how hard the Ukrainians fought back, they assumed the account of seperatist movements were true and they would be heralded as the heroes saving Ukraine.
I wonder about that.... both Putin and Xi are old enough that their legacies may mean more than their current life span. Additionally, it is pretty easy for both of them to create apocalyptic reasons to support these ideas (for Russia, it is already an apocalyptic message of western liberalism - Satan, fighting the last of the true church - Russian Orthodoxy; for China, it appears Xi is pretty ok with doing some terrible things - see the Uigurs, to advance the Han ethnicity, I am not sure how this plays out with him but it has the potential).
At some point, they may find that they have a choice between risking how history will view them and how much damage their nation is willing to suffer. I mentioned earlier that Margaret MacMillian's The War that Ended Peace has a lot to say about how the people (and nature of the times) influenced events leading up to WWI. One of my takeaways is that assuming you can figure out how people like Putin, XI (or, for that matter, Trump or Biden) and the systems around them will calculate costs is fraught with peril.
I am not saying you are wrong, only that there is a pretty decent chance you could be. Even if the likelihood that you are correct is 90%, there is still a non-trivial chance that things play out differently.
I’m rereading that book at present lol
Disagree with you there, Noah. Assuming the warheads actually hit targets inside the US, even a dozen could cripple us. Wall Street, San Jose, Norfolk, Philly, Boston...you get the idea. This, however, is a topic you should explore with some of your Military College contacts: "How Many nuke hits would it take to cripple us economically?"
China is perhaps even more vulnerable in this regard, as 70% of their industrial base is on the coast.
I agree that this starts as a growing basket of proxy wars -- and wars where significantly stronger countries all around the world absorb their weaker neighbors as fast as they can. However, unfortunately about half those countries possessing nukes today will be on one side or the other in those wars and from past behaviors appear be more than willing to use their (limited) nuclear arsenals in the process. From there it gets ugly quickly.
This was obvious to me at the start of the Russio-Ukraine war: That it would inevitably become a proxy Nato/China war. I am actually flabbergasted at the incompetence of American leadership in pushing for expansion of Nato into Ukraine. If we'd be honest Realists we should have used Russia as a balancer wrt China (the actual threat) and engage in security negotiations with Putin like a decade ago. Putin is a moron however, so it may have been impossible anyway.
I have listened to celebratory talks of USA military leadership along the lines of 'we are afghanistan trapping Russia in Ukraine detoriating their economic and industrial base'. And my immediate thought was "China". Not Russia "China". Like, USA foreign policy feels like as if it is still fighting the Cold War with the USSR --> Instead of recognizing the much much greater threat that is China
Truth to be told. I think we have checkmated ourselves by moving our industrial base to China.
USA+Allies can not fight China's industrial base, China's ability as an authoritarian power to organise and concentrate power is much greater than our band of democratic misfits still quibbling over race/etnicity and so forth.
Perhaps if it becomes USA+Allies+The-Entire-World, then we will win. This may be the case, as the global liberal world order is working very well for basically everyone, making me feel quite assured Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Taiwan, SK, Japan, et al will all fight against the Chinese.
But.. who knows. The borders of the Ukraine war are far away from me, but, not far enough; I am moving towards buying some property in Switzerland.
Russia wants its old empire in East Europe; it never had any reason to turn against China.
Russia always wants its old empire in Eastern Europe to shore up its eternal geographic achilles heel it has with Poland. But what Russia wants and what Russia can get are very different.
I think with godtier levels of diplomacy the USA could have prevented the Sino-Russia alliance, but alas, it's probably too late now.
From Russia's perspective NATO started this war in Ukraine and therefore NATO does not listen to Russia's security needs (and therefore it forms an alliance with China). I know from our perspective it is the opposite, but I think it's good to look at things from the perspective of other nations (something the USA is not great at)
True, we're not good at that. But lately I'm becoming much more pessimistic about what we could have accomplished with Russia in the 90s...I'm starting to wonder if the USSR was always just sort of destined to give birth to a successor state like this, given the fact that the USSR killed all the institutions of society except the KGB and the army and killed all of the economy except for oil. Maybe a paranoid militarist petrostate was the only thing that Russia could have become after the USSR got done wrecking it...
Ya I agree. I think Putin is mostly full of shit when he laments 'oh but Russia tried to become part of Nato in the 90s/2010s and you kept rejecting us sadface:('
I think Germany tried very hard to have good relationships with Russia, and I think Puting kept being an asshole. There is no trust in this relationship and that is in large part due to Putin/Russia.
As the late John McCain said:
“Russia is a gas station run by a mafia that is masquerading as a country.”
Having said that, I personally think the time is right. Russia has checkmated itself with this war and with intelligent diplomacy we will get further than whatever this waste of time this war in Ukraine is (for all parties). It is not in Russia's interests to be a vassal state of China. The Chinese play a harder game than we do. Knowing this, we can negotiate.
The Chinese are already busily integrating 154million Russians into their 1.6 billion Chinese empire. Their Belt and Road initiative--a fair equivalent of our own Interstate Highway program--has already reached the 'Stans--the former Russian Central Asian SSR's--as well as India & Nepal.
Once more high-capacity oil & gas pipelines are completed between Russia and themselves in the next few years, they'll be pretty well set with an uninterdictable supply of petrochemicals.
Ya I agree. I think we should have basically courted Russia as much as possible to keep them out of the hands of the Chinese, and keep them within our sphere of influence. This may have been the greatest geostrategic blunder ever, both for the West in provoking Russia, and Putin for starting the war.
The Merscheimer view--that US/NATO "caused" Russia to invade Ukraine--is pretty ridiculous on its face. The breakup of the USSR produced a Ukraine that had large areas of Russian-majority population in the Donbas--which was also a steelmaking and heavy industrial hub. And Crimea--which housed the former USSR's most important naval base. Russia actually began its invasion in 2014, with Russian Special Forces pretending to be Russian-speaking Ukrainians taking parts of the Donbas, and an outright military seizure of Crimea.
The expansion of NATO into Poland, the Baltic States, etc.--all former Warsaw Pact countries--was because those countries all begged and pleaded for membership. Four hundred years of European history was a good prediction of what Russia would to them once it recovered from its' troubles.
Issue is that Russia doesnt actually believe this canard, its just a ready made excuse. Russia was never under threat (they have nukes after all), so all the posturing about Ukraine joining NATO being a threat is just a distraction from their imperialism.
"Truth to be told. I think we have checkmated ourselves by moving our industrial base to China." Perhaps, perhaps not. But we have certainly delayed our response to any crisis by years in doing so.
"Delayed our response by years" --> That's checkmate.
China's population size and industrial base is the most powerful conventional force the world has ever seen. If China and Russia want to they would outgun the Nato states within Europe.
We are not ready for 370 million (MILLION) military ages males supplied with a near infinite amount of tanks/artillery and ammunition. Europe-Nato has no chance against that man.
China's industrial base and population size is literally on 10000 Tsar Bomb nuclear levels of powerful. It is not talked about enough.
Big US corporations like Intel & Apple led a massive corporate investment into China-based manufacturing. Which is why China still has MFN-Most Favored Nation trade status with the US; to keep the profits of a select group of corporations high.
I definitely agree with you. However, I am probably more positive than many on this topic. China's ability to produce at scale still relies on overseas resources in unprecedented volumes. Any conflict beyond 6 months would likely see their manufacturing ability start to deteriorate rapidly. Recreating the infrastructure to deliver natural resources from conventional Eurasia and transporting them via the still rudimentary (but improving) transportation networks would be difficult.
Think of all the trouble the Nazis had with logistical requirements that were literally orders of magnitude less complex than our current manufacturing chains.
That said, I do not think we would necessarily win; only that it would be a highly competitive conflict.
I think China sees it this way too (hence the fact we are still at peace). I think if they decide to move, I believe it will be similar to Japan's Pearl Harbor-type strategy but much, much bolder in terms of attacking US infrastructure directly. This will put the US behind the curve even more (and makes an even greater case for your concerns), but I still think the conflict will boil down to naval power and the ability to protect/interrupt supply chains. Again, not saying the US is obviously the favorite in this regard but that we are at least competitive in the arena.
To expand on we are already 'checkmate'
--> Germany's population was 80 million at the start of WW2.
The total military age male population of Germany was 25 million ish. Let that sink in.
The total military age male population of China is 340 million. Please consider this.
You guys think germany was bad? Germany almost fucked up the entire world.
China's industrial base, wealth and population size is on another level. They can probably build 100 tanks for every 1 tank we can build and I don't think that's an exaggeration.
The European Nato states can not win a war against China/Russia! We checkmated ourselves. I wonder when that will become clear. We are basically doomed (but maybe nukes?)
The real question is, does China want to fight a war with us? If it does, it will certainly win in the European theater (not sure about the indo-pacific, large bodies of water helps). But the victory will be pyrrhic, and perhaps nukes will fly, which is why they may not do it.
Something that became clearer in the last few years is that the alternative to eastern Europe in NATO is (and has always been) either eastern Europe under Russian "protection", or eastern Europe with its own nukes. Putin wants to turn 1 into 2, but the nightmare scenario for him is a very messy version of 3.
Poland should potentially have Nukes, and if the USA pulls out of NATO it's likely that they will. Or perhaps they will form a nuclear defense treaty with France/UK.
The problem with the later is that it would hitch Poland's security to the election outcomes in western Europe. The problem with the former is that the Russians would view that as suicide-by-cop. They are as afraid of a nuclear Poland as we are of them and would go to great lengths to prevent it if there is a time-limited opportunity to do so.
Ukraine should have nukes
Excellent article and appropriately alarming. This makes 2024 election choices even more stark. Each morsel of attention given to culture war nonsense is a tribute to our adversaries and makes our defeat more likely. Instead we should be maniacally focused on rebuilding our defense capacity and shoring up our allies.
Reading this made me feel sick
Writing it was not fun, I tried the previous day and felt so shitty about it that I had to quit, and distracted myself by re-reading the creepier parts of Blood Meridian
This is all I have been thinking about for the past months. I have some vague connections to some political elites here in my nation and think I should have a few conversations, but I am a bit unwell so don't have the energy just yet.
Sadly I saw all of what is happening right now months ago and probably should have start having these conversations. But also I'm not sure how much it would have helped, I partly didn't bother because it seemed to me that 'the die has been cast' and its kinda already too late.
When I feel healthy I will try anyway. I want our leaders to think about this stuff better anyway.
Reading this made me feel ill too, thoughts of nasty scenarios have dominated my thoughts since 2022 (autistic brain also not helping here I feel!). But thank you Noah for tackling the hard to hear subjects in an erudite and informative way, combining your big insights with lots of grainy detail - I always finish reading feeling better informed, if not calmer...
This investigative piece concerning Britain may be of interest, and reflects some similar dynamics/difficulties? https://news.sky.com/story/govt-has-no-national-plan-for-defence-of-the-uk-in-a-war-despite-renewed-threats-of-conflict-13106616
Not sure if anyone is interested in starting a reading list to help think about this issue but here are some books I have read or am reading:
Ian Toll's Pacific War Trilogy
Re-reading Barbra Tuchman's The Guns of August
Fareed Zakaria Age of Revolution
Magaret MacMillian The War that Ended Peace (interesting insights into how individual personalities play into geopolitical events- I think of leaders like Putin, Trump, Xi, Olaf Scholz, Biden, etc. and how their own foibles, blindspots, etc. could lead to bad outcomes).
David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts Conflict
Peter Zeihan's last couple books and some of his interviews
The Cambridge History of Warfare
re-reading Gary Klein's Source of Power (interesting ideas on decision-making in conditions of uncertainty...possibly too tactical but still interesting).
Anyone have other recommendations? I would be interested in some prepper type books that are not insane or do not require crazy investments (i.e., I am not building a bunker to live 20 years...if its that bad Ill just roll with it). Also interested in more recent/relevant geopolitical readings.
The Wars for Asia, by Sally Paine!
Oh, definitely. Thanks for this list.
I'm a pretty long time reader at this point and civilian in the DoD. I thank you for bringing these things to more people's attention. I've even used the Gandalf analogy with some friends of mine about myself (not to overstate my importance or anything) and I think it's appropriate here. Lots of work needs to be done. I hope more people realize that as time goes on.
How do I help publicize this more? Even my best-read blog posts get only a million pageviews, and this one is unlikely to get even that many. How do I get a bigger megaphone?
The things you could do are so different from what I can I have to say I don't really know. I've tried to be supportive of the IR grad program I attended teaching people about war itself, not just broader geopolitics. I was lucky to get to attend the first course offering directly on military affairs in years when I was there. It's honestly shocking to me how little someone getting an IR degree is allowed to think about the possibility and practical ramifications of a major war.
What to do with the general audience though? Just keep mentioning it is all I've got.
You should get on The Daily Show somehow
Hey Noah -- Have you considered doing an Econ 102 (or other) podcast episode with Bob Wright and the NonZero News Network? I'd love to hear you guys discuss/debate this topic, with your economics perspective and Bob's cultural-evolution/greater-world-order perspective. Do you know Bob?
I don't know him!!
Sorry, posted this as an original comment earlier...
Assuming you’re not channeling the Christian apostle Peter: you can check him out (Wright, not Peter) here: https://nonzero.substack.com/?utm_medium=web&utm_medium=reader2
And I highly recommend the short book “Nonzero” as an entrè.
Yep, its getting closer and closer. My fear is that we go opposite way. Head in the sand, appease China, while our manufacturing dies a slow death. US keeps tech industry, Europe luxury and pharma and thats about it, while China laughs. Then China can start pressuring its neighbors one by one with only India willing to stand up to them (except if Japan gets nukes).
So like, although we don't have manufacturing we also got a lot richer in nominal terms over the decades. My vague hope is that somewhere all of these intangible goods make the West very powerful.
We went up the gross margin ladder for a reason. I do think a lot of Chinese industry would collapse without us as a lot of design is done by us. Furthermore, we are their main consumers. China is still more dependent on us than we are on them, although that would change if they increase domestic consumption by a lot.
But then again, a tank seems generally more powerful than the software an iphone runs on.
The way its going, China will rule battery, solar panel, wind turbine, hydrogen electrolyser, drones, EV car, cheaper semicon etc etc manufacturing. In each sector they bury the Western competition through combo of subsidies and IP theft. U think everyone in europe or US wants to be an academic or a Walmart cashier? Without industry there is no military power. In 10-20 years even the nuke shield may fail if we continue losing technological know how. Just check how the manufacturing of new nuke subs is going in US. So its not about “everyone working in manufacturing”, its about enough people doing that so we keep some know how and capacity. Without which, we are just richer Tajikistan (no offense to Tajiks, they just dont have much industry).
I agree. I did end the statement with "Then again, a tank seems more powerful than the software an iphone runs on"
what if my iphone has an app that controls tanks
Noah, Any chance the good old US of A can hold on for a couple of decades (enhanced inflow of migrants on our part) while China starts to age out, or are they just too big and powerful and motivated? I am trying to use my 83+ years to reflect backward and review how we survived previous perilous times such as the 60's and 70's, which had me looking at New Zealand and Canada. While we were clearly No. 1 at that time, Japan was the big rising power. Did we do anything or was it just that Japan is of modest size economically and population-wise, when compared to China? Is there anything we should be doing better with India, another population and developmental behemoth, albeit with very unpleasant social and governmental issues of their own?
I definitely think there is a chance we can.
Pretty sure that Japan and S. Korea are aging out faster than China. Based on current trajectory, North Korea will simply waltz into the South, and Korea will be reunified.
Unlike Europe and the US, Japan and Korea are physically isolated from the migrating hordes from the ME, Africa, and all points south of the US border. So, unlikely immigration will come to their rescue.
Japan has an intelligent migration policy and will be fine. China is likely aging about as fast as SK, although they stopped reporting their numbers. Japan is also doing fine on fertility (better than EU if you take away migrant EU population TFR)
The EU is more screwed.
According to this site, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate
The fertility rate in Japan for 2024 is expected to be 1.39. 2.1 is replacement level. This is a net loss of close to a million people a year. I have a hard time believing they will make this up with immigrants, not matter how wise their policy may be.
Taiwan and S. Korea are at the bottom of the list. Barely over 1.0. That's basically losing half your population in a single generation. If China can be patient, Taiwan will just empty itself out.
Re EU - yep, I was surprised at how low some of their rates are. Especially Spain and Italy. We spent nearly a month in Spain last fall. One of the jokes I was told as that Spain's number one expert was Spanish students, and it's number one import was Irish criminals. At least, I think that was meant as a joke.
Last I heard China is estimated to be at SK's level.
That would not surprise me. At least from what I have read (not specifically addressing fertility rate), is that one special child is typical of couples, and an over supply of males. You hardly need any males; just lots of females.
Note that China itself sees this as no problem. They have only urbanized about 400million of their population. That leaves 1bn left. They don't really care if old people in rural areas die, and they still have a billion of rural people to integrate within the modern economic system. So from their POV they don't really care, they have people overhang.
What would you guess are the odds of a real war with China? Metaculus: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/11480/china-launches-invasion-of-taiwan/?sub-question=10880 has it at 33% by 2035.
I think maybe 50-50.
Jesus!
This is cool! My guess would be between 2030 and 2034: before the leader turns 80 and as succession politics combines with some kinds of economic crises.
A Brit here. Some people are noticing that the French are being quite friendly to us. In fact they sent some Republican Guards to help at Buckingham Palace. We sent some Coldstream guards to the Elysée in return, I think. This celebrates the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale. Militarily we will no doubt draw closer to France and indeed Germany.
Lloyd Austin just now enjoins Ukraine not to attack Russian oil refineries as it may make gas prices go up. Biden can't get Mike Johnson even to proceed to a vote on further Ukrainian support. The Majority Leader is too busy to see UK Foreign Secretary Lord (aka David) Cameron. Trump of course will not support Ukraine but Biden no longer seems able to. The war is not important to the US, let alone "existential".
Indeed, as some commentators here observe, there is a good argument for renewed American isolationism. For many in the US it must seem "horrible, fantastic, incredible" to contemplate joining "a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing". And, unlike Chamberlain in 1938, you have to factor in the possibility of nuclear war. So, the Ukraine war is not existential for the US, it is unclear that it is even very important.
The Ukraine war has and had nothing to do with NATO despite Putin's assertions to the contrary. The provocation that led to the 2014 occupation of Crimea and parts of the Donbass was the proposed EU/Ukraine agreement the consequent threat of an unfriendly government in Ukraine and maybe even unrest in Russia itself. The 2022 invasion is just the continuation of that. Essentially Ukraine has become the borderland between two weak but assertive "empires" - the EU and Russia. For the EU the war is therefore existential.
It looks to me that we are seeing the end of NATO - there is a divergence of interests. For Europe it is Russia that is the threat. For the US it is China. The sort of leadership of the West that might overcome that divide is at present wholly lacking.
Niall Ferguson's 2009 book "The War of the World" notes how declining empires, ethnic diversity, and economic volatility led to conflicts starting in the borderlands of those empires, which evolved into WW2. He notes, as Noah does, that WW2 started in many places at different times. He warns that the circumstances he describes, should they recur, may well lead to same effects. Noah is right to be scared.
Your last paragraph is interesting. Could you expand a bit on these circumstances that he describes? You mention declining empires, ethnic diversity, economic volatility?
This passage expands the declining empires theme:
❝The potential instability of assimilation and integration; the insidious spread of the meme that identifies some human beings as aliens; the combustible character of ethnically mixed borderlands; the chronic volatility of mid-twentieth-century economic life; the bitter struggles between old multi-ethnic empires and short-lived empire-states; the convulsions that marked the decline of Western dominance – these, then, are the principal themes that will be explored and elaborated on below.❞
Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred (pp. 62-63). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
The genocidal impulse is active in Israel/Gaza (both Arab and lately Jewish). Retreating US has allowed it to flourish. The GFC supplied the economic volatility. The crumbling of the Russian empire (aka USSR) continues. Here is another passage from the end of the book:
❝Yet the twin urge to rape and murder remains repressed in a civilized society. It is only when civilization breaks down or is broken down, as happened in both Bosnia and Rwanda, that the urge is unleashed. And only under certain circumstances does it escalate from pogrom to genocide. To repeat: economic volatility very often provides the trigger for the politicization of ethnic difference. Proximity to a strategic borderland, usually an imperial border, determines the extent to which the violence will metastasize.❞
Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred (p. 690). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition. The October 7th atrocities were far from unprecedented.
Sure as hell sounds a lot like exactly what is happening in the West right now..