Great article. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as if pundits and our govt are thinking in terms of China as Japan but China as the USSR. Could you explore that? In my ignorance, I think they're making a serious mistake. China, unlike the USSR, doesn't pose an ideological threat at all and it poses even less of a military threat to friends in Asia than the USSR did in Europe. The logistics of modern war are so daunting that only the US can put even moderate forces overseas; I know of no evidence that China is making the effort to build up anything capable of conquering Taiwan.
As a Chinese person, I can tell you that China's current goal at most is to become the new master of a "GEACPS"(共荣圈). The Communist ideology that the CCP originally held has been eroded by the market and corruption.
They may do a military invasion of Taiwan (though that’s several steps down their list of preferable options). Definitely no crazy aspirations to take over SE Asia, etc.
>>>BUT, if China does end up going to war with the West — or even have a protracted Cold War type struggle — it will be an infinitely more dangerous foe than Japan ever could have been<<<
I've been reading Noah since he first started writing Bloomberg pieces, and I'm generally a big fan. But I find on geopolitics -- which in his case more often than not involves Asia -- his writing is like a teenager who's really, really (really!) enthusiastic about the board game Risk. Several hundred words comparing a potential Sino-US conflict with WW2's Japan-USA theater, and nary a word about the most obvious (and terrifying) difference between the PRC of then and the Japan of now: the former possesses a large, lethal and growing nuclear arsenal (and by their own admission are endeavoring to rapidly grow that arsenal). THAT is what makes a PRC-US war "infinitely" more dangerous than America and Japan's titanic struggle all those years ago. (A single nuclear weapon detonated over a US metro could easily cause more causalities than the country took during the entirety of its 57 month-long war against Japan). A Sino-US war in the Pacific isn't going to look anything like '41-'45. There will be no long, bloody slogs through tropical archipelagos that you can read about in the newspaper from the comfort of your living room. There will be no lengthy, multi-year stage when the economy is mobilized and production is ramped up in preparation for protracted campaigns. There will be no five million man army. And so on. Also, Japan had virtually no ability to hit the US homeland (well, there was a weaponized balloon that blew up over Oregon late in the war). That's very definitely not the case with China.
Very early on in such a conflict, one side or another (probably the side that's on the verge of losing) will either quit or go nuclear. A PRC-USA war (in addition to being as unthinkable* as a USSR-USA war was back in the day) will be short and unfathomably violent.
I suggest boning up on one's firemaking skills.
*Yeah, I know, somebody has to think about these things; but hopefully they do so mostly with an eye toward preventing them from occurring.
What about the Pearl Harbour analogy? If an attack on Taiwan is planned does China have the same incentives to launch a surprise attack on US Pacific forces? Another analogy would be how war might transform China from within. A lot of the dysfunction of Imperial Japan that you mention rose out of factions in the armed forces or ideologies shaped by imperial conquest. The maximum extent of China's current territorial claims would entail major wars with essentially all of it's neighbors. China is not like Japan in the 30s yet.
The surprise attack on Pearl was essentially the 3rd- or 4th-order of a bad decision-making process where the Japanese had backed themselves into one corner after another. Basically, they wanted to seize resources south of the Philippines for their war efforts in China, but the US would almost certainly have blockaded this, so they needed to sideline the US from that potential conflict. The (mis)calculation was that the best way to do so would be to decapitate the US naval presence in the Pacific with a surprise strike at Pearl Harbor, and make it such a costly loss that the US wouldn't be able to meaningfully contest the Pacific for several years. This would have posed a genuine strategic dilemma to the US, where backing down and ceding the Pacific may have made more sense than spending years trying to rebuild the Pacific fleet with those very shipyards under constant naval assault or threat thereof.
The problem is, the tactics ultimately bungled the strategy. Japan took out most of our battleships, which was what naval planners considered to be the big threat, but left us enough of our aircraft carriers that our leaders could reasonably expect to fall back on our ingenuity and credibly contest the war in the early going. Basically, the decapitation strike left a big ugly-looking gash on our necks, and nicked some minor arteries, but got nowhere near to the jugular, so we stayed in the fight.
The strategic calculus in Taiwan is very different, at least without any crystal balls here to give us perfect foresight.
There's no *new* development driving strategic value in Taiwan itself. It's got few natural resources, really only just geography, and a lot of tech that's already been there for decades. As far as the semiconductor industry goes, seizing TSMC might make the West collectively shit themselves, but it nets China very little in reality, since they'd still have to keep reverse-engineering their own EUV tech in order to realize any of the gains. The West, conversely, would just dump a few trillion into making Arizona or Belgium or somewhere the new global hub of semiconductor manufacturing.
But again, there's nothing *new* driving any of that. The Chinese aren't in any wars. They have no shortages of critical industrial materials. Even an acute economic crisis wouldn't necessarily be solved by seizing Taiwan.
If I were Xi, or Xi's successor, I'd simply replicate the same strategy that's already been working with Hong Kong: slowly but surely exert your influence over the locals through whatever legal channels you have, raise hell about how evil and neo-imperialist the West are, and in a few decades or less it's all but a formality to annex the territory. The real trick is just accomplishing this without alarming the rest of the neighbors, but as long as America can't get its shit together and start actually leading a coherent regional policy response (like TPP or whatever new initiative we're currently half-assing), then there's little the neighbors can actually do except panic and quietly wonder if they should just start "going along to get along" since the US isn't doing a damned thing.
Thanks for the considered reply. Your point about the lesser strategic importance of Taiwan is well taken. But if China does decide to invade Taiwan, rational or not as we see it, the logic for a surpise attack on the US naval forces is rather similiar because of the presumption of a blockade. So I suppose the question is whether they would make the same (mis)judgement as Japan. Looking on the bright side this seems less likely. It depends on how the Chinese side assess their own abilities to prevent the US from contesting a Taiwan invasion. Hopefully they don't convince themselves that sinking a couple of carriers would be sufficient.
I don't think they *would* make the same judgment, mainly due to the relative disposition of US forces in the Pacific.
Pre-Pearl, the US Navy was built around a core of battleships, and aircraft carriers were seen as a support class. It was actually the *Japanese's* effective use of carriers for the Pearl strike that proved what naval air power could do.
Today, everyone knows that the USN's carriers are the core of our capability. When we want to send a big message, we send a carrier, not a battleship. Naval tactics are basically a solved game: you stay as far away as you can from the enemy, and lob a shit ton of missiles at them.
It's what's sitting *on top* of all that, that wins the war. Sensors and comms. Radar, satellite, and networks. And what do you defeat those with? Stealth and subterfuge. If they can't see you, they can't shoot you. If they don't know their own radar, satellite, and networks are about to fail, then you can lure them into your trap with cyber.
The Japanese attacked with air power because no one would have expected that kind of assault on Pearl Harbor.
Ironically, everyone knows right now that the next surprise attack won't start with an initial volley of missiles, it'll start with cyber. I think spying, recon, and doctrine genuinely have improved to the point that all major players understand each other's politics, doctrine, disposition, and capabilities (conventional and nuclear) in a way that prevents the sort of underestimation the Japanese made in 1941.
The kicker is just that no one knows what each other's cyber capabilities are. We know what the targets are, just not the capabilities. But in a way, I don't think any of it changes the status quo that MAD has made great-power warfare obsolete. Hacking each other's politics still seems to be on the table, but everyone still more or less agrees on the basic moral calculation that taking down another great power's power grid is still an intolerable escalation that deeply risks provoking a conventional or nuclear response.
Getting back to the theoretical "China throws reason out the window and surprise-invades Taiwan" scenario, the big problem is just that with all that satellite recon and espionage (cyber or meatspace), it's impossible to not know that the other side's putting their forces in range for a surprise attack. War planners simply are too good and too well-informed to get caught so flat-footed these days.
The only realistic way to win a great-power war is "total cyber knockout". You disrupt everything the enemy has all at once, and you help it along by hacking their satellites with false recon on your own positions.
Now, it's kind of moot to discuss if the Chinese achieve a full knockout, since we know that ending - the US military is hamstrung just before the invasion and can't recover in time to mount a successful conventional+cyber response to it, so the US government backs down.
So instead, let's say that our half-rational Chinese overestimate their own cyber capability, and think they've got this knockout all covered, but they really don't. The US hits them back with an exclusively military-targeted cyber attack of our own, and we shoot down everything China throws across the Taiwan Strait, plus possible some mainland AA/AD for good measure. If we're smart, we pull out whatever our "ace up the sleeve" is too, and knock out power to Beijing for a day to let the CCP know we can curb-stomp them at a moment's notice.
But yeah, that's the outline of what happens. It almost doesn't even matter what the actual battle plans are, because the entire outcome is decided in cyberspace before the first shot is fired.
Good points that cyber, MAD and some other capabilities make the analogies to any situation prior to those technologies pretty weak. I also wonder if these type of things change the big picture in underappreciated ways. In the sense that MAD etc being common knowledge changes how people form beliefs about the desirability of empire or territorial conquest. If it is difficult then people find reasons not to want to do it, eventually shifting whole national ideologies away from it. Not just discouraging attack but discouraging aggressive ideas. Conquests may not drive the preference for more conquests as they have in the past. But I'm circling back to my first point. China is not Imperial Japan...yet...but it is only 1 step away while the 'west'/developed world have moved 3 or 4 steps away. Maybe that last step is harder to take now than in the past but I wouldn't want to be complacent about that.
I think China's *definitely more* than "1 step away". Like I said, Xi's strategy of passively undermining the West and using state capitalism to outcompete us has been working thus far. Just because their economy's faltering right now doesn't invalidate the entire approach for the entire next 20-30 years.
What if China were simply to announce the day of its invasion of Taiwan? A US that lacks the courage to sell Taiwan modern hardware (F-16's are hardly cutting edge), strikes me as unlikely to find the courage to actually fire shots in Taiwan's defence.
Seemingly just the other day, China wouldn't risk further humiliation at the hands of the West. Now I feel like it is the US that risks humiliation. Holding on to Taiwan with conventional forces simply must fail eventually. Expanding the conflict would be madness. And so I'm inclined to see our strategy with regards to Taiwan as an increasingly obvious bluff.
If I had to guess, I'd say that were China to show clear determination to invade, the West would pull out all the stops to broker the sort of deal that Hong Kong got (mutatis mutandis), meaning that China makes promises, moves in, and quickly exerts control while the world turns a blind eye.
I'll admit to being far out of my depth here, even by internet standards!
Not sure what you mean "simply announce the day of its invasion". Are you saying a traditional surprise attack? If so, perhaps my point didn't get across as well as I'd hope, but basically, I laid out precisely *why* that wouldn't happen:
1. Conventionally, the US knows more about China's disposition of forces than vice versa.
2. Thus, the US will always see an attack being prepared well in advance. "Announc[ing] the day of [the] invasion" isn't a surprise like it was for Pearl Harbor, it's just telling the US what they'd already be alerted to the possibility of, and moving the US's own forces in place to counter.
3. The only way to prevent the US seeing the attack in advance is *Stealth or Subterfuge/Cyber". Trick the US satellite network into not seeing your preparations, and maybe you have a shot at surprising them.
RE: If China actually did start making motions at TW, it really just depends on how well the West can get their shit together. TW is not as legally fraught as Hong Kong; HK was a protectorate that the Brits signed over in atonement for imperialism, whereas the ROC (TW) and PRC (China) consider each other to be illegally ruling over the same sovereign state. The only difference between the ROC and PRC is that the ROC isn't formally recognized.
The West's first move would obviously be to sell TW modern hardware. That gets the point across to China, without actually recognizing TW. As far as recognizing TW, the Chinese would of course complain furiously, but it basically stalemates them on TW in particular, until or if the recognition prompts a pro-China backlash in TW's domestic politics (such a backlash is growing less likely by the day, as TW's cultural identity continues to diverge from the mainland, but the danger thereof is still quite real). China's only real move left is to start doing more aggressive shit in the South and East China Seas, but all that does is provoke the rest of the neighbors towards the West's side.
But that's ONLY if the West defends TW. If they let TW down, then as I said earlier, the neighbors start wondering if maybe China won't be so bad to them.
Thanks for the reply, David. I'm afraid that I'm the one who wasn't clear. Rather than I surprise attack, I was imagining the brazen hypothetical where China says something like: "We are invading Taiwan at the start of next year. We advise everyone to stay away." I have trouble imagining a calm, collected West daring to stand up.
One flaw in your argument as I see it is that the Americans would act in one voice to counter Chinese aggression. Certainly the Chinese are smart enough to take care of this before invading Taiwan or any of the other neighbours. Already big American business is on their side. They have bought over most American universities, the American media and Hollywood. All these internal assets would be brought to full play before, during and after a Chinese military adventure. This would so hamstring American decision-making that no serious military reaction would be forthcoming from the American side.
You saw the power of these Chinese assets during the recent presidential polls when China was able to prevent the reelection of a President who was openly inimical to it and was standing strongly for American interests.
Now, something that just occurred to me, is that the best modern parallel to Imperial Japan is actually... Iran!
Iran is what I'd describe as a "less chaotic, better-controlled anocracy". Just the other day, for instance, the IRGC raided none other than their own President's and Foreign Minister's offices. Khamenei rules with a certain detachment from most other actors in the country, only intervening when he really needs to, but perhaps taking a more active role than the Emperor did. Mostly, Khamenei just makes sure that his preferred people are in place. But Iran has what, 6 (at a minimum) branches of government? It's a total recipe for anocracy.
I think the tighter control does explain why they haven't made any Japanese Mistakes. But the anocratic character explains why their foreign policy is so all-over-the-place, why some nations and parties see one thing (like how Republicans see an insane theocratic totalitarian state), and others another thing (like how Democrats see an unpredictable but not necessarily insane theocracy). There's no one to keep the country from playing international spoiler or lurching from shitty, cynical misdeed to misdeed.
I'd predict that Iran doesn't do anything while Khamenei's still alive. But the fact that he himself is a successor indicates that it's a surprisingly stable anocracy. Iran will probably survive in its current form until it's overcome by external events; for all Westerners love to accuse authoritarian societies of "internal rot", it's hard to see where the rot actually is. It's like a friend telling you that your apartment has mold because they don't like the landlord's religion or no-pets policy. Without any real rot, the country will just muddle on in anocracy until it deteriorates enough that the IRGC or some other rogue actor picks a fight it can't win.
Ignorance is bliss, please read some history books, please read some real news, including foreign sources, and perhaps travel. I've rarely read something so inaccurate even from the ultra-right or the radical left.
- I'd be curious to hear your critique, review, or whatever of Yuen Yuen Ang's book "How China Escaped the Poverty Trap." She has some interesting propositions about how economic development worked in China, but I'm not a trained economist, so I'm not sure quite how to evaluate them.
As usual, your analysis on Japan is spot on, but you far underestimate how significant Taiwan is to China. If Biden keeps challenging China’s one nation policy, China will go to war and US will throw Japan under the bus first. That will certainly not be enough to stop China so US will enter the most destructive war since WWII. I like most of what Biden is doing domestically but he is leading us closer to a world war with his aggressive stance against China and dismissing the one nation policy. Americans need to be more informed of this real danger.
Agree with most of the author's points about the differences between Imperial Japan and China. Of course, China is a far more formidable opponent than Japan could ever be purely because of size. Although Japan is pound for pound punching above its weight, there are no weight divisions in the jungle.
However, i have to take issue with this narrative of internal "repression". Step back and think for a second. If the CCP's aim was to maintain control and suppress its citizens, why would it be developing infrastructure, raising living standards and implementing an explicit policy to eradicate poverty? Does a government who raises 700+ million people out of poverty sound like it's trying to oppress its own people? Of course the "repression" narrative runs counter to what one sees going on in China. Ditto with Russia. The Russian government remains very popular among most Russians. Why are we lying to ourselves with the "repression" narrative?
Right. China starts a war, the USN cuts off their oil supply thousands of miles from China's shores, China's economy stops, and the Chinese starve in the dark.
You can't power stuff that moves with coal, and you can't make fertilizer from coal. China imports at least 50% of its oil from the Persian Gulf. They also need to trade with the wider world to survive, while the USA does not. Russia has no way to help, and no reason to help. The U.S. Navy is not something that China can counter. See "Disunited Nations" by Peter Zeihan for a more exhaustive analysis of China's geo-strategic situation.
Anybody who takes Zeihan and his Stratfor-esque 'geography is destiny' crap seriously, deserves not to be taken seriously themselves! That particular line of nonsense is nothing more sophisticated than taking a map and drawing a few arrows! The guy is a bit of joke in real geostrategy circles.
Still, let's imagine you're right and a blockade is all that is needed. Have you served in your nation's navy? because I have. Do you know what exactly a blockade entails? The enormous complexity of it? The damage it would do to neighboring US allies? After all, Chinese cargo/oil isnt exactly on big red ships with 'China' on the side...And what would you blockade specifically? Malacca? Lombok? Makassar? the Gwadar port? Various Burmese ports the Chinese have invested in? Any idea how much manpower/tonnage/time/allied-contribution that would require? And finally, given all that commitment to keeping numerous assets floating around at very fixed coordinates like sitting ducks, how exactly would you fight the Chinese?
Here I was thinking such antiquated thinking died out c.2012....
You are entitled to your opinion, but I would bet on the U.S. over China any day. If you have facts to counter Zeihan's analysis of China's geographic, demographic, and financial situation, let's hear them.
Is looking at the big economic and demographic stats really important when assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a state in modern war? Nukes make total war completely unfeasible; the Soviet (and Warsaw Pact more widely) economy was much weaker than NATO's, but in a cold war gone hot scenario, the Warsaw Pact may have been able to push all the way to the Rhine relatively easily, and at that point it would be very hard for NATO to unstick them. Any further escalation could risk Armageddon, so the Soviets would have effectively won.
Well, except for the “winning the peace” part. Hard to imagine any scenario where the Soviets could have kept it all from unraveling within a few decades even if they had managed to push all the way to the Rhine.
Your first mistake is claiming the Chinese people are "repressed", when the government's achievement of the fastest increase in living standards for 1.4 billion people in history, over the last three decades, has resulted in considerable national pride on the mainland. A big change from the days of the Tiananmen protests. Meanwhile democracy is looking increasingly dysfunctional, even in 1st world nations like the US and France. Biden might not even be able to secure the necessary funding in Congress to modernize US infrastructure, such is the strength of the delusional "individual sovereignty", winner-takes-all, ideology of Republicans. .
Certainly Western values of 'individual freedom' are superficially attractive to the majority, yet individuals who fail to successfully compete in invisible-hand 'free' markets are left behind in the West's 'sink or swim', dysfunctional neoliberal economic system.
Personally I hope the Chinese have enough wisdom to wait until they can give the middle finger to the US...and reunite Taiwan to the mainland without firing a shot....
C'mon Noah, you've got to have more than just the "tankie" comment against anyone who disagrees with you. Is it true, or not, that the CCP has presided over the fastest economic growth in human history? Is it true, or not, that the overwhelming majority of Chinese citizens have benefited from the CCP's governance? Is it true, or not, that the majority of Chinese citizens are satisfied with the CCP's performance? It's not tankie-talk to make these points.
It isn't just because he disagrees with Noah. Look at Neil's comments on every thread remotely about China. He's definitely one of China's wolf warriors.
If countering the toxic Western narrative about China is wolf warrior, then count me as a wolf warrior as well. It is actually the West who are beating the war drums - again. This time it has very very dangerous implications for the whole world.
You would have us thank Mrs. O'Leary's cow for leading to the highest rate of new construction in America in 1874 Chicago. In any event, when China does as well as Taiwan, we may then say that the Chinese have benefitted from it - until then, they have been a source of harm.
Unbelievably stupid comment. They may not have as high a income per capita as TW, but China is vastly bigger in terms of population and land mass. You must be daft if you think the ROC could've have done what the CCP has done in raising living standards on the mainland over the last 40 years.
No really, it's like you're saying we should effusively praise a wife beater for not just killing her - and when he cuts back from beating her every day to just once a week, hallelujah! Praise the Lord! For yes, he is to be credited with this improvement! And my, aren't the people so happy under this new and improved regime! Where Mao caused famine now Deng Xiaoping causes living standards far below any of the Western nations. I dunno, praising them for stopping doing their most evil things is faint praise indeed.
A bacteria can double in size every few hours, yet come nowhere near the size of an elephant. The rate of growth is far less important than the size of the whole - and it remains that the average person in China is considerably poorer than in the US. Besides that, the sole reason why the economy is growing in China is that they abandoned Maoism and instituted limited market reforms.
>>>The rate of growth is far less important than the size of the whole - and it remains that the average person in China is considerably poorer than in the US.<<<
The first part of your sentence is in conflict with the second part. You're right the US is a loads richer than China. But in terms of the "size of the whole" China has pulled even.
Well that was rather inarticulate of me - the general point I'm trying to get across is that the people of China remain poorer than in the US, and that a higher rate from a very little base indeed is a pointless comparison.
I'm no fan of china but this seems unfair. You can't dondemn current chinese policy for it's inability to go back to the past and making past china less poor to staart with. Economies can't grow infinetly fast and it takes time to catch up. For a better critique of china try.
1. There is something (what?) that prevents china from becoming as rich as the usa.
2. here are some ways that china is terrible that don't show up in ecometric statistics (like the Uygur stuff)
It’s arguable how loyal the Chinese are to the CCP, but yes, the Han Chinese are extremely loyal to China. There’s no way a successful invasion of China can be pulled off and nobody is suggesting such an absurd idea anyway.
I'm glad you recognise that China transcends any political party and the Chinese people know this. They will wholeheartedly back the CCP in an attempted invasion by the US because the CCP govern China. And the Chinese people actually do love China. They also approve of the CCP's governance, which is a point that not many in the West are willing to concede. Imagine, a strong China now versus a weak and vulnerable China under the Qing and Nationalists. If you were Chinese, which would you prefer?
The Chinese army is I think a conscription army, where the Chinese are forced to serve for a few years. That is, it is not a professional army. Nor is it a national army, it us an offshoot of the Communist Party of China.
The Chinese soldiers have neither the stamina nor the commitment for serious warfare. This became very clear to the world during their brief misadventure against India last year. When battle-hardened Indian soldiers killed scores of Chinese soldiers after suffering initial casualties, the Chinese quickly fled the battle field.
There were several reports of young Chinese conscripts send to the Indian battle-field crying like babies out of sheer terror of fighting in an actual war.
Another reason why the Chinese cannot fight conventional wars, is that the Chinese soldiers all belong to single child families on whom the burden of supporting elderly parents always exists - they just cannot afford to die in the battle field as that would leave their ageing parents unsupported. Being single children, they are all molly-coddled and do not have the grit to last in trying battle conditions.
This fear of dying on the battle field is a serious drawback of the CCP army, just as it is of the US army which too cannot take casualties in war.
Another point to consider is that the Chinese army is not a national army in the sense that its loyalties do not lie with China or with the Chinese people, but with the Chinese Communist Party.
It is also an untested fighting force as after its defeat against the Vietnamese army almist 50 years ago, it has never fought a serious war.
At best it can engage in information war, terrorism, cyber war, clandesine bio-warfare and other indirect forms of destabilisation, which can't achieve it much other than causing its opponents minor irritation.
Much of China's aggression is directed against its own citizens.
Great article. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as if pundits and our govt are thinking in terms of China as Japan but China as the USSR. Could you explore that? In my ignorance, I think they're making a serious mistake. China, unlike the USSR, doesn't pose an ideological threat at all and it poses even less of a military threat to friends in Asia than the USSR did in Europe. The logistics of modern war are so daunting that only the US can put even moderate forces overseas; I know of no evidence that China is making the effort to build up anything capable of conquering Taiwan.
As a Chinese person, I can tell you that China's current goal at most is to become the new master of a "GEACPS"(共荣圈). The Communist ideology that the CCP originally held has been eroded by the market and corruption.
They may do a military invasion of Taiwan (though that’s several steps down their list of preferable options). Definitely no crazy aspirations to take over SE Asia, etc.
>>>BUT, if China does end up going to war with the West — or even have a protracted Cold War type struggle — it will be an infinitely more dangerous foe than Japan ever could have been<<<
I've been reading Noah since he first started writing Bloomberg pieces, and I'm generally a big fan. But I find on geopolitics -- which in his case more often than not involves Asia -- his writing is like a teenager who's really, really (really!) enthusiastic about the board game Risk. Several hundred words comparing a potential Sino-US conflict with WW2's Japan-USA theater, and nary a word about the most obvious (and terrifying) difference between the PRC of then and the Japan of now: the former possesses a large, lethal and growing nuclear arsenal (and by their own admission are endeavoring to rapidly grow that arsenal). THAT is what makes a PRC-US war "infinitely" more dangerous than America and Japan's titanic struggle all those years ago. (A single nuclear weapon detonated over a US metro could easily cause more causalities than the country took during the entirety of its 57 month-long war against Japan). A Sino-US war in the Pacific isn't going to look anything like '41-'45. There will be no long, bloody slogs through tropical archipelagos that you can read about in the newspaper from the comfort of your living room. There will be no lengthy, multi-year stage when the economy is mobilized and production is ramped up in preparation for protracted campaigns. There will be no five million man army. And so on. Also, Japan had virtually no ability to hit the US homeland (well, there was a weaponized balloon that blew up over Oregon late in the war). That's very definitely not the case with China.
Very early on in such a conflict, one side or another (probably the side that's on the verge of losing) will either quit or go nuclear. A PRC-USA war (in addition to being as unthinkable* as a USSR-USA war was back in the day) will be short and unfathomably violent.
I suggest boning up on one's firemaking skills.
*Yeah, I know, somebody has to think about these things; but hopefully they do so mostly with an eye toward preventing them from occurring.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/china-paper-dragon/618778/
China is a Paper Tiger
What about the Pearl Harbour analogy? If an attack on Taiwan is planned does China have the same incentives to launch a surprise attack on US Pacific forces? Another analogy would be how war might transform China from within. A lot of the dysfunction of Imperial Japan that you mention rose out of factions in the armed forces or ideologies shaped by imperial conquest. The maximum extent of China's current territorial claims would entail major wars with essentially all of it's neighbors. China is not like Japan in the 30s yet.
The surprise attack on Pearl was essentially the 3rd- or 4th-order of a bad decision-making process where the Japanese had backed themselves into one corner after another. Basically, they wanted to seize resources south of the Philippines for their war efforts in China, but the US would almost certainly have blockaded this, so they needed to sideline the US from that potential conflict. The (mis)calculation was that the best way to do so would be to decapitate the US naval presence in the Pacific with a surprise strike at Pearl Harbor, and make it such a costly loss that the US wouldn't be able to meaningfully contest the Pacific for several years. This would have posed a genuine strategic dilemma to the US, where backing down and ceding the Pacific may have made more sense than spending years trying to rebuild the Pacific fleet with those very shipyards under constant naval assault or threat thereof.
The problem is, the tactics ultimately bungled the strategy. Japan took out most of our battleships, which was what naval planners considered to be the big threat, but left us enough of our aircraft carriers that our leaders could reasonably expect to fall back on our ingenuity and credibly contest the war in the early going. Basically, the decapitation strike left a big ugly-looking gash on our necks, and nicked some minor arteries, but got nowhere near to the jugular, so we stayed in the fight.
The strategic calculus in Taiwan is very different, at least without any crystal balls here to give us perfect foresight.
There's no *new* development driving strategic value in Taiwan itself. It's got few natural resources, really only just geography, and a lot of tech that's already been there for decades. As far as the semiconductor industry goes, seizing TSMC might make the West collectively shit themselves, but it nets China very little in reality, since they'd still have to keep reverse-engineering their own EUV tech in order to realize any of the gains. The West, conversely, would just dump a few trillion into making Arizona or Belgium or somewhere the new global hub of semiconductor manufacturing.
But again, there's nothing *new* driving any of that. The Chinese aren't in any wars. They have no shortages of critical industrial materials. Even an acute economic crisis wouldn't necessarily be solved by seizing Taiwan.
If I were Xi, or Xi's successor, I'd simply replicate the same strategy that's already been working with Hong Kong: slowly but surely exert your influence over the locals through whatever legal channels you have, raise hell about how evil and neo-imperialist the West are, and in a few decades or less it's all but a formality to annex the territory. The real trick is just accomplishing this without alarming the rest of the neighbors, but as long as America can't get its shit together and start actually leading a coherent regional policy response (like TPP or whatever new initiative we're currently half-assing), then there's little the neighbors can actually do except panic and quietly wonder if they should just start "going along to get along" since the US isn't doing a damned thing.
Thanks for the considered reply. Your point about the lesser strategic importance of Taiwan is well taken. But if China does decide to invade Taiwan, rational or not as we see it, the logic for a surpise attack on the US naval forces is rather similiar because of the presumption of a blockade. So I suppose the question is whether they would make the same (mis)judgement as Japan. Looking on the bright side this seems less likely. It depends on how the Chinese side assess their own abilities to prevent the US from contesting a Taiwan invasion. Hopefully they don't convince themselves that sinking a couple of carriers would be sufficient.
I don't think they *would* make the same judgment, mainly due to the relative disposition of US forces in the Pacific.
Pre-Pearl, the US Navy was built around a core of battleships, and aircraft carriers were seen as a support class. It was actually the *Japanese's* effective use of carriers for the Pearl strike that proved what naval air power could do.
Today, everyone knows that the USN's carriers are the core of our capability. When we want to send a big message, we send a carrier, not a battleship. Naval tactics are basically a solved game: you stay as far away as you can from the enemy, and lob a shit ton of missiles at them.
It's what's sitting *on top* of all that, that wins the war. Sensors and comms. Radar, satellite, and networks. And what do you defeat those with? Stealth and subterfuge. If they can't see you, they can't shoot you. If they don't know their own radar, satellite, and networks are about to fail, then you can lure them into your trap with cyber.
The Japanese attacked with air power because no one would have expected that kind of assault on Pearl Harbor.
Ironically, everyone knows right now that the next surprise attack won't start with an initial volley of missiles, it'll start with cyber. I think spying, recon, and doctrine genuinely have improved to the point that all major players understand each other's politics, doctrine, disposition, and capabilities (conventional and nuclear) in a way that prevents the sort of underestimation the Japanese made in 1941.
The kicker is just that no one knows what each other's cyber capabilities are. We know what the targets are, just not the capabilities. But in a way, I don't think any of it changes the status quo that MAD has made great-power warfare obsolete. Hacking each other's politics still seems to be on the table, but everyone still more or less agrees on the basic moral calculation that taking down another great power's power grid is still an intolerable escalation that deeply risks provoking a conventional or nuclear response.
Getting back to the theoretical "China throws reason out the window and surprise-invades Taiwan" scenario, the big problem is just that with all that satellite recon and espionage (cyber or meatspace), it's impossible to not know that the other side's putting their forces in range for a surprise attack. War planners simply are too good and too well-informed to get caught so flat-footed these days.
The only realistic way to win a great-power war is "total cyber knockout". You disrupt everything the enemy has all at once, and you help it along by hacking their satellites with false recon on your own positions.
Now, it's kind of moot to discuss if the Chinese achieve a full knockout, since we know that ending - the US military is hamstrung just before the invasion and can't recover in time to mount a successful conventional+cyber response to it, so the US government backs down.
So instead, let's say that our half-rational Chinese overestimate their own cyber capability, and think they've got this knockout all covered, but they really don't. The US hits them back with an exclusively military-targeted cyber attack of our own, and we shoot down everything China throws across the Taiwan Strait, plus possible some mainland AA/AD for good measure. If we're smart, we pull out whatever our "ace up the sleeve" is too, and knock out power to Beijing for a day to let the CCP know we can curb-stomp them at a moment's notice.
But yeah, that's the outline of what happens. It almost doesn't even matter what the actual battle plans are, because the entire outcome is decided in cyberspace before the first shot is fired.
Good points that cyber, MAD and some other capabilities make the analogies to any situation prior to those technologies pretty weak. I also wonder if these type of things change the big picture in underappreciated ways. In the sense that MAD etc being common knowledge changes how people form beliefs about the desirability of empire or territorial conquest. If it is difficult then people find reasons not to want to do it, eventually shifting whole national ideologies away from it. Not just discouraging attack but discouraging aggressive ideas. Conquests may not drive the preference for more conquests as they have in the past. But I'm circling back to my first point. China is not Imperial Japan...yet...but it is only 1 step away while the 'west'/developed world have moved 3 or 4 steps away. Maybe that last step is harder to take now than in the past but I wouldn't want to be complacent about that.
I think China's *definitely more* than "1 step away". Like I said, Xi's strategy of passively undermining the West and using state capitalism to outcompete us has been working thus far. Just because their economy's faltering right now doesn't invalidate the entire approach for the entire next 20-30 years.
What if China were simply to announce the day of its invasion of Taiwan? A US that lacks the courage to sell Taiwan modern hardware (F-16's are hardly cutting edge), strikes me as unlikely to find the courage to actually fire shots in Taiwan's defence.
Seemingly just the other day, China wouldn't risk further humiliation at the hands of the West. Now I feel like it is the US that risks humiliation. Holding on to Taiwan with conventional forces simply must fail eventually. Expanding the conflict would be madness. And so I'm inclined to see our strategy with regards to Taiwan as an increasingly obvious bluff.
If I had to guess, I'd say that were China to show clear determination to invade, the West would pull out all the stops to broker the sort of deal that Hong Kong got (mutatis mutandis), meaning that China makes promises, moves in, and quickly exerts control while the world turns a blind eye.
I'll admit to being far out of my depth here, even by internet standards!
Not sure what you mean "simply announce the day of its invasion". Are you saying a traditional surprise attack? If so, perhaps my point didn't get across as well as I'd hope, but basically, I laid out precisely *why* that wouldn't happen:
1. Conventionally, the US knows more about China's disposition of forces than vice versa.
2. Thus, the US will always see an attack being prepared well in advance. "Announc[ing] the day of [the] invasion" isn't a surprise like it was for Pearl Harbor, it's just telling the US what they'd already be alerted to the possibility of, and moving the US's own forces in place to counter.
3. The only way to prevent the US seeing the attack in advance is *Stealth or Subterfuge/Cyber". Trick the US satellite network into not seeing your preparations, and maybe you have a shot at surprising them.
RE: If China actually did start making motions at TW, it really just depends on how well the West can get their shit together. TW is not as legally fraught as Hong Kong; HK was a protectorate that the Brits signed over in atonement for imperialism, whereas the ROC (TW) and PRC (China) consider each other to be illegally ruling over the same sovereign state. The only difference between the ROC and PRC is that the ROC isn't formally recognized.
The West's first move would obviously be to sell TW modern hardware. That gets the point across to China, without actually recognizing TW. As far as recognizing TW, the Chinese would of course complain furiously, but it basically stalemates them on TW in particular, until or if the recognition prompts a pro-China backlash in TW's domestic politics (such a backlash is growing less likely by the day, as TW's cultural identity continues to diverge from the mainland, but the danger thereof is still quite real). China's only real move left is to start doing more aggressive shit in the South and East China Seas, but all that does is provoke the rest of the neighbors towards the West's side.
But that's ONLY if the West defends TW. If they let TW down, then as I said earlier, the neighbors start wondering if maybe China won't be so bad to them.
It all essentially depends on what the West does.
Thanks for the reply, David. I'm afraid that I'm the one who wasn't clear. Rather than I surprise attack, I was imagining the brazen hypothetical where China says something like: "We are invading Taiwan at the start of next year. We advise everyone to stay away." I have trouble imagining a calm, collected West daring to stand up.
One flaw in your argument as I see it is that the Americans would act in one voice to counter Chinese aggression. Certainly the Chinese are smart enough to take care of this before invading Taiwan or any of the other neighbours. Already big American business is on their side. They have bought over most American universities, the American media and Hollywood. All these internal assets would be brought to full play before, during and after a Chinese military adventure. This would so hamstring American decision-making that no serious military reaction would be forthcoming from the American side.
You saw the power of these Chinese assets during the recent presidential polls when China was able to prevent the reelection of a President who was openly inimical to it and was standing strongly for American interests.
Now, something that just occurred to me, is that the best modern parallel to Imperial Japan is actually... Iran!
Iran is what I'd describe as a "less chaotic, better-controlled anocracy". Just the other day, for instance, the IRGC raided none other than their own President's and Foreign Minister's offices. Khamenei rules with a certain detachment from most other actors in the country, only intervening when he really needs to, but perhaps taking a more active role than the Emperor did. Mostly, Khamenei just makes sure that his preferred people are in place. But Iran has what, 6 (at a minimum) branches of government? It's a total recipe for anocracy.
I think the tighter control does explain why they haven't made any Japanese Mistakes. But the anocratic character explains why their foreign policy is so all-over-the-place, why some nations and parties see one thing (like how Republicans see an insane theocratic totalitarian state), and others another thing (like how Democrats see an unpredictable but not necessarily insane theocracy). There's no one to keep the country from playing international spoiler or lurching from shitty, cynical misdeed to misdeed.
I'd predict that Iran doesn't do anything while Khamenei's still alive. But the fact that he himself is a successor indicates that it's a surprisingly stable anocracy. Iran will probably survive in its current form until it's overcome by external events; for all Westerners love to accuse authoritarian societies of "internal rot", it's hard to see where the rot actually is. It's like a friend telling you that your apartment has mold because they don't like the landlord's religion or no-pets policy. Without any real rot, the country will just muddle on in anocracy until it deteriorates enough that the IRGC or some other rogue actor picks a fight it can't win.
FWIW, if you're interested in more takes like this, you're always welcome to join at my own Substack: https://davesdailydiscourse.substack.com/
Ignorance is bliss, please read some history books, please read some real news, including foreign sources, and perhaps travel. I've rarely read something so inaccurate even from the ultra-right or the radical left.
This is a great article. Just signed up!
Btw, I recently started my own Newsletter about Japan and politics 😀https://nihonpolitics.substack.com/welcome
One thing:
- I'd be curious to hear your critique, review, or whatever of Yuen Yuen Ang's book "How China Escaped the Poverty Trap." She has some interesting propositions about how economic development worked in China, but I'm not a trained economist, so I'm not sure quite how to evaluate them.
As usual, your analysis on Japan is spot on, but you far underestimate how significant Taiwan is to China. If Biden keeps challenging China’s one nation policy, China will go to war and US will throw Japan under the bus first. That will certainly not be enough to stop China so US will enter the most destructive war since WWII. I like most of what Biden is doing domestically but he is leading us closer to a world war with his aggressive stance against China and dismissing the one nation policy. Americans need to be more informed of this real danger.
Agree with most of the author's points about the differences between Imperial Japan and China. Of course, China is a far more formidable opponent than Japan could ever be purely because of size. Although Japan is pound for pound punching above its weight, there are no weight divisions in the jungle.
However, i have to take issue with this narrative of internal "repression". Step back and think for a second. If the CCP's aim was to maintain control and suppress its citizens, why would it be developing infrastructure, raising living standards and implementing an explicit policy to eradicate poverty? Does a government who raises 700+ million people out of poverty sound like it's trying to oppress its own people? Of course the "repression" narrative runs counter to what one sees going on in China. Ditto with Russia. The Russian government remains very popular among most Russians. Why are we lying to ourselves with the "repression" narrative?
>>>The U.S. was able to overcome Imperial Japan alone, while fighting a two-front war...<<
Seriously, Noah? The United States "overcame Imperial Japan" alongside its allies Australia, New Zealand, Britain and China.
Right. China starts a war, the USN cuts off their oil supply thousands of miles from China's shores, China's economy stops, and the Chinese starve in the dark.
You can't power stuff that moves with coal, and you can't make fertilizer from coal. China imports at least 50% of its oil from the Persian Gulf. They also need to trade with the wider world to survive, while the USA does not. Russia has no way to help, and no reason to help. The U.S. Navy is not something that China can counter. See "Disunited Nations" by Peter Zeihan for a more exhaustive analysis of China's geo-strategic situation.
Anybody who takes Zeihan and his Stratfor-esque 'geography is destiny' crap seriously, deserves not to be taken seriously themselves! That particular line of nonsense is nothing more sophisticated than taking a map and drawing a few arrows! The guy is a bit of joke in real geostrategy circles.
Still, let's imagine you're right and a blockade is all that is needed. Have you served in your nation's navy? because I have. Do you know what exactly a blockade entails? The enormous complexity of it? The damage it would do to neighboring US allies? After all, Chinese cargo/oil isnt exactly on big red ships with 'China' on the side...And what would you blockade specifically? Malacca? Lombok? Makassar? the Gwadar port? Various Burmese ports the Chinese have invested in? Any idea how much manpower/tonnage/time/allied-contribution that would require? And finally, given all that commitment to keeping numerous assets floating around at very fixed coordinates like sitting ducks, how exactly would you fight the Chinese?
Here I was thinking such antiquated thinking died out c.2012....
You are entitled to your opinion, but I would bet on the U.S. over China any day. If you have facts to counter Zeihan's analysis of China's geographic, demographic, and financial situation, let's hear them.
Is anyone else not getting emails anymore?
I think they had a one-day outage.
Is looking at the big economic and demographic stats really important when assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a state in modern war? Nukes make total war completely unfeasible; the Soviet (and Warsaw Pact more widely) economy was much weaker than NATO's, but in a cold war gone hot scenario, the Warsaw Pact may have been able to push all the way to the Rhine relatively easily, and at that point it would be very hard for NATO to unstick them. Any further escalation could risk Armageddon, so the Soviets would have effectively won.
Well, except for the “winning the peace” part. Hard to imagine any scenario where the Soviets could have kept it all from unraveling within a few decades even if they had managed to push all the way to the Rhine.
Your first mistake is claiming the Chinese people are "repressed", when the government's achievement of the fastest increase in living standards for 1.4 billion people in history, over the last three decades, has resulted in considerable national pride on the mainland. A big change from the days of the Tiananmen protests. Meanwhile democracy is looking increasingly dysfunctional, even in 1st world nations like the US and France. Biden might not even be able to secure the necessary funding in Congress to modernize US infrastructure, such is the strength of the delusional "individual sovereignty", winner-takes-all, ideology of Republicans. .
Certainly Western values of 'individual freedom' are superficially attractive to the majority, yet individuals who fail to successfully compete in invisible-hand 'free' markets are left behind in the West's 'sink or swim', dysfunctional neoliberal economic system.
Personally I hope the Chinese have enough wisdom to wait until they can give the middle finger to the US...and reunite Taiwan to the mainland without firing a shot....
You seems like you have more knowledges of the US’s politics than of China’s.
BTW you troll too much in Noah’s post; it’s annoying a bit.
Yes, Neil appears to be of the tankie tribe...
C'mon Noah, you've got to have more than just the "tankie" comment against anyone who disagrees with you. Is it true, or not, that the CCP has presided over the fastest economic growth in human history? Is it true, or not, that the overwhelming majority of Chinese citizens have benefited from the CCP's governance? Is it true, or not, that the majority of Chinese citizens are satisfied with the CCP's performance? It's not tankie-talk to make these points.
It isn't just because he disagrees with Noah. Look at Neil's comments on every thread remotely about China. He's definitely one of China's wolf warriors.
If countering the toxic Western narrative about China is wolf warrior, then count me as a wolf warrior as well. It is actually the West who are beating the war drums - again. This time it has very very dangerous implications for the whole world.
"then count me as a wolf warrior as well." - Will do.
You would have us thank Mrs. O'Leary's cow for leading to the highest rate of new construction in America in 1874 Chicago. In any event, when China does as well as Taiwan, we may then say that the Chinese have benefitted from it - until then, they have been a source of harm.
Unbelievably stupid comment. They may not have as high a income per capita as TW, but China is vastly bigger in terms of population and land mass. You must be daft if you think the ROC could've have done what the CCP has done in raising living standards on the mainland over the last 40 years.
No really, it's like you're saying we should effusively praise a wife beater for not just killing her - and when he cuts back from beating her every day to just once a week, hallelujah! Praise the Lord! For yes, he is to be credited with this improvement! And my, aren't the people so happy under this new and improved regime! Where Mao caused famine now Deng Xiaoping causes living standards far below any of the Western nations. I dunno, praising them for stopping doing their most evil things is faint praise indeed.
Sounds great. So, when are you moving to China?
^^^A big change from the days of the Tiananmen protests.^^^
A big change from the days of the Tiananmen massacre.
Fixed!
A bacteria can double in size every few hours, yet come nowhere near the size of an elephant. The rate of growth is far less important than the size of the whole - and it remains that the average person in China is considerably poorer than in the US. Besides that, the sole reason why the economy is growing in China is that they abandoned Maoism and instituted limited market reforms.
>>>The rate of growth is far less important than the size of the whole - and it remains that the average person in China is considerably poorer than in the US.<<<
The first part of your sentence is in conflict with the second part. You're right the US is a loads richer than China. But in terms of the "size of the whole" China has pulled even.
Well that was rather inarticulate of me - the general point I'm trying to get across is that the people of China remain poorer than in the US, and that a higher rate from a very little base indeed is a pointless comparison.
I'm no fan of china but this seems unfair. You can't dondemn current chinese policy for it's inability to go back to the past and making past china less poor to staart with. Economies can't grow infinetly fast and it takes time to catch up. For a better critique of china try.
1. There is something (what?) that prevents china from becoming as rich as the usa.
2. here are some ways that china is terrible that don't show up in ecometric statistics (like the Uygur stuff)
It’s arguable how loyal the Chinese are to the CCP, but yes, the Han Chinese are extremely loyal to China. There’s no way a successful invasion of China can be pulled off and nobody is suggesting such an absurd idea anyway.
I'm glad you recognise that China transcends any political party and the Chinese people know this. They will wholeheartedly back the CCP in an attempted invasion by the US because the CCP govern China. And the Chinese people actually do love China. They also approve of the CCP's governance, which is a point that not many in the West are willing to concede. Imagine, a strong China now versus a weak and vulnerable China under the Qing and Nationalists. If you were Chinese, which would you prefer?
The Chinese army is I think a conscription army, where the Chinese are forced to serve for a few years. That is, it is not a professional army. Nor is it a national army, it us an offshoot of the Communist Party of China.
The Chinese soldiers have neither the stamina nor the commitment for serious warfare. This became very clear to the world during their brief misadventure against India last year. When battle-hardened Indian soldiers killed scores of Chinese soldiers after suffering initial casualties, the Chinese quickly fled the battle field.
There were several reports of young Chinese conscripts send to the Indian battle-field crying like babies out of sheer terror of fighting in an actual war.
Another reason why the Chinese cannot fight conventional wars, is that the Chinese soldiers all belong to single child families on whom the burden of supporting elderly parents always exists - they just cannot afford to die in the battle field as that would leave their ageing parents unsupported. Being single children, they are all molly-coddled and do not have the grit to last in trying battle conditions.
This fear of dying on the battle field is a serious drawback of the CCP army, just as it is of the US army which too cannot take casualties in war.
Another point to consider is that the Chinese army is not a national army in the sense that its loyalties do not lie with China or with the Chinese people, but with the Chinese Communist Party.
It is also an untested fighting force as after its defeat against the Vietnamese army almist 50 years ago, it has never fought a serious war.
At best it can engage in information war, terrorism, cyber war, clandesine bio-warfare and other indirect forms of destabilisation, which can't achieve it much other than causing its opponents minor irritation.
Much of China's aggression is directed against its own citizens.