If we are going to have any chance of wining this thing we need a wholesale change in leadership. On one side we have incompetent isolationists and populists who were the dog that caught the car last time they got into leadership. On the other we have a bunch of self hating idealistic intellectuals and bureaucrats who simply lack the brains and the stomach for war. They are the last people on earth I would want on my side in a fight. And both sides clearly see the other as much more of a threat than our foreign enemies. Honestly if we got in a scrap with China I would support a military coup.
Unfortunately, reality is quite different from a romantic Western understanding of it. Raytheon CEO not so far ago famously said Raytheon has 7000 mostly Tier3 and some Tier2 suppliers with no way or plan to change it. It means in case of war military production will stall then it will be maybe replaced by Western suppliers at x10 price. Will there be enough weapons and ammo covee the length of this transition? Ukrainian war shows you need x10 if not x50 ammo than most wilf forecasts.
The Allies with ot without India do not hold the microchip manufacturing - it's 30 production stages from ingot to ready-made chip amd at least two in the middle are always in China. There are claims that chips for DoD must not cross Chinese border but I won't be sure if this system will pass the ultimate war test.
In my understanding NATO never planned a real conventional war with russia as it doesn't have any means to establish air superiority over russian strategic depth - long-range missiles. Tomahawk is a naval weapon and only 3 or 4 2-cell land launchers exist; mostly high-altitude ancient AGM-86 needs B-52, is actually some kind of an airplane which even russian AA defense sees from the distance and just a small number is available. If no air superiority then war outcome is not determined and air losses are huge (see Vietnam war). European armies besides the Polish and Ukrainian ones seem to be useless.
So the right question probably has to be if the West is ready to fight with an axis of russia conventionally and how?
Total inability of Western and especially US Navies to suppress the Houthis - Navies are even unable to capture the Greek tanker captured and blown up the Houthis, see this story and Houthis videos first before answering - show the value and real capabilities of US Navy in case of war in the Pacific.
Well, the US Navy *could* surpress the Houthis, but nobody wants to turn half of Yemen into a wasteland and call it peace.
President Trump wasn't kidding when he said (paraphrased) "I could ‘win’ the war in Afghanistan in a week. All I would have to do is kill ten million people."
The one thing the article doesn't comment on is I think the hidden strength of the "New Allies", which is true if you include or exclude India. The New Allies countries are democracies. The old Allies were pretty isolationist up until Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.
I think something similar would happen in a new Allies/Axis conflict. In the theoretical realm, nobody wants to send people and material and incur huge expense to fight wars to help foreigners (i.e. Taiwan). The Allies in the 1940s weren't exciting to support Europe beyond sending weaponry and were pretty anti-Semitic themselves (just less so than the Axis). But once the democracies have buy-in, it can be much more powerful. Whereas autocracies and dictatorships can mask levels of support for their causes when there isn't free elections or press.
I don't think that's a plus at all. We like to think the Western democracies defeated Germany. We did not. It took totalitarian Russia to defeat Germany; we just mopped up the residual on the other side of the continent. Look at the casualty numbers on the Eastern and Western fronts.
In fact, the Western democracies dithered for years, Churchill faced significant political opposition during the blitz. There were many voices calling for negotiation. Had Hitler not turned on Stalin, most of Europe would likely be speaking German today.
The old adage about democracies not going to war with each other is based on the idea that sustaining democratic support for a war over multiple years is quite hard.
Russia helped defeat the Axis, that's why they were then part of the Allies. Nobody disputes that. Their subsequent turn to communism, tyranny and totalitarianism is probably why Western culture didn't highlight their role in post year pop culture. Nobody's going to make inspiring Saving Private Ryan style films, when you're instigating the Great Purge. However, higher casualties on their end spoke to their dysfunctional economic system, their inability to produce as much materiel and therefore their focus on under equipped human attacks instead.
Aren't the horrendous Soviet casualties in WWII also a function of the fact that eastern Europe was the main focus of the genocidal ambitions of the Nazis?
How is that a strength in war? When democracies go to war they universally become less democratic during them. In the civil war Lincoln imprisoned political opponents and had people charged with "treasonable language". In WWII FDR interned a whole race. We won WWII because we could float more ships, fly more planes, and roll more tanks, not because we had more freedom. And if you think we had more buy-in than the Japanese population, I've got a bridge (on the river Kwai) to sell you.
Because you need legitimacy and buy-in from the people.
Why hasn't Ukraine folded to the 3x larger, far 'stronger' Russia. If your answer is that Western weaponry could sustain any army against anyone, why did the Afghan army fold in a day.
Out producing the enemy requires huge capacity but also willingness to do so. The population could just as easily say they don't want to deal with rations and go back to producing consumer goods. And my point is that democracies will ultimately have more buyin than the Nazis or Hirohito had, through coercion and amphetamines.
It wouldn't: while Israel may not necessarily be one of the New Allies (especially given a Harris Presidency, as the Democrats will no longer be true-believing Zionists once Biden's generation ages out) I don't see any possibility of it being New Axis.
Needs more comments on demographics and geography.
The US Census predicts, if all foreign born immigration is stopped, that by 2100 our population will loose 100million. My readings say similar things about Japan, South Korea and Europe and especially Russia. Africa still has an exploding population bomb.
On Geography: Taiwan is only a couple of miles offshore of mainland China. Quemoy and Matsu Islands. I am old enough to remember seeing newsreels of guns on those islands firing at the mainland. I had an old friend who flew F86 fighter jets over mainland China in this era.
China is Island locked to the east via two rings of islands. Japan is only about 90miles offshore from Taiwan.
China faces no real external threat to its territorial integrity. Any threat would have to be internal. I think Chinese history shows the internal more important than the external. Russia faces no real external threat to its integrity either. Putin may face an internal threat if the war goes bad for Russia.
I think the external power grabs by Putin in Ukraine are mostly to redirect the Russia public from failure to deliver broad based prosperity.
How much is the problem of enemy propaganda online (especially for those of us who believe in freedom of speech) essentially a problem of social media platform owners (*cough* Elon Musk) who amplify that enemy propaganda for their own nefarious political purposes?
There's free speech, and then there's free speech for the highest bidder. Even if billionaire techbros don't have political motives, they're basically war profiteers with lies instead of bombs & bullets.
Your second sentence is more accurate than your first: it isn't that the platform owners are directly paid by the enemy to repeat their lies, so much as that anger drives engagement which in turn drives advertising revenue, and thus profits for the platforms themselves.
In general I agree with much. It is your broad approval of non security related items for industrial planning I object to.
We don’t need more expensive solar panels. Just to support Unions who contribute money to Democrat candidates. That is lousy policy making. We don’t another plastic toy manufacturer in the US just for jobs.
We do need chip manufacturing. We do need alternatives partners. We do need an industrial base for our security.
Using the terminology “New Allies/New Axis”, means you should compare the new to the old. Please present us charts and data from the WWII era, (and the Korean War, since we actually fought China then), so we can evaluate how the old allies and axis compared, since we know how that turned out.
Conditions are so different from nearly a century ago— 2024 versus 1939— that comparisons are almost meaningless. Back then, the United States was the "make everything" country, and China was one of the most backward countries on Earth with a 95% peasant population that was living a medieval life. China could not have fought us in Korea if they had not been supplied with Soviet weapons. Additionally, they were willing to take casualties 10 to one against us, using human wave tactics.
Another way that comparisons between the two eras are almost meaningless is that warfare is so much more technical than today. Drones are evolving so quickly in Ukraine that we cannot possibly tell who will have the advantage six months from now. With the exception of the atomic bomb, rapidly involving technology played much less of a role in WWII. The Allies had the advantage of radar and sonar which the Axis did not possess, which was critical for the Battle of Britain, which prevented a Nazi invasion of England.
Speaking of technology, here is a weird, little known fact about WWII. The Russians had developed a tank that could easily destroy German tanks, while German tanks could easily destroy American tanks (we were NOT #1). The US won the tank battle on the western front simply by force of numbers. American tankers learned that they could not successfully fight a German tank head on. The only way Americans could destroy a German tank was by setting up an ambush and shooting at the German tank from its more vulnerable flank.
I think the most valuable way to think about a conflict between allies and the new Allies and Axis is by thinking about choke points. What will we need to fight a war that we don't have abundant access to?
Although I can see advantages to American avoidance of escalation in conflict, in the case of a shooting war with China, the only way we could expect to win is a short war. We'd have to make it very clear that we had no attention of fighting an unwinnable war of attrition with them. Instead, we should point out to them that they have an incredible number of totally vulnerable factories lining their coast, and we have the weapons to take out a third of their economy in a matter of days. Unless China wanted to escalate to nuclear Armageddon, they couldn't do any similar level of damage to the American homeland.
In terms of population resources and “make everything" industrial capacity we cannot win a war of attrition with China.
I have been told that, during the Cold War, most US military planners believed that trying to NATO would not be able to defend West Germany from a Soviet invasion unless they used nuclear weapons, and that, for the US, trying to maintain the capacity to win a war with Russia in which neither side used nuclear weapons would be an expensive and pointless waste of resources - a few thousand ICBMs would be cheaper to build and maintain than it would be to ship hundreds of thousands of tanks and other conventional munitions across an ocean. It is also possible that the US will find itself in a similar position regarding China and accept that the only practical deterrent to an invasion of Taiwan would be a nuclear one: it's hard to launch an amphibious invasion when your ports get hit by tactical nukes. (Which is another reason why the US will not agree to a "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons.)
I think you are correct. After World War II, the West concentrated on building economic strength and prosperity, while Russia spent 25% of its GDP on the military. Tactical nuclear weapons were looked on as a middle path deterrent between a losing conventional fight and mutually destructive all-out nuclear war. Here is a helpful map comparing troop strengths (NATO versus WP) in 1959.
I mean the broad points you likely already know. Germany/Japan/Italy was a combination of countries with relatively small populations compared to Russia/China and the other allies, but this was broadly irrelevant because the excess population of China and Russia was almost entirely pseudo-medieval peasantry. For contrast, Japan and especially Germany were industrial powerhouses and the UK and France really weren't. The USA had a LOT of industrial capacity, but it was largely low end. Relatively speaking, in WWII the USA was unto Germany like China is to the USA today. The thing that shifted the balance of power was the USA massively expanding industrial capacity and sending weapons to the highly populous russia so that it could win the continental war against Germany.
Right now, China has a more centralized and diverse industrial capacity but is overall smaller on both counts. The west might have more capacity in total and an advantage at the high end, but coordination problems are likely due to the geography at play. (as one example, all the civilian ship building capacity is either right next to china or in europe) On the other hand, the control of the seas means that we have access to unaligned markets like Brazil and Mexico where China does not (something that was also an advantage for the allies in WWI and WWII.)
Germany and Japan also had lots of peasantry (coexisting with the modern industry of which you speak), and the hunger of that peasantry for more land was one reason why those countries started World War II in the first place: they wanted to get the same economic boost for their cultures as the Anglo culture gained from colonizing North America and Australia.
Of course - basically everyone in the 30s and 40s was desperately poor by modern standards. It's nonetheless accurate to call Germany the greatest industrial power of its age.
If one replicates the same exercise from the perspective of the ‘New Axis’ would not the message be one of strong caution against engaging in military confrontation with the ‘New Allies’? For one thing, it seems abundantly clear that Russia can at most harbor ambitions in its ‘near abroad’, since, apart from fossil fuels and some primary products, it is a negligible quantity in the overall equation. Accordingly, fossil fuels seems also the main reason why it makes sense for China to keep Russia on its side, since it decisively blunts one of the main weapons at disposal of the ‘New Allies’ short of outright military conflict, namely, a selective maritime blockade of China’s fuel imports. In other words, China’s alignment with Russia can be seen as ‘buying insurance’ against Western hostile action. All in all, the figures marshalled in the piece suggest that it would extremely ill-advised for the ‘New Axis’ to attempt a Griff Nach der Weltmacht in conflict with the ‘New Allies’. My use of the term may invite the retort that this is precisely what the ‘Old Axis’ (actually, imperial Germany in the original argument) attempted. I would reply that nuclear deterrence alters fundamentally the equation. Admittedly, my argument would still leave Ukraine, the Baltics states and Taiwan rather uneasy. I would still argue that, however deplorable, a ‘New Axis’ aggression toward these countries should not be read through the lenses of domino theory. I should conclude by avowing that I am consciously provocative in making my argument, which does not really reflect the way I feel about the whole issue. I think however that Noah Smith would be the first to agree that questioning the basis of argument one holds dear is an exercise that should be regularly practiced.
It wouldn't surprise me also if China's vulnerability to a USN oil blockade is one of the reasons why they poured so much subsidy into EV manufacturing.
- US Navy considering expanding maintenance and even construction of ships to our Asian peers (because we literally struggle to build more than two ships a year)
- Chinese aggression escalating in Philippines and South China Sea
- Sabina Shoal, Luconia shoals, Scarborough Shoals, Spratly Islands, etc.
And it just goes on and on. 2023 saw Japan and South Korea break new ground and move past old rivalries because they're rightfully concerned and understand they can't go this one alone.
To me it seems like everyone, and I mean everyone, is trying to play catch up to China and the new Axis right now but are finding it difficult if not impossible. The US Navy can't even keep up with scheduled maintenance and Germany is cutting support for Ukraine in 2025 because of idiotic budget constraints. US munitions production is not anywhere near where it needs to be but the impetus is still seemingly slow and steady...
We're looking at 5 years minimum to catch up to Chinese production levels across the entire alliance. ASMs and drones mean Aircraft Carriers might turn out to be huge liabilities and our current sub fleet is one of the few things we can hang our hats on. There's a reason why many many simulations of war over Taiwan end in US defeat and huge losses.
If I'm Xi and I intend to take Taiwan despite any short/medium term costs I do it within the next two years max while I still have a tremendous advantage. China is watching all of these developments as well - they know time is not on their side.
Every time you post this I am going to re-up my complaint that it's crazy to leave out Australia, Canada, and New Zealand in favor of "maybe Hungary". It's also crazy to say South Korea and North Korea cancel out.
Australia controls an incredible quantity of iron ore. Canada has a bigger economy than Russia.
What is the point of a "sizing up the coalition" framework if you refuse to size them up?
The only countries in the far east that we would directly defend are Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and (maybe) the Philippines. Taiwan we would supply weapons but no troops or direct air or naval support. We would treat it like Ukraine.
Taiwan is more strategically important to both the USA and Japan than Ukraine or the Philippines. I would think naval support would be in the cards too.
RT: You are saying we would go to war with nuclear armed, 1.4 billion Chinese to keep a place that is historically part of China from being reunited with its motherland? Nope.
First, naval support is not synonymous with war, although naval support could become a prelude to war.
Second, a revanchist PRC considers Taiwan its rightful plaything, but China is not Taiwan's motherland. Mainland China didn't colonize Taiwan until the late 17th century, but that ended by the late 19th century. Taiwan was also colonized by the Japanese, the Dutch, and briefly the Spanish too.
Third, if you know Chinese politics, you know that an order for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US by China would quickly end Xi's rule with a 'disappearance'. China's nuclear arms ensures no US invasion, but does not preclude war with the US.
US interests in Taiwan far outrank those in Ukraine. Taiwan is now a democracy, and a key national security concern for Japan, the US's most important ally. For the US, abandoning Taiwan would spark nuclear proliferation globally, and a diminishment of American power that the US is unlikely to find acceptable.
The US is therefore likely to use naval power to thwart Beijing's blockade and possibly naval and air power to prevent Taiwan from getting starved out. If Beijing decides to attack the USN (and especially pre-emptively strike US bases in Okinawa), the US will not just frustrate Beijing's naval actions, but probably outright go to war.
In this action, the US would enjoy the support of not only its NATO allies, but SK, the Quad and ASEAN too.
Interesting analysis. It’s clear that China thinks in terms of decades as opposed to the American corporate quarter to quarter focus that drives our economy and political focus.
The recent pandemic supply chain interruptions were proof that our domestic manufacturing machinery is now incapable of supporting simple domestic needs. Merely supporting Ukraine has taxed what little domestic munitions manufacturing capacity remains. A build up to a true war footing will require massive spending on a scale greater than the build up to WWII.
China’s decadal thinking and intention allowed them to absorb much of our manufacturing capacity during the last 50 years. Rebuilding the lost domestic manufacturing capacity will take decades, if we have the time.
Convincing domestic capital to commit to rebuilding is the first obstacle, but that poses a circular question. It’s unlikely that would occur without a Chips Act type of incentive program. However, such a program on the scale needed requires massive sovereign investment capital. The rub comes because the domestic tax revenue structure needed to support such a capital formation effort has been frittered away by “conservative’s” tax cuts for domestic corporate interests and oligarchs, a series of presidentially invented middle eastern wars, and a concomitant increase in domestic debt that Congress is unable, or unwilling, to address. In short, America maxed out its credit cards in the pursuit of corporate greed and profits, and several presidential ego driven war efforts that were compounded by an unanticipated pandemic. Oops.
As long as our internal political alignments are so incredibly polarized and encouraged by American corporate interest’s free spending speech, and a corporate interest aligned SCOTUS, retooling America’s industrial capacity is a benign hope.
It's a good broad viewpoint. People want to get way more fussy on the details but its frankly pretty hard to do so. As you're well aware we don't actually track supply chains that clearly.
What I'm interested in is the impact of the loss of the export market for china. Without chinese imports we'll need to build a lot of mines and refineries and factories. That means pain in the short run and we should be ready for it, but overall the politics here wouldn't be horrible. People love good-paying factory jobs!
But China will have all this excess capacity... I feel that there's a tendency for people to simply say that it gets moved to wartime production, and that's true to an extent, but this is the bedrock of the chinese economy, especially right now. 3.7 trillion dollars in exports in 2022, and in the event of a war a lot of that money is just disappearing. Commandeering industrial capacity still requires you to pay the workers and buy material inputs and energy. We're talking trillions of dollars of GDP loss and I don't foresee domestic consumption in china stepping up to keep the money flowing. Does the chinese government have the financial resources to do this year over year?
Safe travels Noah.
Rings of Power is fun!
Mordor not so much
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Krakow. Established 1364. The restaurants are phenomenal in Poland. Poznan, Krakow, Warsaw.
If we are going to have any chance of wining this thing we need a wholesale change in leadership. On one side we have incompetent isolationists and populists who were the dog that caught the car last time they got into leadership. On the other we have a bunch of self hating idealistic intellectuals and bureaucrats who simply lack the brains and the stomach for war. They are the last people on earth I would want on my side in a fight. And both sides clearly see the other as much more of a threat than our foreign enemies. Honestly if we got in a scrap with China I would support a military coup.
Unfortunately, reality is quite different from a romantic Western understanding of it. Raytheon CEO not so far ago famously said Raytheon has 7000 mostly Tier3 and some Tier2 suppliers with no way or plan to change it. It means in case of war military production will stall then it will be maybe replaced by Western suppliers at x10 price. Will there be enough weapons and ammo covee the length of this transition? Ukrainian war shows you need x10 if not x50 ammo than most wilf forecasts.
The Allies with ot without India do not hold the microchip manufacturing - it's 30 production stages from ingot to ready-made chip amd at least two in the middle are always in China. There are claims that chips for DoD must not cross Chinese border but I won't be sure if this system will pass the ultimate war test.
In my understanding NATO never planned a real conventional war with russia as it doesn't have any means to establish air superiority over russian strategic depth - long-range missiles. Tomahawk is a naval weapon and only 3 or 4 2-cell land launchers exist; mostly high-altitude ancient AGM-86 needs B-52, is actually some kind of an airplane which even russian AA defense sees from the distance and just a small number is available. If no air superiority then war outcome is not determined and air losses are huge (see Vietnam war). European armies besides the Polish and Ukrainian ones seem to be useless.
So the right question probably has to be if the West is ready to fight with an axis of russia conventionally and how?
Total inability of Western and especially US Navies to suppress the Houthis - Navies are even unable to capture the Greek tanker captured and blown up the Houthis, see this story and Houthis videos first before answering - show the value and real capabilities of US Navy in case of war in the Pacific.
You won't like the outcome.
Well, the US Navy *could* surpress the Houthis, but nobody wants to turn half of Yemen into a wasteland and call it peace.
President Trump wasn't kidding when he said (paraphrased) "I could ‘win’ the war in Afghanistan in a week. All I would have to do is kill ten million people."
Last world war we had to set cities on fire to win. Next time will be no different.
The one thing the article doesn't comment on is I think the hidden strength of the "New Allies", which is true if you include or exclude India. The New Allies countries are democracies. The old Allies were pretty isolationist up until Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.
I think something similar would happen in a new Allies/Axis conflict. In the theoretical realm, nobody wants to send people and material and incur huge expense to fight wars to help foreigners (i.e. Taiwan). The Allies in the 1940s weren't exciting to support Europe beyond sending weaponry and were pretty anti-Semitic themselves (just less so than the Axis). But once the democracies have buy-in, it can be much more powerful. Whereas autocracies and dictatorships can mask levels of support for their causes when there isn't free elections or press.
I don't think that's a plus at all. We like to think the Western democracies defeated Germany. We did not. It took totalitarian Russia to defeat Germany; we just mopped up the residual on the other side of the continent. Look at the casualty numbers on the Eastern and Western fronts.
In fact, the Western democracies dithered for years, Churchill faced significant political opposition during the blitz. There were many voices calling for negotiation. Had Hitler not turned on Stalin, most of Europe would likely be speaking German today.
The old adage about democracies not going to war with each other is based on the idea that sustaining democratic support for a war over multiple years is quite hard.
Russia helped defeat the Axis, that's why they were then part of the Allies. Nobody disputes that. Their subsequent turn to communism, tyranny and totalitarianism is probably why Western culture didn't highlight their role in post year pop culture. Nobody's going to make inspiring Saving Private Ryan style films, when you're instigating the Great Purge. However, higher casualties on their end spoke to their dysfunctional economic system, their inability to produce as much materiel and therefore their focus on under equipped human attacks instead.
"Their subsequent turn to communism, tyranny and totalitarianism"
The Russians had been commies for several decades already.
1917: Russian Communist Revolution
1942: Battle of Stalingrad
Aren't the horrendous Soviet casualties in WWII also a function of the fact that eastern Europe was the main focus of the genocidal ambitions of the Nazis?
How is that a strength in war? When democracies go to war they universally become less democratic during them. In the civil war Lincoln imprisoned political opponents and had people charged with "treasonable language". In WWII FDR interned a whole race. We won WWII because we could float more ships, fly more planes, and roll more tanks, not because we had more freedom. And if you think we had more buy-in than the Japanese population, I've got a bridge (on the river Kwai) to sell you.
Because you need legitimacy and buy-in from the people.
Why hasn't Ukraine folded to the 3x larger, far 'stronger' Russia. If your answer is that Western weaponry could sustain any army against anyone, why did the Afghan army fold in a day.
Out producing the enemy requires huge capacity but also willingness to do so. The population could just as easily say they don't want to deal with rations and go back to producing consumer goods. And my point is that democracies will ultimately have more buyin than the Nazis or Hirohito had, through coercion and amphetamines.
Does the new axis include Israel? What value does it share?
It wouldn't: while Israel may not necessarily be one of the New Allies (especially given a Harris Presidency, as the Democrats will no longer be true-believing Zionists once Biden's generation ages out) I don't see any possibility of it being New Axis.
Needs more comments on demographics and geography.
The US Census predicts, if all foreign born immigration is stopped, that by 2100 our population will loose 100million. My readings say similar things about Japan, South Korea and Europe and especially Russia. Africa still has an exploding population bomb.
On Geography: Taiwan is only a couple of miles offshore of mainland China. Quemoy and Matsu Islands. I am old enough to remember seeing newsreels of guns on those islands firing at the mainland. I had an old friend who flew F86 fighter jets over mainland China in this era.
China is Island locked to the east via two rings of islands. Japan is only about 90miles offshore from Taiwan.
China faces no real external threat to its territorial integrity. Any threat would have to be internal. I think Chinese history shows the internal more important than the external. Russia faces no real external threat to its integrity either. Putin may face an internal threat if the war goes bad for Russia.
I think the external power grabs by Putin in Ukraine are mostly to redirect the Russia public from failure to deliver broad based prosperity.
My thoughts are full of shit, so please ignore.
Pro-Putin MAGAlomaniacs aren't too keen on China, so there must be some way to drive a wedge there.
And the Arsenal of Democracy 2.0 isn't just missiles & guns. It also needs proactive efforts to counter the Kremlin's firehose of falsehood.
How much is the problem of enemy propaganda online (especially for those of us who believe in freedom of speech) essentially a problem of social media platform owners (*cough* Elon Musk) who amplify that enemy propaganda for their own nefarious political purposes?
There's free speech, and then there's free speech for the highest bidder. Even if billionaire techbros don't have political motives, they're basically war profiteers with lies instead of bombs & bullets.
Your second sentence is more accurate than your first: it isn't that the platform owners are directly paid by the enemy to repeat their lies, so much as that anger drives engagement which in turn drives advertising revenue, and thus profits for the platforms themselves.
In general I agree with much. It is your broad approval of non security related items for industrial planning I object to.
We don’t need more expensive solar panels. Just to support Unions who contribute money to Democrat candidates. That is lousy policy making. We don’t another plastic toy manufacturer in the US just for jobs.
We do need chip manufacturing. We do need alternatives partners. We do need an industrial base for our security.
Using the terminology “New Allies/New Axis”, means you should compare the new to the old. Please present us charts and data from the WWII era, (and the Korean War, since we actually fought China then), so we can evaluate how the old allies and axis compared, since we know how that turned out.
Conditions are so different from nearly a century ago— 2024 versus 1939— that comparisons are almost meaningless. Back then, the United States was the "make everything" country, and China was one of the most backward countries on Earth with a 95% peasant population that was living a medieval life. China could not have fought us in Korea if they had not been supplied with Soviet weapons. Additionally, they were willing to take casualties 10 to one against us, using human wave tactics.
Another way that comparisons between the two eras are almost meaningless is that warfare is so much more technical than today. Drones are evolving so quickly in Ukraine that we cannot possibly tell who will have the advantage six months from now. With the exception of the atomic bomb, rapidly involving technology played much less of a role in WWII. The Allies had the advantage of radar and sonar which the Axis did not possess, which was critical for the Battle of Britain, which prevented a Nazi invasion of England.
Speaking of technology, here is a weird, little known fact about WWII. The Russians had developed a tank that could easily destroy German tanks, while German tanks could easily destroy American tanks (we were NOT #1). The US won the tank battle on the western front simply by force of numbers. American tankers learned that they could not successfully fight a German tank head on. The only way Americans could destroy a German tank was by setting up an ambush and shooting at the German tank from its more vulnerable flank.
I think the most valuable way to think about a conflict between allies and the new Allies and Axis is by thinking about choke points. What will we need to fight a war that we don't have abundant access to?
Although I can see advantages to American avoidance of escalation in conflict, in the case of a shooting war with China, the only way we could expect to win is a short war. We'd have to make it very clear that we had no attention of fighting an unwinnable war of attrition with them. Instead, we should point out to them that they have an incredible number of totally vulnerable factories lining their coast, and we have the weapons to take out a third of their economy in a matter of days. Unless China wanted to escalate to nuclear Armageddon, they couldn't do any similar level of damage to the American homeland.
In terms of population resources and “make everything" industrial capacity we cannot win a war of attrition with China.
I have been told that, during the Cold War, most US military planners believed that trying to NATO would not be able to defend West Germany from a Soviet invasion unless they used nuclear weapons, and that, for the US, trying to maintain the capacity to win a war with Russia in which neither side used nuclear weapons would be an expensive and pointless waste of resources - a few thousand ICBMs would be cheaper to build and maintain than it would be to ship hundreds of thousands of tanks and other conventional munitions across an ocean. It is also possible that the US will find itself in a similar position regarding China and accept that the only practical deterrent to an invasion of Taiwan would be a nuclear one: it's hard to launch an amphibious invasion when your ports get hit by tactical nukes. (Which is another reason why the US will not agree to a "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons.)
I think you are correct. After World War II, the West concentrated on building economic strength and prosperity, while Russia spent 25% of its GDP on the military. Tactical nuclear weapons were looked on as a middle path deterrent between a losing conventional fight and mutually destructive all-out nuclear war. Here is a helpful map comparing troop strengths (NATO versus WP) in 1959.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1959_NATO_and_WP_troop_strengths_in_Europe.svg
I mean the broad points you likely already know. Germany/Japan/Italy was a combination of countries with relatively small populations compared to Russia/China and the other allies, but this was broadly irrelevant because the excess population of China and Russia was almost entirely pseudo-medieval peasantry. For contrast, Japan and especially Germany were industrial powerhouses and the UK and France really weren't. The USA had a LOT of industrial capacity, but it was largely low end. Relatively speaking, in WWII the USA was unto Germany like China is to the USA today. The thing that shifted the balance of power was the USA massively expanding industrial capacity and sending weapons to the highly populous russia so that it could win the continental war against Germany.
Right now, China has a more centralized and diverse industrial capacity but is overall smaller on both counts. The west might have more capacity in total and an advantage at the high end, but coordination problems are likely due to the geography at play. (as one example, all the civilian ship building capacity is either right next to china or in europe) On the other hand, the control of the seas means that we have access to unaligned markets like Brazil and Mexico where China does not (something that was also an advantage for the allies in WWI and WWII.)
Germany and Japan also had lots of peasantry (coexisting with the modern industry of which you speak), and the hunger of that peasantry for more land was one reason why those countries started World War II in the first place: they wanted to get the same economic boost for their cultures as the Anglo culture gained from colonizing North America and Australia.
Of course - basically everyone in the 30s and 40s was desperately poor by modern standards. It's nonetheless accurate to call Germany the greatest industrial power of its age.
If one replicates the same exercise from the perspective of the ‘New Axis’ would not the message be one of strong caution against engaging in military confrontation with the ‘New Allies’? For one thing, it seems abundantly clear that Russia can at most harbor ambitions in its ‘near abroad’, since, apart from fossil fuels and some primary products, it is a negligible quantity in the overall equation. Accordingly, fossil fuels seems also the main reason why it makes sense for China to keep Russia on its side, since it decisively blunts one of the main weapons at disposal of the ‘New Allies’ short of outright military conflict, namely, a selective maritime blockade of China’s fuel imports. In other words, China’s alignment with Russia can be seen as ‘buying insurance’ against Western hostile action. All in all, the figures marshalled in the piece suggest that it would extremely ill-advised for the ‘New Axis’ to attempt a Griff Nach der Weltmacht in conflict with the ‘New Allies’. My use of the term may invite the retort that this is precisely what the ‘Old Axis’ (actually, imperial Germany in the original argument) attempted. I would reply that nuclear deterrence alters fundamentally the equation. Admittedly, my argument would still leave Ukraine, the Baltics states and Taiwan rather uneasy. I would still argue that, however deplorable, a ‘New Axis’ aggression toward these countries should not be read through the lenses of domino theory. I should conclude by avowing that I am consciously provocative in making my argument, which does not really reflect the way I feel about the whole issue. I think however that Noah Smith would be the first to agree that questioning the basis of argument one holds dear is an exercise that should be regularly practiced.
It wouldn't surprise me also if China's vulnerability to a USN oil blockade is one of the reasons why they poured so much subsidy into EV manufacturing.
I think the more concerning element of everything lately is the pace of change. Over the last 12 months:
- Vietnam announces comprehensive strategic partnership with US
- Vietnam announces strategic defensive pact with Philippines
- Japan, South Korea, and US conduct first ever trilateral multidomain joint military exercises and host talks in Tokyo - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/18/asia/japan-south-korea-military-ties-china-north-korea-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
- US Navy considering expanding maintenance and even construction of ships to our Asian peers (because we literally struggle to build more than two ships a year)
- Chinese aggression escalating in Philippines and South China Sea
- Sabina Shoal, Luconia shoals, Scarborough Shoals, Spratly Islands, etc.
- New Taiwanese government detested by China
- China jails Taiwanese citizen on charges of separatism - https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-jails-
taiwan-activist-nine-022506186.html
- North Korea started supplying Russia with munitions - https://www.reuters.com/world/north-korea-has-sent-6700-containers-munitions-russia-south-korea-says-2024-02-27/
And it just goes on and on. 2023 saw Japan and South Korea break new ground and move past old rivalries because they're rightfully concerned and understand they can't go this one alone.
To me it seems like everyone, and I mean everyone, is trying to play catch up to China and the new Axis right now but are finding it difficult if not impossible. The US Navy can't even keep up with scheduled maintenance and Germany is cutting support for Ukraine in 2025 because of idiotic budget constraints. US munitions production is not anywhere near where it needs to be but the impetus is still seemingly slow and steady...
We're looking at 5 years minimum to catch up to Chinese production levels across the entire alliance. ASMs and drones mean Aircraft Carriers might turn out to be huge liabilities and our current sub fleet is one of the few things we can hang our hats on. There's a reason why many many simulations of war over Taiwan end in US defeat and huge losses.
If I'm Xi and I intend to take Taiwan despite any short/medium term costs I do it within the next two years max while I still have a tremendous advantage. China is watching all of these developments as well - they know time is not on their side.
I would suggest that time is, in fact, very much on China's side.
As such, I do not expect Xi to do anything dramatic over the coming few years.
Every time you post this I am going to re-up my complaint that it's crazy to leave out Australia, Canada, and New Zealand in favor of "maybe Hungary". It's also crazy to say South Korea and North Korea cancel out.
Australia controls an incredible quantity of iron ore. Canada has a bigger economy than Russia.
What is the point of a "sizing up the coalition" framework if you refuse to size them up?
The only countries in the far east that we would directly defend are Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and (maybe) the Philippines. Taiwan we would supply weapons but no troops or direct air or naval support. We would treat it like Ukraine.
Taiwan is more strategically important to both the USA and Japan than Ukraine or the Philippines. I would think naval support would be in the cards too.
RT: You are saying we would go to war with nuclear armed, 1.4 billion Chinese to keep a place that is historically part of China from being reunited with its motherland? Nope.
Quite possibly, yes, but possibly no.
First, naval support is not synonymous with war, although naval support could become a prelude to war.
Second, a revanchist PRC considers Taiwan its rightful plaything, but China is not Taiwan's motherland. Mainland China didn't colonize Taiwan until the late 17th century, but that ended by the late 19th century. Taiwan was also colonized by the Japanese, the Dutch, and briefly the Spanish too.
Third, if you know Chinese politics, you know that an order for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US by China would quickly end Xi's rule with a 'disappearance'. China's nuclear arms ensures no US invasion, but does not preclude war with the US.
US interests in Taiwan far outrank those in Ukraine. Taiwan is now a democracy, and a key national security concern for Japan, the US's most important ally. For the US, abandoning Taiwan would spark nuclear proliferation globally, and a diminishment of American power that the US is unlikely to find acceptable.
The US is therefore likely to use naval power to thwart Beijing's blockade and possibly naval and air power to prevent Taiwan from getting starved out. If Beijing decides to attack the USN (and especially pre-emptively strike US bases in Okinawa), the US will not just frustrate Beijing's naval actions, but probably outright go to war.
In this action, the US would enjoy the support of not only its NATO allies, but SK, the Quad and ASEAN too.
Interesting analysis. It’s clear that China thinks in terms of decades as opposed to the American corporate quarter to quarter focus that drives our economy and political focus.
The recent pandemic supply chain interruptions were proof that our domestic manufacturing machinery is now incapable of supporting simple domestic needs. Merely supporting Ukraine has taxed what little domestic munitions manufacturing capacity remains. A build up to a true war footing will require massive spending on a scale greater than the build up to WWII.
China’s decadal thinking and intention allowed them to absorb much of our manufacturing capacity during the last 50 years. Rebuilding the lost domestic manufacturing capacity will take decades, if we have the time.
Convincing domestic capital to commit to rebuilding is the first obstacle, but that poses a circular question. It’s unlikely that would occur without a Chips Act type of incentive program. However, such a program on the scale needed requires massive sovereign investment capital. The rub comes because the domestic tax revenue structure needed to support such a capital formation effort has been frittered away by “conservative’s” tax cuts for domestic corporate interests and oligarchs, a series of presidentially invented middle eastern wars, and a concomitant increase in domestic debt that Congress is unable, or unwilling, to address. In short, America maxed out its credit cards in the pursuit of corporate greed and profits, and several presidential ego driven war efforts that were compounded by an unanticipated pandemic. Oops.
As long as our internal political alignments are so incredibly polarized and encouraged by American corporate interest’s free spending speech, and a corporate interest aligned SCOTUS, retooling America’s industrial capacity is a benign hope.
It's a good broad viewpoint. People want to get way more fussy on the details but its frankly pretty hard to do so. As you're well aware we don't actually track supply chains that clearly.
What I'm interested in is the impact of the loss of the export market for china. Without chinese imports we'll need to build a lot of mines and refineries and factories. That means pain in the short run and we should be ready for it, but overall the politics here wouldn't be horrible. People love good-paying factory jobs!
But China will have all this excess capacity... I feel that there's a tendency for people to simply say that it gets moved to wartime production, and that's true to an extent, but this is the bedrock of the chinese economy, especially right now. 3.7 trillion dollars in exports in 2022, and in the event of a war a lot of that money is just disappearing. Commandeering industrial capacity still requires you to pay the workers and buy material inputs and energy. We're talking trillions of dollars of GDP loss and I don't foresee domestic consumption in china stepping up to keep the money flowing. Does the chinese government have the financial resources to do this year over year?
Something that's worth mentioning