I actually think the real determinant will be geography. It's not just India that matters here. I strongly suspect it will be 'The Entire World' vs 'China'
We have that China has an attack vector aimed at all of its neighbours: Vietnamn, Thailand, The Phillipines, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and so forth. However, the USA has no attack vectors aimed at any of these countries! Being the far away power.
This means that the rational realist approach for any of these nations is to ally with the United States.
The USA can not threaten the sovereignty of any of these nations the way that China can. Which means they will ally with the USA. Furthermore the USA has proved to uphold international law over the past 60 years or so which allowed these nations to trade freely and they do not know if China will allow them to do the same.
Some of these nations will try to balance for as long as they and can as I suspect Indonesia will. But if push comes to shove they will ally with the USA.
Due to the USA (And perhaps ultimately the Dutch) creating the current structure of the global liberal word order China is checkmated at the outset because of where all the attack vectors point at. China will undoubtedly try to invade Taiwan, but strongly suspect it will find itself with no allies besides a weak ally in Russia.
I suspect we will have hot proxy conflicts with in total a few million dead the coming decade, and with near certainty we will have navy battles in the Indo-Pacific for a while but I think due to the structure of the international system and nuclear weapons we won't have a WW3.
The global liberal order is indeed dead. The world is multipolar now and you will find a rise in illiberal nationalism in all of the western world (as is already happening(and this is rational btw)), Israel is an apartheid state (and we will continue to support Israel), and you will see China spend all of its energy to carve out it's own block in this world. They will try, and we will try, but we'll mostly end up on top.
(Also 85% of the world's trade is done in dollars and the Ukraine war didn't change this)
We should still manufacture all of the important things as much as possible of course.
It will need to be protected against drones and missiles the way Israel was today. Fortunately, it is close to US Air Force bases, so as threats materialize, it will not require too much adjustment to defend it.
For the 2024 election, Ukraine hitting Russian oil targets is problematic, because it causes inflation, which US voters get furious about. But it’s a very important illustration of the weakness in the new Axis.
If oil supplies get disrupted by war, this number can ramp up very rapidly. GM has got a handle on EV production finally, and cheaper models will appear later this year:
Starting a war with the New Allies would be bad business for China. Selling $15K EVs in the US would destroy our auto industry, which would make us weaker in a war. But it would take a few years, so China would have to wait.
Then again, both Biden and Trump know $15K EVs will destroy the US auto industry (and our economy for several years), so neither are likely going to let China sell them here. Dangling a carrot in the grey area could both keep US auto-makers in business and delay China’s plans for war.
The New Allies are very big markets for Chinese goods and EVs. They would lose those very rapidly.
Russia is not going to switch to EVs: its grid sucks, it is giant, and it’s got lots of oil, which it will keep trying to use, even as Ukraine keeps blowing their facilities up.
India may have a hard time weaning itself from cheap Chinese EVs, but it is developing its own EV industry:
Your link https://www.axios.com/2022/07/29/china-taiwan-xi-pelosi-biden from nearly two years ago, says "But U.S. officials now believe China may make a strong move against Taiwan within the next 18 months" Worth reassessing the credibility of these unnamed officials, I think.
J.D. came up with a new retort over his position on Ukraine. The US has limits and needs to focus on ourselves first and our strategic allies in the rest of the world. He doesn’t believe Ukraine is important enough.
To focus mean this. The US according to him manufactures about 550 Patriot missiles a year and with the supplemental it will go to 650 missiles a year. Hardly enough for Ukraine Israel and Taiwan. There for we come first followed by Israel which is far more strategic ally. He mentioned the same problem with 155mm artillery shells.
What I found more interesting is that he focused on what we are currently doing rather than what we could be doing. Our miliatary industrial complex is moribund due to its peacetime setting. Take the Stinger factory line. It was shuttered in 2007. So we shipped a ton Stingers to Ukraine and want to build up our inventory again.
The manufacturer had to recall retired workers to open the line...That isn’t the issue, whether to restart a weapons line. It is that the weapons line was built for peacetime manufacturing.
During peace time you don’t need to keep manufacturing items that you are not using. So you keep the line open by building a few dozen a month, or a few hundred or even a few thousand.
Russia has a 5 to 1 advantage over artillery shells. The one line that was building 155mm artillery shells isn’t close to building anywhere near the need for Ukraine or Israel. The issue for our manufacturing is how much and how fast do you need to build these weapons. We need them NOW, not next year or two years from now. If we get in to a shooting war we’ll go thru anti aircraft missiles, fighter jet missiles like candy corn on Halloween. CR’s are the worst thing for the Pentagon. Our entire military industrial complex is screwed up. The recent Naval assessment on shipbuilding makes the situation look hopeless. This is the issue we confront.
I don't understand what China's goals are. They don't seem to be promoting an 'ism, like Mao or Lenin/Stalin and the Nazis. Minor border disputes and the Taiwan issue decided, either win or lose for China, what else is on their agenda? Isn't this all about money and resources and prestige? If so, is war the best way for them to achieve their goals? I encourage you, Noah, to think about what you would advise the Chinese government to do to ensure their economic dominance for the future by any other means than war.
Regarding China’s involvement in Russia-Ukraine war, I believe they are the chief reason why Russia has been able to rearm itself so quickly. So this is not a good situation for Ukraine. Regarding US Allies and the military, the US is an innovation and technology powerhouse. But it gave up manufacturing to Asia decades ago. It is only recently that US Congressmen have noticed that ship building is hurting the Navy and is hampered with delays. But Allies such as Hyundai Heavy Industries is punching ships out like rabbits. It is thought that they may be tasked with taking over the shipyards or even build the ships for the Navy to add the technology. The US will need to leverage all of its allies with their talents to stand up to this competition. As for China, they have no administrative roadblocks. Their barriers are mainly technical.
There are some other aspects to this worth analysing.
1. Space. Space superiority will be a concept in any war between the USA and China because from space you can launch some pretty impressive weapons today are hard to defend against, and do mad surveillance. The USA has a unique asset in SpaceX and I would be hopeful that it could rapidly deny space access to China in any serious conflict
2. Infrastructure disruption through cyber warfare. This hasn't played a big role yet, but there has been some of it in Ukraine. The infrastructure is terribly fragile and I lie awake at night worrying what a strong adversary could do. There are repeated and detailed reports of China infiltration of utilities and other basic infrastructure operations. If they succeed in planting time bombs there, any conflict could easily start with multi day or week power outages, water supply disruptions, mobile network failures and general chaos that would prevent the military from deploying. An invasion of Taiwan could easily be over before we even get TV news back online and figure out what the hell happened.
I would not say that America lazily allowed China to become the dominant manufacturing power in the world. Market dynamics are the most powerful force in the world, and China had competitive advantages in manufacturing that were overwhelming. The United States would have had to rally the whole world to prevent China be from becoming a manufacturing giant. It would have required virtually every participant to go against strong economic incentives.
Nevertheless, the new allies now need to address supply issues for war capacity seriously. Probably, the US should look to Mexico and other Atlantic facing Latin American countries. They can provide cheaper labor and their goods would travel a much shorter distance to the US and Europe in case of a conflict rather than China or Russia. Additionally, if handled well, US investment in Latin America could create significant good will on that continent.
You should probably add Iran to your new Axis. You should add a long section of food supply as well as Pharma supply. Although i doubt any war would be protracted in a protracted war how many millions of chinese die of hunger, how many americans from lack of pharma? How about the next section on what happens to the economies of the countries at war and how that affects their populations? No thoughts on bio weapons?
Most countries would want to stay out of the conflict simply because it makes good sense to do so and not pick sides. They would supply to both sides and refuse to take part in sanctions. Further, the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Iran and China and Taiwan might only see Japan and a fractured EU get involved mostly for their own self-serving reasons (to assusage a concerned citizenry, preserve trading/supply routes and to deter further aggression that could see its citizens get involved). It's not unthinkable that the New Allies ends up appeasing China and Russia with parts of Taiwan and Ukraine bartered away in exchange for peace. Israel, though, may have to fight for its survival till the very end as I'm not sure if it has any friends in the Middle East.
With Trump in the White House, it's seriously debatable whether US will want to get involved in any international crisis.
Just a general thought about the benefits of supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia as an intermediate step in addressing long-term issues with China. Please feel free to disagree as I do not claim to be a military analyst. That said,
1) Addressing the Soviet Legacy - Russia had access to thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, support vehicles, etc. prior to invading Ukraine. While Russian is a middling power in terms of industrial production, this legacy was/is quite potent and could be gifted/used against the US and its allies in any future conflict (even if Russian stayed neutral). Forcing Russian to use this legacy now reduces its future power to those items it can produce. So to benefit for Russia's current inability to produce much, it behooves us to have Russia using as much of that equipment as possible now.
2) Reducing Russia's resources/ability to update/maintain nuclear weapons - anything that forces Russia's industrial and scientific resources to be spent on things besides updating nuclear weapons is to all our benefit (including the Russian people). The conventional conflict does this.
3) Ramping up US industrial assets - like it or not...there is a huge degree of uncertainty among US defense contractors about the long-term US expenditures on weaponry. By using our own stores, we set up a kind of "commitment" to buy new weapons. This commitment, while not iron-clad, is much stronger when the industrial base can see the need increase. In the long run, setting up these industries now is more important than the weapons which are used.
4) Signaling to allies - Just like I do not blame the industrial base for being suspicious about making major investments absent long-term commitments, I do not blame our allies for having some concerns about our (the US) commitment internationally. As many have argued, the US could probably sit out a future conflict. In the long run, I do not believe this is a wise course and that we would end up with a Chinese-run international order that would eventually end up with the US on the defensive...that prediction is by no means certain, and I cannot blame people for questioning it. However, anything we do now to signal we are a reliable ally probably helps strengthen existing alliances and build new ones.
5) Turning the conflict into a one-front war - China, absent a Russian threat to Europe, would be in a terrible position in any future conflict. Having basically the entire industrial might of the US and EU in a strategic fortress (i.e., largely inaccessible to most Chinese interventions) would turn China into an island with a very tiny pipeline of supplies via the unreliable Brick and Road projects.
One of the US's biggest assets during WWII was that it could optimize how it produced material (i.e., more efficiency). The Axis were worried about bombing, etc., and had to hide/disperse industry. Obviously, China has some weapons that can reach the US and Europe, but the number would be insufficient if both Europe and the US were largely isolated from attack.
Wearing out Russia now might enable Europe to emerge in a situation similar to the US, where its industry could operate without the distractions associated with being in the war zone. The effects of this would be multiplicative, not additive, in the sense that if it is just the US, which is isolated, it is easier for an enemy to mass missile strikes and overwhelm air defense. If you have two largely isolated sectors, it becomes harder to create that kind of mass.
These are just my thoughts, and of all of them, I find the idea of forcing Russia to spend down its military inheritance to be the most compelling. Basically, if you already have all the weaponry, you really do not need to produce much (this is Russia right now), as that material is spent up, industrial productions become more relevant. This is why I do not find the weak Russian hypothesis very compelling.
How can you re-up this an still exclude Canada and Australia! These are not small Hungary sized countries! Just New Zealand offsets Hungary. If we are talking about resources Australia controls most of the iron ore.
I was really hoping the reason you would update your New Allies/Axis framework is to just do this correctly! You have a very successful substack - would it be so hard to thrown in a few relevant countries for the sake of rigor?
I also don't buy this framework that countries cancel each other out - NK and ROK bring different things to the table. There are also inter-coalitional dynamics - what fraction of the New Allies does the US alone make up depends on how big the coalition we are talking about.
I can understand the rationale for excluding Iran, Israel, Saudia Arabia etc., because although the current Middle East conflict has elements of proxy war, the coalitional dynamics are sufficiently complicated and are not centered around China. In the future, Africa will be the new Asia and the power dynamics there will be more important. But not in time for the present conflict.
One of the best things the Allies can do in the short-medium term is try and get into a roughly equal trade balance with the Axis, so if it turns into a hot war they won't be starting with a hollowed out industrial base. To do this they would most likely have to stop importing capital from the Axis.
It is a fascinating question to me whether the Allies (notably the US, but also other players like India) can address their fiscal and trade deficits while maintaining reasonably full employment.
It is easy enough to think of economic solutions to this problem (eg letting SS run out of money if Trump wins, or taxes on the rich if Biden does). But none of these seems like a particularly stable political outcome compared to, say, continuing to kick the can down the road and run huge deficits.
Thanks. As you note, starting this year to care about this year is too late.
I like your economic analysis, on GDP basis. The details count. As you noted, the US spent a couple of years ramping up military production (and providing that production to the Allies) before Pearl Harbor. So the US had a running head start on production capacity. But the shift to Wartime production was really profound. It put women in the workforce, and shifted most commodities to military output. I believe the "Allies" could do this again.
People are important, too. Your Population comparisons don't dig in, but wars are fought mostly by young men, and when it gets tougher, old men. In WWII, the women kept up domestic military production, and men 16 to 50 went to combat. Older workers got locked into domestic industries, operating refineries, factories, transportation logistics. China's population is declining. One Child policy means they have men, but they don't have the next generation. That makes it hard to field troops. The new Allies have a similar problem with declining birth rates. You have to figure on both sides "soldiers" become a constraint, as losses would mount.
Ukraine today has a shortage of ammunition and a shortage of soldiers. Russia has more of both. In a grinding long war, volumes of soldiers, munitions, food and fuel all count.
I actually think the real determinant will be geography. It's not just India that matters here. I strongly suspect it will be 'The Entire World' vs 'China'
We have that China has an attack vector aimed at all of its neighbours: Vietnamn, Thailand, The Phillipines, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and so forth. However, the USA has no attack vectors aimed at any of these countries! Being the far away power.
This means that the rational realist approach for any of these nations is to ally with the United States.
The USA can not threaten the sovereignty of any of these nations the way that China can. Which means they will ally with the USA. Furthermore the USA has proved to uphold international law over the past 60 years or so which allowed these nations to trade freely and they do not know if China will allow them to do the same.
History matters here too, China has invaded many of these countries dozens of times in the past already. And none of them were very happy about that. China already has border disputes with basically all of their neighbours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
Some of these nations will try to balance for as long as they and can as I suspect Indonesia will. But if push comes to shove they will ally with the USA.
Due to the USA (And perhaps ultimately the Dutch) creating the current structure of the global liberal word order China is checkmated at the outset because of where all the attack vectors point at. China will undoubtedly try to invade Taiwan, but strongly suspect it will find itself with no allies besides a weak ally in Russia.
I suspect we will have hot proxy conflicts with in total a few million dead the coming decade, and with near certainty we will have navy battles in the Indo-Pacific for a while but I think due to the structure of the international system and nuclear weapons we won't have a WW3.
The global liberal order is indeed dead. The world is multipolar now and you will find a rise in illiberal nationalism in all of the western world (as is already happening(and this is rational btw)), Israel is an apartheid state (and we will continue to support Israel), and you will see China spend all of its energy to carve out it's own block in this world. They will try, and we will try, but we'll mostly end up on top.
(Also 85% of the world's trade is done in dollars and the Ukraine war didn't change this)
We should still manufacture all of the important things as much as possible of course.
California is building lithium extraction operations for US batteries:
https://www.enr.com/articles/58102-groundbreaking-lithium-extraction-plant-launches-in-california
It will need to be protected against drones and missiles the way Israel was today. Fortunately, it is close to US Air Force bases, so as threats materialize, it will not require too much adjustment to defend it.
For the 2024 election, Ukraine hitting Russian oil targets is problematic, because it causes inflation, which US voters get furious about. But it’s a very important illustration of the weakness in the new Axis.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-strikes-may-have-hit-15-russian-refinery-capacity-nato-official-2024-04-04/
This year, EVs are predicted to be 13% of new vehicle sales in the US:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a46340514/ev-sales-are-just-getting-started/
If oil supplies get disrupted by war, this number can ramp up very rapidly. GM has got a handle on EV production finally, and cheaper models will appear later this year:
https://apnews.com/article/bba3a9cbbd2aad0953cbc113e53d041c
Starting a war with the New Allies would be bad business for China. Selling $15K EVs in the US would destroy our auto industry, which would make us weaker in a war. But it would take a few years, so China would have to wait.
Then again, both Biden and Trump know $15K EVs will destroy the US auto industry (and our economy for several years), so neither are likely going to let China sell them here. Dangling a carrot in the grey area could both keep US auto-makers in business and delay China’s plans for war.
The New Allies are very big markets for Chinese goods and EVs. They would lose those very rapidly.
Russia is not going to switch to EVs: its grid sucks, it is giant, and it’s got lots of oil, which it will keep trying to use, even as Ukraine keeps blowing their facilities up.
India may have a hard time weaning itself from cheap Chinese EVs, but it is developing its own EV industry:
https://restofworld.org/2024/e-rickshaw-yc-electric-india/
In a few years, it should be less dependent.
China is becoming the arsenal of autocracy.
Your link https://www.axios.com/2022/07/29/china-taiwan-xi-pelosi-biden from nearly two years ago, says "But U.S. officials now believe China may make a strong move against Taiwan within the next 18 months" Worth reassessing the credibility of these unnamed officials, I think.
Congratulations on gandalfing your way into the NYT morning newsletter
J.D. came up with a new retort over his position on Ukraine. The US has limits and needs to focus on ourselves first and our strategic allies in the rest of the world. He doesn’t believe Ukraine is important enough.
To focus mean this. The US according to him manufactures about 550 Patriot missiles a year and with the supplemental it will go to 650 missiles a year. Hardly enough for Ukraine Israel and Taiwan. There for we come first followed by Israel which is far more strategic ally. He mentioned the same problem with 155mm artillery shells.
What I found more interesting is that he focused on what we are currently doing rather than what we could be doing. Our miliatary industrial complex is moribund due to its peacetime setting. Take the Stinger factory line. It was shuttered in 2007. So we shipped a ton Stingers to Ukraine and want to build up our inventory again.
The manufacturer had to recall retired workers to open the line...That isn’t the issue, whether to restart a weapons line. It is that the weapons line was built for peacetime manufacturing.
During peace time you don’t need to keep manufacturing items that you are not using. So you keep the line open by building a few dozen a month, or a few hundred or even a few thousand.
Russia has a 5 to 1 advantage over artillery shells. The one line that was building 155mm artillery shells isn’t close to building anywhere near the need for Ukraine or Israel. The issue for our manufacturing is how much and how fast do you need to build these weapons. We need them NOW, not next year or two years from now. If we get in to a shooting war we’ll go thru anti aircraft missiles, fighter jet missiles like candy corn on Halloween. CR’s are the worst thing for the Pentagon. Our entire military industrial complex is screwed up. The recent Naval assessment on shipbuilding makes the situation look hopeless. This is the issue we confront.
I don't understand what China's goals are. They don't seem to be promoting an 'ism, like Mao or Lenin/Stalin and the Nazis. Minor border disputes and the Taiwan issue decided, either win or lose for China, what else is on their agenda? Isn't this all about money and resources and prestige? If so, is war the best way for them to achieve their goals? I encourage you, Noah, to think about what you would advise the Chinese government to do to ensure their economic dominance for the future by any other means than war.
Regarding China’s involvement in Russia-Ukraine war, I believe they are the chief reason why Russia has been able to rearm itself so quickly. So this is not a good situation for Ukraine. Regarding US Allies and the military, the US is an innovation and technology powerhouse. But it gave up manufacturing to Asia decades ago. It is only recently that US Congressmen have noticed that ship building is hurting the Navy and is hampered with delays. But Allies such as Hyundai Heavy Industries is punching ships out like rabbits. It is thought that they may be tasked with taking over the shipyards or even build the ships for the Navy to add the technology. The US will need to leverage all of its allies with their talents to stand up to this competition. As for China, they have no administrative roadblocks. Their barriers are mainly technical.
There are some other aspects to this worth analysing.
1. Space. Space superiority will be a concept in any war between the USA and China because from space you can launch some pretty impressive weapons today are hard to defend against, and do mad surveillance. The USA has a unique asset in SpaceX and I would be hopeful that it could rapidly deny space access to China in any serious conflict
2. Infrastructure disruption through cyber warfare. This hasn't played a big role yet, but there has been some of it in Ukraine. The infrastructure is terribly fragile and I lie awake at night worrying what a strong adversary could do. There are repeated and detailed reports of China infiltration of utilities and other basic infrastructure operations. If they succeed in planting time bombs there, any conflict could easily start with multi day or week power outages, water supply disruptions, mobile network failures and general chaos that would prevent the military from deploying. An invasion of Taiwan could easily be over before we even get TV news back online and figure out what the hell happened.
I would not say that America lazily allowed China to become the dominant manufacturing power in the world. Market dynamics are the most powerful force in the world, and China had competitive advantages in manufacturing that were overwhelming. The United States would have had to rally the whole world to prevent China be from becoming a manufacturing giant. It would have required virtually every participant to go against strong economic incentives.
Nevertheless, the new allies now need to address supply issues for war capacity seriously. Probably, the US should look to Mexico and other Atlantic facing Latin American countries. They can provide cheaper labor and their goods would travel a much shorter distance to the US and Europe in case of a conflict rather than China or Russia. Additionally, if handled well, US investment in Latin America could create significant good will on that continent.
You should probably add Iran to your new Axis. You should add a long section of food supply as well as Pharma supply. Although i doubt any war would be protracted in a protracted war how many millions of chinese die of hunger, how many americans from lack of pharma? How about the next section on what happens to the economies of the countries at war and how that affects their populations? No thoughts on bio weapons?
Most countries would want to stay out of the conflict simply because it makes good sense to do so and not pick sides. They would supply to both sides and refuse to take part in sanctions. Further, the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Iran and China and Taiwan might only see Japan and a fractured EU get involved mostly for their own self-serving reasons (to assusage a concerned citizenry, preserve trading/supply routes and to deter further aggression that could see its citizens get involved). It's not unthinkable that the New Allies ends up appeasing China and Russia with parts of Taiwan and Ukraine bartered away in exchange for peace. Israel, though, may have to fight for its survival till the very end as I'm not sure if it has any friends in the Middle East.
With Trump in the White House, it's seriously debatable whether US will want to get involved in any international crisis.
Just a general thought about the benefits of supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia as an intermediate step in addressing long-term issues with China. Please feel free to disagree as I do not claim to be a military analyst. That said,
1) Addressing the Soviet Legacy - Russia had access to thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, support vehicles, etc. prior to invading Ukraine. While Russian is a middling power in terms of industrial production, this legacy was/is quite potent and could be gifted/used against the US and its allies in any future conflict (even if Russian stayed neutral). Forcing Russian to use this legacy now reduces its future power to those items it can produce. So to benefit for Russia's current inability to produce much, it behooves us to have Russia using as much of that equipment as possible now.
2) Reducing Russia's resources/ability to update/maintain nuclear weapons - anything that forces Russia's industrial and scientific resources to be spent on things besides updating nuclear weapons is to all our benefit (including the Russian people). The conventional conflict does this.
3) Ramping up US industrial assets - like it or not...there is a huge degree of uncertainty among US defense contractors about the long-term US expenditures on weaponry. By using our own stores, we set up a kind of "commitment" to buy new weapons. This commitment, while not iron-clad, is much stronger when the industrial base can see the need increase. In the long run, setting up these industries now is more important than the weapons which are used.
4) Signaling to allies - Just like I do not blame the industrial base for being suspicious about making major investments absent long-term commitments, I do not blame our allies for having some concerns about our (the US) commitment internationally. As many have argued, the US could probably sit out a future conflict. In the long run, I do not believe this is a wise course and that we would end up with a Chinese-run international order that would eventually end up with the US on the defensive...that prediction is by no means certain, and I cannot blame people for questioning it. However, anything we do now to signal we are a reliable ally probably helps strengthen existing alliances and build new ones.
5) Turning the conflict into a one-front war - China, absent a Russian threat to Europe, would be in a terrible position in any future conflict. Having basically the entire industrial might of the US and EU in a strategic fortress (i.e., largely inaccessible to most Chinese interventions) would turn China into an island with a very tiny pipeline of supplies via the unreliable Brick and Road projects.
One of the US's biggest assets during WWII was that it could optimize how it produced material (i.e., more efficiency). The Axis were worried about bombing, etc., and had to hide/disperse industry. Obviously, China has some weapons that can reach the US and Europe, but the number would be insufficient if both Europe and the US were largely isolated from attack.
Wearing out Russia now might enable Europe to emerge in a situation similar to the US, where its industry could operate without the distractions associated with being in the war zone. The effects of this would be multiplicative, not additive, in the sense that if it is just the US, which is isolated, it is easier for an enemy to mass missile strikes and overwhelm air defense. If you have two largely isolated sectors, it becomes harder to create that kind of mass.
These are just my thoughts, and of all of them, I find the idea of forcing Russia to spend down its military inheritance to be the most compelling. Basically, if you already have all the weaponry, you really do not need to produce much (this is Russia right now), as that material is spent up, industrial productions become more relevant. This is why I do not find the weak Russian hypothesis very compelling.
How can you re-up this an still exclude Canada and Australia! These are not small Hungary sized countries! Just New Zealand offsets Hungary. If we are talking about resources Australia controls most of the iron ore.
I was really hoping the reason you would update your New Allies/Axis framework is to just do this correctly! You have a very successful substack - would it be so hard to thrown in a few relevant countries for the sake of rigor?
I also don't buy this framework that countries cancel each other out - NK and ROK bring different things to the table. There are also inter-coalitional dynamics - what fraction of the New Allies does the US alone make up depends on how big the coalition we are talking about.
I can understand the rationale for excluding Iran, Israel, Saudia Arabia etc., because although the current Middle East conflict has elements of proxy war, the coalitional dynamics are sufficiently complicated and are not centered around China. In the future, Africa will be the new Asia and the power dynamics there will be more important. But not in time for the present conflict.
One of the best things the Allies can do in the short-medium term is try and get into a roughly equal trade balance with the Axis, so if it turns into a hot war they won't be starting with a hollowed out industrial base. To do this they would most likely have to stop importing capital from the Axis.
It is a fascinating question to me whether the Allies (notably the US, but also other players like India) can address their fiscal and trade deficits while maintaining reasonably full employment.
It is easy enough to think of economic solutions to this problem (eg letting SS run out of money if Trump wins, or taxes on the rich if Biden does). But none of these seems like a particularly stable political outcome compared to, say, continuing to kick the can down the road and run huge deficits.
Thanks. As you note, starting this year to care about this year is too late.
I like your economic analysis, on GDP basis. The details count. As you noted, the US spent a couple of years ramping up military production (and providing that production to the Allies) before Pearl Harbor. So the US had a running head start on production capacity. But the shift to Wartime production was really profound. It put women in the workforce, and shifted most commodities to military output. I believe the "Allies" could do this again.
People are important, too. Your Population comparisons don't dig in, but wars are fought mostly by young men, and when it gets tougher, old men. In WWII, the women kept up domestic military production, and men 16 to 50 went to combat. Older workers got locked into domestic industries, operating refineries, factories, transportation logistics. China's population is declining. One Child policy means they have men, but they don't have the next generation. That makes it hard to field troops. The new Allies have a similar problem with declining birth rates. You have to figure on both sides "soldiers" become a constraint, as losses would mount.
Ukraine today has a shortage of ammunition and a shortage of soldiers. Russia has more of both. In a grinding long war, volumes of soldiers, munitions, food and fuel all count.