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.
Perhaps. But the recent terrorist attack in Moscow was successfully predicted by the US intelligence establishment, they just got the date wrong by a month or so. And they also predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine and got the timing nearly right for that too. I am not reassured by the fact that they are making such time bounded predictions now
If they predict that the invasion will take place in a month, I'll pay attention. Such a prediction is based on observation of actual preparations, such as assembling troops and landing ships (which China doesn't have in anything like the required numbers).
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.
Hope you're not agreeing with Putin's,...er J.D.'s call to ditch Ukraine, as they are our only way of countering the Russian part of this new Sino-Soviet axis. If we can keep giving Kiev the hardware and munitions they need to bleed Russia white, Putin may never militarily join China when they move against us.
Which is why our pro-Putin wing needs to be at least temporarily neutralized this Fall; to ensure that Ukraine stays in the fight, and that the new Bamboo Curtain lies on the Ukrainian border and not the Polish one.
JD Vance is an idiot, but in this case he is repeating something that smarter, good-faith military analysts have pointed out.
US missile defense is a limited resource, and our US manufacturing is not setup to replenish them. Most of the things going to Ukraine and Israel are distinct from Taiwan's needs, but this is the biggest exception. Separately, there is no excuse for our slow make-nothing military procurement process and we need to fix our military manufacturing capabilities.
The supplemental will pay for US factories to build cutting-edge weaponry and munitions for US forces. We then give the older inventory replaced to the Ukrainians.
Since when does the GOP, even under Trump's leadership, fight against giving our own troops the best and newest gear? If not for Russian interference, this would be a serious no-brainer for any American, Left or Right, who thinks our military needs to be strong.
Yeah that very odd thing about Vance....He is against the supplemental money which goes to our contractors.....Seems like an odd way to complain about a shortage of missiles. I brought up our deficit quite a while ago at The Dispatch.....Since the cold war ended it seems everybody has forgotten military needs. Did you read about the Navies study of its shipbuilding? It’s fucked and they have no idea how to fix it.
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.
China's ideology is now (Han) Chinese nationalism. They would like to:
1) Expand territory into their neighbors (Taiwan, East China Sea, Himalayas, Mongolia)
2) Have substantial economic and political control over their neighbors (Singapore, Vietnam, Phillipines, Malayasia, Korea, Japan, etc.)
3) Control the lives of ethnic Chinese and Chinese-language worldwide (allowing no dissent and forcibly recruiting talent).
4) Embarass and defeat European, Japanese and America enemies in retaliation for the so-called "century of humiliation".
This is not totally incompatible with the Marxist-Lenist/Maoist framework. Classically there are two pillars of Marxist-Lenism regimes - "socialism" and "anti-imperialism". The expansive foreign policy agenda falls into the "anti-imperialism" bucket, even if the balance of power shifts towards China doing the imperialism. Using the incompleteness of the anti-imperialism project as an excuse, they can delay the socialism project indefinitely (i.e. prefering martial law to an egalitarian worker's paradise). More broadly though, "socialism" in the Chinese case has come to mean "complete control of the communist party" which has come to mean "complete suppression of dissent, democracy, and economic autonomy". So rather than "socialism" and "anti-imperialism", those words now mean "statism" and "revaunchism".
War is indeed not the best way to achieve the goal of economic prosperity, including lavish livestyles for the elites and decent quality of life for the common man. Arguably, the Dengists are satisified with that, but for Xi it appears success only counts if it can be measured as power over Asia and the West.
Thank you for this explanation. It's a short list with no simple resolution to the issues suggested, but it helps to frame what is at risk. I fully understand the century of humiliations. In many ways the west is reaping what it sowed. We will need a president with considerable knowledge and understanding of these issues as they unfold to guide our country, congress, and our allies forward. He or she is out there, but just not a candidate.
As something of a China hawk, I think Biden is underrated and Trump is overrated.
Biden/Democrats have done export controls on chips, supplied Taiwan with defensive weaponry, moved to reshore our supply chains, and bringing allies like Japan, South Korea, and Phillipines closer together. My biggest critcism of Biden/Democrats is that they have failed to do enough, fast enough. We still have a shortage of ships, anti-ship missiles, sea mines, anti-drone technology etc. We still have a lot of supply chains dependent on China (as they do dependent on us!).
Trump/Republicans talk tough on China, but are really two factions. The hawks don't control the Republican party, are somewhat immature in their perspective, and haven't realized yet their hopes must rely on the Democratic party. Whereas the Trumpist are broadly but shallowly anti-China, they are focused on small-ball economic deals (like soybeans), not a strategic perspective on supply chains (like chips and batteries). Being broadly anti-Chinese whatever actions the China takes, Trumpist don't focus any specific economic or diplomatic levers on deterrence and they are poor choice to bring in European and Asian allies. Shallowly, they don't have the stomach to do anything difficult - This was the faction that utterly failed to act when Hong Kong was crushed and actively impedes the defense of Ukraine - the two strongest precedents for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
There may be some possibility yet to deter China on Taiwan and engage it in economically cooperative terms. Unclear to me what level of control Dengists have in Chinese elites, and what level of control Chinese elites have over Xi. And Xi won't live forever. Definitely there are Chinese elites who want to pursue Chinese nationalism by being moral superior to the West, and learning from the West's morally and economically ill-advised adventurism. And on the US side, Obama famously asserted "We don't oppose the peaceful rise of China" and I think we are still prepared to honor that.
You mean other than near total economic domination? China Shock II is in the works...it has already begun, and if unopposed will degrade/destroy much/most of the West's remaining manufacturing base. If that happens, then China has the rest of the world over a proverbial barrel. They can then dictate terms; or go with a war with a weaker West for even better outcomes.
Yes, that's what I mean, but economic domination at what cost? I suspect that Noah would agree that a balanced trading system among nations would generate more prosperity for all than could be had by one country achieving dominance in one or two areas at the expense of all the destruction a war would entail. And holding other countries over a barrel just means those markets are probably cut off from your trade. I just can't see where going to war is in China's best long-term interests. Is anyone asking China what they think they want in the long term, and considering how we might work together to achieve theirs and our goals together? I bet that's exactly what the industrial plant owners on both sides are thinking.
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.
What "overwhelming advantages" did China (especially versus other countries of similar per-capita GDP) have circa 2000, when its meteoric rise in manufacturing was first beginning?
1. Were invited and supported by a government that had capital to build infrastructure. The government was creating entrepreneurship zone specifically to a facilitate direct investment.
2. Knew that their labor force would be docile, backed up by a government that would reinforce management.
And once Apple, IBM, Intel and the cream of the American tech sector had invested mucho billions in manufacturing capacity in China, the CCP used those same American corporations' combined political clout to set American MFN trade status to enable China Shock I, which gutted Western manufacturing.
Sounds like you're saying that those big US computer hardware companies were basically the _pioneers_ of offshoring to China: could you link to any information on that point?
Actually quantifying 2024 dollar value of US-owned (or Western-owned) manufacturing in China is a tougher ask. Or quantifying what % of the goods exported during China Shock I were from said firms.
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.
Neutrality is always an option; but one that is not necessarily attainable. Denmark & Norway, for example, bet everything on neutrality. But the Nazis invaded them anyway.
If India thinks they can remain neutral during--or after--an armed conflict between China and the West, they're deluded. Consider recent military friction in the Himalayas; the new Chinese highways that stop just at the Indian border; the increasingly pro-Chinese stance of Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka; the Chinese claim to Andhra Pradesh. Not to mention the dramatic Chinese military buildup. The Chinese are gearing up for war, and the only solutions are, A) To deter them from actually warring via strength & diplomatic alliance; B) To fight them; or C) to Submit.
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.
Given that Australia is a huge producer of both iron ore and coal, why does it simply export these raw resources to China instead of having its own steel industry?
If there is a true split I think it will have to go that way. Or perhaps they will send it to India, where costs are lower than Australia. Very interesting to think about whether the Chinese economy is set up to handle a loss of Australia ore.
Right now I think the steel is produced by China because 1) China subsidizes heavy industry massively 2) A lot of the steel is used in China anyway.
I have tried to think about whether this is a China risk hedge, to invest in non-Chinese steel companies. One challenge is that if the Chinese economies flounders but doesn't go to war (as it is right now), it dumps steel on the market. The other challenge is that there are many steel companies and its hard to know which to invest in. The ones that make the cheapest steel and have the most international footprint are the most direct competitors to the Chinese steel industry, but maybe the least certain to not to be disrupted themselves.
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.
Why didn't western countries start working on their ammunition production capacity back in the summer of 2022, to counter the Russian artillery superiority demonstrated by that season's Donbas offensive?
I also note Noah's claim that the Japanese (at least initially) had the best fighters of the early part of WWII.
While it was the case that the A6M Zero was both remarkably maneuverable and had a range that the Allies would only match three years later with the P-51 Mustang, it achieved this performance (especially remarkable given the inferiority of Japanese engines) by stripping away almost all protection from battle damage (notably self-sealing fuel tanks, because those didn't just weigh more but had less fuel capacity -- a big problem given that the IJN's air war strategy was premised on out-ranging their opponents)
This was one reason (along with the failure -- shared with the Germans -- to divert ace pilots to teaching duties) why the late air war in the Pacific was such a turkey shoot, as the best Japanese pilots had been killed without the chance to train replacements (which would anyway have been difficult due to lack of fuel).
“Anyone who scoffs at industrial policy or the idea of bringing back manufacturing in the U.S. and Europe needs to be able to answer the questions raised by this post.”
Is that right? So, anyone who thinks nuclear power and nuclear waste can be safely managed and stored for millennia needs to why they’re greenwashing science, and why they’re ignoring a sketchy nuclear history of only 75 years, why they think they can predict the location and intensity of earthquakes over millennia (5,000 annual quakes), why they think they can predict geopolitical events and warfare over millennia (Russia has already endangered the largest nuclear plant in Ukraine, Japan has pumped millions of gallons of nuclear waste into the ocean).
It seems to me scoffing is endemic, not isolated to one side of one issue.
Deterrence in the Cold War was based on our willingness to use nukes first if the Warsaw Pact, which had many more tanks & soldiers than NATO, decided to roll west. I doubt that threat is credible in the Formosa Straights, unless Taiwan makes it with its own nukes. Since the 1940s, the Pacific has been an American lake, from San Francisco to Shanghai. That's not true anymore, and China is quite likely able to defeat our navy in the Formosa Straights in a conventional war. Nevertheless, an amphibious invasion across 100 miles of open water would be extremely difficult if Taiwan had sufficient arms to oppose it. We better hope that diplomacy works--or Xi has a stroke of good sense.
We currently have tactical nukes deployed in S Korea and to some extent Japan. But not Taiwan. Chinese amphibious and airmobile capabilities are essential for them to secure a viable beachhead if they move on Taiwan. And to potentially use against Okinawa, Guam, Indonesia, etc. in subsequent phases of a shooting war. In fact, I'd argue that the extent of PLA amphibious/airmobile assets are the best tactical metric of their readiness for war.
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.
Perhaps. But the recent terrorist attack in Moscow was successfully predicted by the US intelligence establishment, they just got the date wrong by a month or so. And they also predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine and got the timing nearly right for that too. I am not reassured by the fact that they are making such time bounded predictions now
If they predict that the invasion will take place in a month, I'll pay attention. Such a prediction is based on observation of actual preparations, such as assembling troops and landing ships (which China doesn't have in anything like the required numbers).
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.
Hope you're not agreeing with Putin's,...er J.D.'s call to ditch Ukraine, as they are our only way of countering the Russian part of this new Sino-Soviet axis. If we can keep giving Kiev the hardware and munitions they need to bleed Russia white, Putin may never militarily join China when they move against us.
Which is why our pro-Putin wing needs to be at least temporarily neutralized this Fall; to ensure that Ukraine stays in the fight, and that the new Bamboo Curtain lies on the Ukrainian border and not the Polish one.
JD Vance is an idiot, but in this case he is repeating something that smarter, good-faith military analysts have pointed out.
US missile defense is a limited resource, and our US manufacturing is not setup to replenish them. Most of the things going to Ukraine and Israel are distinct from Taiwan's needs, but this is the biggest exception. Separately, there is no excuse for our slow make-nothing military procurement process and we need to fix our military manufacturing capabilities.
The supplemental will pay for US factories to build cutting-edge weaponry and munitions for US forces. We then give the older inventory replaced to the Ukrainians.
Since when does the GOP, even under Trump's leadership, fight against giving our own troops the best and newest gear? If not for Russian interference, this would be a serious no-brainer for any American, Left or Right, who thinks our military needs to be strong.
Yeah that very odd thing about Vance....He is against the supplemental money which goes to our contractors.....Seems like an odd way to complain about a shortage of missiles. I brought up our deficit quite a while ago at The Dispatch.....Since the cold war ended it seems everybody has forgotten military needs. Did you read about the Navies study of its shipbuilding? It’s fucked and they have no idea how to fix it.
JD Vance is an asshole
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.
China's ideology is now (Han) Chinese nationalism. They would like to:
1) Expand territory into their neighbors (Taiwan, East China Sea, Himalayas, Mongolia)
2) Have substantial economic and political control over their neighbors (Singapore, Vietnam, Phillipines, Malayasia, Korea, Japan, etc.)
3) Control the lives of ethnic Chinese and Chinese-language worldwide (allowing no dissent and forcibly recruiting talent).
4) Embarass and defeat European, Japanese and America enemies in retaliation for the so-called "century of humiliation".
This is not totally incompatible with the Marxist-Lenist/Maoist framework. Classically there are two pillars of Marxist-Lenism regimes - "socialism" and "anti-imperialism". The expansive foreign policy agenda falls into the "anti-imperialism" bucket, even if the balance of power shifts towards China doing the imperialism. Using the incompleteness of the anti-imperialism project as an excuse, they can delay the socialism project indefinitely (i.e. prefering martial law to an egalitarian worker's paradise). More broadly though, "socialism" in the Chinese case has come to mean "complete control of the communist party" which has come to mean "complete suppression of dissent, democracy, and economic autonomy". So rather than "socialism" and "anti-imperialism", those words now mean "statism" and "revaunchism".
War is indeed not the best way to achieve the goal of economic prosperity, including lavish livestyles for the elites and decent quality of life for the common man. Arguably, the Dengists are satisified with that, but for Xi it appears success only counts if it can be measured as power over Asia and the West.
Thank you for this explanation. It's a short list with no simple resolution to the issues suggested, but it helps to frame what is at risk. I fully understand the century of humiliations. In many ways the west is reaping what it sowed. We will need a president with considerable knowledge and understanding of these issues as they unfold to guide our country, congress, and our allies forward. He or she is out there, but just not a candidate.
As something of a China hawk, I think Biden is underrated and Trump is overrated.
Biden/Democrats have done export controls on chips, supplied Taiwan with defensive weaponry, moved to reshore our supply chains, and bringing allies like Japan, South Korea, and Phillipines closer together. My biggest critcism of Biden/Democrats is that they have failed to do enough, fast enough. We still have a shortage of ships, anti-ship missiles, sea mines, anti-drone technology etc. We still have a lot of supply chains dependent on China (as they do dependent on us!).
Trump/Republicans talk tough on China, but are really two factions. The hawks don't control the Republican party, are somewhat immature in their perspective, and haven't realized yet their hopes must rely on the Democratic party. Whereas the Trumpist are broadly but shallowly anti-China, they are focused on small-ball economic deals (like soybeans), not a strategic perspective on supply chains (like chips and batteries). Being broadly anti-Chinese whatever actions the China takes, Trumpist don't focus any specific economic or diplomatic levers on deterrence and they are poor choice to bring in European and Asian allies. Shallowly, they don't have the stomach to do anything difficult - This was the faction that utterly failed to act when Hong Kong was crushed and actively impedes the defense of Ukraine - the two strongest precedents for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
There may be some possibility yet to deter China on Taiwan and engage it in economically cooperative terms. Unclear to me what level of control Dengists have in Chinese elites, and what level of control Chinese elites have over Xi. And Xi won't live forever. Definitely there are Chinese elites who want to pursue Chinese nationalism by being moral superior to the West, and learning from the West's morally and economically ill-advised adventurism. And on the US side, Obama famously asserted "We don't oppose the peaceful rise of China" and I think we are still prepared to honor that.
You mean other than near total economic domination? China Shock II is in the works...it has already begun, and if unopposed will degrade/destroy much/most of the West's remaining manufacturing base. If that happens, then China has the rest of the world over a proverbial barrel. They can then dictate terms; or go with a war with a weaker West for even better outcomes.
Yes, that's what I mean, but economic domination at what cost? I suspect that Noah would agree that a balanced trading system among nations would generate more prosperity for all than could be had by one country achieving dominance in one or two areas at the expense of all the destruction a war would entail. And holding other countries over a barrel just means those markets are probably cut off from your trade. I just can't see where going to war is in China's best long-term interests. Is anyone asking China what they think they want in the long term, and considering how we might work together to achieve theirs and our goals together? I bet that's exactly what the industrial plant owners on both sides are thinking.
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 think Taiwan is lost regardless of what we or our allies do. That's a battle we cannot win.
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.
What "overwhelming advantages" did China (especially versus other countries of similar per-capita GDP) have circa 2000, when its meteoric rise in manufacturing was first beginning?
1. Were invited and supported by a government that had capital to build infrastructure. The government was creating entrepreneurship zone specifically to a facilitate direct investment.
2. Knew that their labor force would be docile, backed up by a government that would reinforce management.
3. Infinite supply of eager labor.
And once Apple, IBM, Intel and the cream of the American tech sector had invested mucho billions in manufacturing capacity in China, the CCP used those same American corporations' combined political clout to set American MFN trade status to enable China Shock I, which gutted Western manufacturing.
Sounds like you're saying that those big US computer hardware companies were basically the _pioneers_ of offshoring to China: could you link to any information on that point?
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/list-of-american-companies-in-china/
Actually quantifying 2024 dollar value of US-owned (or Western-owned) manufacturing in China is a tougher ask. Or quantifying what % of the goods exported during China Shock I were from said firms.
Here's a snapshot of 2012: https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/the-most-popular-american-companies-in-china
And a GAO historical study on tech offshoring to China & India: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-06-423.pdf
Anecdotally, almost everything of value in our house has a 'made in China' stamp. Not just the computers, TV and router.
Agreed.
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.
Neutrality is always an option; but one that is not necessarily attainable. Denmark & Norway, for example, bet everything on neutrality. But the Nazis invaded them anyway.
If India thinks they can remain neutral during--or after--an armed conflict between China and the West, they're deluded. Consider recent military friction in the Himalayas; the new Chinese highways that stop just at the Indian border; the increasingly pro-Chinese stance of Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka; the Chinese claim to Andhra Pradesh. Not to mention the dramatic Chinese military buildup. The Chinese are gearing up for war, and the only solutions are, A) To deter them from actually warring via strength & diplomatic alliance; B) To fight them; or C) to Submit.
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.
Given that Australia is a huge producer of both iron ore and coal, why does it simply export these raw resources to China instead of having its own steel industry?
If there is a true split I think it will have to go that way. Or perhaps they will send it to India, where costs are lower than Australia. Very interesting to think about whether the Chinese economy is set up to handle a loss of Australia ore.
Right now I think the steel is produced by China because 1) China subsidizes heavy industry massively 2) A lot of the steel is used in China anyway.
I have tried to think about whether this is a China risk hedge, to invest in non-Chinese steel companies. One challenge is that if the Chinese economies flounders but doesn't go to war (as it is right now), it dumps steel on the market. The other challenge is that there are many steel companies and its hard to know which to invest in. The ones that make the cheapest steel and have the most international footprint are the most direct competitors to the Chinese steel industry, but maybe the least certain to not to be disrupted themselves.
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.
Why didn't western countries start working on their ammunition production capacity back in the summer of 2022, to counter the Russian artillery superiority demonstrated by that season's Donbas offensive?
I also note Noah's claim that the Japanese (at least initially) had the best fighters of the early part of WWII.
While it was the case that the A6M Zero was both remarkably maneuverable and had a range that the Allies would only match three years later with the P-51 Mustang, it achieved this performance (especially remarkable given the inferiority of Japanese engines) by stripping away almost all protection from battle damage (notably self-sealing fuel tanks, because those didn't just weigh more but had less fuel capacity -- a big problem given that the IJN's air war strategy was premised on out-ranging their opponents)
This was one reason (along with the failure -- shared with the Germans -- to divert ace pilots to teaching duties) why the late air war in the Pacific was such a turkey shoot, as the best Japanese pilots had been killed without the chance to train replacements (which would anyway have been difficult due to lack of fuel).
“Anyone who scoffs at industrial policy or the idea of bringing back manufacturing in the U.S. and Europe needs to be able to answer the questions raised by this post.”
Is that right? So, anyone who thinks nuclear power and nuclear waste can be safely managed and stored for millennia needs to why they’re greenwashing science, and why they’re ignoring a sketchy nuclear history of only 75 years, why they think they can predict the location and intensity of earthquakes over millennia (5,000 annual quakes), why they think they can predict geopolitical events and warfare over millennia (Russia has already endangered the largest nuclear plant in Ukraine, Japan has pumped millions of gallons of nuclear waste into the ocean).
It seems to me scoffing is endemic, not isolated to one side of one issue.
What was the purpose of making an irrelevant anti-nuclear-power comment on a blog post that has nothing to do with civilian nuclear power?
Deterrence in the Cold War was based on our willingness to use nukes first if the Warsaw Pact, which had many more tanks & soldiers than NATO, decided to roll west. I doubt that threat is credible in the Formosa Straights, unless Taiwan makes it with its own nukes. Since the 1940s, the Pacific has been an American lake, from San Francisco to Shanghai. That's not true anymore, and China is quite likely able to defeat our navy in the Formosa Straights in a conventional war. Nevertheless, an amphibious invasion across 100 miles of open water would be extremely difficult if Taiwan had sufficient arms to oppose it. We better hope that diplomacy works--or Xi has a stroke of good sense.
We currently have tactical nukes deployed in S Korea and to some extent Japan. But not Taiwan. Chinese amphibious and airmobile capabilities are essential for them to secure a viable beachhead if they move on Taiwan. And to potentially use against Okinawa, Guam, Indonesia, etc. in subsequent phases of a shooting war. In fact, I'd argue that the extent of PLA amphibious/airmobile assets are the best tactical metric of their readiness for war.