Beautifully written and gut-wrenching piece, Noah. Thanks for speaking up for Taiwan. As someone living in Taiwan who sees its hard-won democratic life every day, it means a lot to me (and to so many others).
But deep down, I think that everything else you discuss is subordinate to this paragraph:
"The only possible answer here is that the world is created anew each generation. We still call China by the same name, we still draw it the same on a map, but essentially all of the people who remember the Long March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the Battle of Shanghai are dead and gone. The hard-won wisdom that they received as inadequate compensation for suffering through those terrible events has vanished into the entropy of history, and their descendants have only war movies and books and half-remembered tales to give them thin, shadowed glimpses."
There are two threads implicit here.
One is human nature. I am an old man, but I have never resolved myself to human nature as it actually exists. Anyone who absorbs global history over the centuries has to face the fact that mass freedom or happiness is accidental; rather it's the individual and group drive for power and dominance that determines history. Everywhere I look, on all continents and at almost all times, those who thought that they could take from their neighbors and subjugate their neighbors did so. Especially if their neighbors were doing well and, perhaps, focused more on enjoyment of their blessings than on strength.
Humans, of course, are far from alone in this nature. I am a bird watcher, and every year I watch the birdie equivalent; Cardinals break their necks fighting the Cardinals in the window, and Robins lie dying along the roadside caring to their final breath only about the expansion of their territory.
The other thread here involves the protective qualities of memory. However, from the caves to Sumeria to Rome to 1945, memory alone rarely served as an antidote to human nature. So what changed after World War II? I would argue that it was communications technology. Print became truly dominant only when steam power made printed material almost universally accessible, and, like all technologies but especially communications and transportation technologies, it profoundly changed humans. In large part because print was a memory multiplier. It vastly increased the reflection upon past experience and wisdom, to the point that this reflective nature became a deep seated cultural value. Such that reflective and wise became attractive traits in leaders. Especially once the World Wars were entered into humanity's memory bank.
Of course, this change in human history resulted in winners and losers. The United States was probably the biggest beneficiary; racing under a yellow flag is great when you have the lead. The spiritual descendants of raiders and pirates were the losers, as were individuals who otherwise might have risen in life through physical might.
When you bemoan the lack of memory of, say, the Rape of Nanking, you are really bemoaning the replacement of print society with online society, which turns out to favor an entirely different kind of thinking, and privileges different voices. Reflective voices lose; bristling aggression wins, and thus looks attractive in prospective leaders. Including in democracies. And all the more so, because we have a substantial reservoir of discontents who really were disadvantaged in the print era, and whose discontent has long been mocked by print society.
So, I don't know about the world being recreated anew every generation -- such rapid change is a very modern phenomenon. But I am pretty sure that this generation does indeed face a world fundamentally different from the one I was born into. And I don't believe that we Americans are doing any better at facing up to serious threats than are the Taiwanese partiers.
I do wonder if the combat footage all over social media will make people less likely to want war--if seeing the injured Russian soldier running slowly around his tank while a kamikaze drone follows him getting closer and closer until it detonates and the video feed ends, or if seeing 30 minute long, 1080p GoPro footage of trench warfare will make the horrors of war more legible to current generations.
During the American Civil War, trail blazing war photography of skeletal remains of soldiers lying untended months after battle dimmed war enthusiasm.
However, this applies to social media is unclear, though.
1) To what extent will it be believed, what with the advent of easy fake images?
2) Will such imagery bring reflective caution about war, or fear that strengthens the hands of strongman type leaders?
One ought to be cautious in trusting the dour view of the future spouted by the elderly (that would be me). But I know enough about history to know that for time out of mind human beings routinely waged aggressive war in spite of having personally witnessed the horrors of war. For me, it is a hard sell that somehow visual imagery of war atrocities will now prevent aggressive war, absent the aberrations of a print based culture and its distinctive impact on leadership, democracy, and thinking styles.
Yeah, upon further reflection I'm not sure seeing the horror of war helps much. Its sort of like how many antiwar movies get reinterpreted as pro-war movies as they age (or sometimes immediately).
The reaction to the Ukraine war in most of the west is apathy. Most people are too far removed from war to have any clear concept of it. Seeing terrible images on a screen does not shake people like it should.
Good on Noah for speaking clearly about the threat from Xi. But I fear most people will continue to just ignore the possibility.
I agree, but I'm not sure that the thing that bothers me the most is the lack of reaction to screen images. As my father told me more than a half century ago, it simply does not work to absorb the entirety of the planet's pain and inhumanity. All you end up doing is fry all the circuits, so to speak.
The thing that disturbs me is that America WAS worked up over the Ukraine. I Iive and spend a lot of time in red America, and Ukrainian flags and symbols of support were everywhere. And the same seemed to be true on liberal leaning websites I read. Yet this drifted into apathy over a VERY few years.
Maybe it's just Trump and his messaging. Or maybe it's polarization in general -- with two factions at each other's throats, it's inevitable that whatever the in party does, the out party will seek to undermine.
Maybe it's an essential popular misunderstanding of foreign policy. So much that we have done post WWII was sold on moral grounds, when, in truth, we were doing what was best for our country. This was effective in winning over the vast middle of the country, but the moral grounds always offended the right, and the inconsistencies always offended the left. (How dare we fail to intercede on the side of morality everywhere in the world!) The trouble is that our center is now much weakened.
Maybe it's all a part of the move away from a print society. Print encourages a longer attention span, and most everything today pushes in the opposite direction.
And maybe it is endemic to democracies. There are myriad advantages to representative government, but bursts of emotion followed by waning interest -- that has been the Achilles heel of such systems all the way back to antiquity. That, and the tendency to wait for a crisis before reacting.
But whatever the cause, this is America's #1 weakness, even more alarming than lack of production of key stuff. Our rivals, large and small, have learned that the way to defeat America is to out wait us. Survive the initial American outburst, and soon we will lose interest. This synergizes extremely poorly with our diminished manufacturing capacity.
That doesn't feel the same, at least not on a poetic level. Taiwan is facing a much larger, much more aggressive, and much more powerful enemy on it's doorstep. Israel on the other hand is (with the help of western weapons) the dominant power in it's section of the middle east. If a hot war broke out with Iran, I would put money on Israel coming out on top. Nothing even close can be said of Taiwan.
Your pessimism is justified, I'm afraid. The fact that 77 million Americans voted for a malignant narcissist and convicted felon who thinks he is above the law (and appointed 3 Supreme Court justices who agree with him) and disrespects our allies shows that most voters are short-sighted and not concerned at all about the people in other countries (even allied countries). In 3 weeks power-hungry sociopaths will lead the 3 countries with the largest nuclear arsenals and the largest militaries. Trump makes it clear he wants to bully weaker countries, not help our allies, and sees Putin and Xi as role models he is eager to please and emulate. If Rubio and Waltz , and Republican senators, can stand up to Trump and support our alliances, there may be hope for Taiwan. Otherwise, I'm afraid Trump will allow Xi to blockade it, strangle it and then invade.
Yes. Eerily like the 1934-39 build up to the Second War War. Let us hope that the hard-fought Natsec industrial gains of Biden and the Dems will not be undone by a GOP eager to placate Trump. Who in turn is ever eager to do Putin's bidding.
As to whether the Trump Administration will fight to defend Taiwan when the moment arises, look only to FOX News. If they're pushing the meme of "Why should we shed our blood to defend Taiwan, when they won't even defend themselves?"...then Taiwan's fate is sealed.
I think the most likely endgame is the carnage Noah envisions, both in Taiwan and Ukraine, shocking the entire US right wing out of their current blunt stupidity.
Likely they’ll try to blame it on Biden and Democrats, and possibly even use the chaos abroad as yet another excuse for authoritarian misrule in the U.S. They’ll fail. We’ll likely see now as MAGA’s all-time high water mark, before the fall.
Of course, that all is cold comfort for Taiwan. And the hopes of free people around the world in general. But still.
My outlook is a bit darker, as I'm 99% convinced Trump is an FSB asset--and likely has been since the early '90's. If he tells the GOP establishment that a humiliating peace for Ukraine is necessary, but first takes the time to successfully sell it to the MAGA base via FOX News, Newmax, etc.; then publicly calls upon the GOP Congress to support him, they'll fold--especially the House. Like they almost always do. But first he will cut off all aid to Ukraine. Then let Putin take the rest of the Donbas, and only then broker a peace deal. That will also likely exclude Ukraine from future NATO membership.
The GOP natsec hawks know exactly what Trump is. And to whom he is beholden. But they're terrified of him; as all who have opposed him have been primaried out (Cheney, Kinzinger, etc.).
That’s possible. In a way, it would be a backhanded relief to think Trump has a perfect, diabolically constructed plan here.
Problem is, he’s likely just winging it. Moreover, Ukraine, Russia, China, Taiwan, and more all get a vote here. It’s not like any of the villains here are under any obligation to abide by any “peace” Trump brokers, much less to bolster his political standing.
I tend to rather believe Trump, MAGA, the GOP, and the powers-that-be more broadly have no idea what they are doing, and that their brilliant plans for “peace” in the world are about to crash into a wall.
Don’t know if that’s necessarily a less-dark vision, given the consequences. But it does give MAGA less credit for savvy or advantage than many are currently willing to.
That's not a "meme", that's a legitimate and very serious question.
Taiwan is not interested in defending itself. Look at the way they run their army, how they spend their military budget (which is far too low for their position) and so on. Nothing about their stance indicates any serious concern for fighting a defensive war. There are also opinion polls that show most Taiwanese would rather just be absorbed into the PRC than fight to defend themselves.
Given that situation, why _should_ the USA fight for Taiwan? Chip factories? Not good enough, nobody wants to go fight and die for some fabs especially as the west has plenty that are good enough already.
That could be the case and who knows, maybe they're right.
But, Taiwan has been defended by the USA since the 1950s! China was in no position to take on the USA at any point since then up until very recently. So that long history does not necessarily mean anything, as China's military position is very different now to how it was in the past.
Good points all. It's weird to think this, but maybe it's not too irrational to doubt PRC aggression if they have threatened for 77 years without attacking. I mean, they do look more threatening and serious, and the timing seems right, but it has been 77 years of "no bite, only bark." Personally I would endorse preparing like there's no tomorrow, but their complacency is understandable to some extent.
Taiwan's current fate mirrors that of the Czechs in '37. If Trump/GOP pulls a Chamberlain and surrenders Taiwan to Xi as an act of appeasement, it will only guarantee further Chinese conquests, and dishearten our allies.
World war with China is approaching. Because that is what the Chines Communist Party wants. It is likely unavoidable unless we bolster--not abandon--our allies and alliances.
The French surrendered to Hitler rather than see Paris destroyed. The Taiwanese might have a similar instinct. It's not crazy to submit to a dictatorship rather than an ultimately suicidal gesture of resistance. Taiwan cannot stand against China alone and it's not clear at all that a fickle United States will assist them, leaving aside the question of whether we even should.
I am hopeful that Xi Jinping will die or otherwise be removed from power before China makes a serious effort to take Taiwan. But it is probably inevitable that this reunification happens eventually. Might as well try and resist it as long as possible, like Hong Kong did, but the end result will most likely be the same.
If Taiwan has anything like the violent schisms in French government that rendered the far right, under Petain, willing to collaborate with the likes of Hitler to crush the communists, socialists, and liberals they despised more than freedom itself, you may be right.
If not, probably not.
And Taiwan and Hong Kong are barely comparable analogies.
One is a city that has been under a slowly constricting vice from Beijing for 28 years after a voluntary handover; the other is an independent country of 22 million people with its own government, democracy, and military.
I think we’re all going to be shocked by how much they truly do not believe in the “inevitability of reunification”, under Xi Jinping’s terms. Even those who join them in that unbelief.
There's no real way to resolve this debate even if they're invaded, as it's impossible to tell apart "we surrendered because although we truly believe in freedom and want to fight we were outmatched" and "we surrendered because we don't really want to give it everything we have and don't think life as part of China would be so bad". From the outside they look pretty similar.
Ukrainian attitudes towards Russia were quite favorable pre-2014. Sort of like Czech attitudes towards Germany pre-1936. But after Russia forcibly took Crimea, and occupied parts of the Donbas with Spetsnaz dressed as separatists, Ukrainian sentiment dramatically changed.
You seem to regard the things I “believe” here with puzzlement at best. I’m guessing you have experience of your own to counteract it. Curious as to what that is.
All I have to say for the moment is: Watch and see.
What are the hard-fought Natsec industrial gains that Biden and the democrats made? The now idle electric car factories, or the unbuilt charging stations? The only Natsec advances I see are from SpaceX, which are not things Biden even celebrates let alone was responsible for.
Given that the owner of SpaceX has decided to openly take China’s and Russia’s respective sides in their ongoing/impending wars of conquest, I would reconsider any reflexive defense of him on matters of national security if I were you.
Noah has multiple recent articles on the subject of Biden’s hard-fought natsec industrial gains, if you’re interested in a scroll. He even praises Elon Musk a little, in a heavily qualified, non-worshipful, manner.
Ok, so there is one idle electric car factory in Italy but none in the United States. The electric car segment is the fastest growing segment of automobile production and sales, but companies had been rushing ahead thinking it would grow even faster than it actually has, and so there is some pulling back on production. That doesn’t sound like idle factories to me.
Noah, I will have to think longer on the hard ( in so many ways) information you offer, but I am struck as i often am by the profound empathy with which you offer it. I am too often too silent in my appreciation but you are something of a treasure!
being Ukrainian I felt exactly the same right before the invasion started. I remember that feeling 4 days before the invasion. People were living thier usual life, getting used to news about russia threats. Nobody were ready to deal with full-scale war yet the pressure in the air was felt immensly.
As someone in their mid 20's, seeing the world go back to Great Power Politics, after hearing and learning so much about how horrific it was, is foreboding.
Noah is right. Being able to see where the future might go is terrifying
Encourage your peers to read history. WWI and II were indeed horrific. When Brexit was being voted on in the UK I reminded my young nieces and nephews that one of the reasons we had the EU was to avoid another continental or even global war, but they had no perception of just how awful that would be.
How old were these nieces and nephews exactly? If you had to "remind" them, presumably old enough to vote?
If so then I can guarantee you that your nephews understand the awfulness of war far better than you probably do. They have for sure played highly realistic simulations of WW1 and WW2 which leave the player in no doubt that they would die almost immediately if they were fighting for real. There's no "retry from last save" in real life.
If they ignored you it's because they don't think the existence of the EU has any effect on whether they end up in a war or not. And that belief is correct!
Like many others here, Noah, I believe this may be your best piece ever. "Wars of choice" is perhaps the most striking phrase. We know the outcome, and yet narcissistic men (yes, always men) continue to choose war when there is no impending economic or military reason to start one. In Russia, North Korea or China one could argue that the people have no choice but to go along, and in any case, they probably don't know that there is a choice, as they only see the information that their so-called leaders allow. But in the US, we know there is a choice, and yet we choose the narcissist. Noah, I hope somehow the world makes better choices this year.
When one of your favorite writers comes to Taipei, looks around, and is like, “Yup you’re all fucked” 😂 😭 . “Happy New Year Taiwan! Just a reminder of the impending doom you are all facing”...It’s only the 2nd day of the year and this might be the most chilling piece I will read all year. Don’t think I can remember another article that has me rethinking my entire life like this lol!
Jokes aside, I am grateful you wrote this. The Taiwanese have been living under this threat for a very long time. Both of my grandfathers joined Taiwan's military over 40-50 years ago when they were around my age (23) in preparation for a Chinese invasion. But the threat now, in 2025 (first time writing that lol), has become as real as ever. Yet most Taiwanese people don't ever think about it. It's interesting. In the US, it's all you hear. Most of the headlines about "Taiwan", are either about TSMC, Jensen Huang, or in the context of a Chinese invasion. But in Taiwan, people go on about their lives as if the threat doesn't exist. They've lived under this looming cloud since the day they were born, so much so that it has become just another part of the sky—one cloud among many.
Taiwan is such a great country. Rich culture, safe cities, with talented, kind, and humble people. There’s so much I can say about why I love this place. I loved it so much that I moved to Taipei from California this past year. I really hope Xi and the CCP don’t fuck things up, and I am betting (my life, apparently) that they won’t in the next 1-2 years. But hey who knows. You’re right. The fabric of the world is changing. The Taiwanese people should have a little less equanimity and little more urgency.
Most of us, including Noah are not old enough to remember the awful 13 days in October of 1962 when the world waited with bated breath for resolution or Armageddon. And that Armageddon was only a pale reflection of what we could do to ourselves today.
I was 17, born just exactly five months before the Enola Gay opened her bomb bay doors over Hiroshima; a plank owner in the first generation of human beings to grow up under the nuclear cloud. By the time Kennedy addressed the nation that first evening, I had read many of that whole first generation of nuclear novels - Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon, Philip Wylie’s Tomorrow, Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, and the best and most frightening of them, Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. I had seen the pictures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I had lain awake many nights as a tween, believing that I would not live to be twenty. I walked nearly frozen with fear all through a beautiful Connecticut summer afternoon after Dwight Eisenhower send Marines into Lebanon because a radio announcer I chanced to hear noted that we didn’t know what the Russians might do, and for over an hour I watched a lovely sky for Russian bombers and the end of my life.
And I’d never lived through a war, but it did not take much imagination to understand what we could do to each other if the genie came out of the bottle again. MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), that lunatic watchword that characterized the Cold War was never far from my mind as we ducked under our desks and chuckled wryly with each other about ‘kissing our sweet asses goodbye', heard people arguing about what they’d if the neighbors tried to get into their backyard bomb shelters when the sirens wailed, listened to where the nearest Civil Defece shelters were and imagined how packed with terrified people they would be.
That time is gone, briefly resurrected when the movies The Day After and Threads came out and then buried again.
We’ve been playing this game for over four thousand years (check out the Vulture Stele in the Louvre) and never learned that killing each other en masse has never solved anything with any kind of permanence. War is a monument to sheer human blindness and stupidity, but up until August 6th, 1945 it was containable. We simply lacked the capacity to utter destroy our whole world. Now we have it, and every time I hear some pundit talking bravely about preparations for the next one, I think of Simonides:
“Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here at their command we lie”.
In that simple couplet I hear four thousand years of anguish, horror, fear, loss, madness, and the agony of the dead. Yes, it was written to honor Spartan heroes, but they finally gained nothing but a brief respite.
I’m nearly 80, and so I can look at this time of newly increasing madness with some measure of 'I’ve had a full life”. equanimity.
This was a wonderful and powerful piece. It moved me. Thank you Noah.
As usual, I think you misrepresent the progressive stance (I consider myself an FDR progressive, and feel there really isn't any elected representation of this view - but that's semantics).
Beautifully written and gut-wrenching piece, Noah. Thanks for speaking up for Taiwan. As someone living in Taiwan who sees its hard-won democratic life every day, it means a lot to me (and to so many others).
Thanks, Michelle!
A great read.
But deep down, I think that everything else you discuss is subordinate to this paragraph:
"The only possible answer here is that the world is created anew each generation. We still call China by the same name, we still draw it the same on a map, but essentially all of the people who remember the Long March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the Battle of Shanghai are dead and gone. The hard-won wisdom that they received as inadequate compensation for suffering through those terrible events has vanished into the entropy of history, and their descendants have only war movies and books and half-remembered tales to give them thin, shadowed glimpses."
There are two threads implicit here.
One is human nature. I am an old man, but I have never resolved myself to human nature as it actually exists. Anyone who absorbs global history over the centuries has to face the fact that mass freedom or happiness is accidental; rather it's the individual and group drive for power and dominance that determines history. Everywhere I look, on all continents and at almost all times, those who thought that they could take from their neighbors and subjugate their neighbors did so. Especially if their neighbors were doing well and, perhaps, focused more on enjoyment of their blessings than on strength.
Humans, of course, are far from alone in this nature. I am a bird watcher, and every year I watch the birdie equivalent; Cardinals break their necks fighting the Cardinals in the window, and Robins lie dying along the roadside caring to their final breath only about the expansion of their territory.
The other thread here involves the protective qualities of memory. However, from the caves to Sumeria to Rome to 1945, memory alone rarely served as an antidote to human nature. So what changed after World War II? I would argue that it was communications technology. Print became truly dominant only when steam power made printed material almost universally accessible, and, like all technologies but especially communications and transportation technologies, it profoundly changed humans. In large part because print was a memory multiplier. It vastly increased the reflection upon past experience and wisdom, to the point that this reflective nature became a deep seated cultural value. Such that reflective and wise became attractive traits in leaders. Especially once the World Wars were entered into humanity's memory bank.
Of course, this change in human history resulted in winners and losers. The United States was probably the biggest beneficiary; racing under a yellow flag is great when you have the lead. The spiritual descendants of raiders and pirates were the losers, as were individuals who otherwise might have risen in life through physical might.
When you bemoan the lack of memory of, say, the Rape of Nanking, you are really bemoaning the replacement of print society with online society, which turns out to favor an entirely different kind of thinking, and privileges different voices. Reflective voices lose; bristling aggression wins, and thus looks attractive in prospective leaders. Including in democracies. And all the more so, because we have a substantial reservoir of discontents who really were disadvantaged in the print era, and whose discontent has long been mocked by print society.
So, I don't know about the world being recreated anew every generation -- such rapid change is a very modern phenomenon. But I am pretty sure that this generation does indeed face a world fundamentally different from the one I was born into. And I don't believe that we Americans are doing any better at facing up to serious threats than are the Taiwanese partiers.
I do wonder if the combat footage all over social media will make people less likely to want war--if seeing the injured Russian soldier running slowly around his tank while a kamikaze drone follows him getting closer and closer until it detonates and the video feed ends, or if seeing 30 minute long, 1080p GoPro footage of trench warfare will make the horrors of war more legible to current generations.
Certainly an interesting question.
During the American Civil War, trail blazing war photography of skeletal remains of soldiers lying untended months after battle dimmed war enthusiasm.
However, this applies to social media is unclear, though.
1) To what extent will it be believed, what with the advent of easy fake images?
2) Will such imagery bring reflective caution about war, or fear that strengthens the hands of strongman type leaders?
One ought to be cautious in trusting the dour view of the future spouted by the elderly (that would be me). But I know enough about history to know that for time out of mind human beings routinely waged aggressive war in spite of having personally witnessed the horrors of war. For me, it is a hard sell that somehow visual imagery of war atrocities will now prevent aggressive war, absent the aberrations of a print based culture and its distinctive impact on leadership, democracy, and thinking styles.
Yeah, upon further reflection I'm not sure seeing the horror of war helps much. Its sort of like how many antiwar movies get reinterpreted as pro-war movies as they age (or sometimes immediately).
The reaction to the Ukraine war in most of the west is apathy. Most people are too far removed from war to have any clear concept of it. Seeing terrible images on a screen does not shake people like it should.
Good on Noah for speaking clearly about the threat from Xi. But I fear most people will continue to just ignore the possibility.
I agree, but I'm not sure that the thing that bothers me the most is the lack of reaction to screen images. As my father told me more than a half century ago, it simply does not work to absorb the entirety of the planet's pain and inhumanity. All you end up doing is fry all the circuits, so to speak.
The thing that disturbs me is that America WAS worked up over the Ukraine. I Iive and spend a lot of time in red America, and Ukrainian flags and symbols of support were everywhere. And the same seemed to be true on liberal leaning websites I read. Yet this drifted into apathy over a VERY few years.
Maybe it's just Trump and his messaging. Or maybe it's polarization in general -- with two factions at each other's throats, it's inevitable that whatever the in party does, the out party will seek to undermine.
Maybe it's an essential popular misunderstanding of foreign policy. So much that we have done post WWII was sold on moral grounds, when, in truth, we were doing what was best for our country. This was effective in winning over the vast middle of the country, but the moral grounds always offended the right, and the inconsistencies always offended the left. (How dare we fail to intercede on the side of morality everywhere in the world!) The trouble is that our center is now much weakened.
Maybe it's all a part of the move away from a print society. Print encourages a longer attention span, and most everything today pushes in the opposite direction.
And maybe it is endemic to democracies. There are myriad advantages to representative government, but bursts of emotion followed by waning interest -- that has been the Achilles heel of such systems all the way back to antiquity. That, and the tendency to wait for a crisis before reacting.
But whatever the cause, this is America's #1 weakness, even more alarming than lack of production of key stuff. Our rivals, large and small, have learned that the way to defeat America is to out wait us. Survive the initial American outburst, and soon we will lose interest. This synergizes extremely poorly with our diminished manufacturing capacity.
Wow. Well said. Yikes.
Holy shit Noah, this is the best thing you have ever written!
Part of Taiwan’s magic is the looming threat and awareness of mortality. You can feel it in Jerusalem as well.
That doesn't feel the same, at least not on a poetic level. Taiwan is facing a much larger, much more aggressive, and much more powerful enemy on it's doorstep. Israel on the other hand is (with the help of western weapons) the dominant power in it's section of the middle east. If a hot war broke out with Iran, I would put money on Israel coming out on top. Nothing even close can be said of Taiwan.
Your pessimism is justified, I'm afraid. The fact that 77 million Americans voted for a malignant narcissist and convicted felon who thinks he is above the law (and appointed 3 Supreme Court justices who agree with him) and disrespects our allies shows that most voters are short-sighted and not concerned at all about the people in other countries (even allied countries). In 3 weeks power-hungry sociopaths will lead the 3 countries with the largest nuclear arsenals and the largest militaries. Trump makes it clear he wants to bully weaker countries, not help our allies, and sees Putin and Xi as role models he is eager to please and emulate. If Rubio and Waltz , and Republican senators, can stand up to Trump and support our alliances, there may be hope for Taiwan. Otherwise, I'm afraid Trump will allow Xi to blockade it, strangle it and then invade.
Depressing, but hard cold truth that is desperately needed in these dark times.
Thanks for writing this.
Yes. Eerily like the 1934-39 build up to the Second War War. Let us hope that the hard-fought Natsec industrial gains of Biden and the Dems will not be undone by a GOP eager to placate Trump. Who in turn is ever eager to do Putin's bidding.
As to whether the Trump Administration will fight to defend Taiwan when the moment arises, look only to FOX News. If they're pushing the meme of "Why should we shed our blood to defend Taiwan, when they won't even defend themselves?"...then Taiwan's fate is sealed.
I think the most likely endgame is the carnage Noah envisions, both in Taiwan and Ukraine, shocking the entire US right wing out of their current blunt stupidity.
Likely they’ll try to blame it on Biden and Democrats, and possibly even use the chaos abroad as yet another excuse for authoritarian misrule in the U.S. They’ll fail. We’ll likely see now as MAGA’s all-time high water mark, before the fall.
Of course, that all is cold comfort for Taiwan. And the hopes of free people around the world in general. But still.
My outlook is a bit darker, as I'm 99% convinced Trump is an FSB asset--and likely has been since the early '90's. If he tells the GOP establishment that a humiliating peace for Ukraine is necessary, but first takes the time to successfully sell it to the MAGA base via FOX News, Newmax, etc.; then publicly calls upon the GOP Congress to support him, they'll fold--especially the House. Like they almost always do. But first he will cut off all aid to Ukraine. Then let Putin take the rest of the Donbas, and only then broker a peace deal. That will also likely exclude Ukraine from future NATO membership.
The GOP natsec hawks know exactly what Trump is. And to whom he is beholden. But they're terrified of him; as all who have opposed him have been primaried out (Cheney, Kinzinger, etc.).
That’s possible. In a way, it would be a backhanded relief to think Trump has a perfect, diabolically constructed plan here.
Problem is, he’s likely just winging it. Moreover, Ukraine, Russia, China, Taiwan, and more all get a vote here. It’s not like any of the villains here are under any obligation to abide by any “peace” Trump brokers, much less to bolster his political standing.
I tend to rather believe Trump, MAGA, the GOP, and the powers-that-be more broadly have no idea what they are doing, and that their brilliant plans for “peace” in the world are about to crash into a wall.
Don’t know if that’s necessarily a less-dark vision, given the consequences. But it does give MAGA less credit for savvy or advantage than many are currently willing to.
Lots of parallels to 1934-39, but also 1900-1914. Neither is a good precedent.
That's not a "meme", that's a legitimate and very serious question.
Taiwan is not interested in defending itself. Look at the way they run their army, how they spend their military budget (which is far too low for their position) and so on. Nothing about their stance indicates any serious concern for fighting a defensive war. There are also opinion polls that show most Taiwanese would rather just be absorbed into the PRC than fight to defend themselves.
Given that situation, why _should_ the USA fight for Taiwan? Chip factories? Not good enough, nobody wants to go fight and die for some fabs especially as the west has plenty that are good enough already.
Funny thing about opinion polls on opposition to wars of self-defense; they tend to flip upside down once the bombs start dropping.
See U.S. history thereof (and not just of World War II).
Likely the Taiwanese simply don’t believe China will do what they’ve been threatening to do, for 77 years.
Also, like most current Americans, they think/hope/imagine/hallucinate that war being bad for business is an all-powerful deterrent.
That could be the case and who knows, maybe they're right.
But, Taiwan has been defended by the USA since the 1950s! China was in no position to take on the USA at any point since then up until very recently. So that long history does not necessarily mean anything, as China's military position is very different now to how it was in the past.
Good points all. It's weird to think this, but maybe it's not too irrational to doubt PRC aggression if they have threatened for 77 years without attacking. I mean, they do look more threatening and serious, and the timing seems right, but it has been 77 years of "no bite, only bark." Personally I would endorse preparing like there's no tomorrow, but their complacency is understandable to some extent.
Wrong. Actually, 67% of Taiwanese would fight the PLA/PLAN; while 23% would not:
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2024/10/10/2003825053
Taiwan's current fate mirrors that of the Czechs in '37. If Trump/GOP pulls a Chamberlain and surrenders Taiwan to Xi as an act of appeasement, it will only guarantee further Chinese conquests, and dishearten our allies.
World war with China is approaching. Because that is what the Chines Communist Party wants. It is likely unavoidable unless we bolster--not abandon--our allies and alliances.
There are other polls that give different results. It's not clear why.
The French surrendered to Hitler rather than see Paris destroyed. The Taiwanese might have a similar instinct. It's not crazy to submit to a dictatorship rather than an ultimately suicidal gesture of resistance. Taiwan cannot stand against China alone and it's not clear at all that a fickle United States will assist them, leaving aside the question of whether we even should.
I am hopeful that Xi Jinping will die or otherwise be removed from power before China makes a serious effort to take Taiwan. But it is probably inevitable that this reunification happens eventually. Might as well try and resist it as long as possible, like Hong Kong did, but the end result will most likely be the same.
If Taiwan has anything like the violent schisms in French government that rendered the far right, under Petain, willing to collaborate with the likes of Hitler to crush the communists, socialists, and liberals they despised more than freedom itself, you may be right.
If not, probably not.
And Taiwan and Hong Kong are barely comparable analogies.
One is a city that has been under a slowly constricting vice from Beijing for 28 years after a voluntary handover; the other is an independent country of 22 million people with its own government, democracy, and military.
I think we’re all going to be shocked by how much they truly do not believe in the “inevitability of reunification”, under Xi Jinping’s terms. Even those who join them in that unbelief.
There's no real way to resolve this debate even if they're invaded, as it's impossible to tell apart "we surrendered because although we truly believe in freedom and want to fight we were outmatched" and "we surrendered because we don't really want to give it everything we have and don't think life as part of China would be so bad". From the outside they look pretty similar.
Ukrainian attitudes towards Russia were quite favorable pre-2014. Sort of like Czech attitudes towards Germany pre-1936. But after Russia forcibly took Crimea, and occupied parts of the Donbas with Spetsnaz dressed as separatists, Ukrainian sentiment dramatically changed.
Why do you believe the things that you do? Do you have relatives or close connections to Taiwan?
For the record, I spent a summer there. And yes.
You seem to regard the things I “believe” here with puzzlement at best. I’m guessing you have experience of your own to counteract it. Curious as to what that is.
All I have to say for the moment is: Watch and see.
What are the hard-fought Natsec industrial gains that Biden and the democrats made? The now idle electric car factories, or the unbuilt charging stations? The only Natsec advances I see are from SpaceX, which are not things Biden even celebrates let alone was responsible for.
Given that the owner of SpaceX has decided to openly take China’s and Russia’s respective sides in their ongoing/impending wars of conquest, I would reconsider any reflexive defense of him on matters of national security if I were you.
Noah has multiple recent articles on the subject of Biden’s hard-fought natsec industrial gains, if you’re interested in a scroll. He even praises Elon Musk a little, in a heavily qualified, non-worshipful, manner.
Recommended, FWIW.
What idle electric car factories?
Ford cut production of F150 Lightning in half at its Dearborn factory reducing shifts and idling workers.
GM cut production of its EVs by 50,000 and laid off EV assembly line workers.
https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/gm-cuts-ev-production-forecast-50000-north-america/
https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/gm-layoffs-electric-vehicle-production/
Stellantis reduced production in the US and suspended EV building in Mirafiori.
https://www.topspeed.com/fiat-500e-maserati-ev-production-line-suspended-until-early-2025/
Ok, so there is one idle electric car factory in Italy but none in the United States. The electric car segment is the fastest growing segment of automobile production and sales, but companies had been rushing ahead thinking it would grow even faster than it actually has, and so there is some pulling back on production. That doesn’t sound like idle factories to me.
Noah, I will have to think longer on the hard ( in so many ways) information you offer, but I am struck as i often am by the profound empathy with which you offer it. I am too often too silent in my appreciation but you are something of a treasure!
Thanks, Penelope!
being Ukrainian I felt exactly the same right before the invasion started. I remember that feeling 4 days before the invasion. People were living thier usual life, getting used to news about russia threats. Nobody were ready to deal with full-scale war yet the pressure in the air was felt immensly.
As someone in their mid 20's, seeing the world go back to Great Power Politics, after hearing and learning so much about how horrific it was, is foreboding.
Noah is right. Being able to see where the future might go is terrifying
Encourage your peers to read history. WWI and II were indeed horrific. When Brexit was being voted on in the UK I reminded my young nieces and nephews that one of the reasons we had the EU was to avoid another continental or even global war, but they had no perception of just how awful that would be.
How old were these nieces and nephews exactly? If you had to "remind" them, presumably old enough to vote?
If so then I can guarantee you that your nephews understand the awfulness of war far better than you probably do. They have for sure played highly realistic simulations of WW1 and WW2 which leave the player in no doubt that they would die almost immediately if they were fighting for real. There's no "retry from last save" in real life.
If they ignored you it's because they don't think the existence of the EU has any effect on whether they end up in a war or not. And that belief is correct!
Like many others here, Noah, I believe this may be your best piece ever. "Wars of choice" is perhaps the most striking phrase. We know the outcome, and yet narcissistic men (yes, always men) continue to choose war when there is no impending economic or military reason to start one. In Russia, North Korea or China one could argue that the people have no choice but to go along, and in any case, they probably don't know that there is a choice, as they only see the information that their so-called leaders allow. But in the US, we know there is a choice, and yet we choose the narcissist. Noah, I hope somehow the world makes better choices this year.
When one of your favorite writers comes to Taipei, looks around, and is like, “Yup you’re all fucked” 😂 😭 . “Happy New Year Taiwan! Just a reminder of the impending doom you are all facing”...It’s only the 2nd day of the year and this might be the most chilling piece I will read all year. Don’t think I can remember another article that has me rethinking my entire life like this lol!
Jokes aside, I am grateful you wrote this. The Taiwanese have been living under this threat for a very long time. Both of my grandfathers joined Taiwan's military over 40-50 years ago when they were around my age (23) in preparation for a Chinese invasion. But the threat now, in 2025 (first time writing that lol), has become as real as ever. Yet most Taiwanese people don't ever think about it. It's interesting. In the US, it's all you hear. Most of the headlines about "Taiwan", are either about TSMC, Jensen Huang, or in the context of a Chinese invasion. But in Taiwan, people go on about their lives as if the threat doesn't exist. They've lived under this looming cloud since the day they were born, so much so that it has become just another part of the sky—one cloud among many.
Taiwan is such a great country. Rich culture, safe cities, with talented, kind, and humble people. There’s so much I can say about why I love this place. I loved it so much that I moved to Taipei from California this past year. I really hope Xi and the CCP don’t fuck things up, and I am betting (my life, apparently) that they won’t in the next 1-2 years. But hey who knows. You’re right. The fabric of the world is changing. The Taiwanese people should have a little less equanimity and little more urgency.
Might not be what you're looking for, but there is "As I Walked Out One Evening" by WH Auden.
I made a rare foray into this comment section for affirmation that this piece was AMAZING. It wasn't just me
Most of us, including Noah are not old enough to remember the awful 13 days in October of 1962 when the world waited with bated breath for resolution or Armageddon. And that Armageddon was only a pale reflection of what we could do to ourselves today.
I was 17, born just exactly five months before the Enola Gay opened her bomb bay doors over Hiroshima; a plank owner in the first generation of human beings to grow up under the nuclear cloud. By the time Kennedy addressed the nation that first evening, I had read many of that whole first generation of nuclear novels - Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon, Philip Wylie’s Tomorrow, Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, and the best and most frightening of them, Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. I had seen the pictures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I had lain awake many nights as a tween, believing that I would not live to be twenty. I walked nearly frozen with fear all through a beautiful Connecticut summer afternoon after Dwight Eisenhower send Marines into Lebanon because a radio announcer I chanced to hear noted that we didn’t know what the Russians might do, and for over an hour I watched a lovely sky for Russian bombers and the end of my life.
And I’d never lived through a war, but it did not take much imagination to understand what we could do to each other if the genie came out of the bottle again. MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), that lunatic watchword that characterized the Cold War was never far from my mind as we ducked under our desks and chuckled wryly with each other about ‘kissing our sweet asses goodbye', heard people arguing about what they’d if the neighbors tried to get into their backyard bomb shelters when the sirens wailed, listened to where the nearest Civil Defece shelters were and imagined how packed with terrified people they would be.
That time is gone, briefly resurrected when the movies The Day After and Threads came out and then buried again.
We’ve been playing this game for over four thousand years (check out the Vulture Stele in the Louvre) and never learned that killing each other en masse has never solved anything with any kind of permanence. War is a monument to sheer human blindness and stupidity, but up until August 6th, 1945 it was containable. We simply lacked the capacity to utter destroy our whole world. Now we have it, and every time I hear some pundit talking bravely about preparations for the next one, I think of Simonides:
“Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here at their command we lie”.
In that simple couplet I hear four thousand years of anguish, horror, fear, loss, madness, and the agony of the dead. Yes, it was written to honor Spartan heroes, but they finally gained nothing but a brief respite.
I’m nearly 80, and so I can look at this time of newly increasing madness with some measure of 'I’ve had a full life”. equanimity.
For the rest of you youngsters, good luck.
Don't you mean The Day After (the nuclear war movie) as opposed to The Day After Tomorrow (the climate catastrophe movie)?
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
--Robert Frost
This was a wonderful and powerful piece. It moved me. Thank you Noah.
As usual, I think you misrepresent the progressive stance (I consider myself an FDR progressive, and feel there really isn't any elected representation of this view - but that's semantics).
Thanks for the morning cheer, Noah. Jesus.
Man. You put me right back under my 1963 3rd grade desk with blaring nuclear war air raid sirens.