Oct 15, 2023·edited Oct 15, 2023Liked by Noah Smith
Good post. More antiship missiles for Taiwan, please.
Sure, Xi has a lot of ships. But missiles are cheaper. The USA can still outspend Xi if our strategy is missile-per-ship instead of ship-per-ship.
Xi can't invade, or even gracefully blockade, if Taiwan has a porcupine's worth of missiles to saturate Xi's navy with explosives. Heck, if you expect in advance that you'll get all your precious ships sunk to the bottom of the Taiwan Strait, you don't launch a war in the first place.
If Taiwan is well-armed enough, far in advance enough, this whole disaster can be deterred.
Another wrench to throw in is what happens if America re-elects a self-obsessed autocrat as president? The former president has remarked on how little he cares about Taiwan (quoted in John Bolton's book) and is generally inept and unreliable. What would re-electing him say to Taiwan and China (let alone Japan, NATO, Ukraine, etc)? We need to do what you say: rebuild the defense-industrial base, diversify out of China, build deterrence through strength and allies... but all these things require competence and planning and trust from allies. The world is in a dangerous moment and it makes the work of defeating Donald Trump especially urgent.
Electronic components. Not just microprocessors, GPUs and 3nm silicon processes. Resistors, capacitors, transistors, batteries, LEDs, servo-motors, mechanical switches, etc. Optical components. Copper, nickel, rare earth elements (see the debacle that was the Molycorp mine in Mountain Pass, CA.)
Thanks Noah, I didn't have enough to keep me awake at night already!
'Pearl Harbour 2' and Japan's involvement are only some of the ways for America to become involved. Things can spiral in other, more chaotic, ways also. Blockades, counter-coalitions, China's many other border disputes, etc. It is never a nice simple choice of fighting an invasion of Taiwan or not. It is worth remembering how surprising people found many of the events leading up to both world war 1 and 2 at the time, even as they look obvious in hindsight.
Interesting to see how Poland is preparing here in Europe. If any country should have learned the lesson of being prepared for the unexpected in a world at war it is Poland. We should all try to understand that perspective.
Darn it, Noah! You're usually so optimistic, but lately it's all gloom. Unfortunately, your pessimism is seeming well justified these days. One upside fiscally speaking is that in the face of actual war, Republican resistance to increased taxation might collapse. Always assuming, of course, they won't just want us to surrender to Putin and Xi.
"doesn’t seem atypical; when I read personal accounts of World War 2, I’m always astonished by how the narrators discounted the possibility of America entering the war all the way up until they minute the bombs started falling on Pearl Harbor."
RE above excerpt, reminds me of scene from The Big Short. Brownfield/Cornwall Capital (the hedge fund operated from their Dad's garage) explains their investment strategy. In simple terms, humans have a tendency to discount the possibility of bad things happening as they don't like it when bad things happen. They found investment opportunities arising from this skewed cognitive bias.
Read over to current day, the idea of war between Taiwan and China is so unappetisingly bad, most won't believe it until China lands troops on a Taiwanese beach.
The obvious solution is to give the missiles to Taiwan. Then Xi doesn't need to game out US or Japanese responses. He can be assured the Taiwanese will sink his fleet (which is planned to consist mainly of converted civilian ferries). He can draw on Putin's experience in the Black Sea, against an adversary with no navy and home-produced anti-ship missiles, to work out the odds.
A couple of quibbles: 1) You left off North Korea, from the Axis group. It is small, but it also brings to mind, that unlike the U.S. and its allies, this Axis is geographically connected. 2) It was not Cassandra's fault she was not believed, that was Apollo's doing, for not loving him.
You are completely right about our over dependence on China, and our desperate need to both diversify, and ramp up the military munitions budget.
What the program looks like now, is that a prolonged war, Ala Russia and Ukraine, with outside help, can go on a long time, something that I believe Xi has no interest in. Iran is next up versus Israel, as the follow up to Hamas Israel. With our aircraft carriers in the region, that should be interesting and useful for Xi, as he plans his next step. If the U.S. is willing to do whatever it takes, to borrow a current phrase, Xi may or may not rethink his position depending on the outcome and how quickly it unfolds. Xi game at the moment, in my view, is a watch and wait, and see how things progress outside his realm, before being overly hasty, not unlike Mussolini and Italy, prior to the fall of France.
Your list of preparedness, in 1940 FDR increased the army by a 100,000, after the election. While Biden may well want to wait till after the election, am not sure, like you, that he has the time.
Rebuilding the defense-industrial base not only prepares for a war, it helps deter one. Xi is less likely to go to war if he thinks he'll lose than if he thinks he'll win, and his (correctly) viewing us as a paper tiger will make him think he'll win.
New Subscriber today... kinda regret reading this whole article now (HAHA!) But seriously...Terrifying. Do you (or anyone else reading) have articles or books to recommend what Americans should do to prepare for "essentials' if a China-USA war does break out? Being vulnerable here... I dont even know where to begin to be prepared for something like this.
Decent article... all the points are well taken relative to China (supply chain, manufacturing output, Chinese intent). Having said all of that ... it would be extremely irrational for China to attack Taiwan.
If you flip around the dependencies.. the Chinese situation is far more difficult.
1) Food: Chinese food supply is highly dependent on US Agriculture .. disruption here leads to starvation.
2) Energy: China is a massive importer of oil/gas ... disruption here leads to depression
3) Manufacturing: China is a manufacturing superpower based on deep dependencies on supply chain.
Now...this situation may well change with a Russia/China combination with over land transport. This is not there yet.
Now...flipping to your side of the argument. My argument would have been true for the Japanese in WWII. In fact, the strategic dependencies did play out as expected. All this says that countries/leaders do irrational things ....it is better to be vigilant.
I am desperately scrambling to find *some* kind of silver lining in this thundercloud, so here goes:
Since the US needs to up its capacity to produce artillery shells/ships/drones/etc., is there a potential for some kind of win-win here where a massive weapons buildup is pitched both as a patriotic program to keep our nation secure AND a way to provide lots of jobs for non-college-educated folks in the American heartland? You know, the salt-of-the-earth Real Americans who are disrespected and looked down upon by the coastal elites? If enough Democrats threw their support convincingly behind this plan, would it suffice to break Tr*mp's stranglehold over white working class America?
Also, perhaps you could write something about how Ukraine and Israel conflict reveals how defense is now (apparently?) easier than offense... eg one anti-ship missile or a swarm of cheap drones can take out a large ship. Rapid fire guns can take out any number of concentrated soldiers. .. i don't know much about this, but the ukraine coverage on dailykos has other recent examples.
Conceding that no great power can be ready for a major conflict in every respect, there are many ways in which the US (and its allies) is (are) in fact ready:
1. An attack on US facilities would probably result in US/allies counter-attacks on key port facilities of the attacking country; and using small nuclear weapons is not out of the question.
2. The existing SK/Japan shipbuilding capacity alone is almost as large as China's. If you add US, Holland, Italy, France, etc., in a peacetime environment, there is no reason existing capacity can't keep matching China's military output if funds are devoted to building more naval assets across all those shipyards.
3.. The actual existing naval tonnage of US/SK/Japan/Australia/Canada is about 5 times the tonnage of the Chinese navy. Even the number of blue-water ships is larger. What this actually means is that whereas China might be able to establish short-term dominance over its immediate region, in the longer term, without overseas bases, its navy would be swept from the wider ocean. This is a recipe for strategic defeat.
4. The sensible Chinese objective should be to acquire Taiwan intact. It's an economy about the size of Switzerland, at $800 billion. Destroyed and unable to trade it's not worth much. This posits a blockade approach, but such an approach can't involve attacking US bases, etc., since this would force a (legitimate) US response to break the blockade, which would then escalate to a shooting war, which would then take us back to points 1,2, and 3.
5. Short of a Pyrrhic broad nuclear exchange, neither China nor the US can be defeated, so neither power can come close to risking such an outcome, and any action over Taiwan comes too close to that undesirable outcome. So we're not, and they're not, going there -- by necessity.
6. The ultimate solution here (if there's any such thing) is a negotiation involving a transition time frame. Taiwanese subjects ought to be given the time to decide where else to live and take their assets, if they so wish. A great many would probably not mind becoming normal mainland Chinese subjects. Others might want to relocate, including assets owned by foreigners (TSMC is almost entirely owned by Western companies). This is the kind of thing that might be possible to negotiate between great powers, with all due respect to the sensibilities of the Taiwanese people, but sorry, it's a better solution than almost any other for all concerned. It's also something which can be put in place even without any agreement from China.
7. So there are many possible outcomes to this impasse with a limited restructuring of supply networks. There are millions of people to be employed across Asia ex China, Africa and Latin America where there are already suitable governance conditions to create an economic situation more favorable to those countries as well as to the US and its allies. As a good example, Brazilian elites aren't happy at all about the relative de-industrialization of the country even as it has gained a favorable overall balance of trade with China, based on commodities exports. They would like to change that.
Good post. More antiship missiles for Taiwan, please.
Sure, Xi has a lot of ships. But missiles are cheaper. The USA can still outspend Xi if our strategy is missile-per-ship instead of ship-per-ship.
Xi can't invade, or even gracefully blockade, if Taiwan has a porcupine's worth of missiles to saturate Xi's navy with explosives. Heck, if you expect in advance that you'll get all your precious ships sunk to the bottom of the Taiwan Strait, you don't launch a war in the first place.
If Taiwan is well-armed enough, far in advance enough, this whole disaster can be deterred.
Another wrench to throw in is what happens if America re-elects a self-obsessed autocrat as president? The former president has remarked on how little he cares about Taiwan (quoted in John Bolton's book) and is generally inept and unreliable. What would re-electing him say to Taiwan and China (let alone Japan, NATO, Ukraine, etc)? We need to do what you say: rebuild the defense-industrial base, diversify out of China, build deterrence through strength and allies... but all these things require competence and planning and trust from allies. The world is in a dangerous moment and it makes the work of defeating Donald Trump especially urgent.
Electronic components. Not just microprocessors, GPUs and 3nm silicon processes. Resistors, capacitors, transistors, batteries, LEDs, servo-motors, mechanical switches, etc. Optical components. Copper, nickel, rare earth elements (see the debacle that was the Molycorp mine in Mountain Pass, CA.)
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine
Anything that goes into production of weapons systems and ammunition. And that includes the know-how, which we gladly sold off.
See https://www.npr.org/2022/08/09/1116586600/how-the-u-s-gave-away-cutting-edge-technology-to-china
Or let our knowledge of lapse.
See https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/06/raytheon-calls-retirees-help-restart-stinger-missile-production/388067/
Thanks Noah, I didn't have enough to keep me awake at night already!
'Pearl Harbour 2' and Japan's involvement are only some of the ways for America to become involved. Things can spiral in other, more chaotic, ways also. Blockades, counter-coalitions, China's many other border disputes, etc. It is never a nice simple choice of fighting an invasion of Taiwan or not. It is worth remembering how surprising people found many of the events leading up to both world war 1 and 2 at the time, even as they look obvious in hindsight.
Interesting to see how Poland is preparing here in Europe. If any country should have learned the lesson of being prepared for the unexpected in a world at war it is Poland. We should all try to understand that perspective.
Darn it, Noah! You're usually so optimistic, but lately it's all gloom. Unfortunately, your pessimism is seeming well justified these days. One upside fiscally speaking is that in the face of actual war, Republican resistance to increased taxation might collapse. Always assuming, of course, they won't just want us to surrender to Putin and Xi.
Great blog, Noah 👍
"doesn’t seem atypical; when I read personal accounts of World War 2, I’m always astonished by how the narrators discounted the possibility of America entering the war all the way up until they minute the bombs started falling on Pearl Harbor."
RE above excerpt, reminds me of scene from The Big Short. Brownfield/Cornwall Capital (the hedge fund operated from their Dad's garage) explains their investment strategy. In simple terms, humans have a tendency to discount the possibility of bad things happening as they don't like it when bad things happen. They found investment opportunities arising from this skewed cognitive bias.
Read over to current day, the idea of war between Taiwan and China is so unappetisingly bad, most won't believe it until China lands troops on a Taiwanese beach.
Great post. Is it possible you could maybe discuss how the modern US economy would handle such a war? Does the US even have the fiscal space?
The obvious solution is to give the missiles to Taiwan. Then Xi doesn't need to game out US or Japanese responses. He can be assured the Taiwanese will sink his fleet (which is planned to consist mainly of converted civilian ferries). He can draw on Putin's experience in the Black Sea, against an adversary with no navy and home-produced anti-ship missiles, to work out the odds.
A couple of quibbles: 1) You left off North Korea, from the Axis group. It is small, but it also brings to mind, that unlike the U.S. and its allies, this Axis is geographically connected. 2) It was not Cassandra's fault she was not believed, that was Apollo's doing, for not loving him.
You are completely right about our over dependence on China, and our desperate need to both diversify, and ramp up the military munitions budget.
What the program looks like now, is that a prolonged war, Ala Russia and Ukraine, with outside help, can go on a long time, something that I believe Xi has no interest in. Iran is next up versus Israel, as the follow up to Hamas Israel. With our aircraft carriers in the region, that should be interesting and useful for Xi, as he plans his next step. If the U.S. is willing to do whatever it takes, to borrow a current phrase, Xi may or may not rethink his position depending on the outcome and how quickly it unfolds. Xi game at the moment, in my view, is a watch and wait, and see how things progress outside his realm, before being overly hasty, not unlike Mussolini and Italy, prior to the fall of France.
Your list of preparedness, in 1940 FDR increased the army by a 100,000, after the election. While Biden may well want to wait till after the election, am not sure, like you, that he has the time.
Good article.
Chilling, but good overview Noah. One minor quibble - it should read December 7, 1941 rather than 1942 for our entry into World War 2.
Rebuilding the defense-industrial base not only prepares for a war, it helps deter one. Xi is less likely to go to war if he thinks he'll lose than if he thinks he'll win, and his (correctly) viewing us as a paper tiger will make him think he'll win.
New Subscriber today... kinda regret reading this whole article now (HAHA!) But seriously...Terrifying. Do you (or anyone else reading) have articles or books to recommend what Americans should do to prepare for "essentials' if a China-USA war does break out? Being vulnerable here... I dont even know where to begin to be prepared for something like this.
Decent article... all the points are well taken relative to China (supply chain, manufacturing output, Chinese intent). Having said all of that ... it would be extremely irrational for China to attack Taiwan.
If you flip around the dependencies.. the Chinese situation is far more difficult.
1) Food: Chinese food supply is highly dependent on US Agriculture .. disruption here leads to starvation.
2) Energy: China is a massive importer of oil/gas ... disruption here leads to depression
3) Manufacturing: China is a manufacturing superpower based on deep dependencies on supply chain.
Now...this situation may well change with a Russia/China combination with over land transport. This is not there yet.
Now...flipping to your side of the argument. My argument would have been true for the Japanese in WWII. In fact, the strategic dependencies did play out as expected. All this says that countries/leaders do irrational things ....it is better to be vigilant.
I am desperately scrambling to find *some* kind of silver lining in this thundercloud, so here goes:
Since the US needs to up its capacity to produce artillery shells/ships/drones/etc., is there a potential for some kind of win-win here where a massive weapons buildup is pitched both as a patriotic program to keep our nation secure AND a way to provide lots of jobs for non-college-educated folks in the American heartland? You know, the salt-of-the-earth Real Americans who are disrespected and looked down upon by the coastal elites? If enough Democrats threw their support convincingly behind this plan, would it suffice to break Tr*mp's stranglehold over white working class America?
Could you make this a free article?
Also, perhaps you could write something about how Ukraine and Israel conflict reveals how defense is now (apparently?) easier than offense... eg one anti-ship missile or a swarm of cheap drones can take out a large ship. Rapid fire guns can take out any number of concentrated soldiers. .. i don't know much about this, but the ukraine coverage on dailykos has other recent examples.
Conceding that no great power can be ready for a major conflict in every respect, there are many ways in which the US (and its allies) is (are) in fact ready:
1. An attack on US facilities would probably result in US/allies counter-attacks on key port facilities of the attacking country; and using small nuclear weapons is not out of the question.
2. The existing SK/Japan shipbuilding capacity alone is almost as large as China's. If you add US, Holland, Italy, France, etc., in a peacetime environment, there is no reason existing capacity can't keep matching China's military output if funds are devoted to building more naval assets across all those shipyards.
3.. The actual existing naval tonnage of US/SK/Japan/Australia/Canada is about 5 times the tonnage of the Chinese navy. Even the number of blue-water ships is larger. What this actually means is that whereas China might be able to establish short-term dominance over its immediate region, in the longer term, without overseas bases, its navy would be swept from the wider ocean. This is a recipe for strategic defeat.
4. The sensible Chinese objective should be to acquire Taiwan intact. It's an economy about the size of Switzerland, at $800 billion. Destroyed and unable to trade it's not worth much. This posits a blockade approach, but such an approach can't involve attacking US bases, etc., since this would force a (legitimate) US response to break the blockade, which would then escalate to a shooting war, which would then take us back to points 1,2, and 3.
5. Short of a Pyrrhic broad nuclear exchange, neither China nor the US can be defeated, so neither power can come close to risking such an outcome, and any action over Taiwan comes too close to that undesirable outcome. So we're not, and they're not, going there -- by necessity.
6. The ultimate solution here (if there's any such thing) is a negotiation involving a transition time frame. Taiwanese subjects ought to be given the time to decide where else to live and take their assets, if they so wish. A great many would probably not mind becoming normal mainland Chinese subjects. Others might want to relocate, including assets owned by foreigners (TSMC is almost entirely owned by Western companies). This is the kind of thing that might be possible to negotiate between great powers, with all due respect to the sensibilities of the Taiwanese people, but sorry, it's a better solution than almost any other for all concerned. It's also something which can be put in place even without any agreement from China.
7. So there are many possible outcomes to this impasse with a limited restructuring of supply networks. There are millions of people to be employed across Asia ex China, Africa and Latin America where there are already suitable governance conditions to create an economic situation more favorable to those countries as well as to the US and its allies. As a good example, Brazilian elites aren't happy at all about the relative de-industrialization of the country even as it has gained a favorable overall balance of trade with China, based on commodities exports. They would like to change that.