Oct 24, 2022·edited Oct 24, 2022Liked by Noah Smith
I think the fundamental logic here is more or less correct, but complicating the analysis and (IMO) making it even more likely that a Chinese attack on Taiwan precipitates WW3 are a few additional factors you don't get into here.
For one, this isn't a binary game between two actors - other countries which are major or regional powers in their own right will likely have a say in whether the situation escalates (most notably Japan, but possibly also South Korea, Australia, Vietnam, etc.). Okinawa hosts a major US base that is even closer to Taiwan than Guam is, and a Chinese attack on that base would also be an act of war against Japan that would likely make it extremely likely to escalate as well.
Secondly, we live in a much richer information environment than we did in the era of Pearl Harbor - with surveillance satellites, modern signals intelligence, and the like, there's no way China would be able to keep a comprehensive attack against either Taiwan or major US bases a secret until the last second. We'd see it coming and have time to prepare and/or escalate our defensive posture, which might cause the Chinese to think better of it, but also might lead to risky gambles on their part.
Finally there's the vital economic importance of Taiwan - this isn't a relative hinterland like 1938 Czechoslovakia was, this is a country that plays a crucial role in the modern global economy. China invading it would be more akin to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait than to Hitler's pre-war conquests.
I don't think there's any Taiwan invasion scenario that isn't a massive and very dangerous gamble for the CCP. That doesn't mean Xi won't be dumb enough to try it (he doesn't strike me as an especially insightful or competent leader) but we have to hope that he decides the risk isn't worth it.
Czechia/Czechoslovakia wasn't quite as rich as Germany/France/US/UK, but they were still a very developed region on par with Austria, Italy or Japan. Cities like Prague, Pilsen, Brno or Ostrava were major industrial centers.
Czech industry was quite important for the german war machine. E.g. Czech tanks played an important role in both the invasion of Poland and the invasion of France.
That's why I said "relative" hinterland - I agree Czechoslovakia wasn't worthless as an economic production area, but it wasn't on par with Taiwan which is the world's number one producer of an extremely valuable commodity that everybody needs.
Czechoslovakia was a worthwhile economic prize. But there wasn't much economic downside risk to the German invasion: Germany didn't depend on Czechoslovakia the way China depends on Taiwan. If China invades Taiwan, it may destroy a valuable link in its economic chain, either through the death and destruction from military action, or by alienating the trade partners who deal with China through Taiwan.
I feel as though Noah's analysis made sense in a US prior to Trumpism. I have no idea what an isolationist GOP-majority Congress under feckless leadership by McCarthy would choose to do. Can you really envision McCarthy leading the call for war to a pro-Putin base indifferent to war crimes in Ukraine? I have zero faith in a Maga Republican Congress' interest in preventing the destruction of democracy outside the US when they're actively destroying our own democracy with each passing day.
1. I think the GOP's business class is perfectly aware of Taiwan's strategic criticality to US interests, and would pull the necessary strings to get McCarthy on board.
2. If the US is actually attacked, the decisionmaking is no longer in Congress' hands like it was for Pearl Harbor. Under the War Powers Act, the President could immediately retaliate, and that retaliation could easily create the political "facts on the ground" necessary to turn a mere public supermajority for war into a Dec. 8th-like near-unanimous consensus for war. IE, once our airmen and soldiers start dying in the skies above Taiwan, only a token minority might be left opposing a declaration of war.
[Ed: This is what's so scary to con-law nerds about the War Powers Act - it basically puts the ball in the President's court, not Congress's. Although, those same con-law nerds are also usually too cowardly or partisan to endorse real structural reforms that would make Congress more responsive.]
China's military pattern since the revolution is to "slice the salami" with gradual escalations. (Very unlike the Russian coup-de-main approach of all-or-nothing sudden strikes!)
The "salami" Chinese approach forfeits some surprise, but maximizes political flexibility and lets them either push on weakness or pull back from unexpected strength. Also it lets both sides have a face-saving deal.
If that pattern continues, I expect China to blockade, not invade, Taiwan. Much more controllable for Beijing.
We could still get WW3 out of that, of course: suppose America sends a supply convoy to Taiwan, and a Chinese submarine sinks some American ships...
1. I agree with DxS. A blockade is what the Chinese military exercises this past summer simulated, and a blockade seems a less risky and more probable scenario than an invasion. I think it would be interesting to see a war game of a blockade scenario? Is China willing to sink a ship to enforce the blockade? Would the US create military escorts for shipping? How would a blockade scenario play out?
2. In the current invasion game scenario, the game stops after the invasion either succeeds or fails. It's not clear to me that the next step for either party would be to escalate to nuclear war. Would the US initiate nuclear war if the invasion succeeded? I don't think so. Would China initiate nuclear war if an invasion fails? I'm not so sure. Would it be more probable that China would look at the failure of an invasion as a temporary setback? They have a larger economy than the US, and they have a cohesive population that is used to sacrifice and is probably more willing to sacrifice than the US population. In that case, would China devote a much larger percentage of their already larger economy to their military? And when the military balance is more favorable, and they have addressed whatever led to their initial failure, would they again attempt unification?
" It's not clear to me that the next step for either party would be to escalate to nuclear war. Would the US initiate nuclear war if the invasion succeeded? I don't think so. Would China initiate nuclear war if an invasion fails?"
I don't think Noah was insinuating that WW3 = All out nuclear war if that's what you're getting at. Nevertheless, I agree, I don't see China nor the US resorting to nukes over this.
A blockade makes sense only in that it provides flexibility and somewhat easier off ramps for China but I don't think a naval blockade actually causes the amount of pain you think it would for Taiwan. Taiwan can (at great cost) supply it's domestic markets entirely by shipping lanes that don't go through waters China can project its power to.
“they have a cohesive population that is used to sacrifice and is probably more willing to sacrifice than the US population”
I wouldn’t argue that that all. They have a suppressed population, but like any autocracy, a pressurized bottle that keeps the liquid inside from moving may look serene from the outside (certainly no movement) compared to a container where liquid can slosh around, but also is much more likely to explode.
Also, I would say a greater percentage of Americans born after 1978 have more experience of hardship than Chinese of the same age.
I would have said the same about Russia a year ago. But I’ve been really surprised with how much the population is going along with the invasion. Even if their support is tepid, there’s seemingly very little outright resistance.,
To synthesize this with Peter Gerdes objections above, China obviously won't get up one day and launch a snap invasion of Taiwan, because as Peter says the game Noah has laid out leads to the conclusion that they must neutralize US assets in the western pacific first, and the probability is too high that this would lead to nuclear war. So China won't launch an invasion unless it has strong confidence that the US is not committed to intervening. A long term process of invading by inches is how they achieve that.
To make an analogy, Putin was wrong about the strength of Ukrainian resistance, but he must have also had a very clear understanding that he'd face western equipment but not western troops - because he'd all but invaded Ukraine for 8 years already without a single NATO soldier being deployed.
Note that arguing that China will not willingly enter a war with the US is distinct from China building a military that *could* go to war with the US - it's the fear of attacks on Guam that will stop the US intervening when the PRC sends peacekeepers in to stop the lawlessness in Kinmen Province (after 2 years of a total interdiction of all shipping to the island in response to what will of course be Taiwan's own outrageous provocation.)
Ukraine had ability to resist recent Russian full on invasion because of the capabilities it built up since taking of Crimea via supposedly not Russia military and then battles in Donbas.
If China does something limited at first on regards to Taiwan, may make Taiwan and its allies build up better resistance capabilities til it full war. Just as Russian invasion of Ukraine could easily tip into world war, because just more likely for something, someone to go awry now, same for China in Taiwan.
Recent memory of Putin in Ukraine also will inform West and Asian allies. If it was 100 years ago, that lesson would be forgotten but in lives of current leaders...
And this part of my concern with Xis intentions, what recent lessons had China learned about war.
I don't think the example really holds there. Ukraine was able to strengthen itself during the war in the Donbas because:
A) It was starting from an extraordinarily low baseline, so there was really nowhere to go but up.
B) Much of the initial challenge in Ukraine was genuine divisions within the country on whether their loyalty was to a Ukrainian nation-state or some Greater-Russia theory of nationhood centered on Moscow. The intervention unified the Ukrainian nation while removing the most pro-Russia areas from their politic.
C) It is an extraordinarily poor country who's only chance of building a modern military was foreign donations. The war gave a justification for that at a level that would be unthinkable otherwise, especially given Ukraine's historical political alignment.
D) The enemy proved to be a paper tiger with an airforce that isn't able to gain air superiority, and poorly maintained armoured forced lead by incompetent officers.
E) The conflict is ultimately a land war, and given C, the large cadres of infantry veterans they built up over the last 8 year, and armed with western weaponry, are ultimately useful in those circumstances
Taiwan is a rich, relatively unified country that spends >2% of GDP on their military. Arguably they should be spending more, but this isn't a place that's starting from almost nothing the way Ukraine was.
A war between China and Taiwan is going to be fought over the air/sea gap, and capabilities in that support a war like that are built over decades rather than years. You can't build up a navy overnight, and while the market for (at least second line) fighters is relatively liquid, they don't do you any good without trained and experienced pilots, and the costs reach a level that just isn't comparable to what we're talking about in the Ukrainian ground war.
The other piece of the Air/Sea gap issue is that you sort of have to assume a higher level of competence by the attacker - they're not going to be able to take and hold territory with masses of troops and tanks the way the Russians have, so either they have the ability to gain superiority, in which case Taiwan is not going to be able to contest it effectively, or it's all going to be over very quickly and this exercise isn't at all interesting.
On the one hand, we don’t know if the PLA(N), which has been building out hardware but has not fought any conflict in generations (and that one ended badly for them) is a paper tiger either.
On the other hand, honestly, the Taiwanese military and political establishment seriousness about defending themselves is a joke (their deeds do not match their desires and rhetoric at all).
Yeah, see my last para - whether the PLA are a paper tiger or not, the hot phase of this conflict is going to be over quickly. You can't land an invasion force without air superiority and you can't resupply the defenders without it either.
Loss rates on one side or the other will be totally unsustainable in the air/sea war, and it will be over before any makeshift rearmament effort could be put into effect. I suspect the actual invasion if it happens will be a fait accompli.
The US will have to decide to enter the war as a belligerent or stay out of it - the option of resupplying Taiwan as a neutral power won't be available.
And yes, the Taiwanese aren't conducting themselves like they seriously believe they'll need to fight off an invasion in the next 20 years. But their unseriousness is in the style of Germany rather than pre-2014 Ukraine. That obviously makes them more capable, but on the other hand they need a massive military buildup rather than being a hollowed out remnant of the red army, largely equipped with the castoffs of it's now-enemy and rife with corruption.
In some respects that's harder since it's not something that you can fix by conscripting as many military aged males as you can and then giving them 12 weeks training them on foreign provided weapons systems.
I think demographics plays a significant role in the evaluation. I became very concerned about a China attack on Taiwan a decade ago because they had a large surplus of 20-30 year old males due to the one child policy. They had a large number of people in that age group and Chinese families had been selectively having the single child as a son instead of daughter. They still have a large surplus of males, but the 20-30 year old cohort is much smaller than it was a decade ago, so far fewer young people supporting an older population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/File:China_population_sex_by_age_on_Nov,_1st,_2020.png
One reason China has been doing well economically is because they currently have a middle weighted demographic with a very large percentage of their population between 30 and 55 years old, which is the most economically productive group. China is using this period much better than Russia for economic growth, but they are facing potential financial crises at home over the next several years. So we are looking at a potential danger period like what we have seen with Russia, where the country is pining for past greatness and the leaders decide a war to recapture its claimed territory . Rallying around the flag is good for 5-10 years of support barring catastrophic defeat.
I am hoping that China is looking at Russia's experience in Ukraine very carefully, because Russia-China demographics are very similar. The lack of 20-30 year old males in Russia compared to the rest of the population is making it difficult to recruit soldiers. So they are tossing 30-50 year old untrained men into the fight now. That is not going well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
Amphibious assaults on heavily prepared positions are very risky and can result in large losses of life. Deception played a major role in Sicily and Normandy successes. They could easily have turned into Gallipoli or Anzio. Total control of the sea and air was critical for the island hopping campaign in the Pacific after the long battle for Guadalcanal.
The big surprise with Ukraine was that they had used the 8 years since Russian takeover of Crimea to change the internal structure of their country so that they were focused on being Ukraine as a country separate from Russia. The pro-Russia element was much weaker than just about anybody, especially Putin, expected. Ukrainians are willing to fight for their country. That was a major question in 2014, but not today. My understanding is that the Taiwan people are willing to fight for their independence from China. That is very different from Vietnam where very few people wanted France or US in charge. It is also very different from Iraq or Afghanistan which are struggling with the concept of being a country at all instead of tribes in regions.
The US needs to study the run up to WW II in the Pacific very carefully. The US took a number of actions over a period of several years in response to the Japanese war in China. These made things very difficult for the Japanese economically. The Japanese started structuring their specific attack on Pearl Harbor and takeover in the eastern Pacific a year or more before they initiated the events in response to the growing sanctions. We need to manage trade with China for numerous reasons, but doing something that would be considered sanctions imperiling their economy could force them to start actions like attacking US bases and Taiwan due to domestic perceptions, similar to US response to 9/11 or Vietnam War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_attack_on_Pearl_Harbor
I would assume that if China rattles her sabers enough, the US and other interested allies would supply Taiwan with enough air defense and naval defense to thwart an invasion.
That combined with an economic response that isolates China should be deterrence enough.
Anyone with some understanding of human beings (granted, I do not include some experts in the West) could have seen that Putin invading Ukraine was an insanely stupid decision. But he still invaded due to poor calculations and hubris.
I think it's time you interview a military expert Noah, I think you'd really benefit from it. Or even any random officer who made it to O-5 in any U.S. service.
I don't use the term pejoratively just descriptively, but the ignorance in the underlying premises here is so great that it makes the entire analysis absurd. A couple of examples:
-Most of the U.S. "bases" that would intervene in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan are carrier battle groups. China is decades away from a blue water navy or any other weapon that could reliably disable the multiple carrier battle groups that can be brought to bear on any invasion. Even if they were a peer navy, which they're far from, they could only count on winning half the encounters which still leaves plenty to eliminate what is an insanely difficult amphibious assault.
-The remaining "bases" aren't Anderson in Guam. They're bases in Japan and Korea and Australia, and even Montana and North Dakota. It's simply not credible that China would have a chance of destroying all those bases, again even if they were a peer and they're not even close. Not to mention the impact of really ensuring that they draw every U.S. ally into the war.
-There isn't the capability to launch a Pearl Harbor style "surprise attack" that would have a meaningful military impact anymore, by any nation, short of an all-out nuclear first strike. The logistics of such attacks over such vast distances are simply far too visible by everyone in the world.
And we could go on and on. But basically, think of what you would think if an Army infantry guy your age started pontificating on economics with absolutely no education or knowledge of the subject, or any attempt to talk to anyone with such expertise before said pontification. That's how this post is perceived by anyone with any military background. You're usually much more aware of what you don't know, so this is somewhat disappointing.
I was under the impression that carrier groups are extremely vulnerable to missile attacks (although I definitely don't know what I'm talking about). That's not the case?
Naval Gazings' carrier doom series goes over the reasons to believe that the death of carriers is significantly overstated. Mostly in terms of object level claims but with a bit of a look at the political and financial motivations that make the carrier doom narrative appealing to certain segments.
Even if that was the case (which I don't believe to be true), China would need a blue water navy it doesn't have to deliver those missiles... and by the way that's the same navy that would need to survive said attack to return to launch the attack on Taiwan. And if one accepts the premise that U.S. carrier battle groups are vulnerable to missile attacks, how would the hundreds of transports lumbering their way back and forth to Taiwan from China fare?
All that is really beside the point, however. In fact, what you're doing is engaging in an intelligent discussion, asking reasonable questions about something you realize don't know a lot about. That's the intellectual rigor we all expect out of Noah. Instead, we get this incredibly naive idea that somehow Anderson AFB in Guam is the sum total of U.S. force projection in the Pacific. Then what turns out to be a completely pointless dissertation because it is premised on that faulty assumption. My point is that Noah is better than this. He should be more like you in recognizing the areas he doesn't know a lot about and ask questions before going into the work to draw conclusions based on faulty premises.
I don't think Noah is trying to quantify or qualify the likelihood of any of these military outcomes, just using them to illustrate his point. His point being that if we apply game theory to the potential outcomes, that it suggests that a conflict is more likely that what we would presume on the surface.
A related reason to be worried is that here (unlike in Ukraine), “tactical” nuclear weapons do have really obvious tactical uses, especially for China. Forces in Ukraine are spread out and fast-moving, but in an Asian theater they’re concentrated: ships and island bases are high-value, small in number, slow-moving or stationary, conventionally hard targets.
Very strong incentives to go nuclear, especially in the opening surprise attack you’re considering here.
That's a good point, but I guess if you want to see a silver lining there (and it's a really, super-duper thin silver lining, yes), I do wonder if that means there's a limited nuclear exchange focused on military assets with minimal civilian impact, this freaks everyone out, and they wind up negotiating some kind of settlement before it escalates to raining nuclear missiles down on cities.
I do think it highly unlikely that China's first nuclear strike - if they did go that route - would be to drop a bomb in the middle of LA. They'd try to take out some aircraft carriers in the Pacific or something. Ditto for the US. Though I'm not certain that nukes are really necessary to do that...someone with more expertise in weaponry could perhaps answer that question.
Fair point, but I think part of the reason why Russia has not gone nuclear is because it considers Ukraine (or at least the parts of Ukraine they're fighting in currently) as Russian territory. Nobody wants to nuke their own territory. China considers Taiwan Chinese territory. Nuking it would make it unusable (or at minimum raise the cost of doing so) AND come with a ton of global anger.
Right, I don't think (and bear in mind I'm just some guy, not any kind of relevant expert) that they'd nuke Taiwan. Much more likely to hit US ships, Guam, Okinawa...
Nuking Okinawa 100% brings Japan into a war with China and likely causes it to go nuclear itself (which it has the technology to do with minimal difficulty). Any use of nukes by China might produce this outcome, but nuking Japanese territory 100% would. I don't think China is that dumb.
History shows us a slightly different "conqueror's game." It goes like this:
In 1914, the Germans talked themselves into believing Britain wouldn't really join the war against them, so they could go ahead and invade France.
In 1940, the Japanese talked themselves into believing America wouldn't really shut off their oil supplies, so they could go ahead and occupy China.
In 1950, Stalin talked himself into believing the USA didn't care about Korea, so he could give his strongman in North Korea a green light to invade the South.
In 1990, Saddam Hussein talked himself into believing America wouldn't really intervene over who ruled the Persian Gulf states, so he could go ahead and occupy Kuwait.
And in 2022, Putin talked himself into believing the West wouldn't seriously invest in Ukrainian resistance, so he could go ahead and strike for Kiev...
It's, uh, kind of an alarming pattern.
So this post is lovely game theory and fun to read. But there's history suggesting we should worry about the opposite problem.
Again and again, the trouble isn't that conquerors predict democracies' intervention. It's that they don't!
While your conclusion is right, I don't think your argument supports it, because just a list of things without knowing the a representative sample for those things is just cherry picking.
Probably what's important for the argument is to note that, while we have no idea what Xi or the PRC will "think" or do exactly, even one such similar precedent is enough, because the stakes are so high. So accordingly the strategy should be to make sure Xi/PRC will see that an intervention is inevitable. For example by putting forces of a peacekeeping coalition on Taiwan, also by subsidizing the cost of this peacekeeping, building a treaty framework that has a lot of automatic provisions that trigger sanctions against anyone that violates territorial integrity of the participants. (Basically every time China creates a new island somewhere and claims it's theirs, or violates someone's airspace, or harasses fishing vessels ... it should cost them, the participants of the coalition should automatically increase tariffs on them. This gives a direct economic incentive to reverse course.)
If you think the sample isn't representative, what cases would you cite going the other way?
When have countries attacked an Ally in addition to their real Target, to preempt the Ally later coming into the war in aid of the Target?
Germany going after France (and not just Russia) in 1914 counts, but I'm not thinking of others. You might stretch to apply it to Pearl Harbor, but that came only after years of US-Japan tension, not with the original invasion of China.
Overwhelmingly we see aggressors hoping to win *without* intervention, rather than treating intervention as inevitable and so worth a preemptive escalation to spoil.
So I think we should bet on "problems because China convinces itself USA won't help Taiwan," as opposed to "problems because China correctly expects intervention and goes ahead anyway."
Therefore, I suspect America's best strategy is simply to arm Taiwan to the teeth.
That American missiles will be fired against China in an invasion is arguable. That Taiwan's own missiles will be is obvious.
I mean every time a state/dictator was persuaded not to attack counts as data, right? (And that's the sample we don't really have.)
> I think we should bet on "problems because China convinces itself USA won't help Taiwan,"
I think avoiding a US-China military conflict is paramount, *therefore* even a small chance of it is serious enough to take it ... seriously. It's not a "bet", at this point it's a necessity.
So the optimal strategy for the US is to spend as much as possible now on propaganda to convince the Chinese that a loss (even if very unlikely) would be five times worse than a victory (500 to 100)? If they believe that, then war never makes sense, whether they attack US bases or not.
Non-proliferation has been an important priority of the US and the international community pursued in the hope of making us all safer. Ironically, it may well be that, in the case of both Ukraine and Taiwan, we'd all be safer had those two states *not* eschewed the possession of nuclear arsenals.
(Alas I believe that ship has already sailed in the case of Taiwan; Beijing has long maintained a Taiwanese attempt to develop or acquire a nuclear arsenal would constitute a casus belli, and I doubt in this case they're bluffing any more than JFK was in 1962).
Still, what might have been: it would make everybody's life a lot easier—except Xi Jinping's—if Beijing gave up on the idea of annexation because it understood attacking Taiwan would result in disaster for the PRC.
Careful! That line of argument might work if Taiwan's weaponry could be instantly massively upgraded at the flick of a switch, but in practice China would very likely be able to see that development coming, and it could provoke China to move first (a declining larger power reacting to a rising smaller power being a classic explanation for why larger powers start wars).
Scenarios not considered: the war is fought in cyberspace, and success is defined by which side can cripple the other’s economy and infrastructure quicker and more thoroughly. No need for nukes.
Another scenario, based on the current Ukrainian situation: Taiwan defeats or at least stalemates a Chinese invasion using unconventional tactics and/or superior morale, aided by US intelligence help.
I believe Taiwan's military is 100% focused on defense of the island. That is a very different military than trying to project power. The Japanese military left on islands like Iwo Jima and Okinawa was "woeful" largely limited to some artillery, machine guns, and small arms with no hope for resupply but was well dug in and managed to inflict massive losses on a far larger and better equipped enemy with endless supply chains.
Russia is now forced to destroy the village to save it in Ukraine because their initial plan to be greeted as liberators did not work out as planned. Would China be willing to turn Taiwan into scorched depopulated ground in order to liberate it?
Yes, but regardless, the military culture of Imperial Japan (and for that matter, current Ukraine) is far different from current Taiwan. You seem to really not want to believe the military of Taiwan is currently woeful, but it’s not like we haven’t seen military collapses in our lifetime. Just look at Afghanistan.
The Chinese military is pretty soft though, maybe not as bad as the Russian military but not similar to an all-volunteer army like the US or Europe. While they do have an excess male problem, thanks to the one child policy, I have a hard time believing that many mothers and fathers would enthusiastically send their sons as cannon fodder. I just think that it is all talk, although if Taiwan creates an excuse for China to attack, Taiwan will be conquered fairly handily. I think the leadership of Taiwan recognizes that, and has moderated away from a strict independence position, although of course if the electorate decides differently, that could be the door opener.
I agree with this especially. A combined operations amphibious landing was extraordinarily hard on D-Day even with near complete surprise. With satellite surveillance, surprise will be impossible to achieve unless China takes out America's satellites first.
Even then, we have other surveillance assets that make it overwhelmingly likely that we will know the invasion is imminent before the fleet even sails - you can't hide that sort of invasion prep. The best you can do is repeatedly exercise it so that the enemy can't distinguish an exercise from the real thing until after the fleet is underway.
So there will be a period of probably 3-4 hours where the fleet will be vulnerable to missile attacks before it even reaches Taiwan's shores. China will also have to establish complete air supremacy because contested skies mean jets with munitions flying over amphib ships full of vulnerable soldiers.
And even if they make it to the island, that's still only the beginning. They have to establish a beachhead and then they have to set up a means of reinforcement and resupply. If you have thousands of troops on the shore but no resupply, they're dead men walking.
Then you have to factor in that nobody in the world has attempted a full scale combined arms amphibious landing against a well armed enemy in this era of missiles and precise artillery. And China will have to get it right the first time. There will be no warmup runs and no do-overs. I wouldn't want that job.
An amphibious invasion right from the get-go is the most unrealistic option. Blockade and/or firing missiles to destroy/decapitate seem much more likely.
It depends on the situation, though. There are a minority of Taiwanese who are OK with China taking over. If the Taiwanese independence/purge Chinese people take power, many of the Chinese waishengren/49'ers will likely stand with China, or at least not fight back. If the DPP stay in power and the status quo is maintained, the waishengren will grumble about things being renamed from Chunghwa to Taiwan but otherwise not do much.
My guess is the number of people in Taiwan who would be happy to be militarily attacked by China is negligible, just as the number of Ukrainians who were happy to be militarily attacked by Russia proved to be negligible, even in ethnically Russian-majority parts of the country.
Abstract pro-China sentiment would tend to dissipate in the face of having your house blown up and your family killed by a Chinese airstrike.
The issue is that Ukraine has been a sovereign and independent country ever since the USSR broke up. Taiwan, still has an ambiguous status as the Republic of China. Quite a few people want to keep it that way, and while there is a minority that wants to purge Chinese influence (including that of the Republic of China from 1911 to 1949), I don't think there is great support for that. As China turns the screws on Hong Kong and Macau, though, that sentiment is going to be lost, so the pro-independence types have that going for them.
In practice Taiwan probably enjoyed more sovereignty from China than Ukraine from USSR/Russia, no? Ukraine was still part of the USSR when Taiwan was already a modern economy and democracy.
Yes, their careful dance with the PRC got more even more high stakes now that Xi consolidated power, but that doesn't mean the population at large is doesn't have a strong preference against getting conquered by the PRC. (Most Taiwanese people simply wanted to carry on with their lives and not waste attention on it. Aaaand up until very recently the best strategy for that was to prefer the status quo, as it was simple and had no long-term consequences. Now the calculation changed, the PRC is pushing more, so to keep the status quo the ROC has to be able to withstand that, eg. by spending more on weapons, etc.)
We should recall also that the US and basically everyone else has a one-China policy. That Taiwan is Chinese territory is not really seriously disputed by anyone except by independence (in effect, secession) supporters in Taiwan, and I suppose armchair strategists in the US. As much as we might sympathise with the idea of Taiwanese independence (secession), or I suppose a fantastical ROC takeover of the mainland, the international community is firmly against unilateral secession. An invasion and US opposition to that will not be framed in terms of defending a country. Not very relevant to the post, but I think there is a confusion of terms and concepts around Taiwan that don't promote clear thinking.
The “one China policy” is a diplomatic fiction that flatters the PRC far beyond its merits. In reality (which is to say, for purposes of business), the PRC and Taiwan are separate, equally sovereign successor states of the pre-1949 Chinese republic and empire, owing to the untidy end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 (where a KMT army fled to/conquered a newly-freed colony just emerging from 50 years of Japanese occupation). They have since had 80 years of separate national, economic, and political development. Calling two countries one for purposes of maintaining the peace is an ambiguity the world can bear. Calling an unprovoked military invasion “reunification” is not.
It is also US policy that a military conquest of Taiwan by China is unacceptable and Taiwan will be defended in the event of an invasion. So it's not like the US supports "one China" under any circumstances.
Right, if Taiwan secessionists take control then that will be a civil war, which China will happily take part in, aided by anti-secessionists who have lived in Taiwan since birth. I don't think the US participates in that, and I don't think that there would need to be Chinese airstrikes either for a civil war to happen, as there are enough anti-secessionists who will take to the streets and procure weapons at that point.
I agree there are plenty of Taiwanese who would like to reunite with China at some point (though the number seems to be shrinking). My point is I think the number of people who'd be happy to have that happen at gunpoint is likely tiny.
I don't know why anyone would claim that there are plenty of people on Taiwan who would like to reunite with China. Polling shows that number to be south of 10%.
I'm not current in my familiarity with Taiwan (it was my home during the late '70s), but I think some confusion may have crept in about who lives there and the relationship with China.
The term "Taiwanese" is not used by people in Taiwan in the sense it is being used by many on this string. It refers to descendants of ethnic Chinese families who were settled on the island before 1895, and who speak a Chinese dialect (Taiwanese) divergent enough from Mandarin to be unintelligible to Chinese mainlanders (other than those from Fujian Province, the ancestral homeland of most Taiwanese). Roughly ~85% of Taiwan's population is Taiwanese, with another ~10% descended from the ROC forces and families ("Mainlanders," or "waishengren": that is, "outsiders") who migrated in 1947-49.
Taiwanese have not traditionally regarded Taiwan as "belonging" to any mainland government (whether ROC or PRC), and from 1949 to 1987 Taiwanese political participation and representation was suppressed through martial law, implemented by a Mainlander one-party (Kuomintang, or KMT--"National People's Party") state. The KMT government claimed that it was the sole legitimate government of all of China. Since 1987, the Taiwanese/Mainlander tension has grown less salient because Taiwanese have achieved full political representation in a two-party system, with the party division increasingly reflecting policy rather than ethnicity. Even when it comes to waishengren attitudes, it's good to remember that these are the families that fled the PRC; they tend to be strongly anti-communist. There is no natural constituency on Taiwan for pro-PRC unification.
The "One-China Policy" is not a Taiwan government policy, though it is in some ways consistent with the old martial law period KMT stance. The current version was a negotiated outcome between the PRC and US that left the US neutral as whether either (PRC/ROC) government had a legitimate claim over the other, and simply held that the future shape in which "China" resolved the issue had to be determined through peaceful negotiation. From the US standpoint, "one China" has never entailed an imperative of "one China under unified governance," and the formulation never acknowledged the view of most Taiwanese (thus, most Taiwan citizens) that they had no interest in being governed by mainlanders of any stripe. The policy addressed only the claims of the Mainlander KMT government and the PRC.
Since 2016, the Taiwan government has been controlled by the popular DPP (Democratic People's Party), which originally formed as a Taiwanese voice when KMT martial law was ending. Its origins lay in the outlawed Taiwan Independence Movement. The DPP has no share in the "One-China Policy," apart from endorsing the component of peaceful negotiation.
I agree with this. But I disagree that they’d face 22mm well-armed combatants. Taiwan _should_ adopt the Israeli approach of forming a whole society military, but they don’t because the Taiwanese aren’t willing to sacrifice. Some of the loudest anti-PRC/pro-independence voices in Taiwan are chickenhawks who dodged or try to dodge military service.
This seems to me the most likely scenario too. Absorption without guns. Or a kind of invasion that we haven't conceived of yet. Culture a big part of it. The point is that, as I understand it, the percent of the Chinese population who think Taiwan should be reunited is sizable and does Xi really have a choice.
The percent of the Chinese population who prefer not to risk being disappeared at a whim by the central government without a credible nod to the rule of law, or who would prefer not to be subject to brutal and long-term hopeless Covid lockdowns, likewise seems very high, yet here we are...
Eh, a large number of Russians support the invasion of Ukraine, a large number of Mainland Chinese believe Taiwan should be part of the PRC, and a large number of Taiwanese support independence, but how many Russians/Chinese/Taiwanese are willing to die to take Ukraine/Taiwan/become independent?
I’ve heard this point being made—about the one child policy and the effect of losing children on China’s national psyche. I must say I think it’s entirely without basis in fact, mostly because CCP leadership won’t sacrifice national security goals because of worries about possible disapproval on the part of the Chinese public (It’s a totalitarian dictatorship). Also, the kind of dynamic you’re referring to takes a long time, probably years, to fester and develop. But a PRC invasion of Taiwan will be designed to be a relatively quick operation. Xi will worry about angry mothers later.
Yes, just like the Russian invasion of Ukraine was designed to be relatively quick. Just like Tsar Nicholas II wasn’t planning on losing his head when committing Russia to WWI. But wars have a habit of not going to plan once you start them.
I'm pretty comforted after reading the article as a Taiwanese.
In my intuition, it is impossible to believe China will ever try to attack US milatary base. But according your simple Taiwan invasion "game", it looks like if China want to invade Taiwan, a flash attack to US will be an option for China. That mean Taiwan will not be alone in the war. Yeah, I know people in US will not happy to see US get involved anothoer Vietnam war. But if there's more missiles & aircrafts point at China definitely help a lot to my country.
It wouldn't be another Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan War. Those were largely fought against insurgents (although NVA was a sort of regular army) embedded within the local people. The classic example was Hue where an entire NVA division was infiltrated into the city for the Tet Offensive and no locals mentioned it to the South Vietnamese government or the US military. That should have been a clear message that the war was unwinnable.
A Taiwan invasion would be a "conventional" war similar to WW I, WW II, or Korean War. If the Taiwanese people turned on the US Military and supported China, I think the US would hightail it out of there. rather than continue the fight.
I believe the US would get involved if Taiwan is ever attacked, but that may not actually help Taiwan that much even if China also suffers grievously. Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan would be tough to supply. Most likely, the US would try to choke China’s economy via the Molucca Strait.
Not much reason to attack US Army bases at Tongducheon, unless China wanted to include a new Korean War as part of the scenario. Plenty of reason to attack US air bases in Japan or Guam (and plenty of risk to go with it).
I think any of them that are within close range of Taiwan would be potential targets, but that's a lot of bases, and they'd be hard to attack without angering the other countries that host them.
I think there is a sleight of hand in how "Probability of Chinese victory if China attacks U.S. bases and U.S. fights: 80%" is defined. Seems what Noah means is "80% chance of a swift conquest of Taiwan". But that wouldn't be the end of the war in the scenario where China attacked US bases. That wouldn't be Vietnam but Pearl Harbor - America was attacked first. No way they just give up and go home if Taipei falls. The initial war over Taiwan ending in Chinese victory would be more akin to the 6 months of victories that Yamamoto allegedly promised the Japanese command in 1941. The war would continue on after that and in the context of "final victory" 80% in favor of China seems way too high.
I'm not sure that the value of a victory in defense of Taiwan has the same expected value for the US as a victory does for China. I'm no expert, but my impression is that China cares much more about Taiwan than the US does.
Your description of the US payoff for defending Taiwan (#2) also describes the payoff for defending Ukraine. Shouldn't the lack of direct US involvement in that conflict tell us something about how much they value that payoff?
Ah. We don't need to compare U.S. payoffs to China payoffs, only to alternative U.S. payoffs. So the size scaling doesn't matter between the two countries.
Ukraine didn't need our direct intercession in order to effectively defend itself.
If Ukraine had needed American intervention to repel Russia, do you think they would have gotten it? The consensus at the start of the invasion was that Russia would steamroll into Kyiv, but that wasn't enough to draw any kind of significant US response. It was only after the initial Ukrainian success that the US really escalated the sanctions and started providing significant military aid.
It's a good question. I think we would not have interceded but we would have fortified East Europe and started a new Cold War with Russia with liberating Ukraine as a long term goal.
I agree. I think the US and Europe would continue sanctions for a long time, especially once European energy is in a better place a year or two from now.
In that scenario I think Poland would be more likely to actively intervene than the US. That was the impression I got from my Polish relatives right after the invasion.
Ukraine is not an especially important country for the US from an economic perspective - it is to Africa, eastern Europe, and some other areas, but not to us.
Taiwan is different. Without their semiconductor production entire sectors of our economy would grind to a halt. We absolutely have a compelling national interest in preventing China from invading them.
That might be a long-term solution but is much easier said than done. It takes years if not decades to develop the kind of physical and human capital Taiwan has in that industry.
We're working on that! The CHIPS Act has the US Government working together with Intel to build new fabs here in the US... *by 2026.*
You cannot accelerate that timeline, because it's not just the buildings, but the actual machines to make semiconductors. Those machines are produced in I want to say the Netherlands? and they take forever... because you need the latest and greatest semiconductors to make the machines that make semiconductors and the machines that test semiconductors. We also do not currently have the middle-skill workers to run the fabs, but that should sort itself out by 2026.
Sorry, but this is ludicrous: your analysis of the branch where China preemptively strikes US bases seems way off.
First, if China attacks US bases in an analog to Pearl Harbor, there is a significant chance that the US would spot the run-up to the attacks and actually win the associated battles. This isn't 1941: we have spy satellites, spies, signals intelligence, and significant air defenses. And after such an attack, you'd see at least a conventional all gloves off war between US and China, one where I'd still bet on the US.
Essentially, anything short of a bolt-from-the-blue nuclear attack against those bases would *not* be a surprise. And while the retaliation for a nuclear BFB attack would be unpredictable, in any reasonable model, the expected value of your Forbidden City tickets would quickly trend to zero.
Your whole argument depends upon China deciding a this branch is the one to pursue, and I think your cost estimates and probability distributions in this branch are way off.
I think the fundamental logic here is more or less correct, but complicating the analysis and (IMO) making it even more likely that a Chinese attack on Taiwan precipitates WW3 are a few additional factors you don't get into here.
For one, this isn't a binary game between two actors - other countries which are major or regional powers in their own right will likely have a say in whether the situation escalates (most notably Japan, but possibly also South Korea, Australia, Vietnam, etc.). Okinawa hosts a major US base that is even closer to Taiwan than Guam is, and a Chinese attack on that base would also be an act of war against Japan that would likely make it extremely likely to escalate as well.
Secondly, we live in a much richer information environment than we did in the era of Pearl Harbor - with surveillance satellites, modern signals intelligence, and the like, there's no way China would be able to keep a comprehensive attack against either Taiwan or major US bases a secret until the last second. We'd see it coming and have time to prepare and/or escalate our defensive posture, which might cause the Chinese to think better of it, but also might lead to risky gambles on their part.
Finally there's the vital economic importance of Taiwan - this isn't a relative hinterland like 1938 Czechoslovakia was, this is a country that plays a crucial role in the modern global economy. China invading it would be more akin to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait than to Hitler's pre-war conquests.
I don't think there's any Taiwan invasion scenario that isn't a massive and very dangerous gamble for the CCP. That doesn't mean Xi won't be dumb enough to try it (he doesn't strike me as an especially insightful or competent leader) but we have to hope that he decides the risk isn't worth it.
Czechia/Czechoslovakia wasn't quite as rich as Germany/France/US/UK, but they were still a very developed region on par with Austria, Italy or Japan. Cities like Prague, Pilsen, Brno or Ostrava were major industrial centers.
Czech industry was quite important for the german war machine. E.g. Czech tanks played an important role in both the invasion of Poland and the invasion of France.
That's why I said "relative" hinterland - I agree Czechoslovakia wasn't worthless as an economic production area, but it wasn't on par with Taiwan which is the world's number one producer of an extremely valuable commodity that everybody needs.
Czechoslovakia was a worthwhile economic prize. But there wasn't much economic downside risk to the German invasion: Germany didn't depend on Czechoslovakia the way China depends on Taiwan. If China invades Taiwan, it may destroy a valuable link in its economic chain, either through the death and destruction from military action, or by alienating the trade partners who deal with China through Taiwan.
I feel as though Noah's analysis made sense in a US prior to Trumpism. I have no idea what an isolationist GOP-majority Congress under feckless leadership by McCarthy would choose to do. Can you really envision McCarthy leading the call for war to a pro-Putin base indifferent to war crimes in Ukraine? I have zero faith in a Maga Republican Congress' interest in preventing the destruction of democracy outside the US when they're actively destroying our own democracy with each passing day.
1. I think the GOP's business class is perfectly aware of Taiwan's strategic criticality to US interests, and would pull the necessary strings to get McCarthy on board.
2. If the US is actually attacked, the decisionmaking is no longer in Congress' hands like it was for Pearl Harbor. Under the War Powers Act, the President could immediately retaliate, and that retaliation could easily create the political "facts on the ground" necessary to turn a mere public supermajority for war into a Dec. 8th-like near-unanimous consensus for war. IE, once our airmen and soldiers start dying in the skies above Taiwan, only a token minority might be left opposing a declaration of war.
[Ed: This is what's so scary to con-law nerds about the War Powers Act - it basically puts the ball in the President's court, not Congress's. Although, those same con-law nerds are also usually too cowardly or partisan to endorse real structural reforms that would make Congress more responsive.]
China's military pattern since the revolution is to "slice the salami" with gradual escalations. (Very unlike the Russian coup-de-main approach of all-or-nothing sudden strikes!)
The "salami" Chinese approach forfeits some surprise, but maximizes political flexibility and lets them either push on weakness or pull back from unexpected strength. Also it lets both sides have a face-saving deal.
If that pattern continues, I expect China to blockade, not invade, Taiwan. Much more controllable for Beijing.
We could still get WW3 out of that, of course: suppose America sends a supply convoy to Taiwan, and a Chinese submarine sinks some American ships...
1. I agree with DxS. A blockade is what the Chinese military exercises this past summer simulated, and a blockade seems a less risky and more probable scenario than an invasion. I think it would be interesting to see a war game of a blockade scenario? Is China willing to sink a ship to enforce the blockade? Would the US create military escorts for shipping? How would a blockade scenario play out?
2. In the current invasion game scenario, the game stops after the invasion either succeeds or fails. It's not clear to me that the next step for either party would be to escalate to nuclear war. Would the US initiate nuclear war if the invasion succeeded? I don't think so. Would China initiate nuclear war if an invasion fails? I'm not so sure. Would it be more probable that China would look at the failure of an invasion as a temporary setback? They have a larger economy than the US, and they have a cohesive population that is used to sacrifice and is probably more willing to sacrifice than the US population. In that case, would China devote a much larger percentage of their already larger economy to their military? And when the military balance is more favorable, and they have addressed whatever led to their initial failure, would they again attempt unification?
" It's not clear to me that the next step for either party would be to escalate to nuclear war. Would the US initiate nuclear war if the invasion succeeded? I don't think so. Would China initiate nuclear war if an invasion fails?"
I don't think Noah was insinuating that WW3 = All out nuclear war if that's what you're getting at. Nevertheless, I agree, I don't see China nor the US resorting to nukes over this.
A blockade makes sense only in that it provides flexibility and somewhat easier off ramps for China but I don't think a naval blockade actually causes the amount of pain you think it would for Taiwan. Taiwan can (at great cost) supply it's domestic markets entirely by shipping lanes that don't go through waters China can project its power to.
“they have a cohesive population that is used to sacrifice and is probably more willing to sacrifice than the US population”
I wouldn’t argue that that all. They have a suppressed population, but like any autocracy, a pressurized bottle that keeps the liquid inside from moving may look serene from the outside (certainly no movement) compared to a container where liquid can slosh around, but also is much more likely to explode.
Also, I would say a greater percentage of Americans born after 1978 have more experience of hardship than Chinese of the same age.
I would have said the same about Russia a year ago. But I’ve been really surprised with how much the population is going along with the invasion. Even if their support is tepid, there’s seemingly very little outright resistance.,
Patience. Revolutions don’t happen overnight. 1917 in Russia happened 2-3 years after the start of WWI.
To synthesize this with Peter Gerdes objections above, China obviously won't get up one day and launch a snap invasion of Taiwan, because as Peter says the game Noah has laid out leads to the conclusion that they must neutralize US assets in the western pacific first, and the probability is too high that this would lead to nuclear war. So China won't launch an invasion unless it has strong confidence that the US is not committed to intervening. A long term process of invading by inches is how they achieve that.
To make an analogy, Putin was wrong about the strength of Ukrainian resistance, but he must have also had a very clear understanding that he'd face western equipment but not western troops - because he'd all but invaded Ukraine for 8 years already without a single NATO soldier being deployed.
Note that arguing that China will not willingly enter a war with the US is distinct from China building a military that *could* go to war with the US - it's the fear of attacks on Guam that will stop the US intervening when the PRC sends peacekeepers in to stop the lawlessness in Kinmen Province (after 2 years of a total interdiction of all shipping to the island in response to what will of course be Taiwan's own outrageous provocation.)
Ukraine had ability to resist recent Russian full on invasion because of the capabilities it built up since taking of Crimea via supposedly not Russia military and then battles in Donbas.
If China does something limited at first on regards to Taiwan, may make Taiwan and its allies build up better resistance capabilities til it full war. Just as Russian invasion of Ukraine could easily tip into world war, because just more likely for something, someone to go awry now, same for China in Taiwan.
Recent memory of Putin in Ukraine also will inform West and Asian allies. If it was 100 years ago, that lesson would be forgotten but in lives of current leaders...
And this part of my concern with Xis intentions, what recent lessons had China learned about war.
I don't think the example really holds there. Ukraine was able to strengthen itself during the war in the Donbas because:
A) It was starting from an extraordinarily low baseline, so there was really nowhere to go but up.
B) Much of the initial challenge in Ukraine was genuine divisions within the country on whether their loyalty was to a Ukrainian nation-state or some Greater-Russia theory of nationhood centered on Moscow. The intervention unified the Ukrainian nation while removing the most pro-Russia areas from their politic.
C) It is an extraordinarily poor country who's only chance of building a modern military was foreign donations. The war gave a justification for that at a level that would be unthinkable otherwise, especially given Ukraine's historical political alignment.
D) The enemy proved to be a paper tiger with an airforce that isn't able to gain air superiority, and poorly maintained armoured forced lead by incompetent officers.
E) The conflict is ultimately a land war, and given C, the large cadres of infantry veterans they built up over the last 8 year, and armed with western weaponry, are ultimately useful in those circumstances
Taiwan is a rich, relatively unified country that spends >2% of GDP on their military. Arguably they should be spending more, but this isn't a place that's starting from almost nothing the way Ukraine was.
A war between China and Taiwan is going to be fought over the air/sea gap, and capabilities in that support a war like that are built over decades rather than years. You can't build up a navy overnight, and while the market for (at least second line) fighters is relatively liquid, they don't do you any good without trained and experienced pilots, and the costs reach a level that just isn't comparable to what we're talking about in the Ukrainian ground war.
The other piece of the Air/Sea gap issue is that you sort of have to assume a higher level of competence by the attacker - they're not going to be able to take and hold territory with masses of troops and tanks the way the Russians have, so either they have the ability to gain superiority, in which case Taiwan is not going to be able to contest it effectively, or it's all going to be over very quickly and this exercise isn't at all interesting.
On the one hand, we don’t know if the PLA(N), which has been building out hardware but has not fought any conflict in generations (and that one ended badly for them) is a paper tiger either.
On the other hand, honestly, the Taiwanese military and political establishment seriousness about defending themselves is a joke (their deeds do not match their desires and rhetoric at all).
Yeah, see my last para - whether the PLA are a paper tiger or not, the hot phase of this conflict is going to be over quickly. You can't land an invasion force without air superiority and you can't resupply the defenders without it either.
Loss rates on one side or the other will be totally unsustainable in the air/sea war, and it will be over before any makeshift rearmament effort could be put into effect. I suspect the actual invasion if it happens will be a fait accompli.
The US will have to decide to enter the war as a belligerent or stay out of it - the option of resupplying Taiwan as a neutral power won't be available.
And yes, the Taiwanese aren't conducting themselves like they seriously believe they'll need to fight off an invasion in the next 20 years. But their unseriousness is in the style of Germany rather than pre-2014 Ukraine. That obviously makes them more capable, but on the other hand they need a massive military buildup rather than being a hollowed out remnant of the red army, largely equipped with the castoffs of it's now-enemy and rife with corruption.
In some respects that's harder since it's not something that you can fix by conscripting as many military aged males as you can and then giving them 12 weeks training them on foreign provided weapons systems.
I don’t think it’s clear China has an 80% chance of victory - I mean Russia lost to Ukraine and Russia has fought more wars recently.
Plus Taiwan would require an amphibious landing to attack.
True.
I think demographics plays a significant role in the evaluation. I became very concerned about a China attack on Taiwan a decade ago because they had a large surplus of 20-30 year old males due to the one child policy. They had a large number of people in that age group and Chinese families had been selectively having the single child as a son instead of daughter. They still have a large surplus of males, but the 20-30 year old cohort is much smaller than it was a decade ago, so far fewer young people supporting an older population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/File:China_population_sex_by_age_on_Nov,_1st,_2020.png
One reason China has been doing well economically is because they currently have a middle weighted demographic with a very large percentage of their population between 30 and 55 years old, which is the most economically productive group. China is using this period much better than Russia for economic growth, but they are facing potential financial crises at home over the next several years. So we are looking at a potential danger period like what we have seen with Russia, where the country is pining for past greatness and the leaders decide a war to recapture its claimed territory . Rallying around the flag is good for 5-10 years of support barring catastrophic defeat.
I am hoping that China is looking at Russia's experience in Ukraine very carefully, because Russia-China demographics are very similar. The lack of 20-30 year old males in Russia compared to the rest of the population is making it difficult to recruit soldiers. So they are tossing 30-50 year old untrained men into the fight now. That is not going well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
Amphibious assaults on heavily prepared positions are very risky and can result in large losses of life. Deception played a major role in Sicily and Normandy successes. They could easily have turned into Gallipoli or Anzio. Total control of the sea and air was critical for the island hopping campaign in the Pacific after the long battle for Guadalcanal.
The big surprise with Ukraine was that they had used the 8 years since Russian takeover of Crimea to change the internal structure of their country so that they were focused on being Ukraine as a country separate from Russia. The pro-Russia element was much weaker than just about anybody, especially Putin, expected. Ukrainians are willing to fight for their country. That was a major question in 2014, but not today. My understanding is that the Taiwan people are willing to fight for their independence from China. That is very different from Vietnam where very few people wanted France or US in charge. It is also very different from Iraq or Afghanistan which are struggling with the concept of being a country at all instead of tribes in regions.
The US needs to study the run up to WW II in the Pacific very carefully. The US took a number of actions over a period of several years in response to the Japanese war in China. These made things very difficult for the Japanese economically. The Japanese started structuring their specific attack on Pearl Harbor and takeover in the eastern Pacific a year or more before they initiated the events in response to the growing sanctions. We need to manage trade with China for numerous reasons, but doing something that would be considered sanctions imperiling their economy could force them to start actions like attacking US bases and Taiwan due to domestic perceptions, similar to US response to 9/11 or Vietnam War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_attack_on_Pearl_Harbor
Interesting comment for sure 🙂
I would assume that if China rattles her sabers enough, the US and other interested allies would supply Taiwan with enough air defense and naval defense to thwart an invasion.
That combined with an economic response that isolates China should be deterrence enough.
“Should” is the operative word.
Anyone with some understanding of human beings (granted, I do not include some experts in the West) could have seen that Putin invading Ukraine was an insanely stupid decision. But he still invaded due to poor calculations and hubris.
Would love to read more on the difficulty of amphibious landings.
I think it's time you interview a military expert Noah, I think you'd really benefit from it. Or even any random officer who made it to O-5 in any U.S. service.
I don't use the term pejoratively just descriptively, but the ignorance in the underlying premises here is so great that it makes the entire analysis absurd. A couple of examples:
-Most of the U.S. "bases" that would intervene in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan are carrier battle groups. China is decades away from a blue water navy or any other weapon that could reliably disable the multiple carrier battle groups that can be brought to bear on any invasion. Even if they were a peer navy, which they're far from, they could only count on winning half the encounters which still leaves plenty to eliminate what is an insanely difficult amphibious assault.
-The remaining "bases" aren't Anderson in Guam. They're bases in Japan and Korea and Australia, and even Montana and North Dakota. It's simply not credible that China would have a chance of destroying all those bases, again even if they were a peer and they're not even close. Not to mention the impact of really ensuring that they draw every U.S. ally into the war.
-There isn't the capability to launch a Pearl Harbor style "surprise attack" that would have a meaningful military impact anymore, by any nation, short of an all-out nuclear first strike. The logistics of such attacks over such vast distances are simply far too visible by everyone in the world.
And we could go on and on. But basically, think of what you would think if an Army infantry guy your age started pontificating on economics with absolutely no education or knowledge of the subject, or any attempt to talk to anyone with such expertise before said pontification. That's how this post is perceived by anyone with any military background. You're usually much more aware of what you don't know, so this is somewhat disappointing.
I was under the impression that carrier groups are extremely vulnerable to missile attacks (although I definitely don't know what I'm talking about). That's not the case?
Naval Gazings' carrier doom series goes over the reasons to believe that the death of carriers is significantly overstated. Mostly in terms of object level claims but with a bit of a look at the political and financial motivations that make the carrier doom narrative appealing to certain segments.
https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1
Greg G,
Even if that was the case (which I don't believe to be true), China would need a blue water navy it doesn't have to deliver those missiles... and by the way that's the same navy that would need to survive said attack to return to launch the attack on Taiwan. And if one accepts the premise that U.S. carrier battle groups are vulnerable to missile attacks, how would the hundreds of transports lumbering their way back and forth to Taiwan from China fare?
All that is really beside the point, however. In fact, what you're doing is engaging in an intelligent discussion, asking reasonable questions about something you realize don't know a lot about. That's the intellectual rigor we all expect out of Noah. Instead, we get this incredibly naive idea that somehow Anderson AFB in Guam is the sum total of U.S. force projection in the Pacific. Then what turns out to be a completely pointless dissertation because it is premised on that faulty assumption. My point is that Noah is better than this. He should be more like you in recognizing the areas he doesn't know a lot about and ask questions before going into the work to draw conclusions based on faulty premises.
Interesting comment.
I don't think Noah is trying to quantify or qualify the likelihood of any of these military outcomes, just using them to illustrate his point. His point being that if we apply game theory to the potential outcomes, that it suggests that a conflict is more likely that what we would presume on the surface.
A related reason to be worried is that here (unlike in Ukraine), “tactical” nuclear weapons do have really obvious tactical uses, especially for China. Forces in Ukraine are spread out and fast-moving, but in an Asian theater they’re concentrated: ships and island bases are high-value, small in number, slow-moving or stationary, conventionally hard targets.
Very strong incentives to go nuclear, especially in the opening surprise attack you’re considering here.
That's a good point, but I guess if you want to see a silver lining there (and it's a really, super-duper thin silver lining, yes), I do wonder if that means there's a limited nuclear exchange focused on military assets with minimal civilian impact, this freaks everyone out, and they wind up negotiating some kind of settlement before it escalates to raining nuclear missiles down on cities.
I do think it highly unlikely that China's first nuclear strike - if they did go that route - would be to drop a bomb in the middle of LA. They'd try to take out some aircraft carriers in the Pacific or something. Ditto for the US. Though I'm not certain that nukes are really necessary to do that...someone with more expertise in weaponry could perhaps answer that question.
Fair point, but I think part of the reason why Russia has not gone nuclear is because it considers Ukraine (or at least the parts of Ukraine they're fighting in currently) as Russian territory. Nobody wants to nuke their own territory. China considers Taiwan Chinese territory. Nuking it would make it unusable (or at minimum raise the cost of doing so) AND come with a ton of global anger.
Right, I don't think (and bear in mind I'm just some guy, not any kind of relevant expert) that they'd nuke Taiwan. Much more likely to hit US ships, Guam, Okinawa...
Nuking Okinawa 100% brings Japan into a war with China and likely causes it to go nuclear itself (which it has the technology to do with minimal difficulty). Any use of nukes by China might produce this outcome, but nuking Japanese territory 100% would. I don't think China is that dumb.
China is no first use.
History shows us a slightly different "conqueror's game." It goes like this:
In 1914, the Germans talked themselves into believing Britain wouldn't really join the war against them, so they could go ahead and invade France.
In 1940, the Japanese talked themselves into believing America wouldn't really shut off their oil supplies, so they could go ahead and occupy China.
In 1950, Stalin talked himself into believing the USA didn't care about Korea, so he could give his strongman in North Korea a green light to invade the South.
In 1990, Saddam Hussein talked himself into believing America wouldn't really intervene over who ruled the Persian Gulf states, so he could go ahead and occupy Kuwait.
And in 2022, Putin talked himself into believing the West wouldn't seriously invest in Ukrainian resistance, so he could go ahead and strike for Kiev...
It's, uh, kind of an alarming pattern.
So this post is lovely game theory and fun to read. But there's history suggesting we should worry about the opposite problem.
Again and again, the trouble isn't that conquerors predict democracies' intervention. It's that they don't!
While your conclusion is right, I don't think your argument supports it, because just a list of things without knowing the a representative sample for those things is just cherry picking.
Probably what's important for the argument is to note that, while we have no idea what Xi or the PRC will "think" or do exactly, even one such similar precedent is enough, because the stakes are so high. So accordingly the strategy should be to make sure Xi/PRC will see that an intervention is inevitable. For example by putting forces of a peacekeeping coalition on Taiwan, also by subsidizing the cost of this peacekeeping, building a treaty framework that has a lot of automatic provisions that trigger sanctions against anyone that violates territorial integrity of the participants. (Basically every time China creates a new island somewhere and claims it's theirs, or violates someone's airspace, or harasses fishing vessels ... it should cost them, the participants of the coalition should automatically increase tariffs on them. This gives a direct economic incentive to reverse course.)
If you think the sample isn't representative, what cases would you cite going the other way?
When have countries attacked an Ally in addition to their real Target, to preempt the Ally later coming into the war in aid of the Target?
Germany going after France (and not just Russia) in 1914 counts, but I'm not thinking of others. You might stretch to apply it to Pearl Harbor, but that came only after years of US-Japan tension, not with the original invasion of China.
Overwhelmingly we see aggressors hoping to win *without* intervention, rather than treating intervention as inevitable and so worth a preemptive escalation to spoil.
So I think we should bet on "problems because China convinces itself USA won't help Taiwan," as opposed to "problems because China correctly expects intervention and goes ahead anyway."
Therefore, I suspect America's best strategy is simply to arm Taiwan to the teeth.
That American missiles will be fired against China in an invasion is arguable. That Taiwan's own missiles will be is obvious.
I mean every time a state/dictator was persuaded not to attack counts as data, right? (And that's the sample we don't really have.)
> I think we should bet on "problems because China convinces itself USA won't help Taiwan,"
I think avoiding a US-China military conflict is paramount, *therefore* even a small chance of it is serious enough to take it ... seriously. It's not a "bet", at this point it's a necessity.
> simply to arm Taiwan to the teeth
Exactly. Like I said, it is a necessity.
So the optimal strategy for the US is to spend as much as possible now on propaganda to convince the Chinese that a loss (even if very unlikely) would be five times worse than a victory (500 to 100)? If they believe that, then war never makes sense, whether they attack US bases or not.
Yes, the only way to prevent an invasion completely is to raise the risks for China.
Give Taiwan nukes and pretend they developed them themselves
Non-proliferation has been an important priority of the US and the international community pursued in the hope of making us all safer. Ironically, it may well be that, in the case of both Ukraine and Taiwan, we'd all be safer had those two states *not* eschewed the possession of nuclear arsenals.
(Alas I believe that ship has already sailed in the case of Taiwan; Beijing has long maintained a Taiwanese attempt to develop or acquire a nuclear arsenal would constitute a casus belli, and I doubt in this case they're bluffing any more than JFK was in 1962).
Still, what might have been: it would make everybody's life a lot easier—except Xi Jinping's—if Beijing gave up on the idea of annexation because it understood attacking Taiwan would result in disaster for the PRC.
We kinda owe it to em anyway, we forced them to shut down their nuke program back in the 80s
I think that implies that the best thing the US can do is make a credible commitment to Taiwan that signals to China that we're serious.
Tough to balance that with not wanting to antagonize China too much, but some kind of tripwire would likely do the trick.
American intervention can't be proven in advance. Taiwan's own weapons can.
If you want a Taiwan that won't be invaded, get them more missiles. The "porcupine" strategy is right.
Careful! That line of argument might work if Taiwan's weaponry could be instantly massively upgraded at the flick of a switch, but in practice China would very likely be able to see that development coming, and it could provoke China to move first (a declining larger power reacting to a rising smaller power being a classic explanation for why larger powers start wars).
Scenarios not considered: the war is fought in cyberspace, and success is defined by which side can cripple the other’s economy and infrastructure quicker and more thoroughly. No need for nukes.
Another scenario, based on the current Ukrainian situation: Taiwan defeats or at least stalemates a Chinese invasion using unconventional tactics and/or superior morale, aided by US intelligence help.
Taiwan pretty much would have to fight by cyber tactics because their conventional military is woeful.
I believe Taiwan's military is 100% focused on defense of the island. That is a very different military than trying to project power. The Japanese military left on islands like Iwo Jima and Okinawa was "woeful" largely limited to some artillery, machine guns, and small arms with no hope for resupply but was well dug in and managed to inflict massive losses on a far larger and better equipped enemy with endless supply chains.
Russia is now forced to destroy the village to save it in Ukraine because their initial plan to be greeted as liberators did not work out as planned. Would China be willing to turn Taiwan into scorched depopulated ground in order to liberate it?
Yes, but regardless, the military culture of Imperial Japan (and for that matter, current Ukraine) is far different from current Taiwan. You seem to really not want to believe the military of Taiwan is currently woeful, but it’s not like we haven’t seen military collapses in our lifetime. Just look at Afghanistan.
The Chinese military is pretty soft though, maybe not as bad as the Russian military but not similar to an all-volunteer army like the US or Europe. While they do have an excess male problem, thanks to the one child policy, I have a hard time believing that many mothers and fathers would enthusiastically send their sons as cannon fodder. I just think that it is all talk, although if Taiwan creates an excuse for China to attack, Taiwan will be conquered fairly handily. I think the leadership of Taiwan recognizes that, and has moderated away from a strict independence position, although of course if the electorate decides differently, that could be the door opener.
There is absolutely nothing easy about conquering a country of 22 million well-armed people via an amphibious invasion across 100 miles of open water.
It would be a D-Day-on-steroids level military undertaking.
I agree with this especially. A combined operations amphibious landing was extraordinarily hard on D-Day even with near complete surprise. With satellite surveillance, surprise will be impossible to achieve unless China takes out America's satellites first.
Even then, we have other surveillance assets that make it overwhelmingly likely that we will know the invasion is imminent before the fleet even sails - you can't hide that sort of invasion prep. The best you can do is repeatedly exercise it so that the enemy can't distinguish an exercise from the real thing until after the fleet is underway.
So there will be a period of probably 3-4 hours where the fleet will be vulnerable to missile attacks before it even reaches Taiwan's shores. China will also have to establish complete air supremacy because contested skies mean jets with munitions flying over amphib ships full of vulnerable soldiers.
And even if they make it to the island, that's still only the beginning. They have to establish a beachhead and then they have to set up a means of reinforcement and resupply. If you have thousands of troops on the shore but no resupply, they're dead men walking.
Then you have to factor in that nobody in the world has attempted a full scale combined arms amphibious landing against a well armed enemy in this era of missiles and precise artillery. And China will have to get it right the first time. There will be no warmup runs and no do-overs. I wouldn't want that job.
An amphibious invasion right from the get-go is the most unrealistic option. Blockade and/or firing missiles to destroy/decapitate seem much more likely.
It depends on the situation, though. There are a minority of Taiwanese who are OK with China taking over. If the Taiwanese independence/purge Chinese people take power, many of the Chinese waishengren/49'ers will likely stand with China, or at least not fight back. If the DPP stay in power and the status quo is maintained, the waishengren will grumble about things being renamed from Chunghwa to Taiwan but otherwise not do much.
My guess is the number of people in Taiwan who would be happy to be militarily attacked by China is negligible, just as the number of Ukrainians who were happy to be militarily attacked by Russia proved to be negligible, even in ethnically Russian-majority parts of the country.
Abstract pro-China sentiment would tend to dissipate in the face of having your house blown up and your family killed by a Chinese airstrike.
The issue is that Ukraine has been a sovereign and independent country ever since the USSR broke up. Taiwan, still has an ambiguous status as the Republic of China. Quite a few people want to keep it that way, and while there is a minority that wants to purge Chinese influence (including that of the Republic of China from 1911 to 1949), I don't think there is great support for that. As China turns the screws on Hong Kong and Macau, though, that sentiment is going to be lost, so the pro-independence types have that going for them.
In practice Taiwan probably enjoyed more sovereignty from China than Ukraine from USSR/Russia, no? Ukraine was still part of the USSR when Taiwan was already a modern economy and democracy.
Yes, their careful dance with the PRC got more even more high stakes now that Xi consolidated power, but that doesn't mean the population at large is doesn't have a strong preference against getting conquered by the PRC. (Most Taiwanese people simply wanted to carry on with their lives and not waste attention on it. Aaaand up until very recently the best strategy for that was to prefer the status quo, as it was simple and had no long-term consequences. Now the calculation changed, the PRC is pushing more, so to keep the status quo the ROC has to be able to withstand that, eg. by spending more on weapons, etc.)
We should recall also that the US and basically everyone else has a one-China policy. That Taiwan is Chinese territory is not really seriously disputed by anyone except by independence (in effect, secession) supporters in Taiwan, and I suppose armchair strategists in the US. As much as we might sympathise with the idea of Taiwanese independence (secession), or I suppose a fantastical ROC takeover of the mainland, the international community is firmly against unilateral secession. An invasion and US opposition to that will not be framed in terms of defending a country. Not very relevant to the post, but I think there is a confusion of terms and concepts around Taiwan that don't promote clear thinking.
The “one China policy” is a diplomatic fiction that flatters the PRC far beyond its merits. In reality (which is to say, for purposes of business), the PRC and Taiwan are separate, equally sovereign successor states of the pre-1949 Chinese republic and empire, owing to the untidy end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 (where a KMT army fled to/conquered a newly-freed colony just emerging from 50 years of Japanese occupation). They have since had 80 years of separate national, economic, and political development. Calling two countries one for purposes of maintaining the peace is an ambiguity the world can bear. Calling an unprovoked military invasion “reunification” is not.
It is also US policy that a military conquest of Taiwan by China is unacceptable and Taiwan will be defended in the event of an invasion. So it's not like the US supports "one China" under any circumstances.
It might be “official policy” to state otherwise, but no one in the US considers Taiwan to be anything other than an independent country.
Right, if Taiwan secessionists take control then that will be a civil war, which China will happily take part in, aided by anti-secessionists who have lived in Taiwan since birth. I don't think the US participates in that, and I don't think that there would need to be Chinese airstrikes either for a civil war to happen, as there are enough anti-secessionists who will take to the streets and procure weapons at that point.
I agree there are plenty of Taiwanese who would like to reunite with China at some point (though the number seems to be shrinking). My point is I think the number of people who'd be happy to have that happen at gunpoint is likely tiny.
I don't know why anyone would claim that there are plenty of people on Taiwan who would like to reunite with China. Polling shows that number to be south of 10%.
I'm not current in my familiarity with Taiwan (it was my home during the late '70s), but I think some confusion may have crept in about who lives there and the relationship with China.
The term "Taiwanese" is not used by people in Taiwan in the sense it is being used by many on this string. It refers to descendants of ethnic Chinese families who were settled on the island before 1895, and who speak a Chinese dialect (Taiwanese) divergent enough from Mandarin to be unintelligible to Chinese mainlanders (other than those from Fujian Province, the ancestral homeland of most Taiwanese). Roughly ~85% of Taiwan's population is Taiwanese, with another ~10% descended from the ROC forces and families ("Mainlanders," or "waishengren": that is, "outsiders") who migrated in 1947-49.
Taiwanese have not traditionally regarded Taiwan as "belonging" to any mainland government (whether ROC or PRC), and from 1949 to 1987 Taiwanese political participation and representation was suppressed through martial law, implemented by a Mainlander one-party (Kuomintang, or KMT--"National People's Party") state. The KMT government claimed that it was the sole legitimate government of all of China. Since 1987, the Taiwanese/Mainlander tension has grown less salient because Taiwanese have achieved full political representation in a two-party system, with the party division increasingly reflecting policy rather than ethnicity. Even when it comes to waishengren attitudes, it's good to remember that these are the families that fled the PRC; they tend to be strongly anti-communist. There is no natural constituency on Taiwan for pro-PRC unification.
The "One-China Policy" is not a Taiwan government policy, though it is in some ways consistent with the old martial law period KMT stance. The current version was a negotiated outcome between the PRC and US that left the US neutral as whether either (PRC/ROC) government had a legitimate claim over the other, and simply held that the future shape in which "China" resolved the issue had to be determined through peaceful negotiation. From the US standpoint, "one China" has never entailed an imperative of "one China under unified governance," and the formulation never acknowledged the view of most Taiwanese (thus, most Taiwan citizens) that they had no interest in being governed by mainlanders of any stripe. The policy addressed only the claims of the Mainlander KMT government and the PRC.
Since 2016, the Taiwan government has been controlled by the popular DPP (Democratic People's Party), which originally formed as a Taiwanese voice when KMT martial law was ending. Its origins lay in the outlawed Taiwan Independence Movement. The DPP has no share in the "One-China Policy," apart from endorsing the component of peaceful negotiation.
I agree with this. But I disagree that they’d face 22mm well-armed combatants. Taiwan _should_ adopt the Israeli approach of forming a whole society military, but they don’t because the Taiwanese aren’t willing to sacrifice. Some of the loudest anti-PRC/pro-independence voices in Taiwan are chickenhawks who dodged or try to dodge military service.
This seems to me the most likely scenario too. Absorption without guns. Or a kind of invasion that we haven't conceived of yet. Culture a big part of it. The point is that, as I understand it, the percent of the Chinese population who think Taiwan should be reunited is sizable and does Xi really have a choice.
The percent of the Chinese population who prefer not to risk being disappeared at a whim by the central government without a credible nod to the rule of law, or who would prefer not to be subject to brutal and long-term hopeless Covid lockdowns, likewise seems very high, yet here we are...
Eh, a large number of Russians support the invasion of Ukraine, a large number of Mainland Chinese believe Taiwan should be part of the PRC, and a large number of Taiwanese support independence, but how many Russians/Chinese/Taiwanese are willing to die to take Ukraine/Taiwan/become independent?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-military-us-taiwan-xi-11666268994
I’ve heard this point being made—about the one child policy and the effect of losing children on China’s national psyche. I must say I think it’s entirely without basis in fact, mostly because CCP leadership won’t sacrifice national security goals because of worries about possible disapproval on the part of the Chinese public (It’s a totalitarian dictatorship). Also, the kind of dynamic you’re referring to takes a long time, probably years, to fester and develop. But a PRC invasion of Taiwan will be designed to be a relatively quick operation. Xi will worry about angry mothers later.
Yes, just like the Russian invasion of Ukraine was designed to be relatively quick. Just like Tsar Nicholas II wasn’t planning on losing his head when committing Russia to WWI. But wars have a habit of not going to plan once you start them.
The modern chinese military is entirely build on volunteers/professionals, there is no conscription.
I'm pretty comforted after reading the article as a Taiwanese.
In my intuition, it is impossible to believe China will ever try to attack US milatary base. But according your simple Taiwan invasion "game", it looks like if China want to invade Taiwan, a flash attack to US will be an option for China. That mean Taiwan will not be alone in the war. Yeah, I know people in US will not happy to see US get involved anothoer Vietnam war. But if there's more missiles & aircrafts point at China definitely help a lot to my country.
It wouldn't be another Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan War. Those were largely fought against insurgents (although NVA was a sort of regular army) embedded within the local people. The classic example was Hue where an entire NVA division was infiltrated into the city for the Tet Offensive and no locals mentioned it to the South Vietnamese government or the US military. That should have been a clear message that the war was unwinnable.
A Taiwan invasion would be a "conventional" war similar to WW I, WW II, or Korean War. If the Taiwanese people turned on the US Military and supported China, I think the US would hightail it out of there. rather than continue the fight.
I believe the US would get involved if Taiwan is ever attacked, but that may not actually help Taiwan that much even if China also suffers grievously. Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan would be tough to supply. Most likely, the US would try to choke China’s economy via the Molucca Strait.
I'm a South Korean in South Korea...I don't want to read this article..😭😢
Yeah most US army bases are in Korea, not Japan. We have no idea KJU will do too. Stay safe!
The US has seven military bases in Japan, including major ones at Yokosuka and Okinawa.
Ah okay I was referring to the US army which I figured would be the ones under attack
https://www.thesoldiersproject.org/how-many-us-military-bases-are-there-in-the-world/
Not much reason to attack US Army bases at Tongducheon, unless China wanted to include a new Korean War as part of the scenario. Plenty of reason to attack US air bases in Japan or Guam (and plenty of risk to go with it).
That makes sense. They probably also demonize Japan in their history books
I think any of them that are within close range of Taiwan would be potential targets, but that's a lot of bases, and they'd be hard to attack without angering the other countries that host them.
I think there is a sleight of hand in how "Probability of Chinese victory if China attacks U.S. bases and U.S. fights: 80%" is defined. Seems what Noah means is "80% chance of a swift conquest of Taiwan". But that wouldn't be the end of the war in the scenario where China attacked US bases. That wouldn't be Vietnam but Pearl Harbor - America was attacked first. No way they just give up and go home if Taipei falls. The initial war over Taiwan ending in Chinese victory would be more akin to the 6 months of victories that Yamamoto allegedly promised the Japanese command in 1941. The war would continue on after that and in the context of "final victory" 80% in favor of China seems way too high.
For someone on vacation you're sure keeping up a high posting pace!
I'm not sure that the value of a victory in defense of Taiwan has the same expected value for the US as a victory does for China. I'm no expert, but my impression is that China cares much more about Taiwan than the US does.
Your description of the US payoff for defending Taiwan (#2) also describes the payoff for defending Ukraine. Shouldn't the lack of direct US involvement in that conflict tell us something about how much they value that payoff?
Ah. We don't need to compare U.S. payoffs to China payoffs, only to alternative U.S. payoffs. So the size scaling doesn't matter between the two countries.
Ukraine didn't need our direct intercession in order to effectively defend itself.
If Ukraine had needed American intervention to repel Russia, do you think they would have gotten it? The consensus at the start of the invasion was that Russia would steamroll into Kyiv, but that wasn't enough to draw any kind of significant US response. It was only after the initial Ukrainian success that the US really escalated the sanctions and started providing significant military aid.
It's a good question. I think we would not have interceded but we would have fortified East Europe and started a new Cold War with Russia with liberating Ukraine as a long term goal.
I agree. I think the US and Europe would continue sanctions for a long time, especially once European energy is in a better place a year or two from now.
In that scenario I think Poland would be more likely to actively intervene than the US. That was the impression I got from my Polish relatives right after the invasion.
Ukraine is not an especially important country for the US from an economic perspective - it is to Africa, eastern Europe, and some other areas, but not to us.
Taiwan is different. Without their semiconductor production entire sectors of our economy would grind to a halt. We absolutely have a compelling national interest in preventing China from invading them.
Maybe diversify semi conductor production.
That might be a long-term solution but is much easier said than done. It takes years if not decades to develop the kind of physical and human capital Taiwan has in that industry.
We're working on that! The CHIPS Act has the US Government working together with Intel to build new fabs here in the US... *by 2026.*
You cannot accelerate that timeline, because it's not just the buildings, but the actual machines to make semiconductors. Those machines are produced in I want to say the Netherlands? and they take forever... because you need the latest and greatest semiconductors to make the machines that make semiconductors and the machines that test semiconductors. We also do not currently have the middle-skill workers to run the fabs, but that should sort itself out by 2026.
I do like the game theory method as a framework for thinking about the issue though, regardless of its predictive power. Thanks!
Sorry, but this is ludicrous: your analysis of the branch where China preemptively strikes US bases seems way off.
First, if China attacks US bases in an analog to Pearl Harbor, there is a significant chance that the US would spot the run-up to the attacks and actually win the associated battles. This isn't 1941: we have spy satellites, spies, signals intelligence, and significant air defenses. And after such an attack, you'd see at least a conventional all gloves off war between US and China, one where I'd still bet on the US.
Essentially, anything short of a bolt-from-the-blue nuclear attack against those bases would *not* be a surprise. And while the retaliation for a nuclear BFB attack would be unpredictable, in any reasonable model, the expected value of your Forbidden City tickets would quickly trend to zero.
Your whole argument depends upon China deciding a this branch is the one to pursue, and I think your cost estimates and probability distributions in this branch are way off.