26 ms·

Will Xi Move on Taiwan?

86 points by RyanShook 5y ago

brsg 5y ago
I thought this was an interesting quote A: Two thoughts. First, you can leave a foreign country behind in an orderly way. Ask the British Empire, which mostly ended its colonial occupations in an orderly way. The interviewee says this as though it's common sense, but is it true? The examples that stick out to me are India, Israel/Palestine, and the South African colonies. Can these really be described as safe and orderly withdrawals? What are the examples of successful withdrawals? Are they really that much better than US withdrawal from Vietnam or Afghanistan?
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Divorce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Divorce
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- docdeek 5y ago
  > What are the examples of successful withdrawals? Australia or Canada, perhaps.
  - macdice 5y ago
    Those are settler colonies, a completely different kettle of fish. From the point of view of the (majority) settler population, they gradually ceased to consider themselves as British and underwent a multi-step disentanglement of legal and constitutional connections to the UK beginning almost a century ago but still ongoing. From the point of the (minority) indigenous populations, well I'm sure it varies but they may not agree that a withdrawal has occurred...
    - perardi 5y ago
      It still strikes me as a bit weird that Canada did not have its own constitution, as in technically completely independent of the British Parliament, until 1982. And technically the head of state is…well it’s complicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_General_of_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_General_of_Canada
      - macdice 5y ago
        Yeah, similar stories and timeline in other former dominions. I find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_v_Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_v_Hill fascinating, when a court in Australia was forced to consider whether the UK was a foreign power.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  The withdrawl from India was safe (for the British, let's ignore the partition bloodshed) and didn't lead to immediate regime collapse... so I certainly don't think it went as badly as Afghanistan or Vietnam.
  - charlescearl 5y ago
    No let’s not ignore the loss of over 1 million lives. Borders are still contested, with several wars having been fought, the scale of the disaster dwarfs Vietnam.
- dmurray 5y ago
  > What are the examples of successful withdrawals? Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean territories. Arguably Hong Kong. You could also make a reasonable case for Egypt, Ghana, India/Pakistan... The withdrawal itself was peaceful and didn't leave the state in immediate civil war, even if it wasn't stable in the medium term.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    I’d say the difference is that those territories were more or less “at peace”. The colonists had “won” the war, at least per some definition of winning. Afghanistan was a barely held together mess even before we withdrew. I’m not arguing one way or the other for Taiwan—I don’t want to go to war with China for all sorts of obvious reasons—but we would have the backing of the Taiwanese people, and that’s a major difference versus Afghanistan.
  - rjsw 5y ago
    Withdrawal from Malaysia and Singapore went well.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > Canada, Australia Ask the natives about it.
    - mc32 5y ago
      That's a non-sequitur. Did the British leave Canada & Australia in a peaceful state? As far as I know, there were no civil wars or disarray in those countries, whether ex British subjects or original stock of native populations.
      - danielheath 5y ago
        Australian here. Firstly, the monarch of England is still our head of state. Secondly, the genocide was so thorough that there weren't enough indigenous inhabitants left (outside of those enslaved) to hold a war. So yeah - after the British pulled out (except they didn't), we had peace between the living and the dead.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  I'd argue that the Soviet withdrawls from Eastern Europe went pretty well. Safe, orderly, no real bloodshed.
  - nradov 5y ago
    The Soviets militarily occupied Eastern Europe, but they never really colonized it to a significant extent.
    - NotSammyHagar 5y ago
      The Baltics would disagree. Think of all the problems for the elderly retired Russian speaking people that stayed behind.
      - abrowne 5y ago
        The Baltic states were part of the USSR, unlike Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria etc.
        mannerheim 5y ago
        And the US was once part of the UK, which doesn't mean the latter didn't colonise the former.
        abrowne 5y ago
        Pedantically, I don't think the US was ever part of the UK. The UK ultimately had sovereignty, but that's not the same thing. Even now the United Kingdom's former colonies are not part of the UK: it "has sovereignty over 17 territories which do not form part of the United Kingdom itself: 14 British Overseas Territories and three Crown dependencies.¹ But that's kind of the same point that I didn't articulate. A colony is not part of the country that is ruling it. The Baltic states were part of the Russian Empire, independent between the wars, and then reincorporated into the USSR. They weren't "militarily occupied", they were part fully incorporated. When someone says "militarily occupied Eastern Europe", I'd only assume they meant the countries that were "behind the iron curtain" but de jure independent, like Poland or Romania. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom#:~:text=The%20United%20Kingdom%20has%20sovereignty%20over%2017%20territories%20which%20do%20not%20form%20part%20of%20the%20United%20Kingdom%20itself%3A%2014%20British%20Overseas%20Territories%5B27%5D%20and%20three%20Crown%20dependencies.%5B27%5D%5B223%5D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom#:~:text=The%20U...
- __d 5y ago
  Australia and New Zealand would probably be considered successful withdrawals? Canada? Less so the colonies that became the US, I guess.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I personally don't think those withdrawals are truly orderly. Let's take India - leaving aside the partition of India (which is a huge matter in itself), a big crime is that the country that was left behind by the British did not resemble its historical culture or way of governance. It was instead turned into a secular nation, which just means defaulting to a status quo of colonial Western values. Ironically the partitioned areas (like the Islamic Republic of Pakistan) were not secular, but Hindus no longer had a land to practice a life that was fully dictated by their principles and their principles alone - instead they would live by rules and structures the British left behind. India also retained a lot of colonial structures outside of its government. For example the British education system continued, meaning that Indian children were taught out of Western-controlled/sourced materials that glossed over the horrors of British rule. Those children were also not taught the cultural things they would have learned in a pre-colonial era. This pattern isn't unique to India, but I wanted to call it out as an example of how seemingly peaceful withdrawals still result in long-lasting damage to a people and their culture. Is that peace? Maybe in the most literal sense. But it's not the same as making that place whole.
- hackeraccount 5y ago
  I don't want to speak well of the USSR/Russia but it's not hard to make an argument that they left Eastern Europe in an orderly way... well at the end. Honestly between Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and others there were some bad times in the there.
  - Razengan 5y ago
    > I don't want to speak well of the USSR/Russia Why?
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      The multiple genocides and general suppression of human rights?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Razengan 5y ago
        Would you add a similar disclaimer before pointing something positive about the U.S. because they’ve done some bad shit too, like, I dunno, being the only nation to actually nuke another?
  - mc32 5y ago
    Gorbachov left the Eastern Block in relative peace I would say. Afghanistan of course was an exception.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Wasn't the Soviet Union pretty much done with Afghanistan when Gorbachov took over in 1985?
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    Czechoslovakia and Romania made attempts at leaving peacefully and that didn't go so well. Though yes, in the end it was "fine".
- tragomaskhalos 5y ago
  The intention was there - according to Pakenham's "The Scramble for Africa" the idea was that prior to independence you educate a generation of civil servants who will then run the country along essentially British lines. I'd argue this worked well in India, largely though because Indians were already running the country in most important particulars. In Africa less so because independence movements gained unstoppable momentum which preempted such planning, plus many of those countries had been colonies for decades rather than centuries.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    > civil servants who will then run the country along essentially British lines While this may mean structural continuity, I can’t help but feel this is also a bad outcome - it’s just a continuation of imperialist force/cultural projection.
    - nine_k 5y ago
      I won't say that a working electoral / parliamentary / judicial system, civil engineering, medicine, etc left intact is a bad outcome. It's a much better outcome than a civil war. With some exceptions, there were no comparable systems in native cultures; those that existed (some definitely did) often were not capable to keep together a country, even if they worked well on tribal level, or were scalable but belligerent by design. I also don't think that cultural projection, to a degree, is not a bad thing. It happens constantly, and allows for cultural cross-pollination. It is, of course, best done in peaceful ways.
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    > the idea was that prior to independence you educate a generation of civil servants who will then run the country along essentially British lines. I'd argue this worked well in India… I certainly wouldn’t draw that conclusion. Immediately after the British left Nehru adopted 5 year plans based on the soviet model. Nehru and Stalin didn’t get along because he was still too Britain-friendly for Stalin, but India and The USSR developed very close relations within a very short period of time. Some elements of India’s governance structure were distinctively non-Soviet, like having a multiparty democracy. But if you look at the way the country was run, it was done in the style of soviet central planning, most certainly not along British lines.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > Ask the British Empire, which mostly ended its colonial occupations in an orderly way. Oh, like the independence of the US did go like a major peaceful operation. And yes the US used to be a british colony, in case people forgot.
- dexter89_kp3 5y ago
  Decisions taken by British still haunt India to this date. Especially their division of states.
- wonnage 5y ago
  Yeah this statement kinda discredits everything he says. The world is littered with countries that exist only because some existing adjacent kingdoms happened to both be colonized by the British, and they merged them into one colony. Countries fell apart after they left because there was no shared national identity to begin with.
- xenocyon 5y ago
  * India: the Partition led to massive loss of life, displacement in the tens of millions, traumatized communities, and deadly polarization between peoples to this day. * Palestine: the end of the Mandate and the 1947-1949 Palestine war saw largescale displacement, loss of life, and (as is obvious to everyone) once again a deadly and unshakeable polarization between peoples that persists to this day. On the one hand, it is certainly true that the British did not intend for these consequences, but on the other, the British were fully in charge as the sovereign government of India and Mandatory Palestine (unlike the US in Vietnam or even Afghanistan) - in particular having ruled India for over three centuries by the time they left - and so more deserving of blame.
RyanShook 5y ago
Seems pretty accurate in hindsight: So, there was this enormous distraction that the Islamists created that absorbed our attention, our resources, and it turns out that it was really -- it was a detour. The big issue was the rise of China.
- wahern 5y ago
  Both North Korea and Iran deftly took advantage of the U.S. being preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan. Frankly, I'm surprised China didn't make more significant moves the past 20 years. Though, I suppose China's economy has changed significantly over the past 20 years, and the U.S. was less preoccupied the second decade than the first, which is when Iran and North Korea made their major nuclear moves. But it's not news that China posed the greater strategic issue. One of Obama's first foreign policy initiatives in 2009 was the "Pivot to Asia". And the need for that pivot had been the consensus opinion of foreign policy analysts for years prior. The U.S. got stuck in the Middle East because it couldn't separate itself from the rhetoric. The Bush Administration (specifically Cheney, et al) did too good a job selling the Iraq War to both the public and the defense industry. Conservatives continually carping over Iran has never helped, either. The irony that Iran would never have pursued nuclear weapons but-for the Iraq invasion--because of the threat the U.S. posed, because it distracted the U.S.--makes the dynamic starkly clear.
  - randomopining 5y ago
    The US must've tappped the CCP communications in the 90s... they must've known this was their endgame. I'm surprised that only in the past few years has the China thing really come to the forefront. This should've been in like 1996 wit the taiwan straight incident.
    - nine_k 5y ago
      Maybe they have. But a sliver of truth, even warning about imminent great danger, is too small to overcome the inertia of the political machine. As an example, several weeks before Germany attacked USSR in 1941, multiple Soviet spies warned Moscow about the plans to attack, and approximate dates. But Germany and USSR have officially been friendlies ever since they collectively invaded and divided Poland in 1939, were actively exchanging military technology, food, and various strategic materials. Stalin rejected these reports as provocations. Then Germans nearly won over USSR in like 6 months, but it's a different story, of course, for a different political discourse.
DudeInBasement 5y ago
Does Taiwan have nukes? North Korea does.
SkyMarshal 5y ago
> The Biden administration's abandonment of Afghanistan could be interpreted as an unwillingness on the part of the U.S. to engage in overseas wars and could change Chinese President Xi Jinping's risk calculations, Ferguson said. I think this is exactly backwards. Xi was previously exploiting the US’s preoccupation with the Middle East to build up China’s military and militarize South China Sea islands. With a large chunk of the US military bogged down in a multi-front stalemate with Taliban all across Afghanistan, and maintaining stability in a destabilized Iraq, it was the perfect time for CCP to exploit their limited capabilities. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan and drawdown in Iraq is clearly about freeing up those forces to refocus on China and possibly Russia, in a pivot back to Great Power competition and balance of power strategies. The CCP is publicly trying to convince East Asia that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan means the US won’t stand by its allies there, but that’s just posturing. I’m pretty sure both those allies and the CCP know it means exactly the opposite.
- dnautics 5y ago
  The CCP is not trying to convince any East Asian nation that the us is flaky. It is trying to convince a populace that attacking Taiwan is going to be bloodless for an army of it's populaces only children.
  - randomopining 5y ago
    US should give Taiwan nukes secretly and then taiwan announces a first strike policy.
    - NonEUCitizen 5y ago
      US is reason Taiwan does not have nukes: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39252502 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39252502
      - nine_k 5y ago
        I think since the annexation of Crimea no one country in their sane mind will surrender their nuclear weapons, as Ukraine did.
no_butterscotch 5y ago
I've heard that China is currently at it's demographic peak. From here on out people are aging with less replacing them, and more and more youth have to support multiple grandparents (effect of one-child policy, which while no longer in effect still has lasting impact). As such I suppose if they were going to make a move now would be the time.
- dundarious 5y ago
  I don’t think their preferred tactic is a human wave attack anymore. They’re advanced now. Better to ensure the US stays out of open conflict, which probably still means playing the waiting game.
  - eloff 5y ago
    The demographics are not a problem because of how they constrain the number of troops they can field - their population is still quadruple the US, so no problems there. The problem is the economic weakness that comes with a country where each working person supports two retired people (either directly as in family or indirectly as in taxes). That doesn't work as far as we know. So China is right near the peak of their power (maybe 15-30 years away.) I still think that means they'll be patient and wait for their moment. But they can't wait forever.
- dirtyid 5y ago
  This is one of the more idiotic extrapolations of demographic bomb. Even the one-child policy annual birth rate in China is ~9-10M per year. That's an incredible amount of bodies to recruit from for the needs of modern air / naval warfare with limited casualty potential. Around half of births will be from underclass, where becoming a military martyr for the cause of reunification would be the surest guarantee their family has a meal ticket for the rest of their lives. Throw in upward mobility incentives like preferential queuing for universities, real estate etc - there won’t be a manpower problem.
  - someperson 5y ago
    Those military-age only children are expected to take care of their elderly parents and grandparents. In a world war over Taiwan, it's likely millions of them would die. Leaving each family as "bare branches" since they have no siblings. And eldest male children are especially important in Chinese culture. Given it would be a mass casualty conflict, the upward mobility "support the troops" impact (and guaranteed "meal tickets") would seem to be have a pretty limited.
Isamu 5y ago
> There has to be some reason why Saigon 1975 and Kabul 2021 were such a mess. Sure, the US was exiting one region while under fire from fighters from yet another place that sought to “liberate” the region. Chaos from locals that hoped to save their lives from their “liberators”. You are comparing that to an exit from a region where there is no other party participating in the liberation.
b1n 5y ago
> "When the battle over Huawei began, over 5G, I saw a map of the world, and it was a map of the world according to whether countries were allowing Huawei in or not, and I said to one of my young colleagues, "Oh, that's the Cold War."" Map of countries that have banned Huawei: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/17528.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/17528.jpeg (from https://www.statista.com/chart/17528/countries-which-have-banned-huawei-products/ https://www.statista.com/chart/17528/countries-which-have-ba...)
- b1n 5y ago
  Just noticed how bad the color choice is on that chart. The lightest red (pink) is actually "Unlikely to ban".
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Western Europe is somehow supposed to be in the Second World in this Universe. The only way that’s true is if the US player is forced on the Early War card Degaulle Rules France and not permitted to play NATO. I declare this comparison Bogus History!
  - rkk3 5y ago
    The win condition has been updated, now it is if you have control of Asia you win. Coups are now also allowed in Europe at Defcon 4.
- chrononaut 5y ago
  Why on Earth is "Unlikely to ban" close to the same shade of red as "On the fence" and "(Partial) ban in effect", while "Using Huawei" is green.
  - COGlory 5y ago
    What a useless map
  - nullspace 5y ago
    Haha, until I read your comment, my reaction was “huh interesting, Russia has banned Huwaei” as well.
627467 5y ago
What would CCP gain (compared to the status quo) in doing this move? To test US loyalty to other Asian allies? Seems... Convoluted, reckless, and not at all something China has done in the past. China and Taiwan are already co dependent.
- chrchang523 5y ago
  Well, Hong Kong had plenty of co-dependence with the rest of China, and everyone already expected greater integration in 2047; yet the CCP still chose to accelerate the schedule in defiance of the expectations of both a majority of HK citizens and the West. With that said, Taiwan is both more valuable and easier to take if more Taiwanese people don't think it's much better to be associated with the US than China. I think that, if the CCP does gain control of Taiwan in the future, it's >50% likely to be no more violent than Crimea; that's not possible today because too many Taiwanese are opposed.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  More importantly, China is co-dependent on the rest of the world, including the US, to continue allowing large Chinese trade surpluses. And virtually all of China's foreign assets are held in US and European custodial accounts that could be instantly seized or at least frozen. This is not the position from which one would want to upset the current world order, especially if domestic tranquility (read, employment) is dependent on the good graces of your trading partners. On the other hand completely isolated nations like North Korea -- which are not tightly integrated into the international economy and feel they have nothing left to lose -- these are the ones that are more likely to do crazy things. Thus China will continue to sabre-rattle and focus on largely symbolic issues in order to stoke nationalism but they will not actually act as that would immediately make a large chunk of their population unemployed and destitute. And questions of money and employment are much more important to Chinese citizens than nationalism.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    The economic interdependency argument is fragile. It has been refuted at least once in history. In the 1909 book 'The Great Illusion', British lecturer, journalist, author and Member of Parliament and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Norman Angell argued along the same lines. Coming at the tail end of an unusually long and prosperous European Golden Age, the Belle Époque, it was very well received in its time. 5 years later, the trenches of WWI would put the lofty ideals to rest. > According to Angell, the economic interdependence between industrial countries would be "the real guarantor of the good behavior of one state to another",[6] as it meant that war would be economically harmful to all the countries involved. Moreover, if a conquering power confiscated property in the territory it seized, "the incentive [of the local population] to produce would be sapped and the conquered area be rendered worthless. Thus, the conquering power had to leave property in the hands of the local population while incurring the costs of conquest and occupation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_%C3%89poque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_%C3%89poque
temp8964 5y ago
Does China even need to attack Taiwan? Put an embargo on the island. Will US has the political will to directly confront with China? Seems unlikely.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Taiwan is too closely situated to the Ryukyus (and American airforce/navy bases) for China to enforce an embargo on them. Unless China can block off Japan also, then they can't really cut the island off from anyone. If you mean a direct economic embargo, then China loses a lot of its export potential (e.g. via FoxConn) driven by descendants of the mainlanders who fled to Taiwan in 1949. A lot of the factories are owned/managed by such Taiwanese, who are much more in line with a unified China than other Taiwanese, but are still unwilling to become PRC citizens.
- smitty1e 5y ago
  A naval blockade? That would be tantamount to an attack. After Kabul, whether the feckless U.S. will bother to recall that Taipei is an ally is another question.
rkk3 5y ago
Does Taiwan converting to a liberal democracy decades into the civil war overrule China's right of Sovereignty?
- davidjytang 5y ago
  It sure doesn't overrule Taiwan's right of sovereignty.
  - rkk3 5y ago
    Why do you think they have a right to sovereignty? They lost a civil war (and wouldn't exist without US intervention), Taiwan is a Chinese province. I doubt you would be making this claim if they were still being ruled through dictatorship by a Chiang. Edit: You can downvote me without exploring the question, but most of the world does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation.
    - auroz 5y ago
      >Why do you think they have a right to sovereignty? They are sovereign over the island of Taiwan >They lost a civil war (and wouldn't exist without US intervention) They lost control of mainland China during the civil war; no peace treaty was signed and they still hold Taiwan >Taiwan is a Chinese province You can declare all you want in your constitution but de facto it is not. If all you claimed was true then there would be no issue, but clearly that's not the case.
      - rkk3 5y ago
        So if the US Confederacy held onto a small bit of land in the south, with the help of a foreign power like England, you would respect their right of sovereignty? Somehow I doubt it. There are many reasons to maintain a presence in Taiwan or South Korea, like limiting China's sphere of influence in Asia. But that would require acknowledging that they are geo political chess piece's and dropping this veneer of moral superiority.
vondur 5y ago
Taiwan reminds me of Switzerland. Mountainous terrain with a lot of bunkers and brimming with high end military equipment. It would be really hard to have an invasion force not be noticed by Taiwan. One the shooting started what would stop the Taiwanese from simply lobbing missiles at the heavily populated South of China. I don’t think it’s worth it for China to invade. Constantly threatening it is an interesting foreign policy move against the US.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  > One the shooting started what would stop the Taiwanese from simply lobbing missiles at the heavily populated South of China. I doubt Taiwan would target civilian centers, rather they'd be more likely to put all their surface-to-surface arrows behind sinking the PLAN's amphibious landing ships first, and the rest of its ships next. Without those, there can't be an invasion.
Guthur 5y ago
Not the main point of the article but I'd strongly disagree that Keynesian economics were effort dropped, government spending has been ever increasing since the 1940s and in the 80s it accelerated and just before the GFC it seemed to have got really out of control. I doubt Milton ever advocated for such large government, actually I know definitively that he would have been opposed.
dundarious 5y ago
What does it mean to be in a Cold War with China? On the US side, the Cold War with the USSR involved coups (many but not all successful) in the Middle East and Latin America, training death squads at the School of the Americas, installing nuclear ICBMs in Turkey and on submarines surrounding the USSR, propping up puppet/minority governments resisting “contagion” (and even going to war on behalf of some of them). This was all done to resist “contagion” (sometimes USSR imperialism, but mostly just people agreeing with ideas we didn’t like). What does it mean this time? There doesn’t even seem to be any argument akin to “contagion”. I don’t see any Chinese imperialism or even a big ideological soft power push. Even China’s loans and purchases associated with the Belt and Road come with almost no ideological strings, especially compared with IMF loans and US’s push for the Washington Consensus. What material actions are being asked for here, in order to make up for the lost focus on this supposed “Cold War 2”? This whole article is saber rattling nonsense to me.
- angelzen 5y ago
  Cold War I ended with the breakup of the USSR. Quite possible that Cold War II will have the same end, marked by economic crisis and ethnic strife, but most importantly by the complete dissolution of the average person's faith in their own country. The submarines are a side show, mostly a signal of economic health.
  - dundarious 5y ago
    My questions were about the entire stretch before the end, where a lot of things took place (almost entirely openly reported contemporaneously in the press) and I don’t see analogous things taking place this time, on either side. I mentioned submarines in the context of nuclear buildup during CW1, where they were not a distraction at all. Launch facilities in Turkey were closed as part of a deal to end the Cuban Missile Crisis/October Crisis, but the US only did so because they were to be retired anyway in favor of the submarine nuclear capability.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      The '80 were a period of continuous economic decline and increase in nationalist sentiment all over USSR and satellites. Mostly an implosion. The US won by simply sustaining a level of prosperity that the Soviets could not match. Arguably pop music, blue jeans and Hollywood movies were the primary driver of the destruction of the morale of the average soviet citizen, especially the young generations for which the carnage of WW2 was a distant memory. Militarily speaking, the Afghanistan debacle was the largest contributor, though that was mostly the doing of the Afghanis.
Ericson2314 5y ago
What a moron > The Biden administration's abandonment of Afghanistan is a kind of signal that they probably won't fight over anything. I'm not saying it was a pretty pullout, the whole time that administration was saying we have to do this to change focus to China. Absent lots of mind games, the simple message is "we shouldn't waste our time defending Afghanistan and Taiwan at the same time." > I'm tempted to call it "Keynes' revenge." John Maynard Keynes had a period of retreat, and Milton Friedman had a period of ascendancy, and you could date that from around 1979. Monetarism became dominant, markets were preferred to the state, and what emerged as "the Washington consensus" was much more a Friedmanite view of the world. > Keynes' revenge began in 2008, when, in the face of the financial crisis, a really large part of the economics profession, led by Paul Krugman, essentially said Keynes was right and we need to do Keynes now, or it will be the Great Depression. This part is true. Though I might put Joseph Stiglitz on equal par for existing big names beating the drum. > Some Friedmanite ideas have survived. Universal basic income was an idea of the right, once upon a time... It has an older history that that, but true. > And the answer is because, in the 1970s, Keynesian policies led to inflation. I feel like that's all just going to replay itself and we're going to have to relive the 1970s in order to remember why we did the 1980s. There was inflation before the 1970s that was tamed without a return to stupidity (and class warfare from above). See https://employamerica.medium.com/expecting-inflation-the-case-of-the-1950s-b197c7a926e6 https://employamerica.medium.com/expecting-inflation-the-cas... > No, it won't, because the multiplier just will be nonexistent. The U.S. is completely incapable of turning a large fiscal stimulus into the kind of investment that would have a significant multiplier. We already know what the outcome will be. There won't really be a significant macroeconomic benefit. The "multipliers" are not so dire. I do agree stimulus should be decoupled from infrastructure -- infrastructure simply doesn't mass-emply people the way it used to, especially if projects are completed in a timely matter, but that is a a separate point. > That's partly because the administration cannot resist mixing up other things with the word "infrastructure." Infrastructure now means everything. If you want to do environmental, "green" policy, that's infrastructure. Exactly wrong. Bipartisan road spending just promotes more wasteful, terrible exhurbs. It's useless and environmentally counterproductive. Things like universal Pre-K would actually be useful and certainly raise private sector efficiency. > If you're serious, you're going to walk away from natural gas, walk away from shale gas, and increase the costs of your energy mix. That's just the reality. The point is costs relative growth. If the prices go up but incomes go up faster, there's no problem. "Carbon dividend"-type proposals that make the poor not face the brunt of fuel prices (but still incentive them to ditch the car and pocket the difference!) are a good example to think about.
satonakamoto 5y ago
You guys are fucked.If you don't know HK is China's financial corridor and TW is China's tech corridor.So No! China will never use military force to TW. TW and China just play a show to World and US buy it.
9999px 5y ago
China has a more historic and material claim over Taiwan than the U.S. has over Hawaii. Give me a break with all this imperialist sabre-rattling. Taiwan is a province of China. Fewer than 15 countries (the U.S. is not one of them) acknowledge a sovereign Taiwan. This is a wedge issue designed so that defense contractors can sell more weapons/arms/subs in the South Pacific.
- auroz 5y ago
  >Taiwan is a province of China. De facto, it is not.
arcanon 5y ago
TSMC guarantees global intervention if China attempts to take Taiwan. The US is not alone.

86 points by RyanShook 5y ago

brsg 5y ago

I thought this was an interesting quote A: Two thoughts. First, you can leave a foreign country behind in an orderly way. Ask the British Empire, which mostly ended its colonial occupations in an orderly way. The interviewee says this as though it's common sense, but is it true? The examples that stick out to me are India, Israel/Palestine, and the South African colonies. Can these really be described as safe and orderly withdrawals? What are the examples of successful withdrawals? Are they really that much better than US withdrawal from Vietnam or Afghanistan?

thaumasiotes 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Divorce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Divorce
deleted 5y ago
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docdeek 5y ago
> What are the examples of successful withdrawals? Australia or Canada, perhaps.
- macdice 5y ago
  Those are settler colonies, a completely different kettle of fish. From the point of view of the (majority) settler population, they gradually ceased to consider themselves as British and underwent a multi-step disentanglement of legal and constitutional connections to the UK beginning almost a century ago but still ongoing. From the point of the (minority) indigenous populations, well I'm sure it varies but they may not agree that a withdrawal has occurred...
  - perardi 5y ago
    It still strikes me as a bit weird that Canada did not have its own constitution, as in technically completely independent of the British Parliament, until 1982. And technically the head of state is…well it’s complicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_General_of_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_General_of_Canada
    - macdice 5y ago
      Yeah, similar stories and timeline in other former dominions. I find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_v_Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_v_Hill fascinating, when a court in Australia was forced to consider whether the UK was a foreign power.
bpodgursky 5y ago
The withdrawl from India was safe (for the British, let's ignore the partition bloodshed) and didn't lead to immediate regime collapse... so I certainly don't think it went as badly as Afghanistan or Vietnam.
- charlescearl 5y ago
  No let’s not ignore the loss of over 1 million lives. Borders are still contested, with several wars having been fought, the scale of the disaster dwarfs Vietnam.
dmurray 5y ago
> What are the examples of successful withdrawals? Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean territories. Arguably Hong Kong. You could also make a reasonable case for Egypt, Ghana, India/Pakistan... The withdrawal itself was peaceful and didn't leave the state in immediate civil war, even if it wasn't stable in the medium term.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I’d say the difference is that those territories were more or less “at peace”. The colonists had “won” the war, at least per some definition of winning. Afghanistan was a barely held together mess even before we withdrew. I’m not arguing one way or the other for Taiwan—I don’t want to go to war with China for all sorts of obvious reasons—but we would have the backing of the Taiwanese people, and that’s a major difference versus Afghanistan.
- rjsw 5y ago
  Withdrawal from Malaysia and Singapore went well.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Canada, Australia Ask the natives about it.
  - mc32 5y ago
    That's a non-sequitur. Did the British leave Canada & Australia in a peaceful state? As far as I know, there were no civil wars or disarray in those countries, whether ex British subjects or original stock of native populations.
    - danielheath 5y ago
      Australian here. Firstly, the monarch of England is still our head of state. Secondly, the genocide was so thorough that there weren't enough indigenous inhabitants left (outside of those enslaved) to hold a war. So yeah - after the British pulled out (except they didn't), we had peace between the living and the dead.
bpodgursky 5y ago
I'd argue that the Soviet withdrawls from Eastern Europe went pretty well. Safe, orderly, no real bloodshed.
- nradov 5y ago
  The Soviets militarily occupied Eastern Europe, but they never really colonized it to a significant extent.
  - NotSammyHagar 5y ago
    The Baltics would disagree. Think of all the problems for the elderly retired Russian speaking people that stayed behind.
    - abrowne 5y ago
      The Baltic states were part of the USSR, unlike Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria etc.
      - mannerheim 5y ago
        And the US was once part of the UK, which doesn't mean the latter didn't colonise the former.
        abrowne 5y ago
        Pedantically, I don't think the US was ever part of the UK. The UK ultimately had sovereignty, but that's not the same thing. Even now the United Kingdom's former colonies are not part of the UK: it "has sovereignty over 17 territories which do not form part of the United Kingdom itself: 14 British Overseas Territories and three Crown dependencies.¹ But that's kind of the same point that I didn't articulate. A colony is not part of the country that is ruling it. The Baltic states were part of the Russian Empire, independent between the wars, and then reincorporated into the USSR. They weren't "militarily occupied", they were part fully incorporated. When someone says "militarily occupied Eastern Europe", I'd only assume they meant the countries that were "behind the iron curtain" but de jure independent, like Poland or Romania. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom#:~:text=The%20United%20Kingdom%20has%20sovereignty%20over%2017%20territories%20which%20do%20not%20form%20part%20of%20the%20United%20Kingdom%20itself%3A%2014%20British%20Overseas%20Territories%5B27%5D%20and%20three%20Crown%20dependencies.%5B27%5D%5B223%5D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom#:~:text=The%20U...
__d 5y ago
Australia and New Zealand would probably be considered successful withdrawals? Canada? Less so the colonies that became the US, I guess.
throwawaysea 5y ago
I personally don't think those withdrawals are truly orderly. Let's take India - leaving aside the partition of India (which is a huge matter in itself), a big crime is that the country that was left behind by the British did not resemble its historical culture or way of governance. It was instead turned into a secular nation, which just means defaulting to a status quo of colonial Western values. Ironically the partitioned areas (like the Islamic Republic of Pakistan) were not secular, but Hindus no longer had a land to practice a life that was fully dictated by their principles and their principles alone - instead they would live by rules and structures the British left behind. India also retained a lot of colonial structures outside of its government. For example the British education system continued, meaning that Indian children were taught out of Western-controlled/sourced materials that glossed over the horrors of British rule. Those children were also not taught the cultural things they would have learned in a pre-colonial era. This pattern isn't unique to India, but I wanted to call it out as an example of how seemingly peaceful withdrawals still result in long-lasting damage to a people and their culture. Is that peace? Maybe in the most literal sense. But it's not the same as making that place whole.
hackeraccount 5y ago
I don't want to speak well of the USSR/Russia but it's not hard to make an argument that they left Eastern Europe in an orderly way... well at the end. Honestly between Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and others there were some bad times in the there.
- Razengan 5y ago
  > I don't want to speak well of the USSR/Russia Why?
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    The multiple genocides and general suppression of human rights?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Razengan 5y ago
      Would you add a similar disclaimer before pointing something positive about the U.S. because they’ve done some bad shit too, like, I dunno, being the only nation to actually nuke another?
- mc32 5y ago
  Gorbachov left the Eastern Block in relative peace I would say. Afghanistan of course was an exception.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Wasn't the Soviet Union pretty much done with Afghanistan when Gorbachov took over in 1985?
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Czechoslovakia and Romania made attempts at leaving peacefully and that didn't go so well. Though yes, in the end it was "fine".
tragomaskhalos 5y ago
The intention was there - according to Pakenham's "The Scramble for Africa" the idea was that prior to independence you educate a generation of civil servants who will then run the country along essentially British lines. I'd argue this worked well in India, largely though because Indians were already running the country in most important particulars. In Africa less so because independence movements gained unstoppable momentum which preempted such planning, plus many of those countries had been colonies for decades rather than centuries.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  > civil servants who will then run the country along essentially British lines While this may mean structural continuity, I can’t help but feel this is also a bad outcome - it’s just a continuation of imperialist force/cultural projection.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    I won't say that a working electoral / parliamentary / judicial system, civil engineering, medicine, etc left intact is a bad outcome. It's a much better outcome than a civil war. With some exceptions, there were no comparable systems in native cultures; those that existed (some definitely did) often were not capable to keep together a country, even if they worked well on tribal level, or were scalable but belligerent by design. I also don't think that cultural projection, to a degree, is not a bad thing. It happens constantly, and allows for cultural cross-pollination. It is, of course, best done in peaceful ways.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  > the idea was that prior to independence you educate a generation of civil servants who will then run the country along essentially British lines. I'd argue this worked well in India… I certainly wouldn’t draw that conclusion. Immediately after the British left Nehru adopted 5 year plans based on the soviet model. Nehru and Stalin didn’t get along because he was still too Britain-friendly for Stalin, but India and The USSR developed very close relations within a very short period of time. Some elements of India’s governance structure were distinctively non-Soviet, like having a multiparty democracy. But if you look at the way the country was run, it was done in the style of soviet central planning, most certainly not along British lines.
ekianjo 5y ago
> Ask the British Empire, which mostly ended its colonial occupations in an orderly way. Oh, like the independence of the US did go like a major peaceful operation. And yes the US used to be a british colony, in case people forgot.
dexter89_kp3 5y ago
Decisions taken by British still haunt India to this date. Especially their division of states.
wonnage 5y ago
Yeah this statement kinda discredits everything he says. The world is littered with countries that exist only because some existing adjacent kingdoms happened to both be colonized by the British, and they merged them into one colony. Countries fell apart after they left because there was no shared national identity to begin with.
xenocyon 5y ago
* India: the Partition led to massive loss of life, displacement in the tens of millions, traumatized communities, and deadly polarization between peoples to this day. * Palestine: the end of the Mandate and the 1947-1949 Palestine war saw largescale displacement, loss of life, and (as is obvious to everyone) once again a deadly and unshakeable polarization between peoples that persists to this day. On the one hand, it is certainly true that the British did not intend for these consequences, but on the other, the British were fully in charge as the sovereign government of India and Mandatory Palestine (unlike the US in Vietnam or even Afghanistan) - in particular having ruled India for over three centuries by the time they left - and so more deserving of blame.

RyanShook 5y ago

Seems pretty accurate in hindsight: So, there was this enormous distraction that the Islamists created that absorbed our attention, our resources, and it turns out that it was really -- it was a detour. The big issue was the rise of China.

wahern 5y ago
Both North Korea and Iran deftly took advantage of the U.S. being preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan. Frankly, I'm surprised China didn't make more significant moves the past 20 years. Though, I suppose China's economy has changed significantly over the past 20 years, and the U.S. was less preoccupied the second decade than the first, which is when Iran and North Korea made their major nuclear moves. But it's not news that China posed the greater strategic issue. One of Obama's first foreign policy initiatives in 2009 was the "Pivot to Asia". And the need for that pivot had been the consensus opinion of foreign policy analysts for years prior. The U.S. got stuck in the Middle East because it couldn't separate itself from the rhetoric. The Bush Administration (specifically Cheney, et al) did too good a job selling the Iraq War to both the public and the defense industry. Conservatives continually carping over Iran has never helped, either. The irony that Iran would never have pursued nuclear weapons but-for the Iraq invasion--because of the threat the U.S. posed, because it distracted the U.S.--makes the dynamic starkly clear.
- randomopining 5y ago
  The US must've tappped the CCP communications in the 90s... they must've known this was their endgame. I'm surprised that only in the past few years has the China thing really come to the forefront. This should've been in like 1996 wit the taiwan straight incident.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    Maybe they have. But a sliver of truth, even warning about imminent great danger, is too small to overcome the inertia of the political machine. As an example, several weeks before Germany attacked USSR in 1941, multiple Soviet spies warned Moscow about the plans to attack, and approximate dates. But Germany and USSR have officially been friendlies ever since they collectively invaded and divided Poland in 1939, were actively exchanging military technology, food, and various strategic materials. Stalin rejected these reports as provocations. Then Germans nearly won over USSR in like 6 months, but it's a different story, of course, for a different political discourse.

DudeInBasement 5y ago

Does Taiwan have nukes? North Korea does.

SkyMarshal 5y ago

> The Biden administration's abandonment of Afghanistan could be interpreted as an unwillingness on the part of the U.S. to engage in overseas wars and could change Chinese President Xi Jinping's risk calculations, Ferguson said. I think this is exactly backwards. Xi was previously exploiting the US’s preoccupation with the Middle East to build up China’s military and militarize South China Sea islands. With a large chunk of the US military bogged down in a multi-front stalemate with Taliban all across Afghanistan, and maintaining stability in a destabilized Iraq, it was the perfect time for CCP to exploit their limited capabilities. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan and drawdown in Iraq is clearly about freeing up those forces to refocus on China and possibly Russia, in a pivot back to Great Power competition and balance of power strategies. The CCP is publicly trying to convince East Asia that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan means the US won’t stand by its allies there, but that’s just posturing. I’m pretty sure both those allies and the CCP know it means exactly the opposite.

dnautics 5y ago
The CCP is not trying to convince any East Asian nation that the us is flaky. It is trying to convince a populace that attacking Taiwan is going to be bloodless for an army of it's populaces only children.
- randomopining 5y ago
  US should give Taiwan nukes secretly and then taiwan announces a first strike policy.
  - NonEUCitizen 5y ago
    US is reason Taiwan does not have nukes: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39252502 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39252502
    - nine_k 5y ago
      I think since the annexation of Crimea no one country in their sane mind will surrender their nuclear weapons, as Ukraine did.

no_butterscotch 5y ago

I've heard that China is currently at it's demographic peak. From here on out people are aging with less replacing them, and more and more youth have to support multiple grandparents (effect of one-child policy, which while no longer in effect still has lasting impact). As such I suppose if they were going to make a move now would be the time.

dundarious 5y ago
I don’t think their preferred tactic is a human wave attack anymore. They’re advanced now. Better to ensure the US stays out of open conflict, which probably still means playing the waiting game.
- eloff 5y ago
  The demographics are not a problem because of how they constrain the number of troops they can field - their population is still quadruple the US, so no problems there. The problem is the economic weakness that comes with a country where each working person supports two retired people (either directly as in family or indirectly as in taxes). That doesn't work as far as we know. So China is right near the peak of their power (maybe 15-30 years away.) I still think that means they'll be patient and wait for their moment. But they can't wait forever.
dirtyid 5y ago
This is one of the more idiotic extrapolations of demographic bomb. Even the one-child policy annual birth rate in China is ~9-10M per year. That's an incredible amount of bodies to recruit from for the needs of modern air / naval warfare with limited casualty potential. Around half of births will be from underclass, where becoming a military martyr for the cause of reunification would be the surest guarantee their family has a meal ticket for the rest of their lives. Throw in upward mobility incentives like preferential queuing for universities, real estate etc - there won’t be a manpower problem.
- someperson 5y ago
  Those military-age only children are expected to take care of their elderly parents and grandparents. In a world war over Taiwan, it's likely millions of them would die. Leaving each family as "bare branches" since they have no siblings. And eldest male children are especially important in Chinese culture. Given it would be a mass casualty conflict, the upward mobility "support the troops" impact (and guaranteed "meal tickets") would seem to be have a pretty limited.

Isamu 5y ago

> There has to be some reason why Saigon 1975 and Kabul 2021 were such a mess. Sure, the US was exiting one region while under fire from fighters from yet another place that sought to “liberate” the region. Chaos from locals that hoped to save their lives from their “liberators”. You are comparing that to an exit from a region where there is no other party participating in the liberation.

b1n 5y ago

> "When the battle over Huawei began, over 5G, I saw a map of the world, and it was a map of the world according to whether countries were allowing Huawei in or not, and I said to one of my young colleagues, "Oh, that's the Cold War."" Map of countries that have banned Huawei: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/17528.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/17528.jpeg (from https://www.statista.com/chart/17528/countries-which-have-banned-huawei-products/ https://www.statista.com/chart/17528/countries-which-have-ba...)

b1n 5y ago
Just noticed how bad the color choice is on that chart. The lightest red (pink) is actually "Unlikely to ban".
renewiltord 5y ago
Western Europe is somehow supposed to be in the Second World in this Universe. The only way that’s true is if the US player is forced on the Early War card Degaulle Rules France and not permitted to play NATO. I declare this comparison Bogus History!
- rkk3 5y ago
  The win condition has been updated, now it is if you have control of Asia you win. Coups are now also allowed in Europe at Defcon 4.
chrononaut 5y ago
Why on Earth is "Unlikely to ban" close to the same shade of red as "On the fence" and "(Partial) ban in effect", while "Using Huawei" is green.
- COGlory 5y ago
  What a useless map
- nullspace 5y ago
  Haha, until I read your comment, my reaction was “huh interesting, Russia has banned Huwaei” as well.

627467 5y ago

What would CCP gain (compared to the status quo) in doing this move? To test US loyalty to other Asian allies? Seems... Convoluted, reckless, and not at all something China has done in the past. China and Taiwan are already co dependent.

chrchang523 5y ago
Well, Hong Kong had plenty of co-dependence with the rest of China, and everyone already expected greater integration in 2047; yet the CCP still chose to accelerate the schedule in defiance of the expectations of both a majority of HK citizens and the West. With that said, Taiwan is both more valuable and easier to take if more Taiwanese people don't think it's much better to be associated with the US than China. I think that, if the CCP does gain control of Taiwan in the future, it's >50% likely to be no more violent than Crimea; that's not possible today because too many Taiwanese are opposed.
rsj_hn 5y ago
More importantly, China is co-dependent on the rest of the world, including the US, to continue allowing large Chinese trade surpluses. And virtually all of China's foreign assets are held in US and European custodial accounts that could be instantly seized or at least frozen. This is not the position from which one would want to upset the current world order, especially if domestic tranquility (read, employment) is dependent on the good graces of your trading partners. On the other hand completely isolated nations like North Korea -- which are not tightly integrated into the international economy and feel they have nothing left to lose -- these are the ones that are more likely to do crazy things. Thus China will continue to sabre-rattle and focus on largely symbolic issues in order to stoke nationalism but they will not actually act as that would immediately make a large chunk of their population unemployed and destitute. And questions of money and employment are much more important to Chinese citizens than nationalism.
- angelzen 5y ago
  The economic interdependency argument is fragile. It has been refuted at least once in history. In the 1909 book 'The Great Illusion', British lecturer, journalist, author and Member of Parliament and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Norman Angell argued along the same lines. Coming at the tail end of an unusually long and prosperous European Golden Age, the Belle Époque, it was very well received in its time. 5 years later, the trenches of WWI would put the lofty ideals to rest. > According to Angell, the economic interdependence between industrial countries would be "the real guarantor of the good behavior of one state to another",[6] as it meant that war would be economically harmful to all the countries involved. Moreover, if a conquering power confiscated property in the territory it seized, "the incentive [of the local population] to produce would be sapped and the conquered area be rendered worthless. Thus, the conquering power had to leave property in the hands of the local population while incurring the costs of conquest and occupation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_%C3%89poque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_%C3%89poque

temp8964 5y ago

Does China even need to attack Taiwan? Put an embargo on the island. Will US has the political will to directly confront with China? Seems unlikely.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Taiwan is too closely situated to the Ryukyus (and American airforce/navy bases) for China to enforce an embargo on them. Unless China can block off Japan also, then they can't really cut the island off from anyone. If you mean a direct economic embargo, then China loses a lot of its export potential (e.g. via FoxConn) driven by descendants of the mainlanders who fled to Taiwan in 1949. A lot of the factories are owned/managed by such Taiwanese, who are much more in line with a unified China than other Taiwanese, but are still unwilling to become PRC citizens.
smitty1e 5y ago
A naval blockade? That would be tantamount to an attack. After Kabul, whether the feckless U.S. will bother to recall that Taipei is an ally is another question.

rkk3 5y ago

Does Taiwan converting to a liberal democracy decades into the civil war overrule China's right of Sovereignty?

davidjytang 5y ago
It sure doesn't overrule Taiwan's right of sovereignty.
- rkk3 5y ago
  Why do you think they have a right to sovereignty? They lost a civil war (and wouldn't exist without US intervention), Taiwan is a Chinese province. I doubt you would be making this claim if they were still being ruled through dictatorship by a Chiang. Edit: You can downvote me without exploring the question, but most of the world does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation.
  - auroz 5y ago
    >Why do you think they have a right to sovereignty? They are sovereign over the island of Taiwan >They lost a civil war (and wouldn't exist without US intervention) They lost control of mainland China during the civil war; no peace treaty was signed and they still hold Taiwan >Taiwan is a Chinese province You can declare all you want in your constitution but de facto it is not. If all you claimed was true then there would be no issue, but clearly that's not the case.
    - rkk3 5y ago
      So if the US Confederacy held onto a small bit of land in the south, with the help of a foreign power like England, you would respect their right of sovereignty? Somehow I doubt it. There are many reasons to maintain a presence in Taiwan or South Korea, like limiting China's sphere of influence in Asia. But that would require acknowledging that they are geo political chess piece's and dropping this veneer of moral superiority.

vondur 5y ago

Taiwan reminds me of Switzerland. Mountainous terrain with a lot of bunkers and brimming with high end military equipment. It would be really hard to have an invasion force not be noticed by Taiwan. One the shooting started what would stop the Taiwanese from simply lobbing missiles at the heavily populated South of China. I don’t think it’s worth it for China to invade. Constantly threatening it is an interesting foreign policy move against the US.

SkyMarshal 5y ago
> One the shooting started what would stop the Taiwanese from simply lobbing missiles at the heavily populated South of China. I doubt Taiwan would target civilian centers, rather they'd be more likely to put all their surface-to-surface arrows behind sinking the PLAN's amphibious landing ships first, and the rest of its ships next. Without those, there can't be an invasion.

Guthur 5y ago

Not the main point of the article but I'd strongly disagree that Keynesian economics were effort dropped, government spending has been ever increasing since the 1940s and in the 80s it accelerated and just before the GFC it seemed to have got really out of control. I doubt Milton ever advocated for such large government, actually I know definitively that he would have been opposed.

dundarious 5y ago

What does it mean to be in a Cold War with China? On the US side, the Cold War with the USSR involved coups (many but not all successful) in the Middle East and Latin America, training death squads at the School of the Americas, installing nuclear ICBMs in Turkey and on submarines surrounding the USSR, propping up puppet/minority governments resisting “contagion” (and even going to war on behalf of some of them). This was all done to resist “contagion” (sometimes USSR imperialism, but mostly just people agreeing with ideas we didn’t like). What does it mean this time? There doesn’t even seem to be any argument akin to “contagion”. I don’t see any Chinese imperialism or even a big ideological soft power push. Even China’s loans and purchases associated with the Belt and Road come with almost no ideological strings, especially compared with IMF loans and US’s push for the Washington Consensus. What material actions are being asked for here, in order to make up for the lost focus on this supposed “Cold War 2”? This whole article is saber rattling nonsense to me.

angelzen 5y ago
Cold War I ended with the breakup of the USSR. Quite possible that Cold War II will have the same end, marked by economic crisis and ethnic strife, but most importantly by the complete dissolution of the average person's faith in their own country. The submarines are a side show, mostly a signal of economic health.
- dundarious 5y ago
  My questions were about the entire stretch before the end, where a lot of things took place (almost entirely openly reported contemporaneously in the press) and I don’t see analogous things taking place this time, on either side. I mentioned submarines in the context of nuclear buildup during CW1, where they were not a distraction at all. Launch facilities in Turkey were closed as part of a deal to end the Cuban Missile Crisis/October Crisis, but the US only did so because they were to be retired anyway in favor of the submarine nuclear capability.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    The '80 were a period of continuous economic decline and increase in nationalist sentiment all over USSR and satellites. Mostly an implosion. The US won by simply sustaining a level of prosperity that the Soviets could not match. Arguably pop music, blue jeans and Hollywood movies were the primary driver of the destruction of the morale of the average soviet citizen, especially the young generations for which the carnage of WW2 was a distant memory. Militarily speaking, the Afghanistan debacle was the largest contributor, though that was mostly the doing of the Afghanis.

Ericson2314 5y ago

What a moron > The Biden administration's abandonment of Afghanistan is a kind of signal that they probably won't fight over anything. I'm not saying it was a pretty pullout, the whole time that administration was saying we have to do this to change focus to China. Absent lots of mind games, the simple message is "we shouldn't waste our time defending Afghanistan and Taiwan at the same time." > I'm tempted to call it "Keynes' revenge." John Maynard Keynes had a period of retreat, and Milton Friedman had a period of ascendancy, and you could date that from around 1979. Monetarism became dominant, markets were preferred to the state, and what emerged as "the Washington consensus" was much more a Friedmanite view of the world. > Keynes' revenge began in 2008, when, in the face of the financial crisis, a really large part of the economics profession, led by Paul Krugman, essentially said Keynes was right and we need to do Keynes now, or it will be the Great Depression. This part is true. Though I might put Joseph Stiglitz on equal par for existing big names beating the drum. > Some Friedmanite ideas have survived. Universal basic income was an idea of the right, once upon a time... It has an older history that that, but true. > And the answer is because, in the 1970s, Keynesian policies led to inflation. I feel like that's all just going to replay itself and we're going to have to relive the 1970s in order to remember why we did the 1980s. There was inflation before the 1970s that was tamed without a return to stupidity (and class warfare from above). See https://employamerica.medium.com/expecting-inflation-the-case-of-the-1950s-b197c7a926e6 https://employamerica.medium.com/expecting-inflation-the-cas... > No, it won't, because the multiplier just will be nonexistent. The U.S. is completely incapable of turning a large fiscal stimulus into the kind of investment that would have a significant multiplier. We already know what the outcome will be. There won't really be a significant macroeconomic benefit. The "multipliers" are not so dire. I do agree stimulus should be decoupled from infrastructure -- infrastructure simply doesn't mass-emply people the way it used to, especially if projects are completed in a timely matter, but that is a a separate point. > That's partly because the administration cannot resist mixing up other things with the word "infrastructure." Infrastructure now means everything. If you want to do environmental, "green" policy, that's infrastructure. Exactly wrong. Bipartisan road spending just promotes more wasteful, terrible exhurbs. It's useless and environmentally counterproductive. Things like universal Pre-K would actually be useful and certainly raise private sector efficiency. > If you're serious, you're going to walk away from natural gas, walk away from shale gas, and increase the costs of your energy mix. That's just the reality. The point is costs relative growth. If the prices go up but incomes go up faster, there's no problem. "Carbon dividend"-type proposals that make the poor not face the brunt of fuel prices (but still incentive them to ditch the car and pocket the difference!) are a good example to think about.

satonakamoto 5y ago

You guys are fucked.If you don't know HK is China's financial corridor and TW is China's tech corridor.So No! China will never use military force to TW. TW and China just play a show to World and US buy it.

9999px 5y ago

China has a more historic and material claim over Taiwan than the U.S. has over Hawaii. Give me a break with all this imperialist sabre-rattling. Taiwan is a province of China. Fewer than 15 countries (the U.S. is not one of them) acknowledge a sovereign Taiwan. This is a wedge issue designed so that defense contractors can sell more weapons/arms/subs in the South Pacific.

auroz 5y ago
>Taiwan is a province of China. De facto, it is not.

arcanon 5y ago

TSMC guarantees global intervention if China attempts to take Taiwan. The US is not alone.