Interesting conversation in the tweets. Australian Foreign Minister (fm. Defence Minister) thinks it will take "far longer" than a decade to achieve the intended capability of 8 to 12 operable subs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr is quite pessimistic.
Elsewhere I've heard that even Australia's current fleet of 6 Collins diesels has trouble maintaining crew levels.Quote:
We will get the new subs in 2040 suggests Hugh White. Might get up to 12 in 2050s. In the 2030s we may have none functioning. Gain UK but lose France, the bigger European power in the Pacific. Indonesian military now views us as potential threat.
US will see our subs as joint asset making automatic our recruitment for war against China and the Australian continent a nuclear target. Whew! Imagine the mess we’d be in without the steady strategic vision of Dutton Morrison and ASPI.
So everyone seems to roughly agree on the lead time. Talk about a Chekhov's Gun. I wonder if the real point wrt China is part posturing and part securing more Pacific bases (possible in the short-medium term with Australian ports). Also, just selling lots of bombs to Australia (part of the AUKUS deal) - have to find a new military-industrial outlet now that Afghanistan is dry!
I'm going to embed some interesting visual aids and charts from recent Congressional testimony, but first:Quote:
Originally Posted by spmetla
If Chinese leadership, for whatever reason, is inexorably on a legitimately-psychotic path of Anschluss at any cost - and there's no pressure particularly forcing military expansion here as a conflict resolution strategy , since as you say their opposition's posture is basically reactive, unlike the case with Germany's or Russia's strategic environments in the 1930s - then the probability of escalation to world war, even nuclear war, skyrockets. And if that's the case then it's simply irresponsible to contest China on this (for argument's sake) ultimate national interest. How could Taiwan be worth it? Bad enough for Taiwan to exist as a free wasteland in a hostilities scenario, let alone the whole region or the whole planet.
In the very easy deterrence scenario, as before, just forward deploy a couple carrier fleets off the east coast of Formosa, offer recognition, park like we parked on Fulda and call it a century. If it's maximally difficult to deter China from invading and bearing heartstopping losses, the price is too high for the coalition and for the world, we could conceivably lose outright; we will need to stand down and pull the defensive perimeter back from Taiwan, maybe even from Vietnam, out to where the Chinese really would be unable to crack open Allied defenses or sustain domestic cohesion if they wanted to. (In this extreme version of events I assume Putin's heir will be begging for permission to join NATO at long last if they aren't an outright Chinese client by then.)
Some images I promised:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
If, for example, we take this shipbuilding campaign as an attempt to keep the US out of the first island chain, then there should be ample scope for negotiations and deterrence. Maybe something like the Washington Naval Treaty would be available to reassure the CCP and lower the stakes a little (or else we recognize Taiwan and form a defense pact, how's that for hardball?). But if China is committed to overturning the status quo, overwhelming American naval strength in the region toward territorial expansion and hegemony, then we seriously have to reconsider our commitment and ability to keep pace, as well as acknowledge that this kind of mutual arms race is extremely likely to culminate in war, minimally only one of the worst since WW2. In other words, we won't be spending toward "deterrence," we'll be spending toward putting it to use. And I don't really think that's a road we should be heading down. More bluntly, if Chinese policies are interpreted as Hitleresque rearmament, then Taiwan is in the position of Czechoslovakia and we would be in an even worse spot to try to guarantee its security, let alone, in the event, actually attempt to back up the guarantee with action. It's almost the worst of all worlds. Someone who believes in inevitable bloodletting against a muscular China MUST cut Taiwan loose, as soon as possible and with full recognizance between partners and allies. But that's a hard bet to make, eh?
Maybe this last one offers the most food for thought...
https://i.imgur.com/O4xBqq8.png
Within limits. Do we declare war on Russia if it is involved in overthrowing a NATO government? Sure, not like we've even had a shortage of casi belli on that account since 2016. That doesn't entail that NATO is honorbound to throw away its strength in a relentless push toward Moscow. First we ensure that Poland and Romania are secure, then we consider our options wrt Ukraine, then we reduce Kaliningrad, and if the war is still ongoing after a year or more we gradually push into the Baltics until a diplomatic resolution can be found. The linchpin is the mutualized assurances (between allies) and the mutualized costs (between antagonists), not the accumulation itself of overwhelming material advantage (arms race). Obviously European militaries should be minimally functional in their own limits, a notional strength is hardly worth having if it can't be operationalized in practice, but I disagree that there is a justification for significant expansion across many countries.Quote:
Mutual defense is only valuable if the members are capable and willing to defend each other.
I don't know what to predict for Turkey's part, but I doubt it's going to be invading Greece anytime while NATO or the EU exist. What's happening with the new canal?
No one wanted the Azeri-Armenian war to spread, since it was such a limited irredentist grudge match between minor countries, without many excesses. To emphasize what I said in a previous comment, it surely does introduce a new era of limited interstate conflict between small states or even regional powers (Crimea/LDPR was the prologue). Morocco-Algeria and Egypt-Sudan-Ethiopia are plausible cases. I'm not sure if the Ethiopian Civil War counts as an instance of this paradigm.
He can "afford" one compared to the EU, being a dictator of a relatively-militarized state and all. While it's true that Russia's military expansion has been constrained by sanctions, it's still managed a steady modernization post-2014. If we're following the same sort of logic for why China would sacrifice anything and everything over Taiwan.Quote:
As for Putin being able to afford an arms race, I don't think he can.
But we just get back into the real reasons why Russia wouldn't really start shit, right? Their economy doesn't have the stamina for a total mobilization, and at any rate Putin and his power base would be wrecked by public unrest and internal rivals. There's simply nothing in it to Putinists' advantage to escalate except in the scenario where Europe and the US capitulate on the spot and promise to never bother Russia about anything ever again, slinking off with their hats behind their tails (unreasonably optimistic). And unlike China, the Russian elite seem perfectly happy to focus their attention on exploiting their feudal subjects for personal profit at home. Russia is the paper Ritsar here, the one great power it really is easy to deter (from strictly military aggression I should say). We probably don't need to speak much more of Russia on this topic, other than to remind ourselves that the US nevertheless is doctrinally-bound to maintain a strategic reserve against hypothetical Russian (or other) opportunism in any confrontation with China.
I've learned that of late almost all piratical activity - in the realm of over 90% - has been confined to the Guinea Gulf states, including Nigeria, none of whom are close to failed state status currently (and so can't be approached in the manner of counter-Somalian piracy). The issue appears to be a dire lack of economic and social opportunity coupled with systematic corporate environmental and labor exploitation in the area. Just like the US Navy doesn't have much to offer to OAS citizens, European frigates don't have much to offer West Africans. I'm not saying there's no need for a short-term security response to defend sea lanes there, but we know what to do to address the problem. Concentrating more economic resources toward shooting at impoverished Africans is purely wasteful and immoral. It's pretty much the Euro analogue of Build the Wall (and get the Americans to pay for it).Quote:
The core causes of piracy exist but short of nation building Somalia, Yemen and plenty of other countries the easier and more cost effective solution is sealane protection.
Why would EU citizens believe it's useful for them, or for anyone, to have Europe invest in force projection 10000 miles away? Leave alone that there is no unity on a European foreign policy or consolidated military, but not even the populaces of the UK and France - with extant colonial interests in the Indian Ocean - would hardly see the value in the proposition, one which inherently prescribes deployment of force against sovereign states with unfavorable trade or related policies (where have we heard that one before?).Quote:
Strategic lift capability and reach is extremely useful by air and sea and has uses for humanitarian aid as well moving troops ,there's a lot more to defense spending than tanks and troops though those are necessary too. Building NATO logistical and cyber-warfare capabilities that were independent of the US would be hugely useful and have uses beyond conventional warfare too.
Why the heck does Norway need firepower and the will to use it (presumably) against Russian resource exploration? Jesus. I would need a whole lot of convincing for why this is a legitimate postural debate. It feels too much like the proverbial hammer and nail. If it creates dangerous expectations for the US to insist on being able to reach anywhere, Europe of all things doesn't need to approximate such ambitions.Quote:
The arctic is melting and Canada, Norway and Denmark/Greenland aren't exactly poised to stop Russian resource exploration when that eventually happens.
The Axis of Evil famously counted China client North Korea as a member, which tangentially killed any possibility of sustaining the Agreed Framework on NK nuclearization.Quote:
The Bush 'axis of evil' and policy of regime change in Iraq is what really pushed China into firm opposition.
That's a little unfair in comparison, since the Suez Crisis didn't really change much in geopolitics. France and UK were already consigned to the path if decolonization, and could not plausibly continue to project power as they had in the past; the likes of Suez, and Indochina and Israel before it, just proved it without a doubt for those slow on the uptake. The before-after was a difference in self-image rather than in real capabilities or international relations.Quote:
The Suez Crisis essentially ending France/UK great power status and leading to France's divorce from NATO and the expedited policies of France and the UK to decolonize changed the makeup of the world leading to huge social, economic, and political upheavals in all former colonies over the next 30 years. So yeah, your later examples are far closer to the mark though you took them to a another extreme degree.
France's separation from NATO was politically inconvenient but I don't know that it reduced the US alliance's - of which France remained a member in practice, they weren't laying down the carpet for Soviet troops - preparedness to fend off any Communist invasion. The Iraq War was more of a strain on Europe's usability for US interests (as neocons saw them), and the War on Terror was clearly a proximate cause of instability throughout the Middle East, even if one thinks of it as an enduringly-unstable region, instability that did directly affect the relations of all the great powers among each other and with the world. I can't deprecate all that for the Suez flash in the pan.
Maybe a better comparison for 'true' turning points would be the Cuban Missile Crisis, since that one 'little' incident officially inaugurated the era of Mutually Assured Destruction. In the 1950s, the Soviets still had too few atomic weapons, and moreover no or almost no ICBMs, with which to existentially threaten the US heartland. (Notably for the wider topic of deterrence, MAD was most successful when both the US and USSR acknowledged its potency and agreed to restrict their own deployments and warhead stockpiles. But all those Cold War concords are extinct or about to go extinct...)
If the GIROA were a viable government, we could certainly have supported it. But it just wasn't. Maybe some other version of it could have been, but it's been amply demonstrated by now that it was never our serious aim or interest to invent such an entity. For the remainder of 2021 all we can do is wait and watch and schedule opportunities for dialogue.Quote:
You've said enough that we should try and act on behalf of what's best for the Afghan people. I still think in the long run that would have been supporting the flawed state that was GIROA.
