Great Power contentions

[Montmorency]

Seeing as the US has already been the largest supplier of weapons and platforms to Australia this isn't a new outlet.

The relationship is preexisting, but the announced sales are new. But hey, this AUKUS just guaranteed tens of thousands of Americans in or adjacent to the arms industry a lifetime career. O.0

Those are interesting visuals, hull count isn't exactly tonnage though they are adding tonnage at a rate we can't match.

What do you make of the constant (technically slightly lower) military spending relative to GDP over time? Methodology on assessing true Chinese military (or other) spending is a challenge I have no insight on, but my gut feeling is that unless we see that figure rise suddenly - especially relative to declining overall growth rates for the economy - our leadership won't need to give serious consideration to our extreme hypothetical here.

Taiwan is also crucial in manufacturing of microchips, something the global economy is short of and seeing the PRC gain more control of those industries is not in the interest of the US or EU.

Of course China's exports and imports and financial access would instantly be slashed on the outbreak of war, and I wonder if there's a detailed analysis of how much of a contingency they need to even take the hit for a few months... but we're imagining none of this matters to a bloodthirsty CCP.

Microchip factories are not super-difficult to build out elsewhere with political support, such as Vietnam or Bangladesh (who would want the opportunity independent of the Taiwan impasse mind you). More inconvenient, shall we say, for the global economy would be the complete stoppage of trade in the Strait, much permanently foreclosed by the presumable embargo on China, and the ultimate destruction of complex infrastructure throughout Taiwan... just unthinkable global aftershocks and realignment.

What can we expect in a scenario where the Chicoms take their hundred-year revenge irrespective of any cost to themselves or others, and we thoroughly contest. Several million (mostly Taiwanese) would die over several years of grueling attrition, a century of development and investment on the island would be wiped out, and the US would see a substantial portion of all its operational assets on the floor of the ocean. And this is just in the case where we "win," which is to say preempt Chinese local air/naval supremacy or the formation of an undislodgeable beachhead, the capture of tens of thousands of American soldiers defending the island, or a nuclear exchange.

If one assumes this grade of confrontation is inevitable, then they're either confident we'll only "get our hair mussed" in the blithe style parodied by Stanley Kubrick, or we have to make a calculated retreat sooner rather than later to prevent more embarrassing setbacks in the future when our bluffs get called. The first option assumes we, and the Taiwanese, can and should absorb more damage than the PLA, and the second seeks to preserve American credibility more broadly in order that the Pacific alliance system survive and China more effectively be deterred from pursuing harder targets such as South Korea.

None of these sound appealing, but the latter is clearly superior from both the human and the strategic standpoint. The longer we entertain the delusion that Taiwan can be defended or that it would be worth it to try, the worse it will be for our international standing and alliance structure in the future, the more it will play into China's (shockingly ruthless) hands. What such morbid musings really demonstrate is why we must start from the position that, until proven otherwise, Beijing is not gripped by one of those historical episodes of collective psychosis, and pursue diplomacy and reciprocal concessions/deescalation.

The 'first island chain' is the best line of defense though, with Taiwan as a lynchpin in the absence of US bases in the Philippines anymore.

If China rapin' errybody out there and America is all-in as well, I hope you'll allow the warplan political accedance of some bases in the Philippines.

I don't know, if China had to fight through the Korean peninsula or land on the Japanese islands amid full, preordained, and ongoing American presence, holding Taiwan would offer very little advantage, while not affecting our own logistics (even in the case where Taiwan might have been used as basing). It would simply be impossible for China to exert air and sea supremacy against the Japanese islands, even with an attempt at Okinawa and the southern island chain. And while South Korea is less geographically secure it has a very large allied military, existing US infrastructure, and is right next to Japan. Granted that China would never invade Korea without a North Korean human shield for a vanguard, but the conditions for a conventional defensive ground war so overwhelmingly favor American doctrine and capabilities that from a cold-blooded perspective it's almost a set match an American general would like to hold.

The SE Asian states, specifically the archipelago states, are vulnerable to territorial losses given the presence of the Chinese reef island system, but by the same token their distance from China makes it difficult for China to secure its gains against counterattack and prevent catastrophic attrition of naval assets; given moderate will to resist among the local population, the likes of the Philippines should be resilient enough against invasion to make the prospect a bloody boondoggle for the PLA. (Scary thought: It's easy to imagine someone deciding that we can nuke Woody Island because China wouldn't retaliate over NBC deployment against as pure a military target as there can be). Vietnam is probably a tricky proposition though, that's all I can say.

There is, on the other hand, one convoluted ethical case to be made about putting our eggs in the Taiwanese basket (all still in the context of the most extreme scenario remember). Namely, since Taiwan is the smallest and most isolated of plausible targets of Chinese incursion, it is better, e.g. to sacrifice 25 million Taiwanese and a <$1 trillion economy than 50 million South Koreans (plus North Koreans) and a $2 trillion economy; better for Taiwan to be ruined than the Korean peninsula again, or Vietnam again; better Taipei than Seoul or Tokyo again (not really the latter, just including it for rhetorical effect).

I'm not sure how much stock I put in that, especially given that in any plausible world a Chinese attack on Taiwan is orders of magnitude higher a priority for the CCP than one on a traditional American partner, but within a certain set of apocalyptic premises it's a defensible argument.

The US has been trying to get China on board with arms controls treaties with not much luck. It would be immensely in our interest if arms controls weren't just US-Russia.

What do you know about this? A comprehensive deal on nuclear proliferation (would have to include Russia at least on this aspect), a freeze on military spending, a cap on naval construction, limits on Chinese island reclamation and US missile defenses in South Korea, for some examples - all of the above would be a generous arrangement for China, AFAICT, and a stable framework for future conflict resolution.

Azeri-Armenia caught Russia off guard and they were left unable to support their Armenian allies without getting Turkey involved leaving them to negotiate a peace that gave territory to Azerbaijan after Armenia's sound defeat.

I'm not aware that Russia is decisively closer to Armenia than to Azerbaijan. Wouldn't they prefer not to burn bridges with either? I do assume that Azerbaijan would have occupied all of NK without Russian mediation.

The good news is that that Azerbaijan basically got what it wanted in regaining lost territories, AFAIK, and Armenia is too weak to retaliate in the future, so in a sense that conflict may be 'settled.' I could easily be wrong though: persistent Armenian revanchism; persistent Azeri revanchism for taking the whole apple; the geopolitics of the Azeri exclave. The implications for Turkish foreign affairs are more worrisome though as they continue to throw around their weight to their south and east.

The US and NATO have in general been very good at trying to keep whatever wars they're in contained to the region in conflict. The Korean war was not expanded to mainland China and it took firing Macarthur to ensure that the limit remained. The Vietnam war never involved invading North Vietnam because that'd be a sure way to get China involved outright. The war in Iraq never expanded into Iran despite their manufacturing and supplying EFPs to the shia militias and the Afghan war never expanded to Pakistan despite it allowing the Taliban to regroup after 2002.

Fair enough. Ultimately what I'm trying to impress on the thread is that Euro allies should not pursue the excess capability to - with US assistance - decisively break through the Russian front. I feel compelled to discourage the proposition because this feels like an undertone whenever the issue of Europe "carrying its own weight" in military terms gets raised. (Of course, we have had Orgahs literally arguing for just this sort of campaign in the past.)

As for EU citizens believing it useful? Well, that's were a lack of vision for the future is a problem. What do Europeans want their role in the world to be in a fifty years or a century? Do they want to just be an economic zone with limited influence beyond their borders? Can that ensure they can maintain their current standard of living and social values?

As implied by the previous, civilian-based strand of this conversation, rich countries must increasingly integrate their economic and foreign policy, to preserve themselves from internal threats, to limit the nefarious influence of non-state economic actors, and to accelerate the development of the Global South, the latter being of special important because we don't want hundreds of millions of climate refugees, starving and thirsty people in an overheated world with no prospects, as a matter of mere ethics, and as a matter of enlightened self-interest. For America and Europe, a wealthy, secure, and resilient Africa and South Asia would be one of the greatest triumphs of all time. All of this entails ever-closer cooperation between European states and organizations, and the USA, to start. There's no isolationism to be found here. More directly, my opinion is:

1. Militarization and force projection is not to Europe's comparative advantage going forward.
2. Someone needs to make clear to the UK and (especially) France that their colonial management is no one else's problem as such.
3. Stop prioritizing military (non-)solutions in the first place!!! How often has this worked out for humanity?

Seeing as for Norway at least oil/natural gas are a large part of the economy and the majority of their exports

Thanks for reminding me that they, uh, need to do something about that.
@ReluctantSamurai

Neither power were consigned to the path of decolonization, hell France was still in the middle of its war to keep Algeria French when it intervened in the Suez. Following Suez the UK's 1957 white paper led to a very real decline in capability which was then followed by their withdrawal from East of the Suez in the 1960s. The US essentially telling it's to biggest allies that it did not have their back on interests that didn't align perfectly with the US changed the entire dynamic of France and the UK in regards to all of their colonies and former colonies in every part of the world.
Yes, France was an associate but the the betrayal at Suez and the departure of France from NATO spurred their development of an independent nuclear capability as relying on the US was deemed insufficient.

French military operations/armed resistance in Algeria hadn't really begun yet at this time, it was still terrorism and protest. The UK was decolonizing, this was more or less stipulated in the transatlantic alliance during the war, and was made assured by the independence of India. The only question then was the timetable.

What was the lesson of the Suez Crisis? That the UK and France can still push Egypt around, yes, but the USA and USSR can push around the UK and France in turn. But such an arrangement of facts was not imposed in the course of the Suez Crisis - it had been true for a long time already! Meanwhile, the WoT directly, immediately and enduringly, transformed the world stage in unpredictable ways. The world of 1958 did not look very different on account of the Suez Crisis, whereas the world of 2003 was epochally distinct in a way that was widely recognized and came as a direct cause (with knockons) from 9/11 and the invasions. Don't know what more I can say.

At the risk of offending the Gallic race, French WMDs have not proved a world-shaking development. At any rate, connecting it to the Suez Crisis is not right. De Gaulle promoted French nuclear research from the end of WW2, and the French civilian government had already secretly authorized the development of a weapon in December 1954. (Intriguingly, one of the reasons the French government reacted so harshly to the Algerian independence movement later is that it threatened French planned reliance on the Algerian desert as a testing environment ROFL here's your brain... here's your brain on imperialism.)

The biggest practical effect of the Suez Crisis was internal to capitalist Europe, in that it helped focus some European elites on a "European concept" of the need for closer economic and security integration between states. In fact most capitalist European governments had backed the Anglo-French play in Egypt as a matter of solidarity to the dream of a Eurafrique co-prosperity sphere. Of course, many of these ideas, such as a high-level European nuclear deterrent, a parliament of parliaments, and a Third World Europe, remained theoretical and proved as such in the diplomacy immediately following the Crisis. At the beginning of 1956, capitalist Europe was a protectorate in an American international security architecture, and it remained one at the end of 1956. So the Suez Crisis was of questionable intrinsic causality, as opposed to optics and elite self-image, to subsequent world affairs. But naturally I think the American system was overdetermined - almost no one in Europe before or after 1956 could put up on the promise of rapid European political and foreign policy integration, so it was never going to arise in the Cold War context. If you think these debates could have produced wildly divergent results for Europe's internal trajectory, then the Suez Crisis could be deemed more influential.

the soviet submarine B-59 had 2 out of 3 of its key officers voting to launch nuclear torpedoes against the US Navy.

History is luck, the rest is prejudice.