” …. despite the vast sums the Chinese Communist Party has spent developing its forces, the country is still playing catch-up in terms of acquiring the strength to challenge America’s military supremacy.
The development of China’s two new aircraft carriers is a case in point. While naval powers like the US and Britain have been building this highly specialised military capability for the better part of a century, China only acquired its first carrier in 2012, and is still on a steep learning curve when it comes to making optimal use of them.
Another important consideration is that the Chinese military has not been directly involved in a major war since the Korean conflict in the early 1950s, so it lacks the real-time war-fighting experience acquired by the US and its allies in combat theatres ranging from Afghanistan to the Falklands.
So even if the Chinese continue to make bellicose gestures in response to Mrs Pelosi’s arrival in Taipei this week, their ability to launch a direct assault against Taiwan is limited, as the Taiwanese themselves would be the first to concede.
From Taiwan’s perspective, the most likely threat to its survival is likely to come in the form of political instability similar to the domestic unrest that hastened the demise of democratic rule in Hong Kong. For this reason, many Taiwanese are more concerned about China’s constant efforts to subvert their democracy through support for pro-Beijing political activists and cyber attacks than the possibility of a full-scale Chinese invasion.
The limitations of China’s military strength is certainly a consideration Western policymakers should take on board as they weigh up how best to deal with the more confrontational attitude Beijing has adopted under President Xi Jinping’s leadership.”
Comment: I used to read this man’s things on the IRA. I offer this as an alternative view. pl
China is too weak to invade Taiwan successfully (telegraph.co.uk)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11083987/China-SANCTIONS-Nancy-Pelosi-family-vicious-provocative-visit-Taiwan.html
It is well past time for the US to disengage from the CCP. However, there is a powerful “Amen Corner” for the CCP among the American oligarchy and consequently nothing serious is being done to reshore manufacturing and force the reduction of imported goods.
We are exactly in the same boat as Germany. They decided to rely entirely on Russian energy and are now held hostage. We are in exactly the same boat with respect to manufactured goods from pharmaceuticals to industrial parts. And it is not that the top echelons don’t know it. It is that they value personal gains much more than national interests. And the voters insist on voting only Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum.
They tried it with TPP. Spread the manufacturing (the money) around southeast Asia, minimizing the reliance and regional influence of China.
Congress might stomach to revive it.
The TTP was a trojan horse for destroying citizen rule. The US has responded not at all, yet, to this CCP aggression. As far as I’m concerned, what is being done, now, to Taiwan is war. The US has vast economic powers that it can deploy against China. Walmart might get a little bare, but no time better than now to take the hit and rebuild domestic and regional material sourcing and manufacturing. And if anybody here doesn’t ‘get’ me, when I see the war coming, I remember our Hawk brothers in Vietnam, “kill first.” The military needs to ask itself, if it has forgotten how.. What would Sonny Barger do?
I agree with cobo. TPP would not have taken our economy out of captivity to China. It would merely have brought in some other kidnappers to share our economy-held-hostage among themselves.
At the blog called Naked Capitalism, various anti-TPP posts and comments explained and described in detail some of the Greek soldiers hidden inside the TPP trojan horse.
The answer for America is to abrogate every Free Trade Agreement and withdraw from every Free Trade convention and organization, starting with the WTO. We should understand that an economy which the Free Trade supporters needed decades to destroy would take the Protectionist Restorationists decades to restore. And we should understand that our Trading Enemies and the Free Trade Globalonial Elites would try to put America under the same kind of blockade that Cuba complains we have put Cuba under, in order to strangle our Protectionized Restoration in its crib.
different clue,
Are you advocating for an American Sakoku? Don’t get me wrong, a move towards greater self-sufficiency is a good thing for us and every other country that can do so.
I’m confused (not such a suprise) which is Trump … dee or dum?
“it lacks the real-time war-fighting experience acquired by the US and its allies in combat theatres ranging from Afghanistan to the Falklands.”
The Falklands was a lifetime ago and the youngest veteran of that conflict would now be 60+ years old. The Taiwanese army last won a battle in ….? Of course, think of all the money the UK will lose if they sanction the Chinese. Gotta love matters of principle.
If it is fighting the Afgahans and Iraqis by blowing up their wedding parties and carpet bombing is war fighting capability then we are in lot of trouble. It seems that we forgot when China was much weaker in 1950’s they didn’t bat an eye and got involved in Korean war and eventually we had to seek peace. Of course we have a much superior force now as it was then, but now with those Hypersonics they have a good chance to give us a bloody nose. God only knows where it will lead us. Like some body said nuke them and their NK brothers, it seems we forgot they have the same nukes and they can do a lot of damage. just remember the mahem caused by Chris Christie with his closing of Washington Bridge , imagine the panic caused by one nuke how it will reverberate in our own society. With so much social dislocation in our society I dread to think what we are getting into, saner heads have to prevail. Sorry for being so pessimistic for our world. Thanks
I remember the early postings to this blog about how the Russians would be easy prey to Ukraine and NATO. Looks like China will go down in the same way.
William Raiser,
I remember years of our earlier postings praising Russian military technology and military prowess. This was especially true of Russia’s actions in Syria which still stands up as a model of how to do a military intervention.
TTG,
I don’t want to admit that you and the Colonel have been entirely right on this war, but it sure looks to me at this point like you have been entirely right on this war. I tip my hat to you.
As someone who gets a good many details wrong, it’s not without a sense of irony that I point out the kicking Vietnam gave the PLA in ’78 as major military experience. I also wouldn’t discount the perennial skirmishes with the Indian Army in the Himalayas as worthless, even though the Indians are dishing out 2 or 3 casualties for every one they take.
Say, is the PLA squad weapon still an AGL?
Anyway, A. Martyanov rightly points out that the USN silent service would do most of the heavy lifting (but it’s fair to ask whether or not it suffers from the same issues plaguing the surface fleet).
As an aside, someone mentioned pro-Western CCP elements (pardon me for not going back and looking up who). The CCP has no pro-Western elements. It has factions which view us as chumps they are happy to take advantage of (and this view is not unjustified given how we transferred our manufacturing and technology to them basically for free), and factions who believe China must confront us directly for dominance of the world (and it’s no mean feat that the globalists make this lot seem reasonable).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11084655/VP-Joe-Biden-met-two-Chinese-energy-execs-West-Wing.html
This is why the West is fucked. Not because of any external threats but because we have an oligarchy who don’t care about national interest. It is all about personal gain. From Wall St to Big Business and all the politicians and the media – this tiny circle who run and dominate our leadership – all in it for themselves! And who are quite happy to sell the country and its assets down the river – for a few more billion.
Germany provides a fantastic example. Shut down its nuclear power production, got entirely reliant on Russian energy, with former Chancellor Schroeder on the board of Gazprom. Now sucking it up big time with cities like Hanover shutting off hot water in public buildings!! Schroeder however ain’t suffering.
If the elites who run the big corporations & Wall St finance and the politicians of both parties had even an iota of national interest, they would rapidly disengage from the CCP and reshore all critical manufacturing – because we are on a collision course with the Chinese Communist Party and soon dictator for life Xi Jinping.
Am I incorrect in my understanding of History that in wartime, especially, traitors hang.
The last time anyone tried speaking forcefully for that concept on the national stage was when Ross Perot ran against Clinton and Bush on the Reform Party ticket. But he was deeply unskilled in the dark arts of verbal combat, and he was way outdebated by Al Gore in the televised Gore Perot debate about NAFTA.
This would be a good time for somebody-or-other to start a party so focused on Protectionism and Restoration that it could even call itself the Protectionist Party, or the Protectionist Restoration Party or something like that. It would be a One Issue Party and it could make a very good case that Protectionist Restoration is the One Big Survival Issue worthy of having its very own political party.
If some pro-FairTrade anti-FreeTrade protectionists could form such a party, they would need a very committed and devoted intelligence/counter-intelligence capability to prevent the other two parties from infiltrating it with their pro Free Trade rats, moles and roaches. Any Democrats with any trace of links and ties to Pelosi, Clinton, Obama, etc. would especially have to be viewed as political bubonic plague germs sent to infect a Protectionist Party and kill it quickly.
the West is fucked. Not because of any external threats but because we have an oligarchy who don’t care about national interest. It is all about personal gain. From Wall St to Big Business and all the politicians and the media – this tiny circle who run and dominate our leadership – all in it for themselves! And who are quite happy to sell the country and its assets down the river
I believe you have summarized the issue correctly and concisely. There is a lot of ruin in a nation, but the ruining cannot be indefinitely prolonged. If one regards various conspiracy allegations as credible, one might hope that the exposure of those conspiracies would provide a turning point, at which society could collectively acknowledge the sins of its leaders and dissolve the political bands that had bound the plutocratic parasites to society. However, if society does not eliminate the parasitic power elite, dystopia awaits.
Brittany Smith and Joseph Wayne Smith (Department of Psychology, University of Adelaide) outlined several possible forms of social collapse that could lead to large-scale human dieoff scenarios.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-08-05/collapse-wont-just-reset-society-it-will-destroy-it
Most of the individuals in society are not criminally insane psychopaths. Many of the people in political power are criminally insane psychopaths. If humans are to survive in groups, the non-psychopathic populations are going to have to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with the parasites. Then the non-psychopathic people are going to have to assume a separate political station in accordance with the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.
longarch
In my book the definitive literary account of how a modern, globalized technological society collapses from the inside remains a story written 113 years ago; E M Forster’s novella The Machine Stops. I wouldn’t take seriously any study in the field of “collapseology” that doesn’t cite it. Today’s news of incipient supply chain problems and the ever less convincing all-is-well messages from our leaders are straight from its pages. Who cannot recognize the following characterization of what we today refer to as “progress”:
Forster perfectly prefigured the era of Trust the Science too:
Its real brilliance though was in conceiving the notion of collapse without the need of external stimulus, the device employed by pretty much everything in the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic genres since (disease, aliens, war etc.). Nope, one day the technology sustaining life simply ups and breaks down. A couple more quotes:
Barbara Ann,
I share your appreciation of Forster’s “The Machine Stops.” But I think your idea of science is narrow. It springs from the Christian Dominionist view that man is separate from nature and must extend his dominion over the natural world as well as civil society. Science, as I was taught, is based on careful observation of the world around us. Michael Faraday’s “The Chemical History of a Candle” was our first assigned reading in Father Brissette’s chemistry class. Observation was also at the heart of my anthropological studies. But even more basic than that is the constant and careful observation that allows a person and society to live in relative harmony with nature rather than always attempting to bend nature to our will… or bend other people to our will. Hey, science and the ensuing technology is great. Without it, we’d still be all dying in our 20s and 30s, if we survived childhood. But we should be doing a lot more careful observation of the technology we create and its effect on us and the natural world around us. Otherwise, it’ll kill us just as surely as Forster’s machine.
TTG
Glad you like it. Apologies if my response here is over long, but you’ve hit upon a subject that interests me greatly.
I’m no Luddite (or perhaps I am by modern standards) but I would class myself, as I would Forster, as a counter Enlightenment thinker who sees clearly where the unbridled worship of science and technology in all aspects of our lives and for their own sake is taking us.
Technology in particular is a deceptive concept. By using phrases like “the technology we create” most of us imply a thought process that treats our relationship to technology as mono-directional. But ever since the first pro human attached a rock to the end of a stick so as to better kill his prey, or his fellows, technology has driven human development. It is a 2 way self-reinforcing process*. In fact I see technology as shaping our evolution in a similar way to which Darwin saw nature doing so. So I do reject the Nature/Man dichotomy, but for different reasons: Technology, at least in the wider sense that Ellul uses it in his concept of technique is itself a force of nature, it’s just we fool ourselves into thinking it is something we control. Indeed I’d argue that both the Christian Dominionist view and especially the modern all-pervading secular view of the separation of Man from Nature are themselves products of scientific progress and of its resultant technology giving us power over Nature. Thus even our philosophical paradigm – the way we think – evolves and adapts to our technology.
*The logical end point of which does not actually require humans at all
Why is this so dangerous? Huxley and the wider techno-dystopian genre describes that all too well. There is a clear and present danger of our technology fundamentally changing what we are. Of course a camp exists which is all in favor of this; the transhumanists. Yuval Harari is one such thinker, as is an Iranian-American philosopher named Jason Jorjani. But Jorjani is different. He acknowledges as inevitable the technological apocalypse Heidegger describes, i.e. the point at which technology itself subsumes mankind. His solution is a school of thought he calls the Prometheist Movement which, for example, holds that we should embrace the coming era in which privacy is a thing of the past. No thanks.
My views somewhat align with Heidegger’s in that I absolutely see the certainty that technology will eventually replace mankind, unless we can stop it. You only need to look at Klaus Schwab’s “Fourth Industrial Revolution” to see its clear transhumanist agenda, for example. Schwab and his acolytes see humans as little more than imperfect machines. The 4th IR with embedded RF chips and other control mechanisms is aimed at making us ever more machine-like – i.e. it aims to dehumanize us. We are the raw material for this industry. This future has us not in the Utopia of so much optimistic Sci-Fi literature, served by robots, but with us becoming robots, so as to better serve the ends of our self-appointed technocratic gods.
As for the constant and careful observation that allows a person and society to live in relative harmony with nature, I couldn’t agree more how important this is. However, this kind of empiricism has nothing to do with science and to a certain degree the two are mutually exclusive. As you well know, pre-scientific societies and civilizations of significant size and complexity have flourished via only the observation of the customs and the divine laws they cherished. Science and technology are not a replacement, yet all our great secular institutions continue to act as if they were. The ‘pandemic’ threw into sharp relief the way in which scientific expertise has to a large extent replaced ethical discourse (e.g. with lock downs). The widespread appreciation that science become scientism no longer serves the good of man will lead to an epistemological crisis and it feels to me that we are close to this now.
Heidegger was right when he declared that “Only a God Can Save Us”. Unfortunately I expect that a mass rediscovery of God will only come after great suffering – after our life preserving technology has been stripped away. But even this outcome is infinitely better than the alternative; the success of the transhumanists. Once we had a very unmechanical term for the forces that sought to corrupt the nature of mankind for its own purposes; evil. I look forward to that term coming back into vogue.
https://prometheism.com/f/the-prometheist-manifesto
http://www.ditext.com/heidegger/interview.html
Barbara Ann,
I think you would have liked the anthropology & sociology department of RPI in the early 70s. As a “great technological university,” a central theme of the department was the interplay of technology and sociocultural change. I even had a full semester class revolving just around the effects of the snowmobile on the Inuit and Samek. That subject alone easily filled the semester. One of the textbooks was entitled “Technology and Social Change” edited by H. Russell Bernard and Pertti Pelto. My copy is from the original 1972 printing, but a new edition was published in 1987. I just found a PDF of the conclusion chapter of that 1987 edition that you might find interesting.
https://nanopdf.com/download/technology-and-social-change-theory_pdf
Barbara Ann,
“We are the raw material for this industry. ”
“Personnel” vs. Human resources. The ultimate raw material in industry.
Barbara Ann:
I had known the importance of Forster’s story and I concur with your opinion. I had not considered the importance of Heidegger, but your mention of his ideas motivates me to investigate him. As for “Prometheists,” I have known numerous Satanists and Satanist-adjacent people who have self-identified with that term; they were a wormy bunch.
TTG:
Regarding “Technology and Social Change” edited by H. Russell Bernard and Pertti Pelto — I previously had ten heavy PDF books of philosophy in my to-read folder, and now I must add an eleventh. Thank you.
BP,
https://twitter.com/robinbrooksiif/status/1555934842117832706?s=21
The chart in the above link is instructive. FDI is slowing and outflows are increasing. Implies top echelons of CCP are getting their money out.
BP,
This who we have as influencers in the West.
https://twitter.com/mhar4/status/1556080111740682240?s=21
Heard what Trump said at CPAC? We have an amazing number of appeasers in influential positions. As you say we’ll be unprepared for the collision with the Chinese communists.
I listen to Miles Guo, he is a significant individual behind the New Federation State of China effort (many steps involved to legally declare a new government), and part of the Laobaixing (Common Chinese People) movement. He also says that China is a Paper Tiger (similar sentiment – though I do smile at “Paper Dragon”)
He is not as upset as I am about Pelosi going to Taiwan – it is annother perspective
dunno if you can see this without joining gettr
https://gettr.com/post/p1l73wz677d
please delete this if it is not OK to post stuff from gettr. I found another Miles Guo update from G1 translators –
“8/4/2022 Miles Guo’s GETTR:
The CCP’s live-fire military drills right after Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan trip turned out to be a farce. It is so pathetic that only the Chinese people in mainland China continue to enjoy being brainwashed by the CCP. The U.S. military and Taiwan are well-informed of every move the CCP plans to take. The CCP has been manipulating young people since the establishment of the Party. The living high-ranking CCP cadres and their 2nd generation with pure pedigree of the CCP came from the youth group who were not disciplined in the olden days, and they are all non-human rogues”
dunno if available to the public or if you need to be on gettr to see the post
https://gettr.com/post/p1l7ob9bf68
I suspect the near total meltdown of the Chinese real estate sector is the elephant in the room. This is distraction.
@ J Merryman I believe the real estate it is estimated to be about one third of the CCP economy – those banks that have seized peoples money in two of the provinces are related (IMO) to the people that have stopped making payments… it is an unbelievable thing – from what I understand, to buy a home or condo/home in Mainland China a person or family has to save for several years for a large down payment, after paying the down payment, the individuals must make payments until the thing is built (all the time they cannot inhabit the property). With the failure of the real state sector there is no idea if or when these properties will ever be built so the payments are stopping and people are walking away – sounds like a pnozi scheme if I ever heard of one.. Ya, this ‘elephant’ has Big Stompy Feet.
This article speaks to China’s real estate debacle in Cambodia:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-Spotlight/Stuck-in-Sihanoukville-Projects-grind-to-halt-in-Cambodia-resort-town
cobo – wow – I an watching for similar ‘abandonment’ of China Owned (read CCP owned) properties in the USA – I am aware of the northern areas of my own state, retirees of resprt properties selling to China investors – went to some of those ‘massive hotels’ to find they are not open for business etc… When an entire government becomes insolvent the construction projects will be abandoned.. too bad for Cambodia – ouch!
that was ‘resort’ properties – typing too fast
The development of China’s two new aircraft carriers is a case in point. While naval powers like the US and Britain have been building this highly specialised military capability for the better part of a century, China only acquired its first carrier in 2012, and is still on a steep learning curve when it comes to making optimal use of them.
Disposition of Chinese combat power is massed in East Asia while US disposition of it’s combat power is spread about the globe giving China regional advantage.
https://www.c7f.navy.mil/About-Us/Facts-Sheet/
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/usaf/pacaf.htm
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/navy.htm
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/plaaf-equip.htm
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/pla-inventory.htm
China does not need any aircraft carriers to invade Taiwan. Taiwan is well within the combat radius of Chinese aircraft. China in this instance could act as an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
Another important consideration is that the Chinese military has not been directly involved in a major war since the Korean conflict in the early 1950s, so it lacks the real-time war-fighting experience acquired by the US and its allies in combat theatres ranging from Afghanistan to the Falklands.
A 20 year failed US/NATO counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan and British campaign – 40 years ago 1982 – to recover the Falkland Islands from a poorly trained/equipped/lead Argentinian force hardly qualify as real-time war-fighting experience.
British armed forces total roughly 144 thousand persons. Britain’s ability to project power globally is negligible. Any British military assistance to Taiwan would be token at best.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/uk-rn-post-cold-war.htm
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/uk-army-equipment.htm
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/uk-raf-equipment.htm
US military intervention to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would lead to a war of attrition of which none of the potential belligerents have any recent experience.
All US/Ally airbases, port facilities and logistical hubs in Asia are within range of thousands of Chinese cruise missiles and short/intermediate range ballistic missiles.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB9800/RB9858z2/RAND_RB9858z2.pdf
US supply lines would stretch thousands of miles and sustaining US forces in East Asia would be a logistical nightmare.
US ability to repair battle damaged ships/equipment is in serious question as there are currently severe peacetime maintenance/repair backlogs.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-navy-can%E2%80%99t-repair-its-ships-overseas-129072
US ability to build and outfit new ships in timely manner is also in question – DDG51 five years +, SSN774 five years +, CVN78 seven years + from keel laid to commision.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ddg-51-unit.htm
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ssn-774-unit.htm
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/cvx-unit.htm
So even if the Chinese continue to make bellicose gestures in response to Mrs Pelosi’s arrival in Taipei this week, their ability to launch a direct assault against Taiwan is limited, as the Taiwanese themselves would be the first to concede.
China’s ability to invade Taiwan and sustain it’s forces once ashore is in question – as is the ability of Taiwan the US and it’s regional allies (eg South Korea, Japan) to prevent China from invading.
The only guarantee is that it will be a bloody regional endeavor that may escalate into a global conflagration.
What US national security interests are at stake in Taiwan?
John Merryman wrote:
I suspect the near total meltdown of the Chinese real estate sector is the elephant in the room. This is distraction.
I concur. The PRC is saddled with tyrannical leaders, and their injustice has caused the common Chinese person to suffer greatly. If Mencken were here, he would comment that the CCP must create an endless stream of bogeymen to distract the Chinese.
Persona Anon Grata wrote:
US military intervention to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would lead to a war of attrition of which none of the potential belligerents have any recent experience.
The USA might undertake many distinctly different intervention strategies. Only a small minority of those strategies would lead to wars of attrition. I begin to suspect that Persona Anon Grata might be a PRC fanboy.
Persona Anon Grata wrote:
China’s ability to invade Taiwan and sustain it’s forces once ashore is in question – as is the ability of Taiwan the US and it’s regional allies (eg South Korea, Japan) to prevent China from invading.
The only guarantee is that it will be a bloody regional endeavor that may escalate into a global conflagration.
What US national security interests are at stake in Taiwan?
The USA and the PRC are both heavily dependent on advanced microchips. If Taiwan falls and the PRC captures Taiwan’s chip fabs intact, the USA is finished — the PRC would control the vast majority of the world’s microchips. The USA is struggling to remember how to make microchips because its professors are busy sponsoring drag queen story hours for toddlers.
As I have mentioned in the past, Taiwan has a Samson option. Taiwan’s factory managers could conceivably destroy their own factories if the PRC forces landed successfully. Such destruction, whether partial or complete, would crash the world’s economy. (It is not known whether Taiwan’s oligarchs have the strength of character to use that Samson option.)
If Persona Anon Grata were a sincere and very ignorant person, I could forgive the question “What US national security interests are at stake in Taiwan?” I do not believe Persona Anon Grate is ignorant or sincere. If anyone would like a video about Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductors, YouTube’s “Real Life Lore” has an acceptable film that addresses the subject starting at the ‘t=692’ mark:
https://youtu.be/p6sCsOdqXQw?t=692
“What US national security interests are at stake in Taiwan?”
The interests of the Pelosi and Biden families´economies, as it is the case of Ukraine.
Then it is the delusions of hegemonic domination of a few neocon currently running DoS…
Regarding the example of the Falklands war as a proof of British military might, there seems to be more of what the eye catch, one would say that the media campaign on propaganda and lies started just there as Thatcher needed a victory as if there was no tomorrow to rally the already alienated British masses around her.
Rumour has that the Argentinian military fought like lions and in fact were about to win when an order to surrender the islands to the Britons came from the executive ( we know that Argentinian executives have been sold to the IMF and the US Empire for decades if not always…).
There is testimony that even particular people from the British army laid wreaths at the tomb of some Argentinian military high ranking fallen in recognition of their valor, military genius and really out of shame…