Should the US go to war to prevent the assimilation of Taiwan into the PRC?

[geronimotwo]

Can you imagine Walmart shelves being empty ?   

it's on my wish list.

[just Warren]

Really, so people are to be deprived of low-cost, mid-quality goods? Wal-Mart helps people get more out of a dollar. It makes the people that shop there better off, otherwise they wouldn't shop there.

Lowering folks' standard of living is not a good goal to have. Nor is economic nationalism in any way rational or desirable.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

thats not what the union sponsored websites saY  and you know they only have the american peoples best interests at heart......

[birdman]

I've looked at the military aspects of this in detail, as have others (there is a great RAND study on a US-PRC shooting war) and I'm sorry to say, the end result would be MASSIVE losses of ships and aircraft on both sides, (higher numbers on theirs, but comparable percentages I would say...20:1 combat ratio only seems good until the threat actually HAS 20x the assets), and unfortunately, a PRC held ROC. 

Sorry.  The only way to win is not to play, would you lie a nice game of chess?

Our non-nuclear capability in that conflict serves only as a deterrent...it would be catastrophically damaging to both militaries, so it's a matter of "is it worth it to the PRC" (w.r.t. Both the military and economic effects), not can we -actually- defend ROC.

[Tallpine]

It's a form of MAD: they quit buying our bonds and we quit buying their cheap plastic carp  

[birdman]

It's a form of MAD: they quit buying our bonds and we quit buying their cheap plastic carp  

Scary part is, they have already started the former, and we have not done the latter.  Their US treasury purchases (and holdings, scarily) have been in steady decline.  The largest ppsingle purchaser is the Fed, and with that suppressing interest rates (to keep the interest "affordable" through inflationary monetary policy), it makes them a bad deal for actual purchasers, especially foreign ones, at a cost of the most insidious of "taxes"...inflation, especially when the government, in a major conflict of interest, can continue to hide true inflation by effectively making up numbers.  The only reason they can do so is other economic policies had restrained the velocity of money to historically anomalous lows, and thus the massive money supply increase has not been as visible as it woud normally be.  However, this creates a horrifically dangerous situation...anything that would increase that velocity (ie an improving economy, a move away from the dollar as a reserve currency, etc) would create a catastrophic devaluation of the dollar (for example, based on current money supply and velocity figures, a return to historical norms in velocity would result in a dollar devaluation of nearly 50-75%!).  So basically, we've recreated a situation where win or lose, we lose...as the fed can't possibly pull money back fast enough to make a difference, and even if they could, the resulting interest rate spike would crush the government AND the economy.

Dangerous times my friends, dangerous times.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

aND the chinese are aware even if most in the usa aren't

[Tallpine]

Maybe we all ought to start learning to speak Chinese 

[roo_ster]

aND the chinese are aware even if most in the usa aren't

Be careful not to build them up so much.  They have made plenty of blunders they've yet to correct that will bite them in the tuckus if they don't react soon & decisively.

Sometimes inscrutability is less about genius-level machinations and more about incoherence.

[roo_ster]

I've looked at the military aspects of this in detail, as have others (there is a great RAND study on a US-PRC shooting war) and I'm sorry to say, the end result would be MASSIVE losses of ships and aircraft on both sides, (higher numbers on theirs, but comparable percentages I would say...20:1 combat ratio only seems good until the threat actually HAS 20x the assets), and unfortunately, a PRC held ROC. 

Sorry.  The only way to win is not to play, would you lie a nice game of chess?

Our non-nuclear capability in that conflict serves only as a deterrent...it would be catastrophically damaging to both militaries, so it's a matter of "is it worth it to the PRC" (w.r.t. Both the military and economic effects), not can we -actually- defend ROC.

I dunno, I read Rand docs and sometimes I wonder...maybe I read too many Rand docs.   

Granted:
1. Taiwan could be rubbled by PRC conventional ballistic missiles, no doubt.  And I bet that is what the PRC would end up getting (rubble), not a first-rate industrial nation.
2. I make no claims it would be a cakewalk.  We would expend beau coup munitions turning their shiny new planes, boats, and such into scrap.

It is going to take more than matériel to be competitive.  Give them 20x or 50x the hardware they had when they fought Viet Nam (and lost), but retain the same culture and morale, and I doubt the hardware will do them much good against a first-rate military.  Also, against whom have they been sharpening their armed forces the last 10+ years?  Yeah, I can't think of any foe, either.  OTOH, the USA has lots of veteran troops who have BTDT. 

Ultimately, I think the PRC's decision to attack will come down to non-economic factors and an overly optimistic read of their chances of success.  Not sure we ought to feed the latter.

[Regolith]

Be careful not to build them up so much.  They have made plenty of blunders they've yet to correct that will bite them in the tuckus if they don't react soon & decisively.

Sometimes inscrutability is less about genius-level machinations and more about incoherence.

Lot of people figure their economy is getting ready to implode. They've sunk a vast amount of resources into what are basically Potemkin villages, entire cities where no one lives because there aren't enough people that can afford it and they need to create make-work to make their economy look better. If that ever catches up with them it'll make our housing bust look like a minor hickup.

[mtnbkr]

OTOH, the USA has lots of veteran troops who have BTDT. 

What if the point of the "War on Terror" was actually to sharpen our troops for China?
 

Chris

[birdman]

I dunno, I read Rand docs and sometimes I wonder...maybe I read too many Rand docs.   

Granted:
1. Taiwan could be rubbled by PRC conventional ballistic missiles, no doubt.  And I bet that is what the PRC would end up getting (rubble), not a first-rate industrial nation.
2. I make no claims it would be a cakewalk.  We would expend beau coup munitions turning their shiny new planes, boats, and such into scrap.

It is going to take more than matériel to be competitive.  Give them 20x or 50x the hardware they had when they fought Viet Nam (and lost), but retain the same culture and morale, and I doubt the hardware will do them much good against a first-rate military.  Also, against whom have they been sharpening their armed forces the last 10+ years?  Yeah, I can't think of any foe, either.  OTOH, the USA has lots of veteran troops who have BTDT. 

Ultimately, I think the PRC's decision to attack will come down to non-economic factors and an overly optimistic read of their chances of success.  Not sure we ought to feed the latter.

Agree on the RAND docs, I've done my own analyses as well.  I agree with your training assessment, but it's going to boil down to an air/sea war, not a land war, and our guys have had as much combat experience air to air and blue water engagements as they have.  We haven't really fought a real war for air superiority or power projection at sea since Vietnam in the former, and WWII in the latter.  While we train more realistically and more often, training only goes so far.  The point of the rand air/sea report was even if training lowers the Phit by an enemy AAM by a factor of 4 or more, it's still a war of attrition on both sides.  Yeah, an F-22 can probably get 4-6 kills with 4-6 amraams, but that just means it has to have a better than 50% chance of defeating the 20+ AAM's coming the other way to achieve the required exchange ratio.  Same issues with ship defense, if you fire 200 cruise missiles as a CBG, it is highly likely you will get a bunch of hits.  The Chinese strategy is one of quantity and overwhelming strikes..lust look at the number of SRBMs they point at Taiwan. 

While I absolutely agree that we are far better equipped and trained, that can only improve the numbers game so much.

Also agree on what they would get after their strikeon Taiwan, but remember, unification is less about economically integrating Taiwan and more about national unification and creating their zone of influence unopposed.  Even if they didn't request to rubble, it is likely they found have a serious insurgency (that is how it started after all), so it wouldn't be economically viable anyway--the point is to create their own exclusion zone and buffer zone, and "threats" inside that zone wouldn't be tolerated.  Remove Taiwan, push the carriers back, and deter US from using Japan (including Okinawa), and our ability to do anything in the region becomes far more difficult just due to range.

Draw a 1500-2000km range ring around china, subtracting Japan, and look at the resources in that area, and who currently holds them.  My bet is they will expand, avoid things that would really provoke the US (Taiwan, Japan) and use the possibility of massive attrition as a deterrent to prevent our intervention in things like the spratly islands.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Be careful not to build them up so much.  They have made plenty of blunders they've yet to correct that will bite them in the tuckus if they don't react soon & decisively.

Sometimes inscrutability is less about genius-level machinations and more about incoherence.

they don't care
if they decide that a move will kill 10 million of their own folks they saY OH WELL
hard to beat someone who doesn't care how many you kill

[AJ Dual]

they don't care
if they decide that a move will kill 10 million of their own folks they saY OH WELL
hard to beat someone who doesn't care how many you kill

Very true. An exceptional individual in China, say someone you'd claim was "One in a million"... there's still more than one thousand people just like them.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

they killed 20 million of their own people
the top guys killed off parts of their own families

[longeyes]

Lot of people figure their economy is getting ready to implode. They've sunk a vast amount of resources into what are basically Potemkin villages, entire cities where no one lives because there aren't enough people that can afford it and they need to create make-work to make their economy look better. If that ever catches up with them it'll make our housing bust look like a minor hickup.

Ah, the Community Redevelopment Act outreach program at work?

[Sergeant Bob]

western folk have a hard time thinking like asians do

Therein lies the problem.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Therein lies the problem.

there are westerners who think asian.  they are usually pariahs.  think billy mitchel

[geronimotwo]

Really, so people are to be deprived of low-cost, mid-quality goods? Wal-Mart helps people get more out of a dollar. It makes the people that shop there better off, otherwise they wouldn't shop there.

Lowering folks' standard of living is not a good goal to have. Nor is economic nationalism in any way rational or desirable.

sorry for the hijack, but i don't agree that lower quality products made in a foreign nation with a large conglomerate siphoning the profit benefits most americans.  period.  i think the last 40 years of that thinking has gotten us where we are today (ie, still better off than much of the world, but slipping fast).

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-09/wal-mart-to-end-worker-profit-sharing-contributions-in-february.html

Wal-Mart’s profit-sharing plan was created in 1971 by company co-founder Sam Walton, according to his biography, “Made in America.”

During the year ended Jan. 31, 2008, Wal-Mart contributed $724.4 million to 838,955 hourly employees in profit-sharing and 401(k) contributions, according to a May 2008 company press release. Data for more recent years wasn’t immediately available.

[Sergeant Bob]

there are westerners who think asian.  they are usually pariahs.  think billy mitchel

Pariah indeed. Shame they didn't listen to him earlier.

[longeyes]

Sure, there are westerners who think like Asians.  They are the one busy selling us out for personal gain.  And, wait for it, not just Democrats.  Go back to the General System of Preference and ask who benefits, who created that, why.