To add to Bridge’s point: China may grow old before it grows rich, but it will almost sure become extremely powerful regardless of whether it’s gdp and productivity falters. Here’s why. 🧵 1/
I spelled out the underlying reason for the gap bw economic size and military power here: policytensor.com 2/
Basically, the idea is that the social scientific theory of war cannot be correct — GDP is a poor predictor of military power. Prussia, Russia, Israel are instances of states punching far above their weight; Saudi Arabia of the converse. 3/
Sparta was always stronger than Athens—this is a very general pattern. The issue is that military power is not just a function of the resources available; more importantly, it is a function of institutional competence in the armed forces, and the broader national institutions. 4/
War-fighting is skilled work. Armed forces are long-lasting, situated communities of skilled practice. (See @adam_tooze’s delirious MG42 paper on the former and Crawford’s work on the latter.) 5/
What happens in high intensity conflicts, like the Soviet-German war or the Ukraine war, is that armies learn to solve concrete problems as they emerge in the course of the struggle. 6/
This implies that, contra the social scientific theory, the armies of at least the winning side are almost always stronger later than earlier in the conflict. 7/
The finest military force in history was the Red Army in 1944-1945; the finest operational maneuver of all time was August Storm, the Soviet destruction of the Japanese army in Manchuria (see Glantz). 8/
Parenthetically, one of my tweets lost by Twitter yesterday, was on this point — we may not be bleeding Russia in Ukraine. It is likely that the Russian armed forces will emerge stronger from this struggle bc of the learning effects of high intensity wars. 9/
We're also learning at breakneck speed. But we're learning how to conduct proxy war — we're paymasters, armorers, and scouts for the Ukranians doing the fighting and dying on the ground. The Russians are learning the full-spectrum game from top to bottom! 10/
Back to China: the goal of Chinese armed force modernization since Clinton sent those carriers into the Strait in 1996, and in the aftermath of Gulf War I (which demonstrated our dramatic precision-strike capabilities) has been to develop area denial capabilities. 11/
This has succeeded completely in this strategic task. The Chinese have developed a formidable reconnaissance-strike complex that allows them to hold all our surface assets in the Western Pacific at risk on demand. 12/
There is a rough regional balance rn. We don't enjoy local superiority there. But we do have an advantage in that we're defenders and the island at the front line is easy to defend. 13/
We also enjoy escalation dominance since we still (!) enjoy something close to nuclear superiority over China. So, the strategic task for China is twofold. 14/
First and foremost, the PLA must close the strategic gap — they cannot repeat Kruschev's error — they'd be stupid to risk war with the US without at least a highly survivable second-strike capability — and preferably strategic parity. This is well underway. 15/
Second, they must learn to fight open ocean warfare. In particular, they cannot hope to compete until they develop much more formidable anti-submarine (ASW) warfare capabilities. 16/
This is not just necessary for them to contest the high seas, which is obvious, it is just as imp for their main goal — conquering Taiwan against our determined armed resistance. 17/
So, this is the agenda for the PLA and the Xi regime. This is priority no 1 on Xi's desk. Everything else is secondary from a military-strategic perspective. There is no macroeconomic scenario is which these goals will be subordinated to other concerns. 18/
So, the money's going to be there; the attention and skill is going to be there; there is not going to be any dearth of discipline, skill, talent, knowhow, or funds. 19/
Only an extreme economic or political shock could affect this strategic agenda. No one is forecasting that. Make no mistake: the baseline scenario is that the Chinese accumulation of power will continue just as fast as it has since 2000. 20/
By midcentury, China will be at least as powerful as the United States. Under conditions of strategic deterrence, it cannot be destroyed; neither can the US. Ultimately, we'll have to learn to share the world. 21/
Let's not destroy the chance of good working relations with the Chinese for no good reason, as Jake's nest of hawks and the lunatics in Congress are hell bent on doing. 22/
The goal of US foreign policy should not containment of China, and certainly not China AND Russia, but rather finding a formula of sustainable Sino-American relations that lets us protect our vital interests, and encourages the Chinese to behave well, as they have indeed done…
Loading suggestions...