Everyone on this Earth will suffer, the West will suffer much more.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
Suppose we are talking about conventional war only. In that case, everyone on Earth will suffer economically for a few years, before the recovery completes, and the world ushers in an unprecedented level of development never seen so far under Chinese leadership. The current economic system is becoming dysfunctional, paralyzed by the Western exploitative economic model, especially now in terms of exported inflation, no one grows in the slightest anymore, and it's questionable if there was even ever any qualitative growth in the Global South in recent decades, or if it was just all quantitative growth and global elites getting richer. In that case, the only loser of the US defeat, at the hands of China, would be the West, which would probably fragment and revert back to its natural historical mean (before colonialism). It also implies that China profits most.
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Can someone try to crunch napkin ordnance math, 100xB21s with charitable 60% availabilty rate flying 40+ hours missions delivers about ~300s tons per day to Pacific Theater. Or roughly what a large carrier delivers on non surge tempo. Trying to guestimate if B21 fleet can replace lost fires from multiple CVNs and seems like it's not even close, as in fraction of what US+co delivered during peak Iraq War, granted munition quality is better now.
Where will the tankers be based on and how many sorties can they support?
Asking because I don't know, I'm guestimating off B2 sorties being 20 hour mission time + 20 hours turn around time and peak availiblity of ~60% from Whiteman AFB. I think that's pretty generous, assuming not bottleneck on pilot health and tanking. I suppose to Pacific would be shorter with tanking over Alaska on arctic route. Cursory look and tanking off California -> Hawaii (but not Guam) is 1000km longer trip. I'm also looking for those who know more to crudely guestimate/speculate how much this will drop i.e. 1:1 -> 4:1 maintanece to flight ratio and less availability, as airframes accrue stress over high tempo operations. IIRC Iraq War F15s / 16s availability dropped by ~15% after a few weeks.
A war could result in a lot more than a few years of economic disruption.
And at a minimum, I think we'd be looking at a global depression.
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The West is less than 15% of global population. Of that, the US only accounts for 4% of global population.
So given the Global South accounts for 85% of global population, in the long-term, China can afford to ignore or bypass the US as much as it can.
It has been very clear than the existing system in the US and Europe hasn't worked for decades now, where incomes for the bottom 50% have fallen or stagnated, whilst all the economic gains have flowed to the top. It's why populists are on the rise in the West.
As per Steve Hsu's recent podcast, the Chinese consensus is that China needs to help manage US decline and not get into a war.
And as for Chinese leadership, China isn't really yet in a position to offer overall leadership.
But at the same time, no-one trusts the USA anymore, particularly given the events since Trump's return.
.
Or more poetically, from Antonio Gramsci:
"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters."
Yes
I think China really needs another 10 years before it can realistically offer leadership
Trump wants a world safe for autocracy
Financial Times
"So it seems entirely likely that Trump will eventually betray Taiwan just as surely as he has betrayed Ukraine.
The rumour mill in Washington is already buzzing with talk that the US will threaten to impose tariffs on Taiwan unless it agrees to sell a significant chunk of TSMC"
ft.com/content/452d7f83-fcce-424a-9d6d-4493b0112ec8
Financial Times
"So it seems entirely likely that Trump will eventually betray Taiwan just as surely as he has betrayed Ukraine.
The rumour mill in Washington is already buzzing with talk that the US will threaten to impose tariffs on Taiwan unless it agrees to sell a significant chunk of TSMC"
ft.com/content/452d7f83-fcce-424a-9d6d-4493b0112ec8
FriedRiceNSpice
Major
Why should China burden herself. China just needs to make China great and create a prosperous and safe society for all her citizens.