So it would be starting a nuclear war to prevent that? At what point is the cure worse than the disease?
You switched from “potentially starting” to “starting”. If we want to compare concrete advantages with unspecified probabilities we won’t Be getting very far.
Sure I’ll try to be more clear:
The Twitter thread posits that the true gain from America supporting Ukraine is the reduced risk of a US-China war, which I assumed would be nuclear.
Republicans present China as America’s real, long-term rival. Democrats agree. The scenario for a U.S.-China war is a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Why is going to war over Taiwan an assumed given in this scenario? Why would we potentially start a potentially nuclear war over Taiwan?
Again you haven’t specified if the potential is 50%, 10%, 1%, 0.1%, 0.01% etc.
The US would be economically crippled if China controls almost all the world’s semi-conductor production.
Why do I have to specify the exact probability? Anything >0% nuclear war seems kinda bad, with its badness increasing with the probability. What percentage probability do you think the tweet author assigns to it?
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What do you think happens when technologically advanced countries who are perfectly capable of making nuclear weapons but don’t because of security guarantees have that security guarantee removed?
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What do you think happens when any country with a nuclear arsenal can invade another country without outside opposition because of a vague threat of nuclear war?
Because the answers to these questions are both “Well, everyone is going to get nukes” which increases the threat of nuclear war substantially. Someone who knows better than me can correct me, but my understanding is that it isn’t particularly hard to make a nuke.
That doesn’t even get into the morality of letting 23.5 million people suffer a genocide.
Yea when I said going to war I meant US; I’d expect Taiwan to defend themselves. My question comes from the rationale “defending Ukraine makes US-China war less likely”–why is the chance of US-China war anything but 0% if indeed the only impetus for that war would be a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? LC kinda answered it with the semiconductors response, though that feels like a stretch which is why I kept going.
Seems we’re describing it similarly then, though I don’t see the connection between that and statements like this by the tweeter
Ukrainian resistance has done more for the safety of Americans than any U.S. policy since the end of the cold war.
I assume his calculus is that that increase in safety is due to a decrease in likelihood of war, which implies he thinks it’s nonzero
The probability of nuclear war is nonzero. Even if supporting Ukraine against Russia increases the probability in the short term, we should be willing to accept some extra risk if it decreases the long term probability. Ofc that leaves plenty to argue over.
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https://twitter.com/cjcmichel/status/1589334337602060288
https://twitter.com/cjcmichel/status/1589334979686805504
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https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1589318234242965505?s=21
Russian forces are also reportedly looting the museum, zoo, boat engines and whatever else that isn‘t nailed down in Kherson.
A theoretical US-China war is likely to stay conventional. China would never first strike the US because they only have a couple hundred intercontinental warheads. The US would probably sooner take the L on Taiwan than obliterate China over it, though obliterating the PLA is another story.
China has similar dominance in lots of other critical technologies. Is a problem, but not sure it makes a material difference just from Taiwan.
there are very few technologies that have the same multiplier effects and concentrations like semiconductors and fabs. i’ll give you eleventy internet points if you can name one that china controls.
Solar panels and EV batteries are the ones that spring to mind straight away.
Then theres a lot of smaller tech which arent as significant on their own but in aggregate have the same effect.
China also heavily dependent on imports as well.
Essentially my only hope is that its mutually assured economic destruction. But they said that would prevent ww1 too.
neither solar panels nor ev batteries tech are concentrated in china to the same degree, and they are not currently multipliers for integrated technologies. they also themselves require semiconductors to function, rather than the other way around
Yeah and when it comes down to it, the world doesn’t need solar panels the way they do semiconductors
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80 % of panels are manufactured in china today. That’s going to increase to 95% by 2025.
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