So uh are they talking with these companies and helping them fix it? Such a weird thing to say. Yeah there’s specific companies they have embedded into and are waiting to strike! Trust us it will be China, no solution though.
Well, maybe the US cultural status of caring about computer security in business is so decrepit that only a really major high profile incident will shift priorities. Maybe the most effective route from today's situation to a a world in which US industry takes computer security seriously involves a temporary detour through a serious major disastrous hack. Maybe it's inevitable.
It's certainly consistent with how things have gone so far. Computer security is terrible today, but it was even worse a decade ago, and it's the low hum of constant cyberattacks and ransomware that probably have helped push that.
The feds have been warning about lack of cyber security in critical infrastructure for decades across multiple admins, with the warning being mainly about the two most likely nations with the clout and wherewithal to carry something out. And they see more efforts at compromise so they are warning people.
How is it political? Industry and congress ignore the risk, warning the public is the last chance to spur change
Note, this isn't going to be a surprise attack. China is developing access to hold the infrastructure at risk as a retaliation/deterrent for an American attack on China.
It is highly likely that the US has achieved similar levels of penetration into Chinese critical infrastructure for its own use in conflict contingency.
The actual deterrent effect of this is unlikely to, on its own, prevent the US from agitating a war on or within China. War is not inevitable, just structurally likely, due to the so called "Thucydides Trap." China's rise in economic and military power in an of itself critically endangers US security interests of being uncontested dominant power.
> retaliation/deterrent for an American attack on China.
Just to be clear, what are we talking about here exactly?
I am 99.99999%, no I am 100% sure, that even "US China hawks" do not want to invade China. The alternative sounds like "NATO invading Russia" irrational paranoia which serves to keep the local population in nationalist fervor, while there is no actual threat.
It really sounds like we are calling the free-world's reaction to the possible CCP invasion of Taiwan, to be an attack on China?
I feel like we, as in our press and tbh all of us, repeat terms as they are presented by other countries as if they were peer Democracies, no questions asked.
Putin is President of the Russian Federation. Not dictator, not authoritarian leader who murders his opponents, nope "President."
Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China. Yup, it's a Republic. Not a single party state, and he is not the Emperor, whose opponents keep mysteriously dying. It's totally normal. He's just the "President" of China.
Can anyone with journalism experience explain to me how this works?
I'm a bit confused about the question and how this relates to the topic.
I don't know how many journalists are lurking non-front page HN stories, so you'll probably get a non-journalist answer to the question (if anyone ventures, I'll try).
I think you may be trying to ask a question about structuralist/realist theories of international relations, vs constructivist theories of international relations. Basically "sure there's some structuralist arguments, re: Thucydides, that the US should be expected to agitate for conflict, but what about democracy vs non-democracy - can't that better or equally explain sources of conflict?"
If that's what you mean you could look at the many places in the world where authoritarianism is recognized, accepted, even partnered with the United States (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, ...). In these cases you'll find the US partners with these allies, emboldens and arms them, due to shared structural/realist interests.
As far as the naming of people's titles around the world. I very often read glib/vitriolic denigrations of the specific people you've mentioned in US press. These articles tend to be intended more for domestic catharsis/rallying than it is to be accurate/analytical, although sometimes the articles are very good and I assume the editors make those changes based on guidelines/policy.
To learn more about governments around the world I would point to the CIA World Fact Book, which uses a taxonomic approach to classifying various systems. The CIA considers Russia to be a "semi-presidential federation" and indeed Putin is elected and extremely popular. (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/russia/#gov...). The CIA considers China to be a "communist party-led state" and indeed Jinping is the factually elected president of the single communist party. (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/china/#gove...).
Learning more about other leaders in these countries - their parliaments, their ministries, their election processes, their legislation drafting processes, etc - can help to abate some of the instincts to assume that political systems, because they aren't understood, are hostage/authoritarian situations. A good exercise is to learn at least ten other important officials from a given country and their roles for leading that country. I think trying this exercise yourself could help you answer your question above.
> I'm a bit confused about the question and how this relates to the topic.
I'm sorry, while I did in-fact respond to your comment, I was just complaining out loud. I should have made a top level comment. However, you did give me a thoughtful reply. My apologies for only responding to this paragraph:
> As far as the naming of people's titles around the world. I very often read glib/vitriolic denigrations of the specific people you've mentioned in US press. These articles tend to be intended more for domestic catharsis/rallying than it is to be accurate/analytical, although sometimes the articles are very good and I assume the editors make those changes based on guidelines/policy.
I do believe in the supremacy of democracy. I have lived in an alternative, and it was bad. I do not have some theoretical respect for other government systems in this regard. Democracy is best for everyone, and I am not ashamed of this opinion. Nobody should be ashamed of this opinion. If a society is not ready for democracy, then it should be carpet bombed with Wikipedia.
There are multiple versions of democracies, for example, compared to the US system, a parliamentary system may have advantages.
The baseline that I wish journalists, and our "western" philosophy communication at-large could coalesce around is basically:
Single-party != democracy
If there is no democracy, then there can be no "president."
If you need a neutral term for that, maybe demote to a "leader."
If a "leader" has murdered all of his opponents, then we should go with something actively derogatory. Not only should no respect be given, but the title should be extremely negative.
Thank you for the thoughtful response and for sharing your opinion.
About the standard you propose. It's interesting, but there might be some issues with it. I am writing this not to change your opinion but to expand on the idea with you.
> Single-party != democracy
The concept of parties being associated with democracy is somewhat new or "hyper-local" I think. In the West we often trace democracy to ancient Athens, crediting them with inventing democracy (although I'm sure historians would debate). From Wikipedia: a party system in ancient Athens did not exist, but voting for representation did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#:~:text=Tho....). This immediately disassociates the idea of democracy with the idea of parties. Parties are one way to organize coalitions of shared interest. Whereas democracy is a way for citizens to register their interests so that a government may address those interests.
As you suggested there are a wide range of different ways to organize democracy (parliament vs congress, representative vs direct, ...). There is in fact a Wikipedia article on different types of democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_democracy . An interesting thing I learned reading this is most of 1700s Britain was a one-party (Whig) system and by this standard would not have been considered by your proposed standard.
> If there is no democracy, then there can be no "president."
Again here's something I found on Wikipedia. The history and meaning of the word president means "presides over" rather than it meaning anything in particular in association with democracy. Its first recorded uses were in Aramaic and in the Bible. Today's common usage today means "head of state, usually of a republic", but has no common meaning associated with democracy as a form of government.
> If you need a neutral term for that, maybe demote to a "leader."
I would just like to offer that if president means "presides over" and leader means "leads", someone else could have a similar objection you have to the use of "president" to the proposal to use "leader" - i.e. that we should not use it for persons who lead governments we don't consider to be "true democracies" because it shows some kind of respect or legitimacy.
> If a "leader" has murdered all of his opponents, then we should go with something actively derogatory. Not only should no respect be given, but the title should be extremely negative.
I suppose the idea here is that using a title that describes their role "quarterback Bob", "person who presides over, president, El-Sisi" gives some respect for their having that role, and we shouldn't give them that respect even if its technically accurate to describe them as the role they have. And if we think they've done something heinous we should give them a title that is heinous to disrespect them. "Smelly Bob", "Dipshit El-Sisi".
Here I think its fine for politicians, whose role is swaying public opinion and rousing people, to show disrespect or to not show respect. But I worry about setting standards for journalists because restricting them from accurately describing the roles of persons could undermine their job of communicating context and information, and it suggests that a journalist's role is to disres...
I don’t think the US has a similar level of penetration. They don’t let people who smoke weed work for the federal government. Additionally, the pay and job is just worse than doing cyber security for big tech. This means any decent hackers stay very far away from working for the feds.
I understand where you're coming from, but let me offer a different perspective. There's a certain class of individual who loves the challenge of "breaking" something, but prefers the reduced problem space, risk mitigation, and formal validation that such a job provides. Look at the schools with the top cybersecurity competition teams, and you'll find fertile recruiting ground for such individuals. The NSA knows this, and actively recruits these individuals from these schools. Arguably, they provide a more comfortable working environment for those so inclined than your typical big tech job would provide. With regards to the effectiveness, the recent Kaspersky hacks should show that the feds have some capability in this regard.
Could you add some more information about what steps of reasoning you find unsound, or what reasons you believe China would have to agitate for a conflict?
The "Thucydides Trap" and its application to Sino-American conflict is not something that I've made up or is a personal opinion. I've merely captured what US defense and security analyst perspective here for those wanting more context on the article. Namely China wants to avoid conflict because it is the weaker power, and the US wants to create conflict now while China is a weaker power, to prevent China from becoming a stronger competitor in the future.
There are certainly some US security analysts who argue against the "Thucydides Trap" being the right framework to analyze Sino-American relations. However most of those criticisms are just pointing out that conflict isn't inevitable - that there's nuance. For example the US might become distracted with other priorities (domestic political issues, for example), and never initiate a conflict. Or perhaps China will see a slow down in the growth of its own power, and the US will no longer perceive it as a threat (much the same happened with Japan in the 90's, when Japan was considered a top security threat).
China needs to do two things to avoid war with the US: don’t invade Taiwan, don’t start fights with US allies in the Pacific. So far, they have been agitating for both of those things.
While I disagree with this on its own merit, its important to point out this does not address the question/topic.
Asked above was:
(a) What steps of reasoning do you think are unsound?
(b) What reasons do you believe that China has to agitate a conflict with the US?
You answered (c) here is how China could avoid a conflict with the US
I'm sure you have questions about why this is disagreeable. But could we first resolve the open questions (a) and (b)?
A) China is not infiltrating US infrastructure to prevent the US from “agitating” a war on China, they’re doing it to deter the US from coming to the defense of Taiwan or other allies or partners in case a war breaks out in the Pacific, a war overwhelmingly likely to be started by China.
B) They don’t want to directly, but they definitely want to with their neighbors to expand their borders, legitimize the ruling party, and project naval power into the pacific and South China Sea. They hope their large navy and cyber capabilities will deter a US response
Okay, so for (b) we agree that China does not want to agitate a war with the US; that it would like to avoid it.
For (a) you do not have an area of critique where you believe any chain of logic presented earlier in the thread in unsound. Instead for (a) you have an alternative theory that you would advance.
The reason I thought you had some critique of soundness in (a) is that you had commented earlier you thought there was wild mental gymnastics, which would imply that you thought there was some unsound/crazy/wild leaps of thought.
This I think leaves us to discuss (a). Your proposed alternative theory agrees on the premise that the US would be the one choosing to engage military with China - that China would not choose to attack the United States. The key difference in your theory is that the United States "begrudgingly" would be obligated to engage militarily with China such as due to a legal commitment. This is opposed to the characterization that I advanced, which is that the United States is "leaning into" reasons to engage militarily with China.
I can explain why I do not think that the US would "begrudgingly feel obligated" and instead is "leaning into reasons". This is quite simple (I will spare spilled ink).
The US established in 2009 that China was its primary rival (in 2009 the Obama Administration announces the "Pivot to Asia", which Wikipedia describes as "represented a significant shift in the foreign policy of the United States ... invest heavily and build relationships in [Asia] ... to counter [China's] rise as a rival superpower"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_foreign_policy_of_t...
Since that time the reasons for a potential US conflict with China have kept changing. Once it was because of "unfair trade practices". It became for a while "Uighurs". "Tibet". "Defense of India". "South China Sea". "Taiwan". The constant over time is the explicitly and carefully articulated reason given by the US government itself that it needs to counter China as a rising superpower. The areas of conflict have been, are, and will continue to be, subject to change.
The US had almost certainly has no legal obligation to intervene on part of its "allies" (the Philippines only unless you have other legal allies in mind?) nor does it have any obligation to intervene for Taiwan. From a legal perspective again the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines (who I assume you refer to by "allies") was effectively dead (with US bases, soldiers, exiting the region by early 1990s). It was only in 2021 (!) long long after the US identified the need to confront China that the US renewed this treaty (after the Philippines suggest it be scrapped). Neither the Philippine's specious claims to the Spratly Islands the a BRP Sierra Madre scenario would obligate a US intervention.
I would add that the US even insisted on intervening on behalf of the Philippines even when the Philippines itself rejected the United States and called for it to not engage in the area. This is how desperate the US has been to try to engineer something here. (The new Philippine administration has been easier for the US to work with).
Indeed the United States has been accelerating its efforts to grow treaties, obligations, and military basing in China's near abroad. From the Compacts of Free Association to the Nuclear "AUKUS" to the Quad, to its quite scandalous attempt at the Trans Pacific Partnership, the US's foreign policy has attempted to constrain the growth of China and attempted to engineer plausible scenarios in which it might escalate tensions with China into a victory.
China's interest in the South China Sea? To prevent an existential economic blow severing its ability to trade, a la...
Ok, your post is just pure gish galloping. Basically, you think that the US is forging alliances in the Indo-Pacific because it wants an excuse to go to war with China and crush it. In reality, the US is using its military, specifically it’s deterrence capability as a bargaining chip in alliances with countries who are fed up with China. Yes, it wants to counter China’s rise but it’s doing that through diplomacy. If China doesn’t like this, they are free to start acting like a good neighbor, but it seems that’s not their plan.
Today I learned "gish galloping". No, I am a wordy person and I apologize for that. I think you'll find it isn't an excessive amount of arguments, but an excessive amount of detail to a very straightforward argument. At least that is my hope.
> Basically, you think that the US is forging alliances in the Indo-Pacific because really it wants an excuse to go to war with China and crush it. In reality, the US is using its military, specifically it’s deterrence capability as a bargaining chip in alliances with countries who are fed up with China.
Yes in broad strokes. I'm trying to not add nuance now.
However I would disagree with the "countries that are fed up with China" - that's a very American narrative but based on polls and looking from the region, these countries are mostly looking for whoever will give them the best bargain and play both sides.
> Yes, it wants to counter China’s rise
Right, I'm glad we agree on that.
> but it’s doing that through diplomacy.
I don't see this as very possible in any case. What country could convince through diplomacy another country to e.g. stop growing its economy? Are there any such examples?
Do you have any examples of diplomatic missions or examples you think show the US as having done this?
Anyhow, I'm glad we started out with my doing mental gymnastics, but now we agree that the US wants to prevent China's rise and that China is trying to avoid military conflict with the US. None of this is super crazy / convoluted.
Your mental gymnastics is concluding that the US wants to start a war with China. And I don’t mean diplomacy with China, I mean diplomacy with the other Indo-Pacific countries.
Sorry in advance for the verbosity, but I really feel like we're crossing paths.
The US doesn't want to start a war with China. The US wants to prevent China's rise. It wants to do this as cheaply and as efficiently as possible, and if it could do it by a cheap cyberop/magic-wand/whathaveyou it would. However it has coarse tools to affect this and no easy, cheap answers. And its willing to do it expensive ways (war) if need be.
It therefore has an array of economic, diplomatic, military, and intelligence tracks attempting to prevent China's rise and raise its costs in a myriad of ways. These all create instability and risk war.
The US is, in its attempt to prevent the rise of China, and China in its attempt to continue to grow in power, in a Thucydides Trap - where conflict between them grows. China - in its role is attempting to grow does so by attempting to minimize the amount of tension and risk of conflict with the United States. Because strategically, that's its win condition. It grows.
The US on the other hand, is attempting to increase as much tension and conflict as it can with China, in order to problematize its rise. This may lead to a war (the "trap" in Thucydides Trap), but it is not inevitable.
The examples are plentiful (and as you've discovered I'm verbose) so probe and we can get into that.
I'll just repeat one example from earlier. Before the US was attempting to prevent China's rise, it's policy with regard to Taiwan was to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence and prevent mainland from attempting to annex. This was to create stability and maintain the status quo. It did this by being ambigious about what it would do in such a scenario. This was the policy for ~50 years and it was successful at stabilizing the region.
Once the US's policy became preventing China's rise, it's policy toward Taiwan has been to claim that it will defend Taiwan. The reason for this policy is to encourage Taiwan to declare independence, and to make China worry about this possibility, and encouraging it to attempt to act before it becomes too late. The US is succeeding in this policy of destabilizing the region.
This amounts to agitating for a war. That is not the same thing as wanting to start a war (e.g. "for wars own sake").
I wonder what you agree with, disagree with about this.
> The US doesn't want to start a war with China. The US wants to prevent China's rise. It wants to do this as cheaply and as efficiently as possible, and if it could do it by a cheap cyberop/magic-wand/whathaveyou it would. However it has coarse tools to affect this and no easy, cheap answers.
The US wants to prevent China's rise to global hegemon status. It has no problem with China growing in general.
> And its willing to do it expensive ways (war) if need be.
"If need be" being China starts a conflict with it's neighbors who have asked the US for help. The US will not launch missiles at China if their GDP grows too high or the BRI grows larger.
> It therefore has an array of economic, diplomatic, military, and intelligence tracks attempting to prevent China's rise and raise its costs in a myriad of ways. These all create instability and risk war.
No, the country causing instability here is the one launching missiles into the Taiwan Strait (which was happening long before the "Pivot to East Asia"), salami slicing territory, attacking vessels in the South China sea, and starting border skirmishes with India. US diplomacy and military deterrence aren't causing instability, they are holding it back.
> The US is, in its attempt to prevent the rise of China, and China in its attempt to continue to grow in power, in a Thucydides Trap - where conflict between them grows. China - in its role is attempting to grow does so by attempting to minimize the amount of tension and risk of conflict with the United States. Because strategically, that's its win condition. It grows.
Wrong. If China wanted to minimize risk of conflict with the US, it would cease stealing US IP and military secrets (again, started happening before "Pivot to East Asia"), operating unofficial police stations on US soil, hacking into US companies and infrastructure, etc. China wants to keep tensions just below the threshold that would trigger a serious conflict while antagonizing the US in ways that help it grow.
> The US on the other hand, is attempting to increase as much tension and conflict as it can with China, in order to problematize its rise. This may lead to a war (the "trap" in Thucydides Trap), but it is not inevitable. I'll just repeat one example from earlier. Before the US was attempting to prevent China's rise, it's policy with regard to Taiwan was to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence and prevent mainland from attempting to annex.
> Once the US's policy became preventing China's rise, it's policy toward Taiwan has been to claim that it will defend Taiwan. The reason for this policy is to encourage Taiwan to declare independence, and to make China worry about this possibility, and encouraging it to attempt to act before it becomes too late. The US is succeeding in this policy of destabilizing the region.
This is why I dismissed the earlier post as a gish gallop, because it was full of subtly wrong things like this that I didn't want to spend time debunking. The US policy is still strategic ambiguity. Biden has made multiple remarks that the US would defend Taiwan, but they've always been walked back by the White House. Bush made similar remarks in 2000 and 2001, before the "Pivot to East Asia", and they were also walked back. The US still abides by the 45 year old Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances. Meanwhile, China decides to surround the island with warships and conduct live-fire exercises because a single US representative visits. Who is the one destabilizing the region again?
I see no reason for this conversation to continue any further at this point. Bye.
Posting from another account (home vs work computer). You can reach me at either.
> The US wants to prevent China's rise to global hegemon status. It has no problem with China growing in general.
The US want to prevent China's rise to even a regional hegemon status. It has a problem even with China growing to equal economic power (without a "hegemonic" component").
It would be hard to separate "growth in general" from "growth that contributes to a relative power gap narrowing." They are practically indistinguishable, so I don't see much point in trying to test from it.
> "If need be" being China starts a conflict with it's neighbors who have asked the US for help. The US will not launch missiles at China if their GDP grows too high or the BRI grows larger.
Which neighbors? So far we've discussed Philippines and Taiwan and shown this isn't true.
> The US will not launch missiles at China if their GDP grows too high or the BRI grows larger.
It would. But it would engineer a conflict to justify such an act by.
> No, the country causing instability here is the one launching missiles into the Taiwan Strait (which was happening long before the "Pivot to East Asia"), salami slicing territory, attacking vessels in the South China sea, and starting border skirmishes with India. US diplomacy and military deterrence aren't causing instability, they are holding it back.
No. The US has undertaken a significantly different policy position in order to engineer, amplify, and become in involved in existing and new disputes (which all countries have).
> Wrong. If China wanted to minimize risk of conflict with the US, it would cease stealing US IP and military secrets (again, started happening before "Pivot to East Asia"), operating unofficial police stations on US soil, hacking into US companies and infrastructure, etc. China wants to keep tensions just below the threshold that would trigger a serious conflict while antagonizing the US in ways that help it grow.
Minimize risk within the context of the situation. It's absurd to think that a country trying to grow would just say, hey the US is creating conflict over this, let's shrink to minimize risk.
This is a straw man.
> This is why I dismissed the earlier post as a gish gallop, because it was full of subtly wrong things like this that I didn't want to spend time debunking.
This has been the pattern so far though. Lots of high level accusations ("that's mental gymnastics") and no substantive specific points. If there are factual errors, discuss them, and draw out where there are issues. In any case, having a "subtlely wrong thing" is a far cry from your claim of "mental gymastics". I'm honestly trying to figure out where you think factually and logically this is wrong. What you've provided so far is hard for me to differentiate from grief over preferred vocabulary, high level pronouncements, and advancing a different but not contradictory idea.
> Biden has made multiple remarks that the US would defend Taiwan, but they've always been walked back by the White House.
This is a political tactic. It's like when Biden stated Putin should be assassinated, and then later in a small statement it's made "not official".
This is clearly and evidently the US policy, as its pushing allies and forming coalitions to interfere in a strait crisis. If this was just some rouge statement by a lone official (accidentally: the President) none of those efforts would be underway.
> Bush made similar remarks in 2000 and 2001, before the "Pivot to East Asia", and they were also walked back
Right. The Bush Administration had considered making this pivot before the Obama Administration actually did, but got bogged down in the Middle East. Interesting point though.
> The US still abides by the 45 year old Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances.
Thucydides Trap is just the nonsense of historicism.
What rising power went to war with the hegem with a currency peg?
What rising power went to war with a hegem with a currency peg and its largest trading partner? A coalition that would include several of the top trading partners.
Like all points in history, the current moment is unique and pretending you can predict the future from the past is stupid.
The Belfare Center for Science and International Affairs has a nice report (https://www.belfercenter.org/thucydides-trap/case-file) indicating this is a good predictor for conflict (and lists examples that you can use).
Although, I'll definitely agree with you that all points in history are unique. Thucydides Trap shouldn't be understood as predicting the future using the past (that's absurd by definition). That would be a reductio ad absurdum, but it isn't what foreign policy scholars are actually arguing here.
Instead, it's a description of set of incentives that shape the relationship. What the individuals in power choose to do with those pressures/incentives on the relationship is absolutely a different question. The point the "foreign policy elite" in the United States are making is that it has strong incentives to agitate for a fight with China, before it becomes an competitor (as opposed to a "near peer competitor" or "pacing challenge" - the current language).
I suppose its worth clarifying. Do you deny that there are such structural elements of the Sino-American relationship? Or is your argument wrt Thucydides Trap that it isn't deterministic? Or something else?
Consider formal US position is attack on critical infra is comparable to physical attack, with associated retaliation. IMO cyberwarfare is small stopgap escalation step before mass mutual homeland strikes. US has communicated potential of hitting mainland targets in event of TW contingency, hence PRC need to be able to reciprocate. In which case equation is about who has most industrial expertise and construction overcapacity to recover fastest. And who has most targets to tank hits and survive the homeland attrition game.
Regardless, wonder what the state of domestic PRC industrial control systems is in terms of adoption, and whether US has sufficient familiarity. Mandarin fluency is severely lacking in US 3 letter agencies. PRC has just a metric fuck ton of surplus hackers and familiarity with western ICS having imported a lot of western infra over the years. But then again, PRC is also uniquely vunerable with how cashless society has become. Maybe they have huge stashes of rmb notes for when payment infra goes dark.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 74.5 ms ] threadIt's certainly consistent with how things have gone so far. Computer security is terrible today, but it was even worse a decade ago, and it's the low hum of constant cyberattacks and ransomware that probably have helped push that.
How is it political? Industry and congress ignore the risk, warning the public is the last chance to spur change
It is highly likely that the US has achieved similar levels of penetration into Chinese critical infrastructure for its own use in conflict contingency.
The actual deterrent effect of this is unlikely to, on its own, prevent the US from agitating a war on or within China. War is not inevitable, just structurally likely, due to the so called "Thucydides Trap." China's rise in economic and military power in an of itself critically endangers US security interests of being uncontested dominant power.
Just to be clear, what are we talking about here exactly?
I am 99.99999%, no I am 100% sure, that even "US China hawks" do not want to invade China. The alternative sounds like "NATO invading Russia" irrational paranoia which serves to keep the local population in nationalist fervor, while there is no actual threat.
It really sounds like we are calling the free-world's reaction to the possible CCP invasion of Taiwan, to be an attack on China?
Is the USA training its population for war like China? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUaYNhzEq_E
Please note that the YouTuber linked above, used to live in, and loved living in China, prior to the Xi Jinping take-over.
An ostensible war would be to set back China's growth and its trajectory of growth. The US has little interest in governing such a large country.
Putin is President of the Russian Federation. Not dictator, not authoritarian leader who murders his opponents, nope "President."
Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China. Yup, it's a Republic. Not a single party state, and he is not the Emperor, whose opponents keep mysteriously dying. It's totally normal. He's just the "President" of China.
Can anyone with journalism experience explain to me how this works?
I don't know how many journalists are lurking non-front page HN stories, so you'll probably get a non-journalist answer to the question (if anyone ventures, I'll try).
I think you may be trying to ask a question about structuralist/realist theories of international relations, vs constructivist theories of international relations. Basically "sure there's some structuralist arguments, re: Thucydides, that the US should be expected to agitate for conflict, but what about democracy vs non-democracy - can't that better or equally explain sources of conflict?"
If that's what you mean you could look at the many places in the world where authoritarianism is recognized, accepted, even partnered with the United States (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, ...). In these cases you'll find the US partners with these allies, emboldens and arms them, due to shared structural/realist interests.
As far as the naming of people's titles around the world. I very often read glib/vitriolic denigrations of the specific people you've mentioned in US press. These articles tend to be intended more for domestic catharsis/rallying than it is to be accurate/analytical, although sometimes the articles are very good and I assume the editors make those changes based on guidelines/policy.
To learn more about governments around the world I would point to the CIA World Fact Book, which uses a taxonomic approach to classifying various systems. The CIA considers Russia to be a "semi-presidential federation" and indeed Putin is elected and extremely popular. (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/russia/#gov...). The CIA considers China to be a "communist party-led state" and indeed Jinping is the factually elected president of the single communist party. (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/china/#gove...).
Learning more about other leaders in these countries - their parliaments, their ministries, their election processes, their legislation drafting processes, etc - can help to abate some of the instincts to assume that political systems, because they aren't understood, are hostage/authoritarian situations. A good exercise is to learn at least ten other important officials from a given country and their roles for leading that country. I think trying this exercise yourself could help you answer your question above.
I'm sorry, while I did in-fact respond to your comment, I was just complaining out loud. I should have made a top level comment. However, you did give me a thoughtful reply. My apologies for only responding to this paragraph:
> As far as the naming of people's titles around the world. I very often read glib/vitriolic denigrations of the specific people you've mentioned in US press. These articles tend to be intended more for domestic catharsis/rallying than it is to be accurate/analytical, although sometimes the articles are very good and I assume the editors make those changes based on guidelines/policy.
I do believe in the supremacy of democracy. I have lived in an alternative, and it was bad. I do not have some theoretical respect for other government systems in this regard. Democracy is best for everyone, and I am not ashamed of this opinion. Nobody should be ashamed of this opinion. If a society is not ready for democracy, then it should be carpet bombed with Wikipedia.
There are multiple versions of democracies, for example, compared to the US system, a parliamentary system may have advantages.
The baseline that I wish journalists, and our "western" philosophy communication at-large could coalesce around is basically:
Single-party != democracy
If there is no democracy, then there can be no "president."
If you need a neutral term for that, maybe demote to a "leader."
If a "leader" has murdered all of his opponents, then we should go with something actively derogatory. Not only should no respect be given, but the title should be extremely negative.
About the standard you propose. It's interesting, but there might be some issues with it. I am writing this not to change your opinion but to expand on the idea with you.
> Single-party != democracy
The concept of parties being associated with democracy is somewhat new or "hyper-local" I think. In the West we often trace democracy to ancient Athens, crediting them with inventing democracy (although I'm sure historians would debate). From Wikipedia: a party system in ancient Athens did not exist, but voting for representation did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#:~:text=Tho....). This immediately disassociates the idea of democracy with the idea of parties. Parties are one way to organize coalitions of shared interest. Whereas democracy is a way for citizens to register their interests so that a government may address those interests.
As you suggested there are a wide range of different ways to organize democracy (parliament vs congress, representative vs direct, ...). There is in fact a Wikipedia article on different types of democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_democracy . An interesting thing I learned reading this is most of 1700s Britain was a one-party (Whig) system and by this standard would not have been considered by your proposed standard.
> If there is no democracy, then there can be no "president."
Again here's something I found on Wikipedia. The history and meaning of the word president means "presides over" rather than it meaning anything in particular in association with democracy. Its first recorded uses were in Aramaic and in the Bible. Today's common usage today means "head of state, usually of a republic", but has no common meaning associated with democracy as a form of government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_(government_title)#:....
> If you need a neutral term for that, maybe demote to a "leader."
I would just like to offer that if president means "presides over" and leader means "leads", someone else could have a similar objection you have to the use of "president" to the proposal to use "leader" - i.e. that we should not use it for persons who lead governments we don't consider to be "true democracies" because it shows some kind of respect or legitimacy.
> If a "leader" has murdered all of his opponents, then we should go with something actively derogatory. Not only should no respect be given, but the title should be extremely negative.
I suppose the idea here is that using a title that describes their role "quarterback Bob", "person who presides over, president, El-Sisi" gives some respect for their having that role, and we shouldn't give them that respect even if its technically accurate to describe them as the role they have. And if we think they've done something heinous we should give them a title that is heinous to disrespect them. "Smelly Bob", "Dipshit El-Sisi".
Here I think its fine for politicians, whose role is swaying public opinion and rousing people, to show disrespect or to not show respect. But I worry about setting standards for journalists because restricting them from accurately describing the roles of persons could undermine their job of communicating context and information, and it suggests that a journalist's role is to disres...
Not everyone wants to work on the stuff that SV pays for, or the finance people pay for.
The "Thucydides Trap" and its application to Sino-American conflict is not something that I've made up or is a personal opinion. I've merely captured what US defense and security analyst perspective here for those wanting more context on the article. Namely China wants to avoid conflict because it is the weaker power, and the US wants to create conflict now while China is a weaker power, to prevent China from becoming a stronger competitor in the future.
There are certainly some US security analysts who argue against the "Thucydides Trap" being the right framework to analyze Sino-American relations. However most of those criticisms are just pointing out that conflict isn't inevitable - that there's nuance. For example the US might become distracted with other priorities (domestic political issues, for example), and never initiate a conflict. Or perhaps China will see a slow down in the growth of its own power, and the US will no longer perceive it as a threat (much the same happened with Japan in the 90's, when Japan was considered a top security threat).
Asked above was: (a) What steps of reasoning do you think are unsound? (b) What reasons do you believe that China has to agitate a conflict with the US?
You answered (c) here is how China could avoid a conflict with the US
I'm sure you have questions about why this is disagreeable. But could we first resolve the open questions (a) and (b)?
A) China is not infiltrating US infrastructure to prevent the US from “agitating” a war on China, they’re doing it to deter the US from coming to the defense of Taiwan or other allies or partners in case a war breaks out in the Pacific, a war overwhelmingly likely to be started by China.
B) They don’t want to directly, but they definitely want to with their neighbors to expand their borders, legitimize the ruling party, and project naval power into the pacific and South China Sea. They hope their large navy and cyber capabilities will deter a US response
For (a) you do not have an area of critique where you believe any chain of logic presented earlier in the thread in unsound. Instead for (a) you have an alternative theory that you would advance.
The reason I thought you had some critique of soundness in (a) is that you had commented earlier you thought there was wild mental gymnastics, which would imply that you thought there was some unsound/crazy/wild leaps of thought.
This I think leaves us to discuss (a). Your proposed alternative theory agrees on the premise that the US would be the one choosing to engage military with China - that China would not choose to attack the United States. The key difference in your theory is that the United States "begrudgingly" would be obligated to engage militarily with China such as due to a legal commitment. This is opposed to the characterization that I advanced, which is that the United States is "leaning into" reasons to engage militarily with China.
I can explain why I do not think that the US would "begrudgingly feel obligated" and instead is "leaning into reasons". This is quite simple (I will spare spilled ink).
The US established in 2009 that China was its primary rival (in 2009 the Obama Administration announces the "Pivot to Asia", which Wikipedia describes as "represented a significant shift in the foreign policy of the United States ... invest heavily and build relationships in [Asia] ... to counter [China's] rise as a rival superpower"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_foreign_policy_of_t...
Since that time the reasons for a potential US conflict with China have kept changing. Once it was because of "unfair trade practices". It became for a while "Uighurs". "Tibet". "Defense of India". "South China Sea". "Taiwan". The constant over time is the explicitly and carefully articulated reason given by the US government itself that it needs to counter China as a rising superpower. The areas of conflict have been, are, and will continue to be, subject to change.
The US had almost certainly has no legal obligation to intervene on part of its "allies" (the Philippines only unless you have other legal allies in mind?) nor does it have any obligation to intervene for Taiwan. From a legal perspective again the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines (who I assume you refer to by "allies") was effectively dead (with US bases, soldiers, exiting the region by early 1990s). It was only in 2021 (!) long long after the US identified the need to confront China that the US renewed this treaty (after the Philippines suggest it be scrapped). Neither the Philippine's specious claims to the Spratly Islands the a BRP Sierra Madre scenario would obligate a US intervention.
I would add that the US even insisted on intervening on behalf of the Philippines even when the Philippines itself rejected the United States and called for it to not engage in the area. This is how desperate the US has been to try to engineer something here. (The new Philippine administration has been easier for the US to work with).
Indeed the United States has been accelerating its efforts to grow treaties, obligations, and military basing in China's near abroad. From the Compacts of Free Association to the Nuclear "AUKUS" to the Quad, to its quite scandalous attempt at the Trans Pacific Partnership, the US's foreign policy has attempted to constrain the growth of China and attempted to engineer plausible scenarios in which it might escalate tensions with China into a victory.
China's interest in the South China Sea? To prevent an existential economic blow severing its ability to trade, a la...
> Basically, you think that the US is forging alliances in the Indo-Pacific because really it wants an excuse to go to war with China and crush it. In reality, the US is using its military, specifically it’s deterrence capability as a bargaining chip in alliances with countries who are fed up with China.
Yes in broad strokes. I'm trying to not add nuance now.
However I would disagree with the "countries that are fed up with China" - that's a very American narrative but based on polls and looking from the region, these countries are mostly looking for whoever will give them the best bargain and play both sides.
> Yes, it wants to counter China’s rise
Right, I'm glad we agree on that.
> but it’s doing that through diplomacy.
I don't see this as very possible in any case. What country could convince through diplomacy another country to e.g. stop growing its economy? Are there any such examples?
Do you have any examples of diplomatic missions or examples you think show the US as having done this?
Anyhow, I'm glad we started out with my doing mental gymnastics, but now we agree that the US wants to prevent China's rise and that China is trying to avoid military conflict with the US. None of this is super crazy / convoluted.
Regards for sticking with my verboseness.
The US doesn't want to start a war with China. The US wants to prevent China's rise. It wants to do this as cheaply and as efficiently as possible, and if it could do it by a cheap cyberop/magic-wand/whathaveyou it would. However it has coarse tools to affect this and no easy, cheap answers. And its willing to do it expensive ways (war) if need be.
It therefore has an array of economic, diplomatic, military, and intelligence tracks attempting to prevent China's rise and raise its costs in a myriad of ways. These all create instability and risk war.
The US is, in its attempt to prevent the rise of China, and China in its attempt to continue to grow in power, in a Thucydides Trap - where conflict between them grows. China - in its role is attempting to grow does so by attempting to minimize the amount of tension and risk of conflict with the United States. Because strategically, that's its win condition. It grows.
The US on the other hand, is attempting to increase as much tension and conflict as it can with China, in order to problematize its rise. This may lead to a war (the "trap" in Thucydides Trap), but it is not inevitable.
The examples are plentiful (and as you've discovered I'm verbose) so probe and we can get into that.
I'll just repeat one example from earlier. Before the US was attempting to prevent China's rise, it's policy with regard to Taiwan was to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence and prevent mainland from attempting to annex. This was to create stability and maintain the status quo. It did this by being ambigious about what it would do in such a scenario. This was the policy for ~50 years and it was successful at stabilizing the region.
Once the US's policy became preventing China's rise, it's policy toward Taiwan has been to claim that it will defend Taiwan. The reason for this policy is to encourage Taiwan to declare independence, and to make China worry about this possibility, and encouraging it to attempt to act before it becomes too late. The US is succeeding in this policy of destabilizing the region.
This amounts to agitating for a war. That is not the same thing as wanting to start a war (e.g. "for wars own sake").
I wonder what you agree with, disagree with about this.
The US wants to prevent China's rise to global hegemon status. It has no problem with China growing in general.
> And its willing to do it expensive ways (war) if need be.
"If need be" being China starts a conflict with it's neighbors who have asked the US for help. The US will not launch missiles at China if their GDP grows too high or the BRI grows larger.
> It therefore has an array of economic, diplomatic, military, and intelligence tracks attempting to prevent China's rise and raise its costs in a myriad of ways. These all create instability and risk war.
No, the country causing instability here is the one launching missiles into the Taiwan Strait (which was happening long before the "Pivot to East Asia"), salami slicing territory, attacking vessels in the South China sea, and starting border skirmishes with India. US diplomacy and military deterrence aren't causing instability, they are holding it back.
> The US is, in its attempt to prevent the rise of China, and China in its attempt to continue to grow in power, in a Thucydides Trap - where conflict between them grows. China - in its role is attempting to grow does so by attempting to minimize the amount of tension and risk of conflict with the United States. Because strategically, that's its win condition. It grows.
Wrong. If China wanted to minimize risk of conflict with the US, it would cease stealing US IP and military secrets (again, started happening before "Pivot to East Asia"), operating unofficial police stations on US soil, hacking into US companies and infrastructure, etc. China wants to keep tensions just below the threshold that would trigger a serious conflict while antagonizing the US in ways that help it grow.
> The US on the other hand, is attempting to increase as much tension and conflict as it can with China, in order to problematize its rise. This may lead to a war (the "trap" in Thucydides Trap), but it is not inevitable. I'll just repeat one example from earlier. Before the US was attempting to prevent China's rise, it's policy with regard to Taiwan was to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence and prevent mainland from attempting to annex.
> Once the US's policy became preventing China's rise, it's policy toward Taiwan has been to claim that it will defend Taiwan. The reason for this policy is to encourage Taiwan to declare independence, and to make China worry about this possibility, and encouraging it to attempt to act before it becomes too late. The US is succeeding in this policy of destabilizing the region.
This is why I dismissed the earlier post as a gish gallop, because it was full of subtly wrong things like this that I didn't want to spend time debunking. The US policy is still strategic ambiguity. Biden has made multiple remarks that the US would defend Taiwan, but they've always been walked back by the White House. Bush made similar remarks in 2000 and 2001, before the "Pivot to East Asia", and they were also walked back. The US still abides by the 45 year old Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances. Meanwhile, China decides to surround the island with warships and conduct live-fire exercises because a single US representative visits. Who is the one destabilizing the region again?
I see no reason for this conversation to continue any further at this point. Bye.
> The US wants to prevent China's rise to global hegemon status. It has no problem with China growing in general.
The US want to prevent China's rise to even a regional hegemon status. It has a problem even with China growing to equal economic power (without a "hegemonic" component").
It would be hard to separate "growth in general" from "growth that contributes to a relative power gap narrowing." They are practically indistinguishable, so I don't see much point in trying to test from it.
> "If need be" being China starts a conflict with it's neighbors who have asked the US for help. The US will not launch missiles at China if their GDP grows too high or the BRI grows larger.
Which neighbors? So far we've discussed Philippines and Taiwan and shown this isn't true.
> The US will not launch missiles at China if their GDP grows too high or the BRI grows larger.
It would. But it would engineer a conflict to justify such an act by.
> No, the country causing instability here is the one launching missiles into the Taiwan Strait (which was happening long before the "Pivot to East Asia"), salami slicing territory, attacking vessels in the South China sea, and starting border skirmishes with India. US diplomacy and military deterrence aren't causing instability, they are holding it back.
No. The US has undertaken a significantly different policy position in order to engineer, amplify, and become in involved in existing and new disputes (which all countries have).
> Wrong. If China wanted to minimize risk of conflict with the US, it would cease stealing US IP and military secrets (again, started happening before "Pivot to East Asia"), operating unofficial police stations on US soil, hacking into US companies and infrastructure, etc. China wants to keep tensions just below the threshold that would trigger a serious conflict while antagonizing the US in ways that help it grow.
Minimize risk within the context of the situation. It's absurd to think that a country trying to grow would just say, hey the US is creating conflict over this, let's shrink to minimize risk.
This is a straw man.
> This is why I dismissed the earlier post as a gish gallop, because it was full of subtly wrong things like this that I didn't want to spend time debunking.
This has been the pattern so far though. Lots of high level accusations ("that's mental gymnastics") and no substantive specific points. If there are factual errors, discuss them, and draw out where there are issues. In any case, having a "subtlely wrong thing" is a far cry from your claim of "mental gymastics". I'm honestly trying to figure out where you think factually and logically this is wrong. What you've provided so far is hard for me to differentiate from grief over preferred vocabulary, high level pronouncements, and advancing a different but not contradictory idea.
> Biden has made multiple remarks that the US would defend Taiwan, but they've always been walked back by the White House.
This is a political tactic. It's like when Biden stated Putin should be assassinated, and then later in a small statement it's made "not official".
This is clearly and evidently the US policy, as its pushing allies and forming coalitions to interfere in a strait crisis. If this was just some rouge statement by a lone official (accidentally: the President) none of those efforts would be underway.
> Bush made similar remarks in 2000 and 2001, before the "Pivot to East Asia", and they were also walked back
Right. The Bush Administration had considered making this pivot before the Obama Administration actually did, but got bogged down in the Middle East. Interesting point though.
> The US still abides by the 45 year old Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances.
Fo...
What rising power went to war with the hegem with a currency peg?
What rising power went to war with a hegem with a currency peg and its largest trading partner? A coalition that would include several of the top trading partners.
Like all points in history, the current moment is unique and pretending you can predict the future from the past is stupid.
Although, I'll definitely agree with you that all points in history are unique. Thucydides Trap shouldn't be understood as predicting the future using the past (that's absurd by definition). That would be a reductio ad absurdum, but it isn't what foreign policy scholars are actually arguing here.
Instead, it's a description of set of incentives that shape the relationship. What the individuals in power choose to do with those pressures/incentives on the relationship is absolutely a different question. The point the "foreign policy elite" in the United States are making is that it has strong incentives to agitate for a fight with China, before it becomes an competitor (as opposed to a "near peer competitor" or "pacing challenge" - the current language).
I suppose its worth clarifying. Do you deny that there are such structural elements of the Sino-American relationship? Or is your argument wrt Thucydides Trap that it isn't deterministic? Or something else?
Regardless, wonder what the state of domestic PRC industrial control systems is in terms of adoption, and whether US has sufficient familiarity. Mandarin fluency is severely lacking in US 3 letter agencies. PRC has just a metric fuck ton of surplus hackers and familiarity with western ICS having imported a lot of western infra over the years. But then again, PRC is also uniquely vunerable with how cashless society has become. Maybe they have huge stashes of rmb notes for when payment infra goes dark.