War isn’t that much fun when you think about it. It used to be something of a pastime of the idle rich but then came mechanization and industrialization. Then came the mass media and the blogosphere. The spoils of war began to look more like the inadequate compensation packages issued by corporations sued over lost wages.
War began to look a little too visceral in the age of camera phones capable of tweeting images of fragmented children, mangled limbs and meat-red stills of men with lifeless eyes.
War began to cost trillions instead of billions and as we poured resources into ever more sophisticated weapons, we let things on the home front slide. Once-proud nations became the bastard facsimile of the dilapidation and ruin they once looked down upon. An equilibrium was sought for, found, and implemented.
Nixon In China
The geopolitical realities of the post-World War II years are lost on Trump supporters.
For many of them, no solution can be too simple, no policy statement too facile. Yet much of what has occurred in the 61 years since the last great war ended occurred for reasons that have withstood the test of time because of their complexity, not it spite of it. No major power has fired shots in anger at one another in over six decades.
That’s not an accident; it’s not a function of modernity but rather a function of what that great Germanic leader Otto Von Bismark labeled Realpolitik, a focus on achievable as opposed to ideal objectives. Just one more thing President-elect Donald Trump is going to have to learn to accommodate if any of us are going to survive the next few years.
Because Chinese state-run tabloid the Global Times has just suggested that China should re-balance its stance towards Taiwan in order to:
“… Make the use of force as the main option and carefully prepare for it.”
I know.
Shit, right?
Trump In Taiwan
Donald Trump’s phone call to Taiwan earlier this month is a great case in point. To the perennially confused, China’s position regarding Taiwan seem to be something of an ideological outrage. Why should a nation such as the U.S., founded as it is on the fundamental liberty of the individual, protect the tender feelings of a nation based on collectivism and compliance?
I mean, fuck their hurt fee-fees, right?
Wrong.
It’s that equilibrium thing again, how often it catches us off-balance.
The USA can not only not win a war with China but were it ever so foolish to engage in one, what was left of the USA would not be worth pissing on. Such an observation exists separate from any overwrought preconception about U.S. military power and can be examined simply by crunching some numbers.
For example, despite weighing in at around 1/12th the size of the USA, the eventual bill for the invasion of Iraq might run as high as $6 trillion.
Invading China would cost 52 times that amount all things being equal and, at any rate, all things are not equal.
To begin with, it’s not really about population size. Unlike Iraq, China is not suffering from years of sanctions and ostracization. It’s also a nuclear power.
In 2011, China possessed somewhere between 450-600 warheads. They undoubtedly have more now but that’s hardly the point. Estimated fatalities of a single nuclear missile detonation over a city the size of New York stand at just over 8,000,000. Beijing would fare no better — offering the most obvious point of restraint — but still.
You probably don’t want to let things get to that stage.
Realpolitiked Off
A focus on achievable as opposed to ideal objectives, it’s not that glamorous really. It’s hardly the stuff of speaking softly and carrying a big stick but there you have it. What could the USA do if China invaded Taiwan? The answer is — very little. Firing shots at her could get very ugly, very quickly, and a Cuban Missile Crisis redux is the last thing the debt-ridden USA needs right now.
So why didn’t China do this years ago? Knowing full well that the USA would be foolish to wage war with her, couldn’t she have scratched this itch decades ago?
Well, no actually.
The application of military force is known as hard power within the field of International Relations and if that was all nations had to draw upon in times of crisis we’d all be picking at lice in the trenches right now.
Soft power — defined as the ability to persuade coerce, and, convince nations to comply with our wishes — is responsible for the resolution of the vast majority of disagreements.
Diplomacy, where would we be without it?
Well, we’d all be dead actually.
So while Trump struts around on stage bragging to his true believers about how tough on the Chai-Knees he’s going to be, he is blissfully unaware of the fact that he just lowered everyone’s balls into a deep fryer. The sweet kiss of boiling fat has severed nerve endings and though we might not be feeling the heat, our nuts are on fire nonetheless.
Equal And Opposite Reactions
In the post-truth, fake-news sodden world, it matters little what anyone says anymore.
Michael Moore’s warning that Trump is going to get us all killed; the evaluation of a distinguished professor that the USA has peddling full throttle towards a cliff edge; even Liberal America’s pre-election insistence that Trump is to WWIII what kindling is to a forest fire. It won’t matter.
His supporters aren’t going to listen.
But one group might.
In just a few days time the electors will meet and vote on who will be the next president. They don’t have to vote for Trump. In fact, it’s their sworn constitutional duty not to do so.
With calls for intelligence briefings now morphing into calls to delay the vote itself, one thing is clear: some of the actors are getting jittery.
Should they vote for a man so clearly unsuited for office and suffer the wrath of those who supported him?
Ask the Taiwanese people; ask those who risk being ground underfoot for no better reason that to satisfy Trump’s desire to posture.
Watch Washington State Elector Brett Chifalo explain why he thinks the Electoral College should prevent Trump from becoming president.
Featured Image by Michael Vadon via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0
