The Thucydides Trap
How to bring down a Superpower
Nulla Explicatio
When you disappear for 4 months without writing a blog post, the only way to come back is with a) no explanation of where you went and b) with Latin titles. It’s the rule.
There is another rule at play here though, that of the title “The Thucydides Trap” which you can read about it here. Don’t worry though, if you can’t be bothered to read the wiki article, the short version is “When an emerging great power threatens to displace an existing great power, there is almost always a war”. The article continues with specifics, but essentially during the 16 times in history where this power change has threatened, 12 times there has been a war.
Todays ‘Great Powers’ are clearly the US - the worlds only superpower - and China, the clear pretender to the throne with stated intentions on the world title. So are we just about to see a war? Or are we already in one?
Tactical Thinking
What would you do if you were China and wanting to overcome the US as the leading world power? How would you approach it? The one thing we know is that in this kind of match up, is that you simply cannot afford to lose if you’re going to challenge. Germany learnt this after both world wars, with the ruinous Treaty of Versailles after WWI and the separation of East and West Germany after WWII. If you challenge the big boys, you have to win or you are in trouble.
So how could China give itself the best chance of winning this kind of war?
Economy
Wars can be ruinously expensive, something the British learnt to their cost after WWII, so if you were going to challenge the US you would want your economy to be in good shape and preferably you would want the US economy in terrible shape.
Did you know that China’s national net worth overtook the US in 2020-2021?
With the current economic issues in the US, an official (though ‘redefined’) recession happening and what seems like runaway inflation, the timing seems poor for spending money on a war from the United States point of view.
They have managed to spend $8 billion on ‘defending democracy in Ukraine’ this year which sounds like quite a lot. It does pale into insignificance when you compare it to the $766 billion they spend each year on the military but all of these numbers seem ridiculous when you compare it to the US debt of $28.43 trillion.
Of course China’s debt dwarfs this at $305 trillion. The problem with debts and inflation this big - and with money printing in general - is that the only person paying is the man on the street via increased prices.
So let’s say there was a war on, cost of living increased hugely and the man on the street felt the real pain of not being able to feed his family, what happens to the morale of the citizens?
Morale
The second thing you need to win a war, is the support of your citizens. Britain wouldn’t have got through the Battle of Britain without the ‘Blitz Spirit’. If all those huddled masses in the Underground stations had decided that enough was enough and headed to Downing Street to demand surrender to the Germans, the war would have been over very quickly.
Despite increasing hardship, rationed food and supplies and bombed cities, the public held strong and trusted in their leadership.
So how does the US compare? Currently it seems to be as divided as it’s ever been, with stats showing that cross party agreement on policies are at their lowest level in history. There seems to be very little middle ground between blue states and red states, whether at the leadership or public level. Would US morale hold up under the threat of war? Would a country of people brought up on 24 hour all-you-can-eat donuts cope with food shortages or rations? It seems unlikely but the idea of the US - the most obese population on the planet - running out of food also seems incredibly unlikely. Doesn’t it?
Are you aware of the destruction of several food manufacturing plants over the last 6 months? Are you aware that 13% of the world’s wheat production comes from Ukraine? Yes, that Ukraine.
Which country would be able to control the morale of its people better in the case of a war or food shortages? The generally spoilt, obese, have-it-your-way Americans, with the highest % of armed citizens in the world. A country that’s already divided along political lines and with an ineffective and weak leadership or the Chinese, where a political demonstration by unarmed students is dealt with by rolling tanks over them? China has a social credit system used to punishing errant citizens, cameras on every street and has most recently enforced a strict lockdown in Shanghai where people stayed in their apartments and starved rather than go against the regime.
Of course when a war starts, the most important thing you need is friends.
Allies
Going to war with the US would be madness, surely? You aren’t just going against the ‘biggest military in the world’ you’re also invoking the ire of several of the United States ‘special friends’. The list is easy to recall; United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada or as they are known (together with the US) ‘The Five Eyes’.
Most recently all four of these allied countries have been at the forefront of several news articles because they have been crushing their citizenry and ruining their economies with ridiculous lockdown measures. Its an interesting coincidence that all four countries have also politically moved sharply left wing in the last few years, with leaders like Jacinda Ardern (NZ), Daniel Andrews (VIC), Michael Gunner (NT), Mark McGowan (WA), Anastasia Palaszczuk (QLD) and Justin Trudeau of Canada approaching levels of ‘leftness’ that are not far off full Communist. Trudeau even went as far as saying that he admired China’s “Basic dictatorship”.
Should we expect countries like these to immediately support the US in any war, or are their current sympathies more aligned with Communist China? Is it possible that they may ‘just wait and see’ who the likely winner of any contest would be before joining the winning side?
Manufacturing
During WWII the US ‘war related’ GNP grew from 2% to 40% as manufacturing became a huge part of the economy. In 1944 alone, the US built more planes than the Japanese did between 1939 and 1945. By the end of the war, more than half of all industrial production in the world took place in the United States. Clearly, during a war, you need to make stuff to shoot any opponent with.
However you also need to ensure that supply chains are robust enough to support your citizens and ensure that lack of product doesn’t affect the morale of the country. There’s no point making 1000 tanks a week, if the country has no gasoline to fill them with and none of the citizens can get to work in their cars.
How do China and the US compare in this regard? China currently has the world’s largest manufacturing workforce of more than 112 million workers. The US in comparison had just under 12 million workers in the manufacturing sector in 2018.
This may be part of the reason the US is currently in debt to China to the tune of $980 billion. It’s not making anything, just buying it pre made from China.
Did your countries supply chain feel robust when people started panic buying toilet paper? Has the recent lack of availability of baby formula in the US increased or decreased your confidence? Have any of you tried to buy a car recently, and been told that you’ll have to wait more than a year because of the lack of available microchips - which are - coincidentally I’m sure - made in China?
Of course the easy argument is that in any war, the United States more advanced technology would give it a huge advantage, but that’s not necessarily the case either.
Military
Of course when it comes down to an actual fight, we have become used to assuming the US simply cannot be beaten (except when fighting goat herders in Afghanistan). They have the most expensive military in the world, right?
Well, yes. It’s certainly more expensive but is it bigger and more effective?
Turns out, no it isn’t. The headline figure is that the US has an active personnel total of 1.3million and 800,000 reservists. Giving it just over 2million service personnel available. China on the other hand, has 2.1 million active personnel and EIGHT million reservists, giving it over 10 million service personnel available. As we’ve discussed already, the technology gap is not as big as we would expect it to be either.
As for effectiveness, consider the message each country is giving its recruits;
Here is a 2019 recruiting advert for the Chinese military.
Here is a 2021 recruiting advert for the US military.
Don’t worry though, during any armed conflict the leadership - in the mould of people like George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and William Sherman will get us through it.
Leadership
The current leader of the US military is General Mark A. Milley who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff. He is the highest ranking military officer in the United States and the principal military advisor to the President. The same guy who was in charge during the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan, that left $7 billion of military equipment behind. There were apparently personnel and service dogs left behind too.
The current President of the US is Joe Biden a man who could go out for milk and come back with three penguins and a copy of ‘Womans Weekly’. You can watch this video for some of his inspiring interactions with the public and press.
Among other highlights in the US leadership is Rachel Levine, four star general in the United States Public Health Service Corps.
Worried yet?
All of the above is interesting to read through and consider, but the main issue I haven’t managed to address yet is that nagging feeling you’ve had since the start of the blog. It just isn’t possible that we’ll see a war start between China and the United States. It’s unthinkable.
Is it?
Let’s go through the headings of each section again and consider where the problem came from.
Economy - The US economy is faltering because of the change of Presidency from Trump to Biden, and because of the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic. The Covid 19 pandemic started in China, with scary videos being released showing people literally dropping dead on the streets. Did that happen in your town? Who benefitted from the pandemic most and who suffered? Beneficiaries would be anyone who made any kind of Covid testing kit, PPE or was strong in manufacturing stuff that bored people sitting at home all day could buy on the internet. China in other words. Countries that suffered horrible - seemingly self imposed and unnecessary - hits to their economies include the United States, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. Coincidence?
How did Biden become President anyway? Concerns about election fixing were raised as he apparently became the most popular President ever receiving 10% more votes than any prior Presidential hopeful at the tender age of only 78. Lots of theories circulated, with one being that the Dominion voting machines were fixing votes. I wonder if the machines used the same chips that were in the Chinese made Huawei 5G kit the British government decided were a security risk and banned the installation of?
Morale - China was locked down hard at first of course, that’s where the rest of the world got the idea from. However here is a video of a rock concert held in Wuhan in May 2021 while most of the English speaking world was still locked in their own houses and banned from sitting in their own garden without a hazmat outfit on and a permission letter from the local police. I would argue that China’s heavily controlled population suffered less morale damage over the last 2 years than the countries that are used to a degree more freedom in their lives. Is this a coincidence?
Allies - Every single allied country of the ‘usual suspects’ has moved sharply left over the last 2 years. Who would have thought a supposedly Tory British Government would have advocated locking its citizens away at home for months on end? Who would have expected to see dictatorial edicts from the plinth each day describing exactly what activities are allowed or not, in Australia? Have we become more or less like the communist Chinese over the last 2 years. Have the ‘Five Eyes’ countries become closer or further apart since then? Is this also a coincidence?
Manufacturing - This is an easy one, who has benefitted from the lack of manufacturing in the West? China of course. Manufacturing requires energy and so China has added more than 70 Gigawatts of coal fired energy to its grid in the last 2 years. It sounds like quite a lot, but thats more than THREE TIMES MORE than the rest of the world put together. Who does the increasingly pervasive ‘net zero’ agenda benefit most? Sounds like China. Another coincidence?
Is it interesting that every item on this list benefits China and weakens the United States? Yes. Is it merely coincidence? I find that unlikely.
I’m not saying the above conclusively proves that China is trying to weaken the United States so that it can defeat it in an all out war. What I am saying is that if you were an increasingly powerful and antagonistic China, with plans on becoming the most powerful country in the world, your best chance of overcoming the United States would be to do exactly the things that are currently happening.
Of course if you did want an all out war with the United States, the most important thing - apart from being prepared - is to have an acceptable Casus Belli and that could never happen, right?
https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20220802-us-house-speaker-nancy-pelosi-lands-in-taiwan-despite-chinese-warnings
Oh.
~Z
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