What is the polycrisis?
A popular theme in the public discourse over the past few years has been that of the "polycrisis". Which for those of you who are not terminally online, which I imagine is all of you - you outsource that to me for my sins, is meant as a catch all term for the many negative phenomena we observe in the world today. This includes the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East which is contained to Gaza for now but seems poised to expand, and the increasingly severe impacts of climate change, just to name a few.
"Polycrisis" is not the only way this sentiment is expressed, but I'm just using it here to substitute for the general vibe that many people have of a world spun out of control in a way that feels aberrant to historical norms. I want to tackle a couple of pieces of this idea. But before I do, I'm going to list here some specific readings from Noah Smith, a popular blogger whose professional background is economics, but who writes about a wide range of topics.
He's written a number of pieces tackling aspects of the current state of the world which I mostly agree with, although I want to hive off parts of his view here and there are provide a counterpoint. And so in that sense, I think these readings are helpful companions to what I'm about to work through:
Sizing up the New Axis - August 2022, Noah compares the macroeconomic strengths of the US and its allies to a New Axis with Russia and China at its core;
Against "polycrisis" - November 2022, in this piece Noah argues that in fact we are seeing the emergence of polysolutions, and there is cause for optimism that the world was moving onto a better path, at least at the time of writing; and
Americans are still not worried enough about the risk of a world war - April 2024, I think the title here is pretty self-explanatory
The first part of all of this I want to tackle is the idea of polycrisis as a catch all term for this sense that many people have expressed to me that we're in a somehow distinctively turbulent time in history. I see this as a form of chronocentrism which just means a tendency to see one's own time as being more important than other periods in history. For example, I am sure that when Cheops, the Egyptian pharaoh generally thought to have commissioned the Great Pyramid at Giza, saw his vision arise from the desert sands, he assumed humanity had reached its peak.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the collapse of the western portion of the Roman empire must have felt like the end of civilization for Europe. In China, the flourishing of Chinese culture under Kublai Khan, a descendant of Genghis, must have felt like a uniquely productive period in human history. But the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution were still several hundred years in the future and would both lead Europe to leave China behind from a technological and economic development perspective.
Indeed, in front of China lay the Taiping Rebellion. Precipitated by an ethnically Chinese man who claimed to be the brother of Jesus Christ, the rebellious state he would carve out of the Chinese Empire, which was called the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, would cause the deaths of between 20 and 30 million Chinese people and would leave China fatally susceptible to exploitation by the European powers during the late 19th century.
Obviously I could go on and on like this but the point here is probably what was unusual in human history was the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union to today. There have been comparable periods such as the Pax Brittanica which prevailed after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. And there have been comparable periods isolated to certain parts of the globe under various empires.
But for many young and even middle aged people, we are totally unfamiliar with the chaotic combination of warfare, famine and disease that has characterized much of human history. And so for those reasons the current moment feels peculiarly chaotic to us when I would submit that, actually, this is what the world is like most of the time.
That's probably a depressing message, but it shouldn't be. Especially prior to the Industrial Revolution, people mostly didn't have a choice in their circumstances. If their king or emperor or sultan wanted to start a war for religious, economic, or military reasons, or even just vanity, too bad. But the combination of modern science and democracy in many of the world's richest countries means that actually we can solve a lot of today's problems.
In his piece of polycrisis, Noah talks about polysolutions as I mentioned. And I think what I'm saying is implicit in what he is saying: regardless of whether we face more problems now than we did in the past, what's verifiably true is that our capacity to solve macro challenges is greater than ever before.
The real challenge is a combination of apathy, ignorance and selfishness. Apathy in that the political process is boring to most people and often the solutions to big problems are technical. Most people I know don't spend much time thinking about what would constitute fair tax rates, they just know that they don't like taxes.
Apathy leads to ignorance. And in the absence of deep reading to understand all the complexities that come with big problems, people tend to either just disengage, or they fill those gaps with cynicism and conspiracy theories.
And, finally, you have selfishness. The long peace we've enjoyed in the West since the Second World War has made people totally unwilling to yield even an inch of their own comfort regardless of the benefit it might permit others to enjoy. A powerful example of this is the way that supposedly pro-environmental groups constantly sue to block clean infrastructure projects here in the US. These groups put on a green face, but frequently they are local land owners who don't want their view altered.
If some of this sounds familiar it's because we discussed it in the context of American power a few episodes ago. And we especially discussed the work of Mancur Olson, an academic who described the fall of great powers as basically related to the development of domestic constituencies that are unable to bargain with one another to get things done.
And that, I think, is really what's at play when people think about this sense of doom and gloom that everything around them is turning bad. The world has returned to its normal state of chaos. And even though we have all the technologies we need to ameliorate that chaos including vaccines, nuclear energy, robotics and artificial intelligence, we don't do it because each time we try to fix something, some small group of society thinks they will be worse off and they shout loudest.
Exacerbating all of this is social media which creates two problems. The first is that social media creates an impression of direct connection to the facts. You can see videos, photos and read quotes. It leaves people with the impression that they are getting the "real" story when often all of that is subject to important context, or even just outright manipulation.
The second problem it creates is that it allows people to choose which world they want to live in. Things in your own life not going well and desperate to find some company for your misery? Social media will let you find it. And so you have this layer of people marinating themselves in a thick juice of misery and, well, bullshit and it feeds the three horsemen of democratic decline I mentioned earlier: apathy, ignorance and selfishness.
To conclude here, my point is that actually we're entering a period in human history that looks like most of it: chaotic. And what's great is that because we have developed concepts like scientific method and democratic processes we actually have the tools of technical inquiry and political coordination required to solve them. But those aren't really working right now because of the accumulation of narrow interests we have developed, combined with the capacity of social media to isolate people in whatever reality they choose.
This probably all feels quite abstract, so let's turn to the components of the polycrisis that are most in the bailiwick of Conflicts with Interest: the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, and the growing rivalry between China and the United States.
How does it all tie together?
One of the things Noah does in his piece on the coming war between the US and China is he describes the series of conflicts leading up to World War II. In particular, he starts with the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931. This territory, which lies to the north of the Korean peninsula, is rich in iron and coal and was an important source of raw materials for Japan's industrialization efforts.
He then goes on to describe the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Japan and the Soviet Union's confrontation in the late 30s, the proxy war of the Spanish Civil War and the Japanese invasion of the remainder of China in 1937.
Noah's point is that there was actually a lot of conflict leading up to what is often taught as the period of the Second World War which is 1939 to 1945 in Commonwealth of Nations countries and 1941 to 1945 in the United States. And the armed conflict that we see today in Ukraine and Gaza might be stepping stones on the timeline to World War III.
I really like this way of thinking about the issue, but I also disagree with portions of it which sounds contradictory. And maybe it is, I'll explain and leave it to you to decide!
I think what's fundamentally correct about this idea in the case of World War II is the parallel rise of fascism in a number of countries, notably Germany, Italy and Japan, which formed the Axis powers. And the concept of national prestige and national destiny is a powerful concept in fascist structures which essentially demands military glory and imperial expansion. Hence we see each of these countries gobbling up territory prior to the German invasion of Poland in 1939, a commonly cited date for the start of World War II.
Where I am uncertain, and perhaps that's a better word than disagree, is with the level of interdependence between the forces driving the behavior of these countries and their subsequent actions. The hyperinflation and economic misery of the Weimar Republic, combined with the punitive Treaty of Versailles arising from World War I, is well understood as the Petri dish in which Hitler and Nazism grew and ultimately took over Germany.
But conditions were different in Japan. Fascism in Japan was more a function of the growing role of the military in politics. In Germany, Hitler had an arm's length relationship with the military. The Waffen SS was in some ways essentially a parallel military force directly loyal to Hitler rather than the German state.
There were also different moments of historical contingency in the rise of Germany and Japan at this time. When Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, a part of western Germany, in 1936, Great Britain and France at that point could have chosen to invoke the Treaty of Versailles and invade. Given that Germany was still in the early stages of rearmament, those two nations could have quickly crushed the German violation of the Treaty. But, with the fields of death at the Marne and the Somme fresh in their minds, they chose not to act which emboldened Hitler to continue seeking more territory in Europe.
I don't believe Japan faced quite the same "off ramp" that Germany did. Japan's invasion of Manchuria wasn't really a direct challenge to the interests of any other major powers.
The point I am getting at is that it is not clear to me that World War II was the product of a series of related events, driven by macro forces, that pushed the world towards the largest global conflict in its history. Instead, I think the argument can be made that the behavior of the antagonists in World War II, while looking similar, was actually driven by circumstances specific to each of them. But because all of this happened at the same time, it seems more related than it actually is.
And this is how this idea can be both one that I find helpful and disagree with at the same time. Regardless of whether you agree with the view that World War II emerged out of a series of interrelated forces that were all driving the Axis powers to militarism, or of the view that what was happening in these countries was largely independent it just happened to be coincidental in time, that's a helpful framework for viewing the current moment.
Are the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and rising US tension with China all part of the same conflict? Are they polycrisis!? Or are they happening at the same time and have the potential to dissipate one by one? Or maybe even dissipate simultaneously?
The way I want to tackle this is to take each conflict on a standalone basis and spend some time sharing my understand of what precipitated them and from there to think about the extent to which they are connected. This will serve the dual purpose of addressing the issue of polycrisis while also giving me an opportunity to provide you all with an update on each conflict.
Let's start with Gaza because of the three, that is the one that I feel has the fewest geopolitical implications. Although it's the one that captures by far the most media attention.
Gaza
Hamas, the Islamic Palestinian militant organization, started the most recent bout of conflict in the Middle East on October 7, 2023. They breached the border security measures put in place by Israel and then killed and raped over a thousand Jews, Israelis and citizens of other nations, along with taking over 200 hostages.
As I have written before, Hamas' primary goal is the eradication of the Israeli state. And there are lots of markers of this. That was the goal in Hamas' founding charter; we now know that since Hamas took over governance of the Gaza Strip in 2007, it focused mostly on building a tunnel network and arsenal of rockets and small arms for attacks on Israel, rather than pursuing whatever economic development was possible in the face of an Israeli blockade; and finally we have seen again and again in negotiations that Hamas' priority is its own survival rather than maximum preservation of Palestinian life.
Don't get me wrong, the perverse logic here makes sense. Let's say Hamas had done everything in its power to build up the Gazan economy and to at least keep pace with the West Bank economically. Gazans might have become just a little too comfortable with the status quo to have the stomach to fuel Hamas' goal of eradicating Israel. If you let life get too comfortable, you might end up with a situation where you get a Palestinian state, but there are still Jews next door. That's not the outcome Hamas wants.
So, most fundamentally, Hamas attacked Israel because that's why Hamas exists. The more important question for our discussion is why did Hamas attack Israel when it did, and what does that say or otherwise about this conflict's relationship to the potential for a third world war?
Several factors appear to have influenced the timing of Hamas' attack. The first factor, which was most prominent in the media in the days and weeks immediately following the attack, was the issue of normalization of relations between Israel and other Arab states.
What normalization means is recognition of Israel as a legitimate state. There remain 30 countries that do not recognize the state of Israel. These countries frequently have Islamic majorities and are clustered in the Middle East and North Africa. Although there are some that are further flung including Bangladesh (Muslim majority), Indonesia (Muslim majority) and North Korea (just weird). See the map below for more detail.
Over time, Israel has been able to work on many of these nations to achieve normalization, or recognition. If you look closely you can see neighboring countries like Egypt and Joran, among others, recognize Israel.
The most recent round of recognition was the Abraham Accords which were signed under the Trump Administration and led to Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan recognizing Israel in late 2020 and early 2021.
But these nations are small fry in the normalization game compared to Israel's ultimate goal: Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is far and away the richest country in the Arab world thanks to its huge oil reserves. It also has a special place in the Islamic world because it is home to the two holiest cities in that religion: Mecca and Medina.
Normalization would bring a number of benefits to Israel. It would open more avenues for economic cooperation including trade, technology and tourism. It would provide another security partner against the country Israel sees as its primary threat: Iran. And ultimately it would increase acceptance of Israel in the Arab world and make talk of its eradication less palatable.
All of this runs counter to Hamas' goals. So by conducting the vicious terror attacks of October 7 and eliciting a brutal Israeli response, Hamas likely hoped to spoil the prospects of Israeli / Saudi normalization by making Israel a pariah. As it happens, Saudi Arabia's desire to put the Palestine question to rest appears pretty strong: Despite the more than 30,000 Palestinians Israel has killed, Saudi Arabia is still open to discussing normalization. Although as I write this, Israel is in the process of invading the southern part of the Gaza Strip which many nations, including Saudi Arabia, have established as a red line so this whole paragraph may be wrong by the time you hear it. Sue me.
A second factor weighing on Hamas was probably its desire to counter what it saw as an increasingly threatening rightwing Israeli government. While I do think that Hamas sees eradicating Israel as a precondition to securing a Palestinian state, Hamas has to maintain its hold on power in Gaza to achieve that. And that means delivering outcomes to Gazans to avoid erosion of its power that could lead to rebellion and rejection of Hamas control.
In 2017, Hamas moderated its charter somewhat, accepting a two-state solution as a temporary measure, and it also punished those within Gaza who sought to break the ceasefire with Israel by launching their own attacks. But Hamas ended up with little to show for this. Israel maintained its crushing siege of the strip including leaving homes without power for half the day. 2021 and 2022 broke records for deaths among Palestinians. And all of this took place against the backdrop of an Israeli government that appeared increasingly maximalist in its goals. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than acknowledging Hamas' revised charter, tore it up in front of television cameras. And he formed government with the most extreme identities in Israeli politics, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
You can see how Hamas might have worried about their appeal to the ordinary Palestinian in the street. While it's true that Hamas maintains authoritarian control over Gaza, all authoritarian regimes and parties have to draw their support from some core group. And to maintain its appeal to that core, Hamas probably saw it in its interest to act against Israel.
Indeed, Hamas may have calculated that the October 7 attacks would lead to it enjoying a net gain in popularity. Attacking an occupier to elicit a brutal response is a well-worn insurgency tactic. And it has succeeded spectacularly here. Netanyahu can talk about defeating Hamas as much as he wants. But every Palestinian killed by Israeli bombing represents a dozen or more potential Hamas recruits as friends and family members contemplate revenge.
Factional rivalries, distinct from popular politics, likely also influenced the thinking of Hamas' leaders. Hamas has always sought to distinguish itself from the more secular Fatah, the rival Palestinian political faction which dominates the Palestinian Authority that administers the portions of the West Bank controlled by Palestinians. The Netanyahu government's undermining of the Palestinian Authority has led to many ordinary Palestinians seeing it as feckless and a compromised vehicle for achieving their goals.
The October 7 attacks were an opportunity for Hamas to distinguish itself from Fatah in a dramatic way. And, as of December 2023, they were right in that assessment. To the extent polling is possible in the Palestinian territories, it shows increased popularity for Hamas and more opposition to Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.
Finally, there is the question of factional rivalries within Hamas itself. Frankly, I have found it difficult to find solid, authoritative reporting on the internal composition of Hamas. Which is no surprise. As a terror organization, you would expect it to be constantly changing shape. But I have seen repeated suggestions that Yahyah Sinwar and Mohamad Deif, leaders in Hamas' military wing, wanted to consolidate their power relative to more strictly politically-oriented members of Hamas who often live in Lebanon or Qatar.
And one would have to imagine they have certainly done that, at least in the Gaza Strip. These two men, who were the architects of the October 7 attacks, are now folk heroes among Hamas' core support base. And no doubt as ordinary Palestinians who were indifferent to Hamas confront the unrestrained Israeli response, I imagine some of them are concluding that Sinwar and Deif were right all along and that Israel would never accommodate a Palestinian state (I am not saying that's true, just that some Palestinians will see it that way).
Some have argued for a much more prominent role for Iran in the planning and timing of the October 7 attacks. I frankly do not buy this. Hamas and Iran have fundamental theological differences: Hamas follows the Sunni interpretation of Islam and Iran follows the Shia interpretation. The separation between these two sects of Islam is non-trivial. It is at least as significant as the rift between Protestants and Catholics used to be prior to the acceleration of secularization in the West starting in the 1960s.
Hamas is also not a creature of Iran the way Hezbollah is, which was founded with deep Iranian involvement. And when Israel tried to draw Iran into the conflict, by bombing Iran's consulate in Damascus, Iran did everything it possibly could to avoid escalation. The short version of why is that Iran faces severe domestic problems of its own and likely can't afford and doesn't want a confrontation with the US and Israel at the present moment.
What all of these motivations have in common is that they do not obviously lead back to great power conflict. At least not in any way that is discernible to me. Nobody believes Hamas is a proxy for China or Russia, for example. It's not even a true proxy of Iran, more of a close ally.
People who are ardently pro-Palestinian would argue that Israel is a US proxy. But we are seeing that relationship breakdown as Netanyahu has wrested Israel away from any contemplation of a two state solution as a long term answer to the conflict. Just this week, the Biden Administration took the momentous step of halting a shipment of ammunition to Israel as a way of communicating the seriousness of its demand that the IDF not invade the southern Gaza Strip without due consideration of the Palestinian refugees there.
Matthew Yglesias, another prominent blogger in the same vein as Noah Smith with whom I agree frequently, has argued that the US should try to disentangle itself from the conflict in the Middle East for a very simple reason: the US has shown time and again that it cannot convince either side to take the steps necessary to achieving a permanent resolution. I cannot help but wonder if the Biden Administration's decision is a first step toward that exact outcome.
Israel, strictly speaking, no longer needs the US as a security guarantor. US military aid to Israel is significant, but not crucial, it's a single digit percentage of total Israeli military spending. But removal of US support would cause a pinch in Israeli public finances and it would make more acute the most significant threat facing the Netanyahu government, and potentially the key to breaking the deadlock in negotiating an end to the current conflict: The status of the Haredim.
The Haredim are Israel's orthodox Jewish community. At Israel's founding, then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion who is considered the founder of the state of Israel, cut a deal with some extremely conservative rabbis to exempt their students from what were otherwise vital aspects of Israeli public life. The most significant being military service. In general, Israel's orthodox Jewish population do not serve in the armed forces, as the rest of the country's population are required to do.
On top of that, many of them do not work, and instead spend most of their days studying the Torah which Christians call the Pentateuch and is comprised of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Their daily study of this holy text is subsidized by the state.
So not only does Israel's orthodox community put more pressure on more mainstream or liberal members of the Jewish faith by not serving in the military, they also represent a significant burden on public finances because they do not work and their livelihoods are heavily subsidized.
What makes the Haredim especially vexing for Israeli politics is that their share of the population is growing rapidly because they have large families. When Ben-Gurion negotiated the exception from military service I mentioned before, it was meant to cover a several hundred yeshiva students. A yeshiva is Jewish school. Fast forward to today and they represent about 12% of the population.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Israeli Prime Minister, depends at least partially on the support of Haredi political powers to maintain his leadership. And this is partly why he has been so unwilling to accommodate US requests for more aid to flow to Palestinians. He is beholden to the most rightwing elements of Israeli politics.
A brief side quest, the IDF has a unit which caters to the religious needs of orthodox Jewish men. That unit is currently facing sanctions by the US for war crimes committed during the war in Gaza. Some people will be quick to point out the hypocrisy of US war crimes, such as the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. And that is absolutely true, although half a dozen people were sent to Fort Leavenworth, one of the US's military prisons, and many more were discharged from the military as a consequence of Abu Ghraib. The US military is certainly not perfect, but there are plenty of occasions when it has put its personnel behind bars for war crimes or similar abuses.
If you are wondering why I am telling you all of this and what it has to do with the original question of the relationship between the war and Gaza and the potential for great power conflict, I sympathize. The answer is that in both the case of Hamas and the case of the Isarel, the primary actors making political decisions appear to be doing so largely independent of the guidance of the major powers who would form the base of potential opposing sides in a world war.
Which is to say, the way Gaza breaks out of Noah's narrative of World War II actually starting much earlier than 1941 or even 1939 for Europeans, is that in the examples he cites leading up to those dates, major powers were much more directly involved and explicitly moving pieces around the board. In Gaza, that is not the case.
In a way, Gaza might be more closely analogized to the assassination of the Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, which is widely seen as the event that precipitated World War I. A Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the Archduke in Sarajevo which led to the Austro-Hungarian empire demanding various concessions from Serbia, not all of which the Serbs were willing to give. Austria-Hungary declared war which prompted Russia, which had a treaty with Serbia, to mobilize its armed forces. Germany, Austria-Hungary's ally, saw Russian mobilization as a threat and declared war on Russia. Two days later, Germany declared war on Russia's ally, France and invaded via Belgium. This brought Britain into the war on account of its guarantee of Belgian neutrality. Although I think it's safe to assume Britain would have entered regardless of that treaty because of its foreign policy at the time which was to avoid any one of the continental European powers from becoming too strong.
The parallel I see between Gaza and the assassination of the Archduke is that both incidents caught the major powers largely unawares. For example, as we've discussed before, even Iran didn't know of Hamas' plans for October 7 ahead of time. But what's different in the case of the assassination of the Archduke is that it struck at the very heart of a core concern to one of the major powers of the day. The Austro-Hungarian empire was a weak, unstable collection of many different languages and ethnicities and the growing power of Serbia in the Balkans was enough to pose a threat that reached the level of war.
Hamas' attack, while brutal and reprehensible for its targeting of civilians, its killing of children, and its extensive use of sexual violence, did not threaten to bring down the state of Israel. It also did not put at risk core interests of either the US or China. If anything, it may have catalyzed a move to disentangle US foreign policy from Israel, at least on the left and in the center of American politics.
So, before we move on from Gaza, I owe you more of an update on the situation as it stands today. There are a couple of primary moving pieces. The first is the prospect of an IDF advance on the southern Gazan city of Rafah, which I mentioned before. There are about a million Palestinian refugees in and around this city, which is really more of a town, and there is widespread angst in the US and the broader international community that an assault there will cause a total humanitarian disaster. I think what the US is worried about here is a famine or death level approaching what we have seen in somewhere like Sudan over the past few years, where hundreds of thousands have died.
If this happens, it will be a disaster for the Biden Administration domestically and internationally. Domestically, the left wing of the Democratic Party will erupt and the protests we are seeing now on college campuses could proliferate into much broader demonstrations on city streets. Internationally, it will saddle the US with close association with what by then would be seen as a pariah regime.
So the US is conducting furious amounts of diplomacy, alongside Egypt and Qatar, with the goal of securing a deal to end the war, release all of the hostages and set conditions for a two state solution (fun fact, I met current US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken during a trip to Washington DC in graduate school! He seemed like a nice guy). But as I write this, a potential deal was in the process of collapsing in Egypt. There have actually been multiple rounds of negotiation and talks that have all collapsed in similar circumstances. The consistent reason being that the leadership of both sides sees it as in their interest to continue the conflict.
For Hamas' leadership, the more aggression Israel shows and the more disregard it demonstrates for Palestinian lives, the more the October 7 attacks pay off. Israel, instead of portraying itself as a liberal democracy surrounded by aggressive, conservative Islamic states, looks more and more like the dangerous actor in the Middle East. Whether you agree with that or not, the fact is the images of starving children that are coming out of Gaza and stories of IDF misdeeds make for powerful propaganda. And in the long-term, Hamas likely assesses that it will be able to reconstitute its fighting potential on the backs of friends and family grieving for loved ones.
On the Israeli side, even if Netanyahu wanted to cut a deal, and he probably doesn't, his coalition partners won't let him. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the two most outspoken rightwing members of his government, have made clear that Netanyahu will fall unless he invades Rafah.
So the war goes on with no end in sight. As I write this, the IDF was a couple of hours into its ground invasion of Rafah. So far, the most significant event was its takeover of the Palestinian side of the border crossing with Egypt. As this operation unfolds, it will be a test case for whether there is any US influence left over Israel's actions. If the operation is conducted with what appears to be a high degree of concern for refugees, I think the Biden Administration will try to stay engaged in continued diplomacy. If a mass humanitarian disaster emerges, I can't see Biden wanting to torpedo his re-election chances to support Netanyahu, and US withdrawal from the scene could accelerate.
I'd be remiss not mentioning the college protests that have swept across the US. The irony of these protests, which primarily feature far-left, notionally pro-Palestinian college students building encampments on university grounds, is that they have been an absolute gift to Israel in the propaganda war. First, they have completely diverted attention from conditions on the ground in Gaza. The head snap of US and international media has been so sharp that Bernie Sanders, the Jewish former candidate for the US presidency and the incumbent US Senator for Vermont, was moved to call for greater attention on the victims of the war itself and not college campuses.
Second, those participating in the protests range in ideology from casual wokester who is mostly there because their friends are and it is simply much easier for them operate socially if they espouse leftwing views, all the way to hardcore anti-Semites who are explicitly calling for the murder of Jews or the end of the state of Israel. Some proportion of the latter are alleged to be outside agitators and not students at all and I think that's probably true, although I've no idea how high the number might be.
In the case of Columbia, which full disclosure I attended for two years as a graduate student, it is in New York. So unlikely many American college campuses which are liberal islands in rural seas of conservatism, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people within an hour's transit ride of Columbia who might be tempted to go and sow further discord. One more note here, Columbia has very sadly canceled what it calls its commencement ceremony. At American universities, commencement is the day when the university celebrates its entire graduating class. Then there are usually separate graduation ceremonies for each school where individuals are awarded their degrees. Commencement is a much bigger spectacle than graduation. At Columbia, they manage to fit the entire university into the central quad which is a beautiful setting surrounded by old buildings and I remember it as one of the great all time days, it's a really special scene. Most of Columbia's current undergraduates were not able to attend in person graduation ceremonies at their high schools because of COVID-19 and now they will be denied their commencement ceremony. My heart really goes out to them.
So anyway back to the main thread, this mesh of perfectly legitimate protestors concerned about Israel's conduct in this war and the wider conflict with hardcore anti-Semites has allowed Israel's biggest boosters to focus exclusively on the anti-Semites and demonize the protests in their entirety.
Third, the protests have given Netanyahu the opportunity to reinforce his core political message to the Israeli people that he alone has the strength to protect them from the various threats that Israel and Jews face in the world. How that is still working given October 7 happened on his watch, I'm not sure. Nevertheless, Netanyahu took the opportunity to label the protests anti-Semitic in their entirety and to imply the US and the Biden Administration was not doing enough to deal with them.
Netanyahu, likely correctly, perceives that a Trump Administration would give Israel a blank cheque vs. the efforts of the Biden Administration to reign in its excesses and to stay the course on a two state solution. Therefore raising the salience of the protests at a time when most Americans still have positive impressions of Israel likely hurts Biden's re-election chances.
Two brief side quests here to close out. I say likely in reference to Trump because he has left a lot of betrayals in his wake. Mike Pence, his loyal VP, is now vocally anti-Trump probably because Trump's supporters called for him to be hanged during the January 6 attack on the Capitol building. And let's not forget that in 2017 a rally of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and Klansmen took place in Charlottesville, VA. Trump said there were "very fine people" in that rally, even as they carried tiki torches and chanted that the "Jews will not replace us"… Netanyahu should remember that when you sow dragon's teeth, don't be surprised when you end up with, you know, a dragon.
The second is that there's a saying in American politics which is "all politics is local" and it comes from a former Speaker of the House and favorite son of the great state of Massachusetts, Tip O'Neill. Biden is known to amend that saying to "all politics isn't local, it's personal". And I suspect that Netanyahu stepping into the American domestic political arena and threatening Biden's re-election campaign was a factor in the Biden Administration's decision to halt the ammunition shipment to Israel we discussed earlier. Biden has been a supporter of Israel's for decades. But that doesn't extend to preserving Netanyahu's leadership at the expense of his own.
Ok, I think that's quite enough Gaza for this pod which has really, really long way to go.
Ukraine
Ukraine, remember that war? There was a guy a year ahead of me in graduate school who went on to seek a PhD with his focus of study being the Russian military. When Russia invaded Ukraine he ended up with something like 300,000 followers on Twitter and appearing in lots of press articles. I sometimes wonder whether he is much less busy these days as it often feels like the war in Ukraine has receded from the public consciousness and therefore the media cycle. But it is very much real and ongoing for the people of Ukraine and the soldiers on the front line.
Anyway, back to the main track. Ukraine, to me, has a clearer fit in the thesis we started all of this with, which is Noah Smith's idea of World War II having a much longer lead up than we often think. And the main reason is that it directly involves the interests of a country likely to form a core component of any world war: Russia.
All of the conflicts that Noah included in his list of preludes to World War II involved relatively major powers that would go on to form a core component of the Axis faction in the war. Russia is nakedly opposed to Europe, the US and the broader global liberal order they shepherd. So in any major global conflict, we can be certain Russia would be on the opposing side.
The pre-World War II conflicts also share in common with Russia's invasion of Ukraine an emphasis on national prestige. The invasion of Ukraine provides Russian President Vladimir Putting with lots of opportunities to hype the Russian state and its power. The country does weird stuff like hold public displays of captured Western military equipment which presumably is meant to make the general public more enthusiastic about the war.
In his piece on the threat of a global world war, Noah argues that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has created a proxy war between Europe and China. Europe is supporting Ukraine because if Ukraine falls, it expects Russia will pursue aggression against other parts of Europe. He doesn't directly address China's motivation for aiding Russia but this is straightforward to understand. There are two main reasons. The first is that like Russia, China believes the international global order is tilted towards the West, so any destabilization of that order is to China's advantage.
The second is that China's economy has a huge overcapacity problem: there aren't enough Chinese people to buy all of the stuff made in China. One of the ways China wants to get out of this problem is by dumping cheap goods in Europe, but this will likely have the effect of driving further deindustrialization and all of the calamitous impacts that has on the social fabric. Dividing Europe's attention, and creating a point of leverage by implicitly offering to pare back support for Russia in exchange for more access to European markets, is a logical strategy.
For these reasons, the war in Ukraine has much more potential to be a step on the path to a global conflict than Gaza does. But it is unlikely, I think, to be a direct catalyst. And Noah makes this point as well. The reason is that Russia cannot afford open conflict with the combined forces of Europe, and certainly not the US. What the war in Ukraine has proven beyond all shadow of a doubt is that there is deep corruption and incompetence at the core of the Russian military. A "special military operation" that was supposed to last three days has now dragged into more than two years of war with no end in sight.
So to the extent Russia wants to pursue aggression in Europe, it can only do so where it believes it won't provoke a coordinated European military response which is difficult given that the remaining states from which it covets territory are part of NATO, and therefore subject to collective security guarantees from the rest of Europe and the US. This means that further Russian aggression would require explicit Chinese support and backing. And there is no indication China would provide that.
Why should it? Russia fulfilling its imperial ambitions by expanding parts of eastern Europe is of little benefit to China, which has its own ambition of reunification with Taiwan, a matter which we will discuss later on.
All of this creates a neat parallel back to the original analogy with World War II and that parallel is with Italy. In World War II, the Axis of Germany, Italy and Japan was really two separate blocs. Germany and Italy in the European theater, and Japan in the Pacific theater. The three of them signed an alliance, but the amount of direct cooperation between the European and Pacific theaters was limited.
In Europe, Germany was by far the more competent partner. Its economy dwarfed Italy, as did its military competence. Many people think of the Allied invasion of Europe as commencing with D-Day and the Normandy landings in June of 1944. But the Allies invaded Sicily in September 1943, 9 months earlier. And they steadily marched themselves up the boot of the Italian peninsula. And as they did, the Wehrmacht, the German army, had to constantly reassign divisions to help shore up the weak Italian defenses.
Russia is Italy to China's Germany. Prior to the German invasion of Poland, Italy pursued a number of foreign invasions in the name of national prestige. In 1935, Italy invaded and annexed Ethiopia, adding to its colonial possessions in east Africa. Then in 1936 it supported the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War under their dictator, General Franco. This involved the direct intervention by Italian troops which was crucial in achieving a Nationalist victory. Finally, in 1939, Italy invaded and annexed Albania.
Adding to the eerie parallel between the junior partner conducting its own projects of national glory is the lukewarm participation of the more capable senior partner. Germany actually provided ammunition to the Ethiopian resistance because Italy was objecting to Germany's annexation of Austria. In the case of Russia and China, China was initially frosty in its response to the invasion of Ukraine. Putin had not informed China ahead of time and the commodity price shocks the invasion created placed headwinds on the Chinese economy. But soon China found itself with no choice but to support Russia given that allowing its invasion to collapse would be a boon to European and American prestige.
Notably, it is not the junior partner's ambitions that serve as the spark for war. Europe, rightly, saw Germany as the primary threat. So it was not until the German invasion of Poland that Europe's patience ran out and war was declared. Although I wonder in the case of the Second World War what signals Germany took from European treatment of Italy? In Ethiopia, Italy used chemical weapons and was condemned by the League of Nations, an earlier attempt at the United Nations which emerged from the First World War. The lack of League intervention and its inability to coordinate a tangible response to Ethiopia's plight would ultimately contribute to the League's disbandment.
Germany crossed plenty lines of its own with its militarization of the Rhineland, its annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia and all of Austria and so on. But surely it watched Italy bite off parts of Europe and Africa and that added to its own sense that Europe did not have the stomach for war?
That presents a notable divergence between the current moment, and the lead up to World War II. In the 1930s, Europe allowed Germany and Italy to complete several invasions or annexations largely unmolested. The US was completely out of the picture. Russia's invasion of Ukraine elicited a far more robust response. In addition to deep economic sanctions which have effectively terminated the European economy's dependence on Russia natural gas, both the US and Europe combined have provided significant military aid. All of this has turned Ukraine into a quagmire compared to Russia's initial aims for the conflict.
There is another side to this coin which is that Ukraine has resisted much more fiercely than the examples listed above. It's almost as if by wounding Russia and showing the depth of its weakness, Ukraine made policy decisions much easier in Washington DC and European capitals. How could they afford not to stand up to what was so obviously a corrupt and incompetent state and military apparatus?
And, as I said, this conflict has turned into a quagmire for Russia. The war in Ukraine has been a disaster for the Russian economy and its people: 50,000 Russians have been killed so far and Russia still controls less than 20% of Ukrainian territory. And this is over the course of about two years of fighting. To put that into perspective, the US recorded just over 58,000 military fatalities during more than ten years of fighting in Vietnam. Vietnam was considered a staggering American defeat, a huge blow to American prestige, and it was a running sore in domestic politics for years. And the US fought that war with more wealth and a better demographic profile than Russia has now.
All of which is to say, short of a calamitous collapse in Ukrainian lines, Russia has already lost this war. It has unified European opposition to Russia, led to the expansion of NATO - an alliance primarily aimed at containing Russian aggression, further damaged Russia's population structure, and put Russia in the place of junior partner in a frosty alliance with China.
Staying with the framework of global conflicts having a lead up period in which smaller conflicts take place, what's the right way to think about Russia's experience in Ukraine? Because remember that whereas Germany, Italy and Japan were largely able to invade and annex new territory largely unmolested, Russia's attempt at annexing new territory has been a disaster.
As we discussed, earlier, it is really the senior partner in a coalition that decides when general conflict starts. And so this is a question that really requires assessment of how China has perceived the Russian invasion. And my read is that it certainly rattled Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping and led him to take a closer look at China's military modernization, but that it likely has not dissuaded him from his goal to take Taiwan by force.
Quick sidetrack, someone made the point to me the other day that China always describes Xi as the president of China. When of course he's nothing of the sort. His formal position is General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party but describing him as a president conveys the same democratic legitimacy as that enjoyed by the US president. I found this really insightful, frankly, I was jealous I didn't notice it. So I'm going to call him the General Secretary from now on.
Anyway, we have talked about this before, but just as a refresher, throughout 2023, Xi removed a number of generals from the PLA due to corruption. I think what happened is he saw how badly Russia's military, which had supposedly undergone a modernization program of its own, performed and so he decided to take a closer look at the PLA and didn't like what he saw. Heads therefore needed to roll.
I don't think this means that Xi has revised his intent to reunify China with Taiwan. You can see that in the continued high state of tension in the Taiwan Straits. But I do think he probably revised his timeline while he digs deeper in the PLA to figure out exactly what the status of its forces is.
Let's shift gears back to Ukraine now, because I want to save most of the China discussion for that section. I did an update on the conflict back in March so I won't rehash that. But I do want to share an update on one change since then which was the passage a few weeks ago of $61 billion in new military aid for Ukraine by the US.
This development came as something of a shock. Republicans seemed to have completely turned on Ukraine at the behest of their presidential candidate, Donald Trump. As a result, additional aid for Ukraine was stuck in the House of Representatives, which Republicans control, for weeks. But eventually the Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson (R-LA), relented and brought the relevant bill up for a floor vote where it passed with 210 Democrats and 101 Republicans voting in favor.
Just as an aside, I read some reporting about how and why Johnson changed his mind. One of the key pressure points applied to Johnson was his evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals based here in the US brought over a number of Ukrainian evangelicals to speak to Johnson and tell them about the depredations they had experienced under Russian occupation. They also paid for a billboard supporting Ukraine to be erected opposite one of Johnson's congressional offices in Louisiana. Just really notable to see what seemed to be the very personal role that Johnson's religion played in getting this across the line. It goes to show that when you're lobbying a politician, understanding their unique perspective on the world is valuable.
This incremental aid for Ukraine isn't going to solve the core problems the country faces in terms of a manpower and material deficit relative to Russia, but it will make things significantly less bad. Artillery ammunition remains a constant sore point for Ukraine and I've seen reports suggesting that it faces a 10:1 deficit in terms of its capacity to fire artillery rounds relative to Russia. This aid package should narrow that gap, but there's still a long way to go.
My view remains that Ukraine's best strategy in 2024 remains to dig in, build defensive fortifications and hope that Russia makes a strategic blunder such as a large scale offensive that causes high casualty rates. At the same time, Ukraine can continue to work on its strategy to corrode support within Russia for the war by expanding its long-range strategic strike capability which enables it to attack targets deep in Russia including both infrastructure and politically symbolic targets.
Ok let's shift gears now to the final section and talk about China, the potential decider of whether or not the world will experience a third global conflict in our lifetimes and fulfill the polycrisis narrative.
China
The principal catalyst for a global conflict would be, I think, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It's worth noting that Noah Smith, in one of the pieces I linked at the top of this episode, makes the case that there are plenty of other territorial disputes which could see China use military force in its near region including with the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan.
I personally am not convinced China would attempt to roll the dice on a conflict with the US over any of those disputes. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has so clearly raised Taiwan above all other foreign policy concerns that while I think China is clearly happy to bully other countries in its region, I just can't see it deciding that some random shoal in the South China Sea is worth a global conflict over.
I actually wrote about the potential for conflict between China and the US over Taiwan just over a year ago and I still agree with much of what I wrote then. I don't want to rehash old ground so I will spend some time thinking about how China does and does not resemble the Axis powers in the lead up to World War II, and then I want to extend some of the analysis Noah provides on macroeconomic considerations related to a war between China and the US.
I think a case can be made for China as having a closer parallel to Germany and Italy in the lead up to World War II than to say, Japan.
To explain, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy were strong man dictatorships. Hitler and Mussolini respectively were the sole sources for political power in both countries. And their foreign policy goals were actually grounded in psychological notions of ethnicity and national grandeur. Hitler wanted to create a giant state for the German-speaking people hence his annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and his annexation of Austria. And Mussolini basically wanted respect and admiration for Italy so he invaded far off places like Ethiopia to show that he could.
Particularly in the case of Nazi Germany, you see how this weird soup of ideas about foreign policy ultimately brought Hitler and his country undone. For example, when I learned Second World War history in school, I was taught that Hitler wanted to invade Britain and fully intended to do so. But Britain was a maritime power and so the Royal Navy was far stronger than the German Kriegsmarine. This necessitated that Germany have control of the air, so that it could protect its landing forces.
But the heroes of the Battle of Britain defeated the Luftwaffe and the invasion, codenamed Sea Lion, was called off. In reality, the story is more nuanced. As it relates to Hitler, he was actually more conflicted about invading Britain than we are often taught. Here is German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt speaking to British War Office Intelligence after the war:
The proposed invasion of England was nonsense, because adequate ships were not available… We looked upon the whole thing as a sort of game because it was obvious that no invasion was possible when our Navy was not in a position to cover a crossing of the Channel or carry reinforcements. Nor was the German Air Force capable of taking on these functions if the Navy failed… I was always very skeptical about the whole affair… I have a feeling that the Fuehrer never really wanted to invade England. He never had sufficient courage… He definitely hoped that the English would make peace…
It's not true that Hitler wanted no part of an invasion of Britain. There were serious plans and he demanded the German High Command study the issue in detail. But based on von Rundstedt's testimony we can see that Hitler had not turned Germany's considerable industrial power to the problem of building enough landing ships. Nor did he correct mistakes in Luftwaffe strategy that enabled the British to gain the upper hand in the air war.
The reason Hitler was of mixed views is that a higher goal for him was securing lebensraum, or literally room to expand for the German people to the country's east. That meant invading the Soviet Union. And that, famously, is exactly what he did which was the fatal error that marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
Ultimately, Hitler was so obsessed with weird, ideological ideas that instead of making the decision that would allow him to win the war, figuring out how to take Britain out of the war to prevent the US from having a staging ground for an invasion should it ever be drawn into the fight, he took the ideological path which led to ruin. And we've already talked about how Mussolini pursued various foreign interventions that weren't especially additive to Italian power.
Some of the parallels I see is that Xi has famously consolidated political power in China around himself and his decisions. He is now widely considered the most powerful Chinese political leader since Mao Zedong. In that sense, his leadership is more like that of the strong men leaders of Germany and Italy prior to World War II.
The other similarity here is that the fixation on Taiwan reeks of the ideas of national grandeur, ethnic completeness and prestige that drove the decisions of those countries as well. Ultimately, China does not need Taiwan. It is a tiny island just off the Chinese coast and were China not threatening Taiwan and putting itself on a collision course with the US, it could just buy what Taiwan makes, the most important product of which being semiconductors.
But instead, Xi and the CCP that he leads has wrapped itself up in knots convincing themselves that this is a critical foreign policy goal for China. To some extent, I think it is just difficult for non-Chinese to appreciate the sentiment here. To the rest of the world it looks obvious that risking global conflict is just a terrible trade for a little rock off the coast. That's just not how the Chinese government sees it and, ultimately, this mismatch between what we might call the "realist" or "pragmatist" way of seeing things and the national ideology way of seeing things is another place I see overlap with Germany and Italy.
Another way to put this is that Taiwan has a similar potential to put the world on the path to war as Poland did because there's no common basis for negotiation. China isn't asking for anything Taiwan can give up, just as Germany wasn't asking for anything Poland could give up.
All of the above said, I do think there's a counter argument that's worth putting forward here. And that argument is that China has undeniably risen to become one of the great powers of the world. It should be no surprise that along with that comes some demands. And this is something we saw in Germany before the First World War. Germany, whose industrial capacity and population exploded during the late 1800s to catch up with Britain wanted an empire of its own, just like all of the other major European powers. And that was one of the points of tension, as an example.
China sees Taiwan as part of its territory which only split off when the Communists won China's civil war in 1949 and the defeated Nationalists fled to Taiwan. Now that China is a big, powerful country, it wants that territory. Regardless of which view you ascribe to, both ultimately point to conflict: in neither scenario is China going to budge.
Which brings us to the question of how China assesses the potential outcomes of a conflict over Taiwan. As I said in what I wrote a year ago, I think trying to predict the winner of a war between the US and China is a fools errand. We have seen how difficult that is to do in the context of Ukraine where nearly universal predictions that Kyiv would fall in 72 hours turned out to be completely wrong.
Instead, I want to extend aspects of Noah's analysis as well as highlight areas I think he might not have had space for. Please note that for the remainder of this section I'll refer to the New Axis that Noah describes which comprises China and Russia, vs. the New Allies of the US, Japan, the UK, the EU and potentially India. Oh and let's not forget Australia and Canada!
Being an economist by training, Noah focuses heavily on macroeconomic considerations of a potential conflict between the New Axis and the New Allies. I'm not going to summarize his findings here but there are a few places that I want to disagree or add an alternate perspective. The first is access to oil.
This remains a crucial commodity in warfare. It is the primary power source for most naval vessels, tanks and trucks. The long logistics chain required by modern militaries is critically enabled by access to oil. Noah correctly points out that both the New Allies and the New Axis would have extensive access to oil. The US is the world's largest oil producer and just to its north Canada has huge reserves and to its south, so does Venezuela. While Venezuela is not a US ally, in a global conflict with China I would fully expect the US to invade Venezuela and take over its oil fields if necessary to ensure uninterrupted access to oil supplies close by.
In the case of the New Axis, China has some deposits, but Russia would be the primary source of oil for that side. However, not all oil was created equal. Oil has to be refined before it becomes a usable product and some crudes are more useful than others. In the case of jet fuel, the US is the world's largest refiner of that product, followed by China. This is not just because the US consumes more jet fuel than any other country but also because much of US crude oil is especially well suited to the manufacture of jet fuel which is best manufactured from higher quality oil. Another crucial source for this kind of "light" oil is in the North Sea, the fields of which are controlled by the UK and Norway, who would both side with the US in any conflict involving Russia.
Therefore, while Russia and China would have no problem accessing oil, they would have a harder time manufacturing jet fuel specifically than the US and its allies.
Next up is semiconductors. Semiconductors, thanks to Chris Miller's book Chip War, are increasingly viewed as a critical component in the supply chain of modern warfare. Whomever has the most advanced chips should expect to prevail.
Taiwan, famously, is home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company or TSMC. TSMC produces the world's most advanced semiconductors and the capture of its manufacturing facilities by China is seen by many foreign policy hawks as a grave threat to US national security. The idea being that this would cripple the US's ability to build crucial modern weapons platforms like advanced fighter jets and advanced missiles.
Personally, I think this risk is surmountable, for a couple of reasons. The first is that precision strike weapons and stealth technology have been around since the early 1990s. The fact that both the US and China can hit specific targets at range mean that I doubt much advanced semiconductor manufacturing would take place in a conflict between the two countries.
Producing advanced semiconductors is such a precise manufacturing process that tremors within the earth can potentially disrupt it. That is why there is one unquestioned leader: TSMC. The industry necessarily lends itself to monopolistic dynamics due to the huge capital expenditure involved. But a single point of failure in supply chains is not a good thing in warfare.
So for that reason, I think both sides would end up resorting to the manufacture of less advanced semiconductors in dispersed locations. And such a strategy would benefit the US for two reasons. The US's Intel is a manufacturer of semiconductors, but its products are not as advanced as TSMCs. Furthermore the machines required to produce chips are often produced by US allies, most notably ASML, a Dutch company. Finally, the one part of the semiconductor supply chain the US does have a monopoly on is design. Most semiconductors are designed using US software and tools.
Bolstering this argument is what we have seen in the fight between Ukraine and Russia. In that conflict, the weapons that have been difference makers have relied on semiconductors, but not necessarily the cutting edge of chip design. Instead, mass producible, cheap products have had the highest impact on the battlefield. We talked about this in a prior episode. First person drones (FPV) are an example of a product that doesn't need especially advanced semiconductors, but has had a significant impact on the battlefield.
This prompts an entirely different debate which is whether a country is better off relying on a small number of extremely expensive, advanced systems like the US's F-35 fighter jet, or on simpler weapons systems that cost less but are easier to produce in massive quantities. As I discussed in the podcast I linked earlier, military engineers and planners, for better or for worse, frequently opt for the more capable, complex platform.
You can see this in the case of China. Rather than developing a military down a different path from the US, based on cheaper systems that are easier to produce, China is building its own aircraft carriers and fifth generation stealth fighters. Perhaps the question becomes whichever nation can adjust to the requirements of the battlefield fastest from a manufacturing perspective is likely to prevail?
We typically think of China as the world's manufacturing power house and that's true to some extent. But as Noah shows, when you add US manufacturing to that of all its prospective allies, the manufacturing capacity of the New Allies and the New Axis actually matches up pretty well. And I think this is a good prompt to look at an additional area of economic capacity which is access to basic metals.
Remember that firearms, tanks, ships and so on all involve huge amounts of steel which in turn requires a lot of iron ore. Here, the New Allies would have an advantage. While China has large iron ore deposits, they are dwarfed by those of US ally Australia, and Brazil which is geographically close to the US.
Copper is another important basic metal where China would find itself at a deficit compared to the New Allies. The world's largest copper reserves are in South America, while US and Canadian reserves combined are almost the same as China's.
The disposition of the world's bauxite reserves create a fascinating strategic dilemma for China. Bauxite is a precursor to the smelting of aluminium, a crucial metal in aircraft. China and Russia's reserves combined amount to just 4% of the world's total. But Vietnam, with which China shares a border, has nearly 20% of the world's bauxite reserves. It is easy to imagine China feeling compelled to invade Vietnam to secure those reserves. But at the same time, and as I laid out in my prior piece on conflict between China and the US, Vietnam and the Southeast Asian peninsula represent a potential staging area for an invasion of China by the US. Does all of this suggest Vietnam could be a crucial battlefield in a future world war? It certainly looks that way to me.
That might have felt a little bit dizzying so let me tie it all together with my view which is that I think on balance, the macroeconomic considerations favor the New Allies in a conflict. China and Russia would basically be forced into relying on one another's economies and serving each other by train across Siberia. Whereas the New Allies would have a much more diverse set of commodities and capabilities to draw on which could be more accessible if the US Navy is able to protect global sea lanes.
Finally, let's tackle the one aspect that I think Noah didn't get to in his analysis, and that is force quality and employment. I have referred to the existence of this literature many times so I won't rehash it here but suffice to say that how you use your military matters in conflict. It is not a straightforward case of counting who has more stuff.
For various reasons, authoritarian regimes typically have a harder time fighting with the most modern tactics. This would definitely be a problem for Russia and China assuming their forces came face to face with the ground forces of the New Allies. Furthermore, Russia has shown the weakness of its military. In the case of China, it has not fought a war since 1979 when it fought against Vietnam and lost. So we simply do not know how Chinese forces will perform in combat.
The forces of many countries of the New Allies, however, have received some combat experience through the global war on terror. While fighting a counter insurgency conflict against completely inferior enemies isn't the same as fighting a conventional war against a peer enemy, it does matter that these forces have a strong backbone of non-commissioned officers who have been shot at and know how to react.
As I have said again and again, trying to predict the victor in such a conflict is a bit of a fool's errand in my view and I think the discussion we've just had reinforces that. There is just a lot that military planners have to consider when thinking through such a complex conflict.
Alright, we've been going a while so let's bring this home gang. Where we started all of this was with the idea of polycrisis, that we are beset on all sides by conflicts and unforeseen events like the COVID-19 pandemics and that feels like a break with history. In reality, history is probably returning to trend after a period of unusual calm.
But a subset of this new, more chaotic era is the question of the potential for global hegemonic conflict, especially between the US and China and their respective allies. Looking to World War II, and the many conflicts that preceded the outbreak of general hostilities as a framework, there are some parallels between the current moment and that period which are exemplified in Ukraine. But there are discontinuities as well, exemplified by Gaza, which I don't see as a precursor to great power conflict.
All of which leads to the center of gravity in the polycrisis debate: What should we expect from a conflict between the US and China? Fortunately, I remained smartly unwilling to commit to a position so that I can't be wrong. Don't hate the player, hate the game hey.
Ok well that was another epic. Not sure how long I expected that to be but it was longer than I intended. Hope you enjoyed and found it sufficiently dense in stuff to tell your friends about. As always, thanks for listening.
CWI #41 - Polycrisis, what is it? And will we get the war part?