China will soon have air power rivalling the West’s
economist.com
economist.com
"Non-state firms are helping the armed forces to develop quantum technologies that will boost their ability to make use of artificial intelligence and big data, as well as to develop unhackable communications networks."
Oh boy is that buzz word central. I'm still convinced we're decades away from using quantum computing for much more than finding prime numbers. Everything I've read says we're just barely scratching the surface how to use this stuff. We're a long way off before Quantum AI uses Big Data to design military planes.
Interception detection is for someone messing with the quantum state (in other words, trying to use it). Both parties will know that happened. It is not for the conventional channel.
As i understand it, the main novelty here is that china has demonstrated recent ability to teleport particles a long ways away. This is only related to encryption in the slimmest chain of buzzwords.
As mathematics and physics PhD Vladimir Dergachev explained to me, yes, this is what experts purport about quantum encryption.
https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/608857/china-r...
https://www.insidescience.org/news/china-leader-quantum-comm...
It doesn't mean an enemy couldn't simply deny service by knocking out the satellite, or try to capture information via a side channel by sneaking into a peripheral system's firmware, but it means when bouncing a "beam" off a satellite, the signal might enjoy totally private transmission, end-to-end, or show that someone noticed the message, and may try to decode it, indicating compromised information and a possible loss of surprise or hazard of enemy awareness.
As for unbreakable codes (data at rest), I'm pretty sure most military protocols lean heavily on one-time pads. I'd very honestly guess that prime number ciphers and the like are, well, probably secretly flimsy, and intended for civilian consumers to chase their tails over, while celebrity security bros widely endorse them as a means of cashing in on smart phone apps or book deals.
A lot of the quantum secrecy technology is buzz-wordified as "teleportation entanglement space foam time travel" or whatever, by journalists, but here's an old article I was able to quickly Google:
https://qz.com/760804/chinas-new-quantum-satellite-will-try-...
Hard to believe this made it into the economist.
The big difference I see with China is that they have a massive booming economy. Unlike the USSR which failed to stay productive, they might be able to pull it off.
But the "air power" advancements in the article seem a bit underwhelming to me. A new fighter jet, a new air-to-air missile, and another unnamed air-to-air system with longer range seem like the first steps in bringing Chinese air power up to par. It certainly doesn't suggest that they will soon be able to "rival the West", let alone the US.
Automation.
Whereas the US presence in South America has always been about anti-communism at any cost, including overthrowing elected governments to replace them with dictatorships (Chile); then secondarily about maintaining the drug war and its associated violence. If the US wants to get started there it should see about bringing peace to Mexico and work downwards.
> American ties to Europe were never entirely altruistic but about maintaining it against Russian influence and control.
You're omitting the very strongly shared interests in liberty and democracy, as well as in free trade. There really is little reason for countries that believe in those things not to cooperate - they naturally have each other's best interests in mind.
> the US presence in South America has always been about anti-communism at any cost, ... If the US wants to get started there it should see about bringing peace to Mexico and work downwards.
Again, that was a long time ago. Since the Cold War, almost the entire Western Hemisphere has become peaceful (internationally), democratic, and far more prosperous, lifting hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty.
I don't meant to downplay the drug war, which I agree is awful and highly damaging to people in those nations.
US ties to Europe predate geopolitical conflict with Russia.
> Whereas the US presence in South America has always been about anti-communism at any cost
Likewise, US presence and exercise of colonial and quasi-legal power in Latin America long predates anticommunist foreign policy.
Yes, this issue is the biggest one in the world right now (besides political stability and commitment to democracy in the US). Military power flows from economic power more than from anything else. In maybe 10 years, for the first time since WWII the US may have the second biggest economy and be falling further behind. The US + Europe would still far exceed China, but of course international cooperation is unfashionable for some reason.
Since 1890 or so. The US was the largest economy in the world for more than 50 years before ww2 started.
The movie Threads is still terrifyingly relevant:
https://archive.org/details/threads_201712
I suppose that with improved military forces China can intervene in weaker states' affairs like other P5 members do. There's always room for another nation to participate in the Syrian civil war.
Nor would Turkey have dared to shoot down one of Russia's warplanes based in Syria for violating its airspace.
That happened before China had nuclear weapons.
Both Generals LeMay ( USAF SAC ) and MacArthur advocated widespread nuclear response to the Chinese intervention. They were overruled by President Truman.
> For a thousand years or more China has been content to stay within it's borders
Are the Paracel Islands, Spratly Islands and Formosa within China's borders? To all of which China lays claim.
Why they've attacked Vietham then?
The corollary to this reality, is that pronounced conventional military imbalances increase the probably of nuclear war as either (a) the only available response to perceived aggression by a superior conventional force; or (b) the perceived correct strategic preemptive option in anticipation of (a).
Its been awhile since I was mired in cold war nuclear strategy papers, but I seem to recall conventional military parity as a highly stabilizing factor in global competition and conflict.
I would add that Chinese conventional superiority is as much a threat to India and Asian-pacific countries as to the United States.
Many times on HN I've expressed concern over the new multi-polar world we find ourselves entering. US hegemony had advantages we may wish persisted.
US v. China - by proxy (Korean War) US v. Russia - by proxy (Vietnam War) US v. Russia - by proxy (Afghanistan Conflict) India v. Pakistan India v. China US v. Russia - by proxy (1973 Yom Kippur War Brinksmanship)
You said "expeditionary", not "proxy", which is very different.
The Korean war ended in 1953 and the Chinese government did not get nuclear weapons until 1965 and ICBM capability later.
The actual shooting wars between India and Pakistan mostly pre-date both countries achieving nuclear weapons, indicating that MAD generally works.
While I agree with the main point, I don't know about the evidence. Two nuclear-armed countries have never directly engaged in conflict, that I can think of. The Cold War was 'cold' precisely for that reason, afaik: Neither side wanted to risk a conflict that could possibly escalate to nuclear war.
On the other hand, it's easy to imagine that the US and USSR soldiers directly fighting and killing each other could escalate more easily than the US fighting Vietnamese troops or the USSR fighting Afghans.
The great bulk of international relations happen without conflict, and they strongly depend on the perceived military power of nations. The United States' overwhelming conventional military power has been a guarantor of peace in the western Pacific for decades. If countries there no longer believe the U.S. can or will protect them, then they may arm themselves, which tends to lead to conflict, or they may side with China.
Regarding U.S.-China conflict, unless survival of either country is at stake then there's reason to believe (and hope) that conflicts won't escalate to strategic nuclear weapons and destroying the world. For example, if mainland China attacks Taiwan, would either side use nuclear weapons? If not, then conventional forces come into play.
I don't mean to downplay the risk. Conflicts escalate very easily and unpredictably; that's why the professionals in diplomacy and military affairs are very careful to avoid it, and are careful to choose options that don't escalate it. It's always the amateurs who want to escalate with an angry response, and as a result get masses of people killed and incur extreme costs - because they were angry.
America actually sells the F-35 to other countries it likes, and there are a lot of them and they were supposed to be inexpensive. We’ve kept the F-22 to ourselves, it’s main job is taking down over planes and it’s really really good at it.
Citation needed. To my knowledge the F-22 has downed exactly zero adversary aircraft in actual air-air combat.
In a carrier v. carrier battle, the F-22 likely won't be a factor unless the chosen "ground" is in the operational vicinity of a land base. Granted, Wikipedia believes the avionics range for the F-22 is 250 miles.
That shows some of the advantages of China's South China Sea strategy (taken straight out of the U.S. playbook with Caribbean).
U.S. F-22 stealth fighter pilot taunted Iranian F-4 Phantom combat planes over the Persian Gulf
/rant
Arms races are how we got meritocracy [1], NASA, the ARPANET and other goodies. Our species has a terrible track record with non-hedonistically deploying capital without the motivation of an external threat. In that mold, a Cold War (emphasis on "cold") is a least-worst optimum.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena–Auerstedt
EDIT: Better source https://books.google.com/books?id=z14AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA220&lpg=...
Not so cold for the countries ravaged in proxy wars, forced regime changes and even those drafted and destroyed from the "cold" nation conflicts.
Pardon me, a quote from a better source:
"Prussia, notwithstanding the reforms of Frederick the Great, had retained its half-feudal institutions down to the decisive defat of Jena. The agricultural classes were serfs bound to the soil and compelled to work a certain part of each week for their lords with our remeration. The population was still divided into three distinct castes, nobles, burghers, and peasants, who could not acquire one another's land. The disaster of Jena and the losses at Tilsit convinced the statesmen of Prussia–among whom Baron von Stein and Prince Hardenberg were conspicuous–that the country's only hope of recovery was a complete social and political revolution not unlike that which had taken place in France. They saw that the old system must be abolished, the peasants freed, and the restrictions which hedged about the different classes done away with, before it would be possible to arouse public spirit to a point where a great popular uprising might expel the intruder forever."
Beard and Harvey, James Robinson. Outlines of European History. Ginn & Company, 1907.
https://books.google.com/books?id=z14AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA220&lpg=...
Imagine a operation team, that rents a house, carves it out, and installs - delivered in 3 or 4 container- a explosive drone factory, generators and some material supply silos.
Once the conflicts start, the factory starts out churning kill vehicles like there is no tomorrow- attacking vital infrastructure, public transport- and in addition depositing droves of "fallback" mines, activated after years of delay.
The result is a instantly collapsing society, without even a aggressor visible. And who was it? Anyone could have done this- its a low cost attack. Low tech, once you have the auto-factory line up. Anyone having just one of those terrorizing a city has a plausible denial.
Meanwhile out on the oceans some subs and ships have a cruise with noone to strike at. Noone to strike towards, a redundant a force as a battalion of cavalary at Verdun.
Its nice and shiny new toys for the not yet big boys, but the great scott help us, the day they face a dedicated advessary forced to go cheap.
That would be actually a nice little addition to the mil-industrial complex- a branch forced to develop assymetric attacks, with a very low budget. That way, if you allow that branch to conduct its own exercises and manouvers - you can actually look ahead to find out what those mysterious machine guns are- before you try to solve the excession by sending in wave after wave.
We can debate if the ends justify the means but arms races do have benefits.
ARPANET, solar cells, radar, microwave ovens, jet engines, GPS and drones are a few.
Estimates place the casualties between 400k and over a million people [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Syrian_Civil...
If by "most bloodshed" you mean the population-adjusted (or unadjusted) incidence of violent mortality, bipolarity has its proponents [1][2]. Unipolarity has traditionally been seen as nice in the short-run but inherently unstable in the long [Cf 3].
One point on which there is agreement, however, is the violent instability of multipolar social systems.
[1] http://www.rochelleterman.com/ir/sites/default/files/waltz%2...
[2] https://samuelbhfauredotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/s2-m...
[3] https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/stability-unipolar-...
The general idea is that unipolarity is anarchical and that it will always try to produce a competitor = lots of wars to come, while in bipolar system you always have 2 strong competitors and it is in theirs interest to stop any local conflict before the second superpower uses it in its advantage. Today it is a complete different story where everyone is figing for who know what reason and USA doesn't really care to stop anyone and it probably cannot do anything in most cases, because back in the days of the cold war there was fight for power and now we actually have luck of power in most conflicts. During cold war we had a clear understanding who is finghig and major hot spots were actually pretty localized (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan), but nowadays look at Syria/Yemen/Iraq/Libya/Egypt (I try to follow international relations daily, but have a hard time to truly understand who is fighting whom at this point)War on Terror, wtf is this, some USA global war? who are they fighting really? Afghanistan? Iraq? Enforcing national interests? Who knows. It actually looks like everyone have this war on terror nowadays and USA was just one of the first to face this lack of power all over the world. Actually I'm really hoping that USA is playing the role of Orwellian big brother with constant war, because the alternative is scary: USA is already not able to control the situation and it is going to get worse, much worse. The unipolar world brought us 3-4 more nuclear powers because no one is playing by the rulls anymore. There is no policemen to enforce those rules. We have North Korea escalation not because they are playing with nukes, but because if the USA allows them to keep the weapon, everyone else will go and create one. And then we will be truly fucked up.
- "The United States has been at war for thirteen of the twenty-two years since the end of the Cold War. Put another way, the first two decades of unipolarity, which make up less than 10 percent of U.S. history, account for more than 25 percent of the nation's total time at war." - "in 2014 these are the only 11 countries in the world that are actually free from conflict" [2]
And if you look at [3] you can see that starting from late 70-s - early 80-s (because that's the time SU started to loose power) we have a spike in number of local conflicts worldwide and there are lots of brutal massacres in 90-s+. Most of the conflicts are in ongoing status for 30-50+ years now and we can see the rapid increase in deaths [4].
I'm not saying that it is 100% correct, most of this is just a theory and everything can change in a matter of 1-5 years, but we still have to see the emergence of new rivals of the USA hegemony and the worst case scenario is the comeback to the multipolar world of 18-19 centuries, but with everyone having nukes and who knows what else.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarity_(international_relati...
[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/world-peace...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number_of_conflicts_pe...
However, if N > 1 powers are on equal footing where starting a war does NOT mean you get crushed, now there's N > 1 actors that can start a very large war. And that may have compounding effects where likelihood of war isn't just Percentage * N, but instead some exponent of N because the increased likelihood of war itself increases the likelihood of war.
One country misusing its power is probably less destructive to humanity than superpowers militarily fighting (i.e. number of deaths/problems caused by US wars since WW2 is substantially less than deaths during WW2).
I spent 10 years in Panama, where although many people still resent the US invasion, chiefly over the loss of life - the country is unquestionably better off today for it.
I also have friends from Texas, which was also Mexican territory.
Perhaps your point is that the US became less imperialistic since then, but that's easy to say once it's taken what it wants.
China sees Taiwan as an integral part of the "Greater China", a still unresolved problem from the past century's wars. It sees the South China sea as its own backyard. Can you imagine the US response if China were sailing military vessels provocatively close to the cost of continental US?
I'm not saying either is right. I'm pointing out that the US is not without its hypocrisies either, and that each country has its own flaws.
The point I'm trying to make is the world has largely moved beyond that, but China still thinks it's ok to steal territory from it's neighbors.
If the situation were reversed and Chinese vessels were patrolling in international waters in the Caribbean to dissuade the US from taking territory from it's neighbors there, I'd be cheering them on.
That's not to say the USA doesn't do their fair share of despicable or hypocritical things, but by and large they have been a much better steward of power than China. I think the world will come to miss those days of American leadership in this century.
Thankfully we don't have to imagine.
https://thediplomat.com/2014/07/china-is-spying-on-rimpac/
"“It has not entered the territorial seas of the U.S. and it is in accordance with international law regarding freedom of navigation,” Capt. James said in a statement released to the Wall Street Journal. He explained that the ship was in Hawaii’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The U.S. maintains that freedom of navigation for all international ships extend to countries’ EEZs, and it has long maintained ships inside China’s EEZ."
And there have been many comments in recent months pointing out that China is actually acting with a lot more integrity on the international stage as the US with regards to, for example, the Paris Climate Treaty.
With regards to Panama: let's not forget that the US actively supported Noriega until they changed their mind.
Nobody, group, or nation is all good or bad, it's always somewhere on a slider between the two. China does many admirable things that the US would do well to follow. But I think it's also clear that the US ranks better on that sliding scale.
Not in this century. It happened, though.
But I agree with your larger point. The US has not always been pure in how it used its power, but I don't trust China very far in terms of how it uses power. (Tibet, Vietnam, South China Sea, North Korea...)
>by and large the US has invaded countries and brought them democracy and freed their people from dictators
Hahaha. I mean really. It's amazing that educated people can be brainwashed to believe this absolute nonsense.
The first of those statements show, I don't know, breathtaking historical ignorance, or something, it's hard to explain otherwise. You don't see it because it already happened, long ago.
The second is the official line heard in the US mainstream media and White House press statements etc. I was brought up believing it too. But it's very far from reality. It's been more usual since the 1890s for democracy, self-determination, refusal to submit obediently to US bullying, standing up to the US, to be the very reasons for invasion. It's thoroughly depressing to learn the history. It's the opposite of what you're told. The US has installed dictators, often military types given a load of US weapons. The US prefers dictators—whatever makes for docile 'stability' and exploitation by US business, and democracy is unpredictable, uncontrollable. Then, disgustingly, the US media is filled with stories of how it was all to bring democracy to a land threatened by communists, terrorists, instability etc. And more bilge about doing God's sacred work on earth etc.
> the same level of integrity in the world as the USA
hehehe. Ah I don't know if it's much use my saying this stuff to people on here. The reality is soooo different from what people in the US are taught to believe. So different that you'll feel physically sick when it starts to dawn on you.
You also should not say that the US prefers dictators, I don't think that's ever been true. But sometimes they see it as the lesser evil when the populace would go against US interests - which is certainly hypocritical.
>sometimes they see it as the lesser evil when the populace would go against US interests
So here democracy is 'the greater evil'. Countries have their own interests, the US has just often tried to stomp out any chance of other countries achieving theirs. If anyone tries to do the to the US it's met with moral outrage. Same with 'free markets'. Endless preaching them, actually it's the last thing corporations want.
So yeah, the US looked out for their own interests, and I don't suppose that should be a surprise to anyone, because that's what every nation state does. But by and large they made the world a better place for it - with a few glaring exceptions. I don't think the world would do as well under Chinese leadership - but I also do not think we will see that world in this century. China is not poised to overtake the USA as many seem to believe is inevitable - their near future is written in stone in the demographics of their country, and will more closely mirror the story of Japan. This seems likely to be a second US-led century.
When a superpower exists, the order of power is clear. Thus a nation has little choice but to accept its position.
So according to your own definition wouldn't you agree that unipolarity produces peace?