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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

Ukraine makes WW3 less likely. If it was conquered quickly - that would make WW3 more likely (because Russia and China would estimate their chances of further conquest higher and would probably start something in Taiwan or Baltic states).

Russia issued a statement just before 2022 invasion that demanded NATO back off from Baltic States, Poland, etc. If Ukraine fell quickly they could think they can force this by small scale provocations. If NATO really backed off - Russia would invade these countries soon after that.

A LOT of people are now safe because of Ukrainians (and NATO, and EU). Millions of them.

Returning to your question - WW3 is unlikely, because NATO wins 10 times out of 10. The best China and Russia can count on is stalemate with nuclear exchange. But what's the point of that from their POV?

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The fact that Russia's invasion of Ukraine mostly failed informs about the strength of Russia's military but says nothing about China's.

If China is drawing conclusions they must be based on the West's reaction to the invasion, not on Russia's performance. China has been working on these scenarios well before Russia invaded Ukraine because, well, it is obvious that the West controls most of the world's economic and financial infrastructure.

For instance, payments within China are now almost 100% Alipay and Wechatpay, which means they have completely decoupled and e.g. US networks like Visa and Mastercard are irrelevant.

China is using russian equipment (or equipment based on reverse-engineered russian equipment), russian tactics, and is training with Russia. Before 2022 it was generally agreed that in their joint exercises russian army looked better.

China has all the corruption problems Russia has, even less oversight and transparency, and fought no competetive wars in which it could be tested.

I expect much worse performance from them if they ever go to a real war.

As for decoupling economy - Russia is energy exporter. China is importing resources and energy and selling products to the west. They are much more coupled with the west than Russia, no matter who services the transactions.

China can buy energy from Russia and the Middle East. It is also the second largest economy in the world with the second largest population, which means they can produce mountains of military equipment if needed, which Russia's small economy cannot.

China is coupled to the West in a way that makes the West at least a dependent on China as China is on the West.

There is no comparison with Russia and, if anything Ukraine shows China the mistakes no to make.

> China can buy energy from Russia and the Middle East

They already do. But they won't have anywhere to sell their products. Most of their economy gone just like that.

> China is coupled to the West in a way that makes the West at least a dependent on China as China is on the West.

Nope. For west decoupling means higher inflation but lower unemployment and faster growth. You win more than you lose. For China it means economic decline, unemployment, budget deficits. Catastrophe from all POV.

BTW it's already happening to some degree, just slowly - old factories are still operating in China, but new ones are built near USA/EU - in Mexico, Eastern Europe, Turkey, etc.

What's happening is that the West sees that they are dangerously dependent on China, which as world's second largest economy is also diversifying outside of Western countries.

To some extent I think China would be willing to pay, and accept, a higher economic price than the West as long as Taiwan was seized. That's perhaps the same calculation Russia did with Ukraine, though, so they need to give a very hard look and consideration to this 'as long as', at this point it's not a given. The reason is that no-one cares about Taiwan in the West, it is a pawn against China. But for the Chinese it is very personal (which is not really the case for Russian in Ukraine, btw).

In any case, that wouldn't unleash WWIII.

Russia exports fuel which they take from the ground. China makes goods from things they import using western know-how and sell them back to the west.

Everybody needs fuel. Rich countries need iphones.

When you are isolated you can still pump oil. You can't make iphones.

These are polar opposites when it comes to dependency on the west.

> The reason is that no-one cares about Taiwan in the West, it is a pawn against China.

I wonder what would be your prediction about the West caring about Ukraine in 2021 :) If anything - even fewer people cared about it than about Taiwan. Yet here we are.

There's 2 things so called "realists" and "geopoliticians" consistently get wrong.

The first is that the only things that matter are economies, armies, nukes, and geography. These people couldn't predict USSR falling, because they thought every culture and every system is the same and values are cosmetic. Meanwhile people like Giedroyć proposed a strategy for Poland after "inevitable USSR collapse and creation of independent Ukraine and Belarus" in 60s already. Look it up - google for "Giedroyć doctrine" and "Kultura paryska".

The second thing "realists" consistently get wrong is assuming democracies are weak and fickle and authocracies are strong and resilient. It's an easy mistake to make, because democracies are transparent about their weaknesses and authocracies hide them. But that's exactly why it's a mistake.

Democracies are actually surprisingly bloodthirsty once you persuade people something is worth fighting for. Much easier to change the mind of the leader than to change the minds of millions of people. And all wars are ultimately about changing somebody's minds.

No-one cares about Ukraine in the West. The current help the US provide to Ukraine is painless and in fact the US are benefiting from the war on a number of front (of course that's the actual reason for the support).

If the situation in Taiwan was painful in the West because of the economic impacy then Western public opinions would tire long before the Chinese do because, again, this would be nothing to them while for Chinese it would be a national cause.

Here in the UK many people are already unhappy that we're paying so much, including on our energy bills, for Ukraine. The situation in Europe is not painless and that puts a strain on public opinion.

This has nothing to do with democracies vs autocracies.

One thing that many get wrong about China is that reunification is not what the CCP wants to achieve it is what the Chinese people want to achieve. And the US do not want that no matter whose in charge in Beijing because their aim is to weaken China.

And again, none of that would trigger WWIII.

For Russia Ukraine is as personal for historical reasons but also for strategic reasons. Ukraine is the buffer state between nato and Russia and the access to the black sea.

What historical reasons would justify invading and killing people who don't want to be part of russia?

As for buffer states, by attacking Ukraine they pushed Finland into NATO which the führer does not seem to mind. So we can easily call bullshit on this trope.

As for access to Black Sea, just look at the map. russia has plenty of access to it.

If you asked Russians about that 20 years ago nobody would say that :)

The main russian propagandist - Solovyov - publicly argued that Russia cannot invade Crimea and should let Ukraine do whatever it likes like 15 years ago. Now he argues Russia should nuke the west because Ukraine must be russian.

Not 20 years passed. Watch the videos - they are hilarious when you compare to what they are saying now [1]

Russia is authocracy, they will say whatever putin wants them to say. If putin decides to stop the war and go home - the same people will say with 100% confidence that it's the best thing to do and Russia has no interest in internal Ukrainian affairs.

As for strategic reasons - Russia moved its soldiers from Finland border after Finland joined NATO. Russia knows perfectly well NATO does not want to invade it. They not only know it - they rely on it.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-solovyov-1751095

This is not what leaks tell us about communications between Russia and USA from 15 years ago:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1502177250300600320

(I would post the original cable, but Wikileaks is offline now).

By “this” you refer to which part of the comment?

Finland had zero plans for joining NATO before russia brutally attacked Ukraine.

Finland also joined to better protect them from russian aggression.

So NATO coming closer to russia is fully a consequence of their own actions.

People don’t like their country invaded.

But they won't have anywhere to sell their products. Most of their economy gone just like that.

The internal Chinese economy* is at 80% as against 20% for exports.** Of those exports, the US plus Europe are about 30%. In other words, if the entire West is decoupled from China's economy, the Chinese economy still has 80%+ (70% of 20% = 14%) or a total of 94% left. The West is not actually as important as it thinks.

* The Chinese internal market size is four times the size of the US market for consumer goods. And that's apart from the the Chinese rolling in cash reserves that lets them afford to build lots of infrastructure, just like the US was able to build back in the 1950s and 1960s.

** Back around 1980, the US internal economy was around 95% and the external trade was about 5%. In other words, back then, the 'Rest of the World' could have disappeared and the US economy probably wouldn't have noticed anything. Those times have long gone.

This is a good analysis. People need to hear it. Do you have sources for these numbers?

Those numbers are a couple of years old. They're also rounded off. IIRC, the export figure was actually around 18%. They're out there on the Web somewhere. *

It's very likely that the internal economy is even larger now, because there was a new emphasis on enlarging it to reduce the economy's vulnerability to external factors when the US started to work on reducing imports from China some years back.

* EDIT: Latest figure from 2022 is 20.68%. https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/china/exports/#:~:text=Expo....

Exports to US (2021) are 3% of China's GDP. https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/us-and-china-....

Many Americans think that China would go under if the US stopped importing from China. In fact, exports to the US are less than 15% of China's exports world-wide. (3/20.68 x 100 = 14.51)

The China of 2023 is the US of 1942. When the US gets belligerent with China, I just shake my head. It's a bit like a 5-year-old kid threatening a quarter-back.

Thank you sir! Sometimes, when I see that belligerence, I think "China must already be in charge. It's deputized US to play the provocateur role to give it the pretext it needs for war." But I doubt that's true.

I think the analogy of US-China to 5-year-old to quarterback is a bit of stretch. But given that the US is a young nation/culture and China an old one, it could be more apt that I realize right now. I don't know. Yet China's foreign ministry diplomatic tantrums, mirrored in the (admittedly much rebuked by Chinese netizens) occasional tantrums of its travelers on foreign soil, look more akin to 5-year-old behavior, to me. Do you have more insight your analogy?

To me it seems more like, if China is the QB, then US is like the wizened old coach, battle-scarred, full of wisdom and experience, Hall-of-famer, but now beyond its prime. Living vicariously through youth, easily enraged by yet ready to rise to the challenge of the upstart, but also needing to let go of the idea that it's the only power on the field. Sometimes it gets embarrassing when it goes on its lengthy rants and speeches about the glory days, but still, nobody wants to follow the QB, everyone still needs Coach. Yet Coach needs to evolve and adapt.

I think picking aged leaders could be a weird subconscious expression of this "decrepitude". In another sense, Steve Rogers, "Captain America", the "man out of time" is a fictional embodiment of this idea, and his character's trajectory an allegory of America's trajectory overall, right back to the desire to travel back in time to "Fix things" and harken back to a fading Americana. :.(

> The Chinese internal market size is four times the size of the US market for consumer goods. And that's apart from the the Chinese rolling in cash reserves that lets them afford to build lots of infrastructure, just like the US was able to build back in the 1950s and 1960s.

I was under the impression that large amounts of the infrastructure projects were debt-financed. Is this not the case?

Not to the extent that most countries would need to. It's a bit silly in financial/economic terms to have cash just sitting there doing nothing, while you take out a costlier mortgage on something else.

Most of the infrastructure debt that you're likely to be thinking of is taken out by other countries who have China constructing the railways, etc, used in making the BRI. China is shelling out plenty of cash for those railways, etc in the near term, while the other countries will pay it off over the longer term.

Sure. They can buy oil. But, how will it make it to China in a war? With sanctions applied by the US Navy.

And what about basic necessities like food? China can only meet 65% of it’s food needs.

China is completely vulnerable and dependent on the west, in a way that Russia is not.

> With sanctions applied by the US Navy.

Well, since no-one wants to start WWIII, the US Navy isn't going to attack Chinese ships, especially if escorted by the Chinese Navy. QED.

We're used to see the US behave like they can do anything they want but that's only because they are usually orders of magnitude stronger than the opposition. But if the opposition was of similar strength they would be much more restrained and cautious because, again, no-one is suicidal.

I'm sure the question has been studied many times in war games and scenarios and I expect the plan would be to put pressure at the source (i.e. 'suggest' that you should not sell to China), which would not work with all countries.

(Internal US) Politics aside, didn't Nancy Pelosi extend a middle finger and landed to Taiwan in 2022? For me that was an unanswered slap in Xi's face.

> For instance, payments within China are now almost 100% Alipay and Wechatpay, which means they have completely decoupled and e.g. US networks like Visa and Mastercard are irrelevant.

They may have done these but if I’m not mistaken they yuan is still pegged to the US dollar.

The Russians and their friends are playing a different game. Russian soldiers are like cattle heading to slaughter against NATO equipment and training.

But if long running influence operations seem to be the area where Russia in particular owns the board.

> A LOT of people are now safe because of Ukrainians (and NATO, and EU). Millions of them.

An instrumental narrative used by the media... Do you really believe that? The rest of your comment is also surreal: you are overestimating Russia and underestimating China.

The problem of the West is that all of our leaders are weak. Weak leaders precipitate wars.

> you are overestimating Russia and underestimating China

2 years ago Russia was called 2nd army of the world. China wasn't the first.

> The problem of the West is that all of our leaders are weak. Weak leaders precipitate wars.

These general statements are generally false.

Eastern Europeans are biased - scars are still there - but fear makes the wolf bigger than it really is.

> These general statements are generally false.

What about Trump or even Merkel? Biden and Von Der Leyen are a clear downgrade that may bring us a stupid war.

> Eastern Europeans are biased

We were called biased for 30 years. We were right. Still biased tho :) If you are called biased when you're proven right by the people who were wrong - it's not you who is biased.

> Trump and Merkel.

Both are former leaders.

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