Pragmatically Distributed

The reason Israel should ignore the Progressive foreign policy consensus that says Israel should not bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities for fear of starting a “regional war” is because these are exactly the same Progressive geopolitical “experts” who helped create the economic conditions for Russia to wage war on Ukraine.

The primary way these Progressive “experts” facilitated Putin’s invasion was via their veering away from diplomacy and into climatology when they encouraged America and Europe to transition from stable nuclear and hydrocarbon sources of energy in favor of very unreliable wind and solar energy.

Almost all of these Progressive foreign policy analysts cheered Europe’s transition to unreliable energy sources, which in turn made the continent more and more reliant on Russian hydrocarbon fuels.

Today the Russians are using the trillions of dollars Europe have paid for Russian oil and gas to wage war on Ukraine.

Better still, Europe’s dependence on Russian energy remains so complete (because wind and solar are such worthless energy technologies) that most of Europe cannot risk banning purchases of Russian oil and gas despite the ongoing war.

Now, what do these same Progressive foreign policy analysts have to say about the possibility of Israel bombing Iran’s nuclear program?

These same Progressives whose preferred energy policies helped finance Putin’s war machine are the same Progressives who say it is too dangerous for Israel to bomb Iran because of the risk it would spark some kind of a regional war.

Israel should ignore this military advice just as completely as Germany should have ignored the Progressive foreign policy elite’s advice on energy policy.

The simple fact is that an airstrike against Iran (with or without support from the Biden Administration or the renewal of the JCPOA) is Israel’s best option because Israel does not need to worry about Iran retaliating with a “regional war” because Iran does not have the ability to wage a regional war.

Any Iranian missile retaliation against Saudi Arabia by Iranian Houthi proxies in Yemen would mostly be stopped by Saudi Arabia’s Patriot missile systems.

An attempt by Iran to stop the flow of oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with anti-ship mines would result in the US Navy destroying the wildly inferior Iranian Navy and clearing any mines that were laid out of the Strait with minesweepers.

The only serious retaliation option for Iran would be to order its Hezbollah allies to attack Israel.

But even in this case Israel would be well positioned to defeat any hostile action out of Lebanon.

In a couple of weeks Israel’s military superiority would suppress any attacks launched by Hezbollah, most likely losing only a couple hundred civilians and soldiers.

Hezbollah would also be fighting mostly alone because Syria’s military is exhausted after years of civil war and Iran is too poor to provide significant logistical support to its favorite proxy terrorist group.

Even if Hezbollah managed to drag out a conflict for a couple of months Israel would eventually win and the Iranian nuclear program would still be destroyed.

None of these retaliatory options would amount to any kind of regional war anymore than wind turbines have any chance of replacing fossil fuels.

Iran might be able to restart the engineering work for a new nuclear program but this would take years and Israel can always just bomb any new nuclear installations periodically once every couple of years, as many times as necessary.

With a destroyed Iranian program there would be no risk of Iran developing a bomb, an outcome that would be favorable to the United States (whether Biden realizes it or not) because Iran is MUCH easier to contain without a nuclear bomb than with a nuclear bomb.

If Iran never gets the bomb (and therefore cannot engage in North Korea-style nuclear blackmail/brinkmanship that would divert significant American deterrent resources to the Middle East just as North Korea’s brinkmanship diverts American forces to defend South Korea) then America can more easily divert moderate resources from the Middle East (without abandoning the region completely) to other parts of Asia such as Australia or Japan in order to deter China.

The hardest part of an Israeli airstrike is not that Iran would start a regional war that it clearly doesn’t have the resources to fight but in somehow delivering sufficient Israeli munitions to destroy hardened, deeply buried, nuclear facilities.

But this is a problem of military engineering and planning for the Israelis to solve, and as the Ukrainians have demonstrated a bit of military creativity and raw determination (not to mention a willingness to ignore the foreign policy experts who said Kiev would fall in a week or less) can carry a nation under threat a long way.

Before Putin declared war the consensus about Ukraine’s military was that while its combined regular and insurgent/territorial defense forces were numerically superior to the over 150,000 Russian soldiers that were poised to invade, the Ukrainians were nevertheless overmatched by Russia’s qualitative edge in equipment and training.

Continue reading “The Nuclear Deescalation Case for Giving Putin a Diplomatic Offramp if Russia’s Invasion is Outright Defeated”

Ukraine’s best strategy is to offer to drop its NATO membership bid (unless Russia at some point in the future drops its objection) in order to secure a cease fire.

Once the cease fire is secure Ukraine should spend the next few years acquiring more defensive weapons from the United States, Britain and the EU.

Ukraine should especially use the ceasefire to acquire Western weapons that would close the capability gaps between the Russian and Ukrainian militaries in areas where Russia presently has the advantage such as fighter jets, artillery, cruise missiles, and anti-aircraft systems.

Since Ukraine put up such a tough defensive fight against Russian forces the Kremlin will probably be reluctant to try to interfere directly again while Ukraine conducts an arms buildup, at least for a few, crucial years.

The reason why this is Ukraine’s best move is that China’s position on the Ukraine conflict is that, while they agree with Russia that Ukraine should not join NATO, they also prefer that this be handled through negotiations.

If Ukraine offered this proposal to Russia then it would be harder for China to tolerate Russia’s offensive because it would satisfy China’s official position on Ukraine.

Additionally, this would put China in a more difficult diplomatic position because they don’t want to be seen cheering a war by their increasingly suspicious neighbors in Asia who study closely every Chinese statement on military affairs.

They also seem to be a bit uneasy about the potential economic effects a war launched by a major energy producer could have on global markets, especially the lucrative European market where China has substantial business interests.

The odds that China would suddenly make more demands is also low since Ukraine is not considered a priority to China and because their diplomats usually do not engage in the wild negotiating tactics that Russian diplomats do. The general tendency of Chinese diplomats is usually to hold onto a negotiating stance without pulling late surprises.

All of this means that if Ukraine offers a major concession that seems to satisfy China’s diplomatic stance on the conflict it would be harder for China not to press Russia for an end to hostilities.

This would place Putin in a position where it would be harder for him not to agree to a peace deal that gives him a key Chinese and Russian demand.

If he were to continue with the attack he would be pressing his attack, even after China’s demand had been met, then he would be risking a more serious break with China by not negotiating.

And if he risked a break with China, an ally Russia must have on board to weather the affects of Western sanctions, then Putin would be at significant risk of being removed from power by Russia’s military and intelligence agency elites.

Best of all, Ukraine would be sacrificing nothing because the promise of Ukrainian NATO membership is a completely empty one.

It is impossible for Ukraine to join with an ongoing border conflict and NATO leaders have refused to give a timetable for Ukraine’s entry.

So the ‘open door’ policy of NATO is a completely empty slogan that provides Ukraine with no strategic advantage at all.

But by using NATO membership as a negotiating chip Ukraine could gain the strategic advantage of time by spending a few years gaining more powerful weapons to deter Russia in the future.

These extra defensive weapons would be what would secure Ukraine’s freedom, not the empty promise of NATO membership.

We will never know if Putin would have decided against attacking Ukraine if he had been offered a deal where NATO (or at least a major Alliance member) agreed not to admit Ukraine unless the Russian Government formally approved of it.

Nor will ever know if Putin would have come up with another excuse to attack, because no one offered it to Russia.

Perhaps not even Putin knows what he would have done if he had been offered this deal earlier.

But what is clear is that making that offer at least wouldn’t have harmed Ukraine’s defensive position any more than it already has been by NATO holding out an empty membership offer that could never be fulfilled because no applicant can be admitted if it has an ongoing border dispute.

Also not helpful was the fact almost everyone in the United States arguing in favor of better Russian relations sounded like a cheerleader for Putin.

We now know, in hindsight, that not offering this deal to Putin had, exactly, a 0% chance of preventing a Russian attack on Ukraine.

Since offering it would have had a greater than 0% chance of placating Putin (or, delaying an invasion years into the future which would have given Ukraine more time to strengthen its defenses) the better option would have been to offer some sort of mechanism where Russia would have a veto over Ukrainian entrance to NATO.

In exchange for indefinitely postponing their NATO membership (except for the very unlikely event Russia changed its mind anytime before the distant future) Ukraine would be given more and more defensive weapons to better deter a potential Russian invasion.

Ukraine would certainly have been better off because the weapons they would have received under this deal would be usable right now against Russia.

These weapons would be very unlike the empty promise of NATO membership, which at this very moment is sitting somewhere at NATO headquarters on laptops and document stacks gathering dust.

As has been pointed out on this site a number of times there was no benefit to Ukraine or NATO in holding onto the ‘open door’ policy when Ukraine could never have joined NATO so long as it was dealing with an ongoing Russian occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbas.

A broader topic would be why did the idiots in the West who call themselves “foreign policy analysts” not realize, and still do not realize, that NATO should not have any ‘open door’ policy at all?

The reason is that the West’s foreign policy analysts are Progressives who do not know how to engage in the activity known as ‘thinking.’

Progressives do not know how to think.

Progressives only know how to create more and more useless bureaucracy.

Perhaps foreign policy talking heads should try thinking instead of creating useless bureaucratic rules like mask mandates and they will avoid more problems.

Problems such as praising Angela Merkel who was, during the Trump era, called “The Leader of the Free World.”

How do Leader Merkel’s decisions look in retrospect?

First, the great stateswoman left the German military badly underfunded throughout her widely praised 16 year tenure.

To make matters worse, Merkel put Germany completely at the mercy of Gazprom by stupidly endorsing German legislation that shut down half of her country’s nuclear power (the only known, completely reliable, 100% carbon free energy technology in the world) at the end of last year and which will close Germany’s remaining nuclear plants at the end of this year.

Reliable, carbon free, nuclear energy was shuttered in favor of completely unreliable wind power, electric cars, and (except when used in deserts) solar power.

The green policies Merkel implemented in Germany were copied by Western Europe and, under Biden, in the United States with America shutting down the Keystone pipeline and Britain banning fracking on its own soil.

The result of the West “transitioning” from stable nuclear power (which produces no carbon at all) and gas power to unreliable “renewables” has meant that 40% of European gas supplies come from Russia.

All of the green energy policies that led to European overdependence on Russian oil and gas were praised to the rafters for decades by the same Progressive foreign policy “elite” that also insisted on maintaining an open door policy to Ukrainian NATO membership, despite the fact it was legally impossible for Ukraine to join so long as Russia occupied Crimea and areas of Donbas.

Like Progressive foreign policy, Progressive energy policy is devoid of the act known as ‘thinking’ because they despise the only 0% carbon source of energy that is reliable, proven, and abundant (nuclear) in favor of completely unreliable “non-carbon” sources of energy that do not work.

Progressive should try thinking for once and then maybe they will be able to speak credibly on energy policy.

Once Progressives learn how to think about energy policy, then they may at last be ready to talk about foreign policy.

But let’s drop Western green energy policy (which is another Progressive marvel of pure, unadulterated, stupidity) for now and pivot back to foreign policy.

Let’s try thinking about foreign policy by using game theory.

As mentioned in previous articles one of the advantages of understanding game theory is that one can acquire the ability not to just see various options an actor may take, but also to see how an entire scenario is structured/designed, as a complete, interactive system.

What is the structural/design flaw of NATO’s open door policy for Ukraine from the perspective of John von Neumann’s game theory concepts?

The overall design flaw here is that it creates a scenario that is both pointless and unstable between the various actors involved in the Ukraine drama.

It is pointless because there was no legal way for Ukraine to enter NATO so long as Russia occupied parts of Ukraine.

It is unstable because the ‘open door’ policy greatly incentivized Russia to keep the occupation going indefinitely in order to (among other Russian objectives) block Ukraine from entering NATO.

And as long as Russia’s occupation kept going the risk that one side or other would miscalculate and use force to attain certain objectives increased over time.

Pointless and unstable is the perfect description not only of Progressive foreign policy but also of Progressive energy policy; indeed of every Progressive policy.

What this structural analysis means, when translated into diplomatic terms, is quite simply that no military alliance should ever have an ‘open door’ membership policy because of the nature of military alliances, in general.

Military alliances are not humanitarian agencies.

Military alliances are not international economic organizations.

NATO is not Doctors Without Borders.

NATO is not the World Trade Organization.

NATO is not the International Red Cross.

NATO is not the Eurozone.

NATO is a military alliance which means that whenever it adds new members it will naturally run the risk of encountering some kind of a hostile response by any power that feels threatened (however rightly or wrongly) by that military alliance.

Is there anything wrong with NATO running risk?

In game theory there is NOTHING wrong with taking on risk if – ***IF*** – one can AFFORD to take the risk.

But NATO members have made clear they are not willing to take the risk of defending Ukraine directly, a country with no legal mechanism to join NATO because of an ongoing border dispute.

In which case, under game theory logic, NATO should never have offered Ukraine membership in the first place because of the high risk of making the offer and zero chance of Ukraine joining NATO.

But knowing whether NATO could afford the risk of insisting on a purely theoretical Ukrainian entry into NATO that could never actually happen in reality (short of NATO militarily forcing Russia out of Crimea and Donbas, which was a risk NATO was not willing to take) simply did not occur to Western foreign policy “experts.”

This because Progressive foreign policy “experts” are trained in bureaucracy, not diplomacy, and so they held onto a stupid rule (without minor qualifications such as what the reaction of a potential enemy might be) that says anyone can join NATO.

Moreover, bureaucrats never ask whether stupid rules should exist in the first place because their job is to simply create more stupid rules like mask mandates for the triple-vaccinated.

The actual foreign policy rule that should have been followed by actual diplomats should have been that a NATO member should only join IF there is some advantage or advantages to their entrance that outweighs the risk of a negative reaction by a hostile power.

But understanding this would require ‘thinking’ which the foreign policy pundit class has no grasp of just like the “trained physicist” Angela Merkel had no idea of the fact that the only technologically viable form of zero-carbon energy is nuclear.

The best move for Ukraine to make would be for Germany or France to offer Russia a five year suspension in Ukraine’s NATO membership application in order to give more time for diplomacy.

Although the Ukrainian Government could almost certainly not make this offer itself because it would be seen as weakness, either Germany or France would be doing Ukraine a favor if they offered this medium term deal to Russia.

There are a number of reasons why this would be beneficial for Ukraine.

The first reason is simply that Ukraine would lose nothing under this proposal because it is impossible for any nation to join NATO if it has an ongoing border conflict because, if it were to join, that would mean every NATO member would technically be at war with whatever nation the new member was fighting with.

By offering a five year suspension to Ukraine’s application bid Germany or France would be “conceding” a NATO ascension for Ukraine that can not happen even with just the existing border disputes in Crimea and Donbas.

The second reason is that the offer would throw off a number of Putin’s potential goals.

The Russian forces arrayed against Ukraine are not enough to fight a multi-year insurgent warfare campaign in Ukraine’s cities if Putin intended a full-scale occupation of at least half the country.

At least 500,000 Russian soldiers would be needed to occupy and hold the Eastern half of Ukraine, a number that is probably not politically sustainable among the Russian public or something Russia’s military could keep going for an indefinite period of time. It would be so large that Russia’s military would have little reserves left to handle any kind of military situation that occurred outside of Ukraine.

Hence why Russia’s deployment is less than half of what would be realistically needed.

If Putin were absolutely determined to go with a full-scale attack and annex half the country, no matter the military and economic consequences, then he wouldn’t be going “cheap” with the number of Russian forces deployed.

This leaves two main options for Russia.

One is that Putin is still trying to pressure Ukraine and the West for diplomatic concessions.

The recognition of the breakaway provinces in Ukraine might have been an attempt to divide NATO over a “grey area” of what constitutes an invasion.

And the continued military pressure on Ukraine could be an attempt to weaken its economy enough to force the Ukrainians to make concessions.

To keep up this economic pressure Putin simply needs to continue to hold the threat of war up for months, but has no need to launch a campaign.

The other option is that he intends a narrow attack, possibly seizing and holding a few more provinces. The size of the Russian force is sufficient to do that without having to worry much with insurgent warfare and would be able to throw back any Ukrainian counter-attacks.

Their existing forces could also invade quickly and target major Ukrainian military positions, but then withdraw instead of trying to hold land in the face of urban warfare insurgency.

Toppling the Government in Kiev is not realistic because a puppet regime installed by Russia would have no legitimacy in the eyes of the Ukrainian public or in the diplomatic arena.

In either case, offering a five year suspension would be useful regardless of which of the two possibilities Putin is most likely aiming for.

If Putin intends to go with a narrow attack then this would undercut his justification for launching a war by giving some leeway on a key demand of his.

At a minimum it would make it harder to justify to the public the economic and military costs of an attack would impose on Russia if there is officially no immediate chance of Ukraine entering NATO.

This proposal would also make it more difficult for Russia to justify their actions to China because Beijing has recently signaled that, while they agree with Putin that Ukraine should not join NATO, they also want to see this demand met with diplomatic agreements, not warfare.

The reason China announced this is probably because they do not want to be seen cheering a land invasion since their Asian neighbors would interpret Chinese support for an invasion to mean China is considering territorial expansion in their own neighborhood.

If Ukrainian NATO membership is put on hold it would serve to drive a further wedge between Russia and China on Ukraine because China could see some progress in what they see as a legitimate Russian request that Ukraine not join the Alliance and this concession would have been made without war.

If Putin still wanted to attack after this offer is made it would be even harder for Russia to get support from China, which still has never recognized Crimea as part of Russia.

And if Putin is actually trying to use the threat of war as diplomatic leverage then he could sell this proposal as a “win” for Russia on a major goal that will then open the way for deescalation.

Progressives have nearly destroyed science with their religious faith that the best form of government is a dictatorship of the scientists.

Although, at first glance, having scientists involved in political decision making seems like a good idea, the actual result of coronavirus policies has revealed that, in practice, every scientist involved in political decision making quickly transforms into a lying politician instead of behaving like an actual scientist.

The prime example of this is Anthony Fauci.

Fauci is not making decisions based on science.

He is making decisions to enhance his own political power and control over the American population.

When Fauci promotes mask policies (which have proven to have negligible effect on the coronavirus) his recommendation is being made only because he is getting exactly the same neurochemical high that Hitler got addressing the Reichstag and Stalin got saluting a Soviet military parade; albeit Fauci is getting that same drug hit over smaller scale dictatorial policies.

Fauci is not a scientist anymore, if he ever was.

Fauci (and most everyone else at the various Federal health agencies) is a power addicted politician who will feed his “habit” no matter how much real science says his bureaucratic diktats do little to ameliorate the pandemic.

For example, it was clear six months into the coronavirus that masks had little effect outside of very densely packed cities or indoor environments like bars because the disease does not spread when people walk pass eachother outdoors, in schools, in restaurants, or even inside shopping departments. This is why I have never worn a mask outdoors or even indoors (except for plane travel and doctor’s appointments, and even then I got around this by pretending to drink coffee or from a water bottle). Although masks have been mandatory in my area for most of the pandemic I have found no one except airports and doctor’s offices will enforce the rule.  The result of this for me was that a few days before I got my first shot of Moderna last I took a blood test for virus antibodies and came up negative which indicated I never had the virus despite going around without a mask.

If the masks worked they would have ended the pandemic in a couple of weeks because the whole world was wearing masks.

The vaccines and other pharmaceutical interventions are the answer to the pandemic because they are highly effective at preventing people from dying or getting seriously ill. Pharmaceuticals also either minimize the spread of the virus, or, at worst, they downgrade the effect of it to just a bad flu for everyone except those with very weakened immune systems.

By six months into the pandemic it was also clear that there was no need for extreme lockdown measures to be imposed on those under 50 years of age, who had no preexisting condition that seriously affected their immune system.

Instead of a “one size fits all” lockdown the most severe lockdown policies should have been targeted only at the elderly or those with significant preexisting illnesses, with everyone else being advised to follow more moderate hygene policies.

One factor that is missing in Putin’s threats against Ukraine is that the scale of Russia’s deployment is too small for a large operation.

The current 130,000 Russian troops are simply not enough to capture a vast amounts of Ukrainian territory.

One would get the impression from news coverage that taking over Ukraine would be easy for Russia to do, like it was for Putin to devastate Georgia’s small military a few years ago.

But the Russians would have to overcome hundreds of thousands of motivated regular troops backed up by over a half-million reservists who would be fighting a bloody insurgency, especially in urban areas.

Even though Russia has conventional superiority in a number of areas the sheer size of the Ukrainian military and the broad area of territory Russian troops would have to control could easily result in a disastrous, multi-year insurgency for the Russian military to deal.

If Putin were not deterred by the significant military risks and expense associated with a full occupation of Eastern Ukraine (not to mention other non-military costs that Russia would have to contend with) then he should be deploying at least 300,000 regular soldiers backed up with somewhere around 100,000 to 200,000 reservists.

That Putin is deploying a fraction of the number that would be realistically needed to invade half of Ukraine is another reason, perhaps the best reason, to think he either intends a small operation over a limited amount of Ukrainian territory or that he is really using the deployment as a negotiation tactic.

Although a narrower attack would minimize the risk of a protracted Ukrainian insurgency it’s debatable what kind of a small scale operation would yield enough of a benefit to be worth economic and diplomatic costs that will be as substantial as if Putin opted for a large scale invasion.

The argument against the notion that Putin is really engaging in an elaborate diplomatic maneuver is that he hasn’t yet pivoted to making different, more realistic, demands to NATO that won’t be rejected immediately like his initial, unrealistic, demands were.

Perhaps, but because he can order an invasion anytime he wants to he still has the option to switch to more realistic demands so long as he is only threatening war.

And it may be that his initial demands were not as unattainable as they first appeared.

For any nation to join NATO all existing members must agree unanimously on their entry.

Therefore, any single NATO member state has the full legal power to unilaterally block the ascension of any NATO applicant.

In order to get a more legally binding security guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO (something more legally durable than the current status quo where Russia indefinitely occupies Ukrainian territory to block off its membership bid) then Putin only needs to get one NATO member to agree to postpone it.

The two obvious choices for Putin to pressure are Germany and France.

Putin could simply offer a bilateral treaty to both nations that he will agree to pullback his deployment if one or both of them guarantee that they will not allow Ukraine to join NATO unless the Russian Government approves of it.

If either France or Germany signed such a treaty it would be, under NATO rules, 100% as legally binding and diplomatically effective at blocking Ukrainian NATO membership as if the United States had signed it.

Since German Greens stupidly left their energy security completely at the mercy of Gazprom by closing half of Germany’s existing nuclear power plants last year (and who have promised to close Germany’s last nuclear plants at the end of this year) the German Government could conceivably pass a treaty like that through the Bundestag.

France – which has a national legislature populated with Russia doves who span all sides of their political spectrum and an incumbent President who would love to strike a major diplomatic win ahead of his reelection campaign – could also pass such a deal, probably overwhelmingly.

The Beijing Olympics are a problem for Russia if they intend to launch a war against Ukraine.

If I were Putin I would definitely avoid beginning a war before or during the Olympics because of the risk of angering Xi.

A war would completely erase any media attention China is hoping to earn from the games.

Although it is probable Xi wouldn’t immediately get revenge for ruining his propaganda coup, if I were governing Russia I would not want to run even a small risk that at some point in the future I would need China’s support but then be denied it at the worst possible moment.

Because what other Russian ally could offer a fraction of their money, military and diplomatic support?

Syria?

Venezuela?

That means an invasion would have to be postponed until after the Olympics end in late February.

But a delay is problematic for any war plans because it would give Ukraine too much advance notice to prepare their defenses.

By the time the Olympics are over the Ukrainian Army will have half of America’s stockpile of Javelin anti-tank missiles.

If Putin waits for the games to end before proceeding with the invasion then he would be undertaking the greatest military gamble of his career without preserving any element of surprise.

This would be very out of character with his past modus operandi where he maximized surprise for smaller conflicts in Crimea and Georgia.

The significant amount of time Russia is giving Ukraine to buildup their defenses is another indication Putin is threatening war as a negotiating ploy.

Some analysts believe Russia needs an offramp to deescalate without losing face, but they may not even need that because of how many different issues they could pivot the negotiations towards that are unrelated to Ukrainian NATO membership and the stationing of American forces in NATO member states.

For example, Russia could simply take an offer directly to France and Germany to draw down their military in exchange for German and EU regulators approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Germany (which will close its last three remaining nuclear plants at the end of this year) will be happy to dissuade Russia from starting a war in Eastern Europe and stabilize its supply of Russian gas while Macron would be delighted to get credit for a major diplomatic agreement ahead of the French Presidential election this April.

And then after Putin gets Nord Stream 2 he can return next year with another crisis in search of more diplomatic concessions.

First we will give the best option for the United States to take on Taiwan and then we will give the reasons derived from game theory that justify the option.

But, before that, we need to deal with the option of not militarily defending Taiwan.

From a game theory perspective abandoning Taiwan would make perfect strategic sense – but only under one condition.

Not defending Taiwan from a mainland invasion would be the best option if America also intends to abandon all of its Asian allies to China.

The reason this is the only scenario where it would be logical is because it is geographically much easier to defend our allies such as Japan, Australia and others, as well as ensure freedom of navigation through the multi-trillion dollar traffic navigating the South China Sea if Taiwan remains independent of the mainland.

If a free and well armed Taiwan is included as part of America’s defensive line against China it will be harder for China to project power across the rest of Asia.

But if Taiwan is annexed by China then it becomes significantly more difficult for America to defend Japan, our other allies, America’s own bases and territories, maintain freedom of navigation in the South China Sea (which China could, with Taiwan, easily cut Japan off from) and generally leave China in a much stronger position to economically and militarily control every other Asian nation and, from there, in a much better position to rule the entire planet.

Keeping our other security commitments in Asia without Taiwan would be a ridiculous idea considering how the loss of the island would complicate our deterrent line.

Abandoning Taiwan would is preferable only if we abandon everything else in the Pacific and hand world hegemony to China in exchange for absolutely nothing.

If we are going to maintain a powerful military presence in the Pacific then the following is the best policy for America to adopt under game theory –

• • So long as Taiwan does not formally declare independence or otherwise provoke China into an immediate attack (such as by Taiwan building its own nuclear weapons program) the United States drops strategic ambiguity and officially commits the US Navy to defending Taiwan for the next ten years if it comes under attack from China within that timeframe. This commitment includes the US destroying mainland forces attempting to subject Taiwan to any kind of air or naval blockade of the island because blockades have been universally recognized as acts of war throughout all of history.
  • The future renewal of America’s military guarantee is dependent on Taiwan greatly improving its own military preparedness and counter-intelligence programs over the ten year window with military training and advice provided by American military advisors.
  • During this timeframe the US agrees to provide extra military and financial assistance to Taiwan (With the US paying up to $5 billion annually to Taiwan) to domestically produce or externally purchase thousands of additional long range anti-ship cruise missiles (with ranges of at least 1,500 km) fired from mobile land-based launchers and, to a lesser extent, from air and naval platforms.
  • The United States agrees to provide military and financial assistance to help Taiwan domestically produce or externally purchase all of the associated systems required to use anti-ship cruise missiles in war such as land based missile launchers, active and passive radar systems, and satellites.
  • The United States agrees to provide military and financial assistance to help Taiwan domestically produce or externally purchase any other conventional weapons relevant for its defense, such as fighter aircraft, long range artillery, hand held anti-ship missiles (perhaps modified versions of Javelin anti-tank missiles for use against amphibious troop transports?) etc., etc.

To demonstrate how game theory led to concluding this is the best option we will start by looking at the strategic objectives of Xi.

If I were Xi and I wanted to annex Taiwan I would first of all need to be certain that I would win because a failed invasion would risk the collapse of my Government, whereas I am at almost no risk of losing power if I simply delay an invasion and sit in Beijing while using Taiwan as some sort of propaganda boogeyman.

To pave the way for an invasion I would need to accomplish three preliminary goals –

1) Fortify the economy to a point where it could survive the disruption of merchant traffic and sanctions that an invasion would cause.
2) Buildup my Chinese Navy to a point where it would be powerful enough to destroy any American, Japanese and other allied ships that try to intervene (if America does not intervene, and I am only fighting Taiwan, then I simply have more resources than required).
3) Buildup my land and air forces to a point where they would be powerful enough to overwhelm Taiwanese defenses in a gigantic amphibious requiring at least 500,000 soldiers making it to shore and then another 1 million soldiers (at least) pouring in as reinforcements once a good beachhead is secured.

Fortifying the economy to withstand the negative effects of trade disruptions and sanctions could be done soon, probably five years or less, perhaps one.

But the last two preliminary objectives are more than ten years away from being realistic.

An invasion would have to be preceded by China achieving complete air and naval control around Taiwan because of how vulnerable amphibious landing craft would be.

If the Chinese Navy is destroyed by intervening US and allied warships the amphibious landing could not go ahead, and my invasion will have failed.

And even if the Chinese Navy won the engagement there would still be serious dangers of the amphibious assault failing after control of the sea is established.

The narrowest point between the mainland and Taiwan is 81 miles. Therefore, any landing craft that sail from China would be on the sea for anywhere from 5 to 10 hours, depending on how fast their transports go.

That means my transports would be exposed to land based Taiwanese artillery and missile fire for 5 to 10 hours.

Out of an initial landing force of 500,000 I could easily lose half of that.

And whatever Chinese soldiers made it to shore would be slaughtered by hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese soldiers ready and waiting to crush my invading force at the landing points, in which case my invasion still fails.

Therefore, even defeating the United States and its allies is not enough if Taiwan defeats my landing force.

And given the complexities and dangers involved in what would be the largest amphibious landing in history it is entirely possible that the invasion would fail even if Taiwan fights alone.

Both, extremely risky, phases – control of the sea and successfully executing an amphibious assault on Taiwan – must be highly likely to succeed in order to justify the associated risk (unless Taiwan did something that might pose to much of a threat to the mainland to not act immediately, such as building its own nuclear weapons).

The simple problem for Xi is that it is not realistic for his military to pull off both required phases in the next decade.

One other game theory structural dynamic to consider is that the strategic circumstances favors China being attracted to postponing the timing of an invasion further into the future, perhaps perpetually.

For example, if China has a 20% chance of taking Taiwan today but a 30% chance in ten years, the strategic incentives favor China postponing an invasion into the 2030s.

And in the 2030s if they have a 30% chance of annexing Taiwan but a 40% chance in the 2040s the incentives for China in the 2030s will be for them to postpone an invasion for another decade.

The final thing to consider is that tendency of the CCP is to be highly risk averse.

This means that that the Chinese Government would only attack if they were close to certain the mission would be a success.

Therefore they would be more strongly attracted than other nations to postponing an invasion in the present if they thought the odds would be just moderately better in the future.

Now return to the options for the United States listed earlier.

The reason America can give Taiwan a decade long security guarantee with (counter-intuitively) low risk is because the Chinese will be unlikely to try to invade within an earlier timeframe if they face the certain risk of US intervention.

By giving Taiwan a decade guarantee with renewal dependent on them further arming themselves we would be strongly incentivizing them to greatly increase their combat readiness (which should be close to Israeli and South Korean levels of military preparedness) and for them to step up their counter-intelligence operations so we have the option of giving them more technologically sophisticated weapons in the future.

It also gives America a chance to review whether we should renew the defense pledge in a decade.

If Taiwan is armed with thousands of long range anti-ship cruise missiles the island would be more dangerous to try to invade than it already is because Taiwan could probably use those missiles to knock out at half of the entire Chinese surface fleet in the opening hours of a conflict, even before US forces engage Chinese warships.

With an official American pledge to defend Taiwan the risk averse Chinese Communist Party would likely drop serious consideration of an invasion in the near term and prefer an attack in the future when they would have better odds.

One point that John von Neumann emphasized repeatedly when he (basically) invented the academic field of game theory is that in order to understand each actor’s objectives one has to always remember to resist the temptation to substitute one’s own preferences and objectives for those of different actors.

Unfortunately this point of his is still poorly understood by almost everyone except those who have studied game theory.

Continue reading “Analyzing in More Detail Russia’s Military Options for Starting a Ukrainian War Using Game Theory”