I'm... coming around on China. I mean... they failed to successfully invade Burma. they failed to successfully invade Vietnam. Yeah China has definitely expanded a great deal since 1979 but... they're still China. They display outward contempt to every border state. Their OBOR dealings have largely been regarded as punitive by everyone. Their navy is built around a Soviet-era Kuznetsov-class ski jump carrier.

It doesn't take much to stymie a big navy. I think China's navy is a jobs program intended to intimidate, not dominate. Get a lot of ships out there, run a lot of drills, build a lot of bases, sure. I mean that was the basic Soviet playbook - if you look impressive enough you never have to prove it. The minute shit gets kinetic, though, you have a lot to lose.

How much face does China lose if they take a flyer at Taiwan and don't absolutely dominate? How complicated does their foreign policy become? How quickly does their new millennium become their old millennium?

You might be too young to remember this but Iraq had the fourth largest army in the world back in '90. Desert Shield was the dreaded, dreadful pause before we embarked on another Vietnam or worse; casualties could have been in the tens of thousands because of all the WMD and the Elite Republican Guard but we put up our yellow ribbons and supported the troops and we went from first shot to ceasefire in one hundred hours.

Popular memory insists that the Japanese were a fearsome strategic threat during WWII. The reality of the situation is they successfully ambushed the allies in December and were fighting a war of attrition by the following June. If the Japanese hadn't boxed themselves into a totalitarian death cult domestically the Pacific theater would have been over at Midway. As it was, US forces ended up fighting a war of near-extermination.

I think the Chinese would have to be truly foolhardy to start a shooting war with someone who can credibly fight back. Trade rocks across Ladakh? Sure. But I think they know their narrative falls apart the minute they launch Silkworms.

Speaking of Silkworms

The Silkworm was developed at the Institute of Mechanics under Qian Xuesen, a Chinese scientist who did his graduate studies at MIT and Caltech, before being deported by the United States in 1955 after being suspected of Communist ties. A book about this scientist's life was written by Iris Chang, entitled Thread of the Silkworm.