There’s a fairly common contrarian narrative circulating around the internet:
Sure China looks big and strong but they really have all kinds of problems. The shadow banking sector, inefficient SOEs, corruption, horrendous environmental degradation, middle-income trap, command economy, expensive internal security apparatus, low birth rates and so on will prevent them from overtaking the US. Meanwhile, while the US looks like an empire in rapid decline, American capitalism and republican institutions have often rebounded in the past. The US still has a technological edge in semiconductors, enduring power of democracy and freedom, world’s largest navy by tonnage etc, dozens of allies…
I believe this is cherry-picking and that China looks big and strong because it is big and strong. They have problems but have the willpower and intellect to fix them, to expand and improve. Meanwhile, it is the US that is experiencing a precipitous decline. They’re far weaker than they look on nearly every front. There’s a critical weakness in elite willpower that has rendered the US passive and incapable of effectively wielding what remains of its strength.
This imbalance happened once before. France in the 1930s and those few weeks in May is the archetypal example of this failure mode. They experienced more than a decade of decay (military and political) before a stunning defeat, yet it was largely unnoticed outside a few niche commentators. Nearly everyone thought they’d wipe the floor with the Germans. I think the same thing is happening with the US and China today. Note that I’m not focused on advocating a normative argument ‘this is how things should be’, I’m trying to describe a phenomenon within a zero-sum strategic worldview: 'This is how things should be if you want to win'.
Background to WW2: Losing the unlosable war
France had recently won the greatest war in human history. On a strategic level, they’d managed to encircle Germany pre-war, securing an alliance with Russia and eventually Britain. They’d developed a plan to actively reshape Europe in their favour: force Germany into a two-front war they lacked the resources to win. Then retake Alsace-Lorraine and neuter Germany forever more. In 1912, the French told the Russians they’d be willing to fight for their Balkan interests, essentially ensuring a war at some point. But despite propping up Russia with loans and strategic investment for decades, the Russians didn’t do nearly as well as expected on the battlefield. (Obviously all kinds of other factors were involved but I’m just interested in what the French were doing. Their strategy was simple and worked, on the whole.)
France performed very well on the military front, fighting against a powerful foe with some of their richest provinces under enemy occupation. While the British lost 20,000 men on Day 1 of the Somme, the French took their objectives at a minimum of fatalities (something like 200, excellent even considering it was a primarily British operation). Ferdinand Foch was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in WW1. He was their Eisenhower and rightly so: the French made the greatest contribution to the Western Front and thus the war. The French showed extraordinary resolve to fight on through heavy casualties (the highest proportionately of any major power) and mastered the new doctrine of trench warfare.
Anyway, one would think that Germany would have no chance for round 3. They’d lost 10% of their European territory, their entire colonial empire, their navy was all but deleted, the army was vastly reduced, airforce prohibited and their allies had been dismembered. France now had alliances with Czechoslovakia and Poland and of course they had the British Empire on their side, along with limited support from all the other democracies. Even Fascist Italy was friendly towards the Allies: they joined in the 1935 Stresa Front which promised to defend Austria from Hitler. After all, who would you prefer to ally with as a second-rate wannabe power? The triumphant victors of the Great War or the bitter loser? Furthermore, France developed a powerful defensive strategy: fortify the Franco-German border to the point of impregnability (the infamous Maginot line) and prepare mobile forces to move into Belgium to dig in there. Then, use the vastly superior Allied navies to blockade the Germans into submission like in the last war. All the while, the Allies would be mobilizing the vast resources of the world’s greatest empires plus whatever could be bought on world markets. Germany had no oil, no rubber, no tungsten, little iron ore, not much of anything but coal. In the long run they’d have to lose. France would merely have to defend from prepared positions for a few years, then strike with overwhelming force. It would be a very cost-effective way to win the war, saving money and lives.
(There’s a myth that the French didn’t expect the Germans to go around the line: that’s totally untrue. They remembered WW1. Even the Ardennes-being-impenetrable part isn’t really true. Once you get out of the Ardennes you still have to break through several rivers to get anywhere. River crossings against prepared opponents are some of the most difficult things you can possibly do.)
From the Outside View, sending the best part of your army deep into enemy territory in a rapid armoured thrust is a recipe for disaster, especially against a numerically superior force who has spent 20 years preparing to defend against your invasion. It was a hail-Mary move because the strategic situation for Germany was so bleak: they were totally outmatched by Allied resources. But it worked. I posit Maginot syndrome as an explanation for why France performed so poorly, why they failed to beat an opponent they should’ve had every advantage over. There are a number of causes, all stemming down to a failure of focused willpower by elites to implement a strategy:
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Political division. France was divided between communists and rightists to a crippling extent. Cabinet was unable to make a meaningful response to the great crisis of the time: the Great Depression. Corruption was rife. Mass strikes shut down industry and hasty, overgenerous labour reforms hurt the economy. When one’s government can’t manage internal affairs, it won’t have the energy to deal with foreign relations properly: attention is a scarce resource after all. Things got to the point where the French government was afraid of the military: one argument for why De Gaulle’s armoured division proposal was ignored is because it would represent a danger for the military to have too much autonomy and independence. France was internally divided, incapable of focusing on a strategy to advance their interests.
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Appease when they’re weak, challenge when strong (the worst possible grand strategy). French foreign policy in the later interwar period was largely dominated by what the British wanted: the French rightly knew they needed British help to beat Germany (though they should’ve been able to hold alone), so they don’t bear all the blame for this one. Even so, the French enjoyed overwhelming military superiority up until 1937. They could’ve kicked down the door when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland and the whole structure would’ve come crumbling down. But they didn’t, because they were apathetic. French generals deliberately overestimated the number of German troops entering the Rhineland, including SS paramilitaries in the count. Inaction was the goal, not any kind of realistic strategy. The same goes for Czechoslovakia: the British persuaded themselves the Germans had the firepower to obliterate London on Day 1 because they used WW1 trench warfare deaths/tonne of TNT statistics and vastly overestimated the Luftwaffe’s range and payload capacity. It was a stupid and inappropriate thing to do then and didn’t even make much sense: surely they would invest in a much larger air force if the damage was so great OR move to take out Germany before the Luftwaffe developed? But the phoney numbers justified inaction, which is what Chamberlain and the rest of the appeasers desired. Certainly, Chamberlain lost his son in WW1 and fully understood the gravity of war – but that isn’t an excuse for bad strategy even if it makes his decisions more understandable. The Allies frittered away their hard-won spoils of WW1: they bungled the Stresa Front and pushed Italy towards Hitler by mishandling the invasion of Ethiopia. Misguided virtue-signalling and adherence to the League of Nations spirit of countering aggression cost them an important ally (and the Ethiopians were no better off btw). They handed Czechoslovakia (a well fortified country in a great meatshield position) to Hitler on a silver platter. They failed to secure Soviet support, making an extremely worthless treaty with the Soviets in 1935 rather than anything binding and effective. This naturally led to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Stalin couldn’t comprehend just how stupid Allied foreign policy was, he assumed the Allies were working with Hitler to turn him against the Soviets, so he pre-empted them. Essentially, Allied foreign policy from 1933 onwards was a complete debacle: they were blindly, passively pacifistic rather than actively, strategically advancing their interests.
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Obsolescence and inadequacy in the places that mattered, abundance in the irrelevant. The French army had plenty of artillery and tanks – more than Germany. Their tanks were often better armed and armoured than early-war German armour. The combined Allied forces (who had months and months to actively prepare for the invasion) outnumbered their German counterparts. The BEF was very well motorized, proportionately more motorized than the German army as a whole. However, they lacked radios, anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns and aircraft, the critical things they needed. Their doctrine was also obsolete: they were well-prepared for lengthy, well-planned Great War style battles not fast-paced armoured thrusts and counter-thrusts. They expected time to plan, not to need radios because nothing would be happening on the scale of hours. There were a few reformers who urged change but nothing was done. Nobody had the will to push into the unknown, to try out unproven new tactics.
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General military ineptitude. The infamous German push through the Ardennes did not go unnoticed. French recon planes spotted the buildup and should’ve alerted command. Perhaps command was alerted and chose to ignore it. Perhaps they were counting on the Germans to have to bring up heavy artillery if they wanted to break river defences: instead the Luftwaffe did that. In any event, French High Command was passive when the situation was in their favour and defeatist when things got bad. They ignored a months-long opportunity when the bulk of the German army was demolishing Poland, sitting still on the vulnerable French-German border. They somehow managed to let Germany invade Norway, by sea, despite having a huge advantage in naval power. They threw in the towel when the Germans did something unprecedented, like Rommel’s tanks and Stukas blitzing through the French at the Meuse. The rank and file were quickly demoralized, retreating en masse. While it’s true that after the initial encirclement the French fought fairly well, after you lose 61 divisions in an encirclement it’s very hard to come back without Soviet levels of space and manpower.
The Modern Day
Looking at the US in the present day, I’m concerned by the similarities. The US is at least as politically divided as France was. The government is dysfunctional and incapable of efficiently executing basic tasks like the Chinese can: see infrastructure, housing, highspeed rail, COVID vaccines, COVID lockdowns and shambolic foreign policy see-sawing (Iran deal, operations in Syria). This ineptitude naturally extends into the military: warships crash repeatedly. I don’t have any egregious combat errors because the US hasn’t fought a naval war since WW2 – but avoiding collision in open waters in peacetime is surely a prerequisite to winning a naval war! If you can see cracks and broken windows outside the house, things are probably worse inside where you can’t see.
The US is being consistently outbuilt by China as well, which is alarming considering the supposed gulf in defense budgets. The greatest military threat to the US is China, so how is America being outpaced when they have around twice the money? US dockyards are in a sorry state, contractors are incompetent and there’s new ships are expensive and ineffective like the Zumwalt. Alternately, the Chinese might be pumping a lot more money into their military than they say. At any rate, they can afford to do so. If they truly are spending about 1.2% of GDP on the military as they say, they can triple it. Russia can afford 3% of GDP despite crippling sanctions and rampant corruption in an already weak economy. A strong dictatorship with a colossal industrial base should be capable of more.
Furthermore, just like France, there’s a danger of the US being behind in the areas that matter. China is ahead in hypersonics. While the US does have an advantage in supercarriers and 5th gen aircraft, it may be that hypersonic glide vehicles are simply superior. They are faster, longer range and possibly cheaper once you account for pilot training costs and the other miscellaneous expenses of aerial warfare. If carriers can’t get close enough to Taiwan because of the missiles and the airbases themselves get obliterated, what good can the F35 do? Of course, the US and allies are developing anti-missile systems and hypersonics of their own but these technologies aren’t really mature yet. Besides, it’s always been very difficult to shoot down missiles in a cost-effective way, let alone missiles that can alter their ballistic trajectories. And there's an innate advantage to the aggressor if hypersonic missiles become the primary weapon of war: he who launches first wins. Even if both sides lose their airfields, C4I, radar… the side that can launch a few sorties and is marginally more prepared will have an advantage. This will favour China, since the US is never going to strike first.
Yes, even if the US loses its nearby airbases, they can use strategic bombers with standoff weapons to counterattack. There are weaknesses in this though: the US doesn’t have many strategic bombers, they are more temperamental to maintain for long-term operations and even the B2 would need in-air refuelling, complicating the logistical situation. They are also quite old and are unable to contest for air superiority. There’s danger in deploying last-generation stealth tech against a foe who has had 20 years to prepare and counter them. Modernity matters: updating avionics and weapons has diminishing returns.
The Chinese fleet is also in many respects more modern than the American fleet. The new Type 55’s seem quite capable. The Chinese 052Ds are young, along with most of the other frigates and destroyers. Looking at their fleet, I was surprised by how many frigates and destroyers they can pump out in a single year.
They’ll be facing off against US Ticonderegas (the youngest of which was commissioned in 1994), a couple of disastrously mismanaged but contemporary Zumwalts, a lot of Arleigh Burkes (mostly made in 1990s and 2000s but with updated production continuing), Los Angeles subs from the 80’s and 90’s, a couple of 2000’s Seawolfs and 2000’s and 2010’s Virginia subs. The new Gerald R Ford carrier is modern but the Nimitz’s are old and their powerplants will make it difficult to install new systems like missile-defence lasers. So as we continue into the 2020s, the aging USN will face a modern, readily upgradeable and rapidly growing fleet that’s totally concentrated in the West Pacific theatre. Its older ships will require more lengthy and expensive maintenance, limiting how many can actually be deployed in time along with potential obsolescence.
Now, one might argue that China is 10 years behind the US in everything, so age doesn’t matter so much. I think this is a pretty arrogant assumption, reminiscent of how the Allies derided Japanese aircraft as garbage pre-WW2. Certainly, the Japanese struggled with high performance engines – but that didn’t prevent the Zero from being effective early in the war. The Chinese still struggle with modern high-performance engines for their fighters as well as semiconductors – this doesn’t mean they can’t be capable in combat, that they can't offset that weakness with doctrinal, tactical or strategic adaptation. They are making better indigenous engines and microchips and have stolen a great deal from the US. Trends are more important than raw inequalities.
The US is very weak in cyberspace. Newspapers abound with stories of the Pentagon being hacked. A US general was impersonated and lost his passwords, which I believe compromised the White House too at one point. The marvellously named Shadow Brokers ran off with (or some disaffected staffer gave them) some stolen US cyberweapons and sold them for bitcoin! And of course, we know the Chinese have stolen secrets from the F35.
The only time I’ve heard of China getting hacked is when it recently emerged that millions of Communist Party members had infiltrated businesses and countries around the world. Now perhaps the US hears everything that happens across Eurasia but keeps quiet about it. Perhaps the CIA stole all the amazingly competent and discreet spies from the Snowden/Manning-ridden NSA. It’s possible – but it seems unlikely to the point of Q-tier secret wars. I believe there are more and higher placed Chinese spies in America (Fang and all those bribed scientists) than American spies in China. If things are decided by tech-stealing, grid-sabotaging, bioweapon-planting, software-backdooring shadow warfare, I think China holds all the cards. Cyberwarfare and hypersonic missiles may be the new radios and aircraft, it may be that we look back in 50 years and think ‘how stupid could you be to spend trillions on the most sophisticated network-centric weapons systems the world has ever seen but let the Chinese steal the designs and install a backdoor somewhere in the terabytes of all-important software’. This is the US’s entire force strategy in a nutshell: ask any expert about the F35 and they’ll say network integration is its greatest strength, its raison d'ĂȘtre. On land, sea and air it’s all network-centric warfare, the most vulnerable to cyber.
There are gaping vulnerabilities for the US in this most opaque field of warfare. The US has been hit before by Chinese electronic subversion. Slackness in defence computing is a recipe for disaster. France only lacked a few pieces of novel and largely unproven technology for its apparently world-class military to be torn apart. The US is probably in the same situation.
Perhaps more important is a lack of strategic vision. For about 25 years since the Tiananmen massacre, the US persuaded itself that they should assist China’s rise. They didn’t just appease China, they advanced her. Nobody should ever make fun of Chaimberlain again. Since 2014-2016, America realised that things won’t be so easy and that China is in fact a rival. But what strategy is there now to defeat China? Truman came up with Containment and made alliances with Greece and Turkey, bribing them into NATO. Trump launched the trade war – but that clearly isn’t enough to defeat China. It simply isn’t enough to rely on watered down Containment style policies – especially when you can’t get your allies to follow suit and slap on tariffs, nor bribe new partners into the fold. If your opponent is less populous and severely hampered (the Soviet Union lost 20M out of 180M in WW2 and had its homeland devastated) then containment is logical. It’s difficult to lose if you keep a weaker opponent from expanding.
But this time the rival isn’t less populous, nor is it less developed. We’re not talking about slight gaps like Japan producing 20% more steel than the US in 1990. China produces more steel than the rest of the world combined. They’re world No.1 on the number of TOP500 supercomputers. They’re not slouching on high speed rail either, with something like 60% of the world’s total installed in China. They are the biggest exporter in the world. They produce the most electric cars of any country. Of course, the Economist will say that it’s all fine because the US still has a lead on some other high-tech capital goods, semiconductors, robots and so on. This ignores the trend we’ve seen in Japan, Korea… First they make cheaper textiles than you, then more cars/steel, then consumer electronics, then high-tech capital goods. The US did the same thing to Britain. I see no reason why China should flounder in high technology: they do not lack high-IQ scientists or government support for advanced technology. There are no ethical qualms preventing them from stealing everyone else’s technology, human experimentation or genetic augmentation. They couldn’t care less about the privacy implications of intrusive AI surveillance needed to train world-leading neural networks. They have a gargantuan internal market too – they have every ingredient for success in high technology.
Yes, in terms of labour force, China exceeds the US, EU and Japan combined – by 300 million. Again, the Economist will say that it’s fine because China is aging faster than the US. This is true but it’s unclear how significant the trend is. My suspicion is that the CCP can reverse this by altering anti-natalist regulations that keeps many migrant workers from settling down in the cities. Centralized control over social media may also be very helpful in pushing a natalist message. More cynically, Chinese air pollution and tobacco use could be their saving grace in shortening expensive retirement periods. In any case, China is going to have a huge manpower advantage over almost any combination of powers that excludes India. Manpower is their card, not ours. And as we have seen in the recent COVID extravaganza, China’s manpower is very well organized. They can leverage tight Party control to make things happen quickly. Have you seen how quickly they can build an office building when they try? What about an arms factory?
If the US cares about winning, it ought to do more than circulate buzzwords like strategic competition, the ball is in their court. The ball has been in their court for the last 30 years and they have refused to take any pre-emptive action to suppress China. It was not as though nothing could’ve been justified: Tienanmen square, forced abortions in the One Child Policy, genocide and organ harvesting of the Falun Gong, support for crazy North Korea, Uyghurs etc… all could be used to justify action. Even if you don’t agree on the importance or accuracy of any of these issues, surely the media that justified the Iraq War could muster up support for sanctions on China? Forget morality and hypocrisy, what about strategy? Without oil imports, US capital and foreign technology, it would’ve taken China a very long time to get as strong as they are. Anyway, that opportunity is lost now. It was squandered by misguided, overconfident and sclerotic leadership. There was a brief attempt to develop some kind of strategy: at least the Project for the New American Century had a plan for American dominance even if it was incredibly stupid, wasteful and couldn’t be executed.
But now there is no plan. The US has been executing an energy-focused foreign policy while it exports oil. Saudi Arabia’s biggest customer is China. The US is butting heads with Russia, pushing them into the Chinese camp. The Trump administration seemed determined to push Iran into China’s arms and really bring that Eurasian world-island concept to life. Instead of a single global strategy, the US has numerous conflicting priorities. Fighting climate change, promoting liberal democracy, maintaining a vast network of vassal-states, adhering to UN multilateralism and non-aggression while suppressing two great powers is too much to ask for a country that's struggling with its domestic issues. It's as though the US has a mental model of itself as the righteous protagonist in one of its unbelievably syrupy TV shows (looking at you, Designated Survivor). You can't wrap everything up at the end of the episode. Sometimes you just have to ruthlessly prioritize, discard the luxuries and fight just to stay in the game.
The impression I get is that the US is a hollow force, overdue for a catastrophic humiliation. Perhaps they’ll wake up and get their act together like the British did in WW2: the US has General Geography on their side more than Russia ever had Winter. Certainly, China doesn’t have much hope of getting far into the Pacific right now, let alone threatening the US’s West Coast ports. It's logistically impossible. The US certainly has time and space on their side if things go poorly on the West Pacific Front. They can regroup and form a new defensive line in the Straits of Malacca, blockading Chinese oil imports. But the Chinese aren't idiots. They know this and will plan around it.
They also have an advantage in allies (Pakistan and NK are weak), though there are risks there too. Japan can be relied upon to be loyal (they hate China) but I have fears about their staying power. Japan really is too old, bringing its cost in debt and a lack of dynamism. South Korea is less reliable, given their distrust of Japan and relatively warm feelings about China. Taiwan is apathetic, with a weak military. They don’t like the Communist Party but their will to fight hard is dubious. Vietnam and the Philippines don’t like China but aren’t strong: the Philippines might be useful as a naval base but can’t really contribute much more than that. And there’s also the prospect of China buying/bullying them into submission. The Philippines and Vietnam are not strong democracies; their political systems are opaque and potentially vulnerable. As with Europe in the 1930s, there may be defectors like Italy or Romania or opportunists like Hungary and Bulgaria. Just as they were economically dependent on Germany, so too are many Asian countries economically tied to China.
As for the Great Powers, Russia is leaning towards China. They’re aligned ideologically, leading the anti-liberal democracy camp. There are a great many commentators in the West who think they should join us vs China but I can’t understand why. How can China hurt Russia in the face of thousands of nuclear warheads and a relatively self-reliant economy? They can’t blockade Russia for geographical reasons. They don’t care if Russia kills journalists, annexes Ukraine, is undemocratic… What does the West have to offer Russia? China can offer them a free hand at home and in Europe plus the world’s biggest market for resources. They can provide world-leading surveillance and repression AI. Our leadership class can’t even spell realpolitik; such is their obsession with bullying non-democracies. No lessons were learnt from hectoring Mussolini over Ethiopia: either go hard or go home. Sanctions don’t work.
The Europeans lean towards the US but can’t be relied upon to help much. They’re very far from the frontline in the Pacific and have quite weak militaries. Britain and France might be able to contribute a carrier group each – but I doubt that the marginal carrier will be of major significance. Either the US supercarriers in the Pacific Fleet will defeat China or they will be destroyed/neutered. Inferior European carrier groups will not be the decisive factor. Germany has also been flirting with Russia for some time and EU hesitance on banning Huawei doesn’t bode well for the US. India could be a useful ally for the US, opening up another front for China and acting as a potential balance to China’s huge size. There’ve been motions towards building up the Quad: Australia, Japan, India & US as an alliance. But there’s no actual treaty which is the all-important part.
Germany didn’t have much military experience. The German army had been rapidly built up over six years from the Versailles 100K limit. Some airmen had experience from Spain but the rest of the army had only been recently trained.
However, France hadn’t had any military experience either. They hadn’t fought a major war and thought things would look similar to WW1. Today, nobody has had any experience with modern naval warfare since the Falklands - two generations ago in defence terms. On the air front, the US showed it’s mettle with convincing victories against the Iraqi and Serbian air defence systems. But that was still one generation ago – and the Chinese air force is a much tougher, much larger beast with major geographic advantages (not being near a huge number of NATO/allied airbases for one). They have studied the lessons of those wars and gambled on hypersonic missiles being the key to unravelling the US’s airbase-centric forward-deployment doctrine. There is every chance for a first-of-its-kind move from China. They might do a helicopter airlift instead of a traditional beach landing. They might mass-activate sleeper cells to disrupt Taiwanese mobilization. They might launch a massive cyberwarfare attack and cripple the F-35 fleet, radar, communications and power. They might perform some strategic-level masterstroke like Molotov-Ribbentrop or launch a massive synthetic oil program to circumvent resource shortages. They are the rising, dynamic power: sudden change is their prerogative. Overall, unless there is major change, I expect a major humiliation for the US military by 2030: the annexation of Taiwan by China and corresponding rise of China to No. 1 great power. With Taiwan, they’d occupy a strategic position in world trade and an entire world-class semiconductor industry. The prestige of victory would smooth out nearly every other difficulty they face around the world. They’d be in a good position to dominate Asia, high technology and thus the entire 21st century.
Examples of a major change would be a binding, NATO-style mutual defence treaty between at least India, Japan, Taiwan and the US. Massive nuclear proliferation would also do the trick as it would solve the problem of Taiwanese willpower and self-defence capacity in a single stroke. Any leader tough enough to deploy nuclear weapons won’t let their country be annexed without a fight. Of course, the US might pull something big out of its sleeve: UFOs, orbital weapons or whatever wizardry the black budgets pay for. I just don’t think that’s likely, given all trends thus far. I think the black budgets go towards the same kind of overpriced, corruptly managed, cyberfragile tech the conventional budgets buy. The visible trends are that China wins and keeps winning. They keep militarizing new islands, keep taking ground with their salami tactics, keep making more and more ships, stealing more and more IP. The US spasms all over the place with its Cultural Revolution, inability to halt COVID, inability to maintain stable politics and total unwillingness to have a coherent global strategy. There is a comprehensive gulf in elite willpower that can make up for any Chinese shortcoming and negate every US advantage.
