US military logistics minnow in Indopac vs PRC mainland logistics. Peak US war fighting capability was calibrated around adversaries with 50% of US GDP, even Iraq took 50% of USN CSGs + extremely favourable region basing in multi month surge operations. PRC conservatively 100x larger high-end target than Iraq, 150% US GDP by PPP, and more by actual industrial output. Before VZ uber trip, US was flexing and failing vs Houthis, i.e. shit tier adversary that actually bothered shooting US ships.

CONUS targets are on the menu, there's a reason China Military Report from last month included US west coast under PRC conventional fire, which TBH was years out of date, i.e. most of CONUS will be vulnerable, and PRC has more harden targets to attrite and more ability to deny US fires in the first place, i.e. PRC taking out exquisitely vulnerable CSG/unrep/tankers logistics tail drops US ability to deliver fires to PRC to zero, vs PRC global strikes complex chilling in hardened tunnels is extremely survivable.

You can aggregate everyone in 1IC and PRC still out manpower and out produce by magnitude. Hence most will stay neutral for the simple reason they're within PRC logistics backyard which US don't have remote capability to defend against. PRC simply that big in scale, i.e. their acquisition of 1m loitering munitions on top of 1m drones and cruise missile Gigafactory that can churn 1000 components (likely floor) per day makes any US posture in 1/2IC not survivable outside of cope war games. PRC has the fire power to literally fight everyone simultaneously, with domestic resources (no imports) to maintain war economy basically indefinitely.

Ultimately, if PRC starts TW blockading, US will likely look at ledger/force balance and bail because PRC sees through US bluff. Doesn't matter if pacifist muricans demand intervention if PRC throws every TWnese in torment nexus, ultimately US unlikely to out attrite PRC in backyard, and more fundamentally, cannot out reconstitute faster than PRC after the fact. US isn't gambling shipyards, energy infra, semi fabs, hyperscalers, payment processors, boeing/lockheed plants over TW. Now 10 years ago, when US could theoretically asymmetrically hit PRC without CONUS vulnerability, US intervention strategically likely, but this 2026, we see the new national security strategy. Much more sensible for US planners to retreat to hemisphere and accept spheres of influence arrangement. Americans being powerless to US foreign policy is an (often unfortunate) American trait.

You're speaking of a hot war which isn't ever going to happen owing to nuclear weapons. And if it did happen it precludes many of your scenarios. For instance naval vessels are highly vulnerable to modern weapons technology. Aircraft carriers were constantly sunk in WW2. The main factor that shifted after WW2 is that nukes precluded direct war between major powers, so they ended up being exclusively used against places incapable of defending themselves. More generally Ukraine has provided many lessons in modern war, and among them is that experience in invading these sort of countries is not only useless but perhaps even harmful as it can contribute to flawed assumptions.

That 15% no longer has the majority of the economic power in the world, or anywhere near it. There's a great visualization of the G7 vs BRICS here. [1] That's obviously not all countries, but those omitted aren't going to change the result nor trend. Just as important is what "economy" means. When we speak of war we're referring to the ability to go from ploughshares to swords, but most of the 15% have neglected their core manufacturing competencies and transitioned to service economies where these large numbers don't really translate into economic might of the sort we might imagine. Again, yet another lesson from Ukraine.

[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1412425/gdp-ppp-share-wo...

PPP is misapplied here; you literally get more PPP by having less economic power.

You think a hot war won't happen over Taiwan? I mean, I hope you are right. But if China wants to invade, it's going to turn into a hot war including the US and probably a number of other regional neighbors.

My guess is that MAD will keep the war conventional even though people have nukes. After all, Russia has nukes and they haven't used them despite their failure on the battlefield.

I'm curious where you are from? You don't sound like you understand the mentality of Americans. Your reasoning sounds quite a lot like the theories of victory circulating among Japanese leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

PPP is the exchange rate normalized cost of a basket of goods in different countries. The way you have a high PPP is by having an economy where people can buy a lot with a little. Whether that lot happens to be eggs, steel, or artillery shells. The US is avoiding a hot war with Russia over Ukraine. They will never, ever, engage in a hot war with China over Taiwan. They'll feed weapons to Taiwan and let the Taiwanese fight to the last man, somehow try to frame the eventual defeat as a victory, wash our hands of it, and rapidly move on to the next war.

And if you think Russia is failing, then I'm not sure you know what victory looks like when fighting a competent adversary. The Ukrainian army is being fueled by endless and increasingly brutal forced conscription, and backed by Western weapons, tech, hardware, and intelligence. But instead of the present, let's go 4 years back after the invasion and when the West decided to get overtly involved. Imagine I came to you and said 'hey stickfigure not only with this war last for years, but in 4 years Russia will have the strategic initiative, control a massive chunk of Ukraine, and be continuing to push forward' -- what do you think you would have said? 'Russia must be failing' wouldn't really be a logical response then, or now.

  > Imagine I came to you and said 'hey stickfigure not only with this war last for years, but in 4 years Russia will have the strategic initiative, control a massive chunk of Ukraine, and be continuing to push forward' -- what do you think you would have said? 'Russia must be failing' wouldn't really be a logical response then, or now.

"Four years" alone would've raised eyebrows.

If four years ago anyone had said that Russia would invade Ukraine with everything it got and that four years later it would still stuck fighting for the first eastern provinces, with casualties exceeding a million and no end in sight, they would've been dismissed as an insane doomer. And yet here we are.

By now, the war against Ukraine is among the worst disasters in the entire military history of Russia, far worse than the 1979 invasion Afghanistan and the 1904 Russo-Japanese war, which until recently were regarded as the worst catastrophies of the modern era. Notable Russian fascist Maxim Kalashnikov goes much further. He says that Russia tried to subjugate Ukrainians, but failed, and Ukrainians will return for revenge. He calls it a "cultural and civilizational defeat": https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1985270960321130516

I take this as more or less confirmation that you are not American and are so detached from American culture that you haven't the faintest idea what Americans will do over Taiwan.

That adage about being doomed to repeat history would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

I thought your question was quite childish as it's effectively a masked ad hominem to avoid dealing with the fundamentally illogical points in your argument. I expect deep inside you know full well that you're living in a bubble, and that bubble's reality and the world's reality have long since diverged.

Part of the reason people are doomed to repeat history is precisely this effect. By the time Hitler was greenlighting the Volkssturm, he certainly knew it was over. But he refused to step outside of his cognitive dissonance, to the net result that vast numbers of Germans ended up dying for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

You've offered unsupported opinions about American attitudes and future behavior. Since you're setting yourself up as an expert on Americans, I'm impeaching your credibility. Strictly speaking this is not ad homenim.

Reread the thread. You've, perhaps again, built something up in your mind that isn't accurate. And yes obviously I'm American, though it's completely inconsequential to what I have said.