In a new post, I tried to warn citizens about the large and growing prospect of World War 3. My post did n’t really care about the possibility that a war will break out, but rather the possibility that America and its allies will win.
Yes, atomic arms are a factor, but there’s no surety they’ll be unleashed in WW3, even by the losing side. But, yes, there is a possibility that China and its allies will overthrow the US and its allies in a significant regular earth conflict.
How big is this opportunity of battle? Evidently, education and professionalism are in enjoy, and these factors favor the US. Technological style is likewise important and here as well the established democracies probably also include at least a little edge over China.
However, at the start of World War 2, the Axis was somewhat favored over the Allies by skill, experience, and technological advancement. Nazi Germany started with the best terrain tools, while Japan had the best warrior jets and; arguably the best aircraft companies, as well as missiles.
But over period, large US and Russian production of boats, planes, tanks, and munitions ground down the Axis. And as the war progressed, the Allies quickly picked up their weapons and developed them, making the close product far superior to what the Axis had.
In a lengthy standard conflict, production actually matters. China has also emerged as the biggest manufacturer since the turn of the century. Even before the current China was the most significant producer by considerably in terms of mass production, producing as much physical goods as the US and all of Europe combined.
The country ’s current effort to increase that share even further threatens to make China the “make-everything country ” in reality, turning the rest of the world into a de-industrialized hinterland.
If that occurs, governments ‘ advances in education and technology will be temporary, and they will likely lose a long battle unless they can recall making physical products in large numbers.
I tried to illustrate the large size of the problem that the US and its supporters are facing in another article. We must become taking it very seriously, I believe. People who scoffs at business plan or the idea of bringing back production in the US and Europe needs to be able to answer the questions raised by this article, which is republished these:
I would like to avoid having to endure a resurrected period of great authority conflict. I wish the end of the Cold War had meant that such dangerous shows were always relegated to the record books.
However, regrettably, those dreams did not materialize. The Ukraine conflict means that the US is today surely in a long-term Cold War-type conflict with Russia. And the large chance of a Taiwanese war of Taiwan There is a good chance that the US will shortly become embroiled in a battle with China as well in the coming years.
Maybe neither of these problems will result in strong conflict between great capabilities (especially because all the wonderful capabilities now have plenty of nuclear weapons ). I do n’t want to make up for the fact that we are on the verge of a third world war.
But a movie to the Cold War— a long political struggle in which both factors prepare for the chance that they might have to battle each other — seems exceedingly likely at this point. In fact, it is so likely that the US ca n’t afford not to make plans for it.
That’s what the concept of the “War Economy ” is about. As Anduril leader Palmer Luckey says, “current time is too late to worry about current point. We began to think about a potential issue with the original Axis before World War II, and we did the same in the Cold War, which happily never occurred.
But the US has prepare again today. And that entails far more than just spending money on security; ;;; it implies restructuring the economy ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; to promote specific industries, establish or rebuild specific capacities, and restructure supply chains.
The features of the opposition determine the task’s scope and nature. In WW2, the Axis capabilities had advanced manufacturing skills but little groups and a lack of exposure to energy. The Soviet bloc, which had a large population and fuel similar to the US, had a little, disorganized economy and struggled with superior manufacturing during the Cold War.
In contrast, a potential “New Axis ” of Russia and China would control enormous population, vast energy sources, advanced manufacturing features and a combined business of enormous dimensions. This is all just China, aside from the gas piece.
But this article is about how the US and its possible friends stack up against the New Axis in financial terms.
Is there really a New Axis?
Before we compare the two possible alliances, we should question whether the New Axis is a real issue. The mixture of China and Russia ( and whatever other friends and other guests they can summon ) is just a name I made up.
The idea that these two forces are de facto allies against the US is based on the joint speech they made before the conflict in Ukraine. When I use the word “New Axis”, though, people often scoff, arguing that China and Russia have very few common interests and too much common conviction to form any kind of close ally.
And perhaps this is accurate. So far, China has been reluctant to offer considerable support to Russia for its conquest of Ukraine: Chinese firms, afraid of punishment , are n’t even making significant investments in Russia.
But it ’s worth remembering that the original Axis was n’t that close of an alliance either. Japan and Germany signed some agreements and they both engaged in combat with the US, but they never really collaborated.
They also did n’t staff up against the USSR — Japan signed a non-violent alliance with the Soviets; ( which the Soviets themselves broke only in the very last days of the war ), and notably failed to come to Germany ’s aid in Operation Barbarossa.
A New Axis of Russia and China would not even need to collaborate physically or provide weapons in order to be close to the classic Axis. Russia would have to buy China gas, but other than that, they actually could merely ignore each other and focus on fighting the US and its supporters in distinct theaters.
The US and its allies must prepare to face Russia and China at the same time in this “minimal New Axis ” case. As long as Russia and China don’t battle each other and Russia provides China with gas, they could also be; been friends in the new Cold War.
We must attribute countries to the two blocs in order to size them, which is incredibly fanciful. Yet in WW2, the ultimate composition of the Allies was n’t determined until Hitler invaded the USSR; In fact, it appeared as though the USSR might even be in the beginning stages of the issue. visit the Nazis, or at least stay things out. There is a lot of speculation here, then.
On the New Axis area, I’m only going to involve China and Russia. I wo n’t mention North Korea because it’s so small and ca n’t really fight South Korea, so I wo n’t mention it. Then there are a couple of exotic cards like Pakistan and Iran, but these have normally lower capabilities and much reason to get involved with a worldwide great-power conflict, but I’ll leave them out to.
Which nations would be on the US side in this new Cold War is the more difficult question to answer. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has united most of Europe against Russia and deepened transatlantic cooperation, which puts a lot of people and GDP and manufacturing capacity in the US’ corner. And it will be Japan. likely be the US’ main partner in a Taiwan conflict with China.
So I’ll include the EU, the UK, and Japan in the “New Allies. In the event that North Korea will ensnare South Korea, I will leave it out. I’ll also leave out some smaller countries like Canada and Australia that would almost certainly be part of the New Allies; this is at least partially balanced out by the fact that some EU nations, like Hungary, refuse to really cooperate.
The really big wild card here is India, which has a huge population and a reasonably hefty economy. Despite the fact that Russia is still a major supplier of Indian military equipment during the Cold War, the USSR was India’s protector. starting to shift ). So it ca n’t be expected that India will start a conflict with Russia.
But China is a very different matter. India’s primary military threat is China, which the two nations have; come to blows recently over a contentious border They are also rivals for influence in the Indo-Pacific region. This is the reason why India has ; joined the Quad, forging a loose quasi-alliance with the US, Japan and Australia whose purpose is obviously to hedge against China.
I’ll therefore conduct two comparisons: one with the New Allies of the US, EU, UK, and Japan, and the other with the New Allies India because India’s status is still largely unknown.
Because of the uncertain nature of the coalitions ( and because of my omission of smaller coalition partners on both sides ), these comparisons should be taken as rough and indicative rather than definitive. All figures are the most recent ones that are available.
Tale of the tape: population, GDP, and manufacturing output
The quality of quality is unique to it. ” – Joseph Stalin
Let’s start with population. Obviously, that ’s only one input to national power, but it ’s worth looking at anyway:
What this chart really only shows is that China and India are actually very large in comparison to every other nation and even compared to the EU. That’s a fact worth remembering.
Let’s take a look at GDP now. GDP is important for military strength because unless you’re operating a command economy, you have to pay for your army somehow, and GDP determines the available tax revenue. ;;;
There’s a debate whether nominal GDP or purchasing power parity-adjusted GDP should be used in these comparisons. So I’ll just sidestep that debate by showing both, because they really don’t tell that different of a story:
Numbers here are in millions of dollars.
With or without India on board, the New Allies ‘ GDP is the main story. The difference is a bit narrowed when we use PPP, to a ratio of 1. 7 instead of 2 3 ( without India ). The New Axis is primarily China, both in terms of population and economic terms, according to this comparison.
Of course, we could expect these figures to change in the result of a war, as a result of sanctions, disruptions to supply chains, financial market changes, war production, and a variety of other things. This is only an indicator of where we are, therefore.
But anyway, paying for your army is one thing, but if your alliance can’t actually make the things you need to fight a war, then having a bunch of dollars is not so useful. Making a lot of stuff for modern warfare means making a lot of things, including missiles, drones, ships, tanks, trucks, ammo, and so on.
So manufacturing output is probably important, above and beyond simple GDP; When a war breaks out, the money that comes from tourism or the sale of expensive wine will be of less use than the money made from factory output. Anyway, here ’s the comparison, again in millions of dollars:
Here we see it ’s a much closer-run thing. With or without India, the New Allies hardly outmanufacture the New Axis, either way.
The reason, as before, is China. According to Damien Ma, China has evolved into the “make everything country.” ” Before the turn of the century, a very large percent of the manufacturing in the world, in terms of value, was done in the old industrialized economies of the US, Europe, and Japan.
However, China has grown to be a second-largest producer in the last 20 years, surpassing all of the former industrialized countries. combined. I have a strong suspicion that this shift is the cause of the resurrected great-power conflict.
What this means is that while Russia itself can’t manufacture the materiel for a protracted local conflict with Europe, China can manufacture enough to sustain both itself and; Russia in a conflict between the two blocs I’m envisioning here.
Specific economic capabilities
“The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly ever can you make a pair of shoes or a yard of cloth. ” – William T. Sherman
The manufacturing comparison in the previous section was pretty broad; the total value-added figure disregards a lot of crucial details. It does n’t tell us how technologically advanced a country ’s weapons systems are. What proportion of the manufacturing capacity could be repurposed for military purposes is not provided in the document.
And most importantly, it does n’t show how complete a country ’s supply chains are. It does n’t matter how much value-added you produce in peacetime if you go to war with manufacturing companies that rely on the enemy countries for essential components because your factories will shut down.
Value added is calculated on the margin, in peacetime, while wartime manufacturing capability is inframarginal — it ’s the amount you can make after wrenching changes close you off to your peacetime supply chains.
The US during the early Covid pandemic painfully rediscovered this principle when it realized it was insufficiently producing enough masks, Covid tests, or ventilators. But later in the pandemic, the US had the advanced biotech supply chains to pump out huge amounts of mRNA vaccines, while China was in a position to struggle.
Thus, it ’s very hard to tell which supply chain pieces will end up being the choke points in a conflict. This is why the Biden administration is; working feverishly on this issue, and I’m sure the Chinese authorities are doing the same. But there are a few things we can probably predict will be important.
Fuel first, of course. ( At this point I’ll stop doing the stacked bar charts and just show a map. We can see that the two posited blocs would have easy access to oil:
Coal is a similar story — Not only do China and Russia have plenty, but so do the US and Australia. Gas is also roughly comparable.
So, on paper, both blocs have enough fossil fuels. For the New Axis, the key issue would be whether Russia can supply China with enough oil and gas; this would involve either moving a lot of tankers through potentially conflicting waters or building numerous highly pricey, challenging pipelines across the vast expanses of Eurasia. Of course, the US would face a similar problem getting oil, coal and gas to its allies in Europe and Asia.
Of course, there are other types of energy as well; there’s also renewables. A lot of batteries ( and perhaps some electrolyzers ), as well as a lot of minerals, are needed to cart around the renewable energy.
David Roberts has a thorough breakdown of mineral requirements for alternative energy, with some good charts showing where the minerals are located. Cobalt and platinum are concentrated in Africa, while graphite and rare earths are concentrated in China.
This is, of course, just current production. The US and its allies will probably be able to develop domestic supplies of rare earths and graphite if they have to, just as Japan began mining rare earths when China cut it off. However, it takes time to find and use these resources, so the New Allies should probably be examining this at this time.
Then there’s the question of where the minerals are processed. Here, we can see that the answer is primarily “China”:
This seems like a real vulnerability for the New Allies. I have a suspicion that there are many other fundamental, “primary industry”-style tasks that developed nations have lazily allowed to en masse immigrate to China because they are n’t very high up the value chain. But in a conflict situation, “high up the value chain ” suddenly means a lot less.
i .e. semiconductoronductors e. , computer chips, are an additional factor. “Chips are the new oil”, as they say, which means that semiconductors are used in pretty much every piece of machinery. That includes all the war and war production machines. Currently, the New Allies produce most of the semiconductors in the world, though China is racing to catch up:
Despite China’s most formidable efforts, it appears that the New Allies will continue to have a significant advantage over the coming years.
In general, what looking at supply chain chokepoints shows us is that neither the New Axis nor the New Allies represents a fully self-contained, integrated economic machine that can make everything it needs for a major conflict.
China and the old industrialized countries have developed a symbiotic relationship over the past 20 years, which is profoundly intertwined. ( One would hope this would be enough to prevent a conflict but that ’s almost certainly wishful thinking given past experience. )
What that means is that in the event of a conflict, each bloc would be scrambling to shore up its weak points — China scrambling to build more chip fabs and secure more oil from Russia, the US and Europe and Japan scrambling to rebuild the low-value primary industries that they outsourced to China.
Everest brutal economic competition
I can’t say whether or not the New Axis is the most formidable military competitor that the US and its allies have ever faced. The USSR had a fearsome first Axis, and it was undoubtedly fearsome. tens of thousands of nuclear weapons that are ready to spit out the world with the click of a button.
But I think that the comparisons above show that the New Axis certainly represents an economic competitor like none the US and its allies have ever faced. And the only reason is China. Russia is mainly a gas station with nukes but China has three things going for it:
- There are far, far more workers in China than in the Soviet Union or the original Axis.
- China has advanced manufacturing technology that probably rivals the original Axis in relative terms, and far exceeds the Soviet bloc.
- China is the largest manufacturing hub in the world, making it the world’s first-ever “make everything country ” akin to the USSR.
This is simply a unique situation in modern history. The US and the East Asian border were the first to experience the Industrial Revolution after it started in Europe. The aftermath of WW2 saw central Europe and the East Asian rim incorporated into a US-led alliance that dominated global manufacturing in a way that the communist powers could never threaten.
With the expansion of China, global manufacturing is currently roughly divided in half. Much of the War Economy in the US and its allies will therefore be about rediscovering the manufacturing capabilities they neglected during China ’s meteoric rise.
This article was first published on Noah Smith’s Noahpinion ; Substack and is republished with kind permission. Read the original and turn into a Noahopinion subscriber here.