Exiled from the discourse / sanctions piece reflections
This is the latest piece that I have written: “The next world war will be economic — even if the weapons don’t work.” Its arguments are these: a Taiwan emergency is unlikely; in the improbable event of a Taiwan emergency, conventional warfare is unlikely to be used by the United States and its allies to dissuade China; the past, present, and the future is economic warfare; economic warfare is rarely effective in achieving foreign policy goals and can, paradoxically, harm the sender nation.
I will say it again. Conventional warfare costs lives, involves a shift in priorities away from other fronts, and also requires some degree of popular support over the long-term; economic warfare can be conducted, it is imagined by strategists, at a lower cost. The economic weapon, despite the fact that history shows it to be ineffective, is imbued with incredible power, precisely because it is misunderstood. The world economy could be crashed without discouraging China from taking Taiwan.
This could be an argument for engagement. If we agree that conventional and economic warfare, as well as other types of hard and soft coercion, will fail and have failed in the past, engagement is an option. This engagement would necessarily, given our admission that hard and soft coercion are no longer options, break with the status quo.
This could be an argument, too, for a more isolationist American foreign policy. If current foreign policy goals can now only be achieved at great cost to the country, it would be worthwhile to reevaluate them. An American presence in East Asia is not, I would argue, something that can be imagined to exist at the same scale and depth in a century, or even fifty years. It is no longer desirable.
My article is a call for something that nobody is planning for—neither a preservation of the status quo, a return to an earlier state of relations, or an intensification. Although the sting of it has faded over time, this is my perennial disappointment: if I write an article—and I am speaking here in particular about publishing an article in an outlet intended for observers of China—that does not attack or support a red team or blue team position, it will not be answered by either side. Since discourse is controlled by those teams, the article does not exist. Nobody will take the time to dismantle its conclusions. It exists outside of the discourse.
I see this happen with any contributions that deny the possibility of Taiwan being captured. In a sense, both sides require the fantasy of a coming military conflict. They only disagree on what actions should follow blockade or the lightning amphibious assault. To say that it’s a fantasy is to step outside of the discourse.
So, I am writing this because I am imploring someone to disagree with me. I am begging someone to explain why I am wrong about sanctions. I want to see another scenario, where China crumbles and a war is won without firing a shot.