- cross-posted to:
- news
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- news
- usa@lemmy.ml
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I wonder if China will pull critical supply chains (or just threaten) to the west before it gets to a hot war. I'm not sure how the west including the US will sustain any large enough manufacturing and production without critical inputs from the global south.
But then again they may be just MAD enough to do it:
Israel isn't crazy, it's just MAD https://thecradle.co/articles-id/26203
If China pulls critical things off the market then that could trigger a war as the west panics, or it can actually spur the west to start building out their own infrastructure out of necessity. The smart play for China would be to start quietly winding down exports of stuff that's critical for the military industry in the west in a way that doesn't raise immediate alarm.
As Yogthos notes, while it could badly hurt the US, it would also advance its plans of decoupling as it would force the matter in a hard, hard way.
The US including capitalists who have been happy to continue profiting from business with China and have resisted moving operations elsewhere would at that point have no choice but to begin investing heavily in India and a few other countries as well as some in the US to get the economy going again. I suppose they could just sit on their money and do nothing but as long as the US can print infinite money the US government could just step in and I'm sure the Indian bourgeoisie and government would be happy to quickly set aside a large sum of money to help with this.
Though in a way it may not be China's choice and inevitable. They keep talking about decoupling and may be set on it. They can instigate a war with China over Taiwan, slap sanctions that amount to a blockade and near total cutting of trade on China and at that point have achieved decoupling anyways and do so at their own pace to let their companies and consumers down gradually by winding down trade in a fast but more controlled way that benefits them. So there is an argument for China decoupling on its own terms and timetable rather than on the terms and timetable of the US to be sure.
On the other hand neither we nor the US government planners nor China can be sure the US bourgeoisie would actually go along with such a decoupling. They may simply not allow it, they may refuse, continue trade and dare the US to do something which it probably won't if enough big bourgeois corporate interests just ignore them or route around it via importing via third parties. So that's an argument for keeping the capitalists of the US glued to China's side.
Once the US extricates itself from Ukraine, gets European defense industry production running at a higher rate than it has been in decades (one of the goals of the Ukraine conflict besides just divorcing Europe from Russia and pulling them into the US sphere is getting Europe to increase their fighting and production potential for NATO overall, to turn them into a weapon for US use), and builds up a stock-pile for itself I'm convinced it's go-time for attacking China.
Those are the only things they're waiting for. They can't attack while continuing to supply Ukraine and they don't want to attack before getting a bit more production capacity into play that will enable them to fight China longer and inflict more pain and punishment and possibly enough devastation to forcibly decouple China from much of the world (as I assume their plan is to shoot missiles at ports, rail infrastructure, and after that random factories all conveniently labeled as defense factories while not all are, etc).
In line with this open war by the way, as we saw with Bangladesh they'll be doing hybrid war, sanctions war, using their Ukraine assassination Nazi kill squads and such to go around the world instigating terrorism, conflict, coups, assisting color revolutions, etc. They don't just plan to deny Chinese goods to places, they plan to overthrow groups of geographically/strategically significant countries and bring them by force into the anti-China camp to blunt the belt and road, to blunt Chinese expansion into other markets, to blunt China's access to raw resources and to ultimately contain China, Russia, the DPRK in a geographically isolated pocket and self-trading group cut off from the rest of the world, subject to merciless hybrid warfare and propaganda and instigation of extremism and terrorism as well as hitting their economies as hard as they can using the full power of the dollar while it still holds.
I assume originally their optimistic forecasts for Ukraine saw defeating Russia then turning Ukraine into a super weapons and war factory producing not just Nazi soldiers and assassins but bombs, drones, etc all at much lower rates than developed nations and funneling them into Poland to be taken into the NATO supply chain in earnest. But right now they seem to think (and maybe they're right) that they can get some sort of negotiated settlement with Russia that still saves some face, extricates them and their strained supplies from this conflict, allows them to continue building up Nazi fortress Ukraine's war machine for use by NATO and allows them to pivot.
This is part of the reason why I think they're so desperate to avoid war with Iran in the middle east. It would be a big detour that could derail their plans. It would empty US/NATO stockpiles even further and likely put a prolonged strain on them that would require involvement and use of weapons at large scale in the middle east for several years which runs into their timetable for attacking China.
Assuming war with Iran doesn't happen and the US can manage to either wind down the Ukraine conflict to a frozen conflict, official armistice, or non-official, or even a treaty of some sort by the middle of next year or before I think they're going to try a war with China by 2026-28.
The US is still threatening Iran over its pending retaliation for "Israel" killing Haniyeh. The Biden regime might favor a ceasefire, but they can't abandon the zionist project either.
