The U.S. military is increasingly dependent on Chinese suppliers for critical components, giving Beijing unprecedented leverage and the ability to manipulate or shut down exports on which the American military depends.
  • comrade-bear@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    2 days ago

    People here will confirm, I suspected that for a long time. And that's probably the most powerful deterrence China have, if you start long war you are cut off from those resources rendering you powerless to win, if you try to win doing massive inter continental damage, well you likely destroyed your own supply chain as well, so China kinda became unreplacable to the world.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 day ago

      I think this was exactly the strategy on the part of China, and another layer of deterrence here is that large US companies are economically dependent on doing production in China now. Moving out is very difficult because all these companies are in competition with each other forcing them to prioritize short term profits. Any company that starts investing in moving infrastructure out of China ends up being at a disadvantage relative to its competitors.

      • 201dberg@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        10 hours ago

        The US has lost all of its means of production through outsourcing and now does not have the ability to bring it because because it will require the oligarchy to take a hit to their "income." The line must go up.

        The difference between Nazi Germany and the west is that the Nazis were able to plunder their country to build up a means of production. Then further that as they expanded and continued to plunder Europe. The US is at a point where there's almost nothing left to plunder and what is left can't go anywhere but to the pockets or the rich. They can't even divert those funds to building up the means of military production because those means have been turned into money funnels for the rich. The blustering of the US against China relies almost entirely on their cache of arms already manufactured. They know the only thing they can do is point the missiles they already have because if they go to war they will lose the ability to make more. At least at any meaningful rate.

        The US is a broken empire with a fuck load of nukes and that's about it. They can't have a military conflict directly with another advanced nation. Hell they can't even win against most non-advanced nations. They only thing they can do is scream a lot and then threaten to nuke the planet.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          10 hours ago

          That's pretty much my impression as well. I think this is an unprecedented scenario historically where the empire outsourced so much of its essential production its main adversary.

      • cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        1 day ago

        I think this also speaks volumes about eastern/Chinese philosophy, especially in terms of conflict. Winning the war, before it even starts. War is usually a tragic, absolute last resort, rather than first or second option, as in the West.

      • comrade-bear@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        1 day ago

        Yeah, India Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia are some of the back up plans, but the level of technology of China's industrial sector, is decades ahead of any country US included, so they are kinda out of luck trying to replace it in the short term, capitalism own near sightedness is being the key for it's downfall

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          1 day ago

          Exactly, and it's also worth noting that US continues to lose influence globally as well. Both India and Indonesia are now in BRICS. It looks like Thailand will flip towards China as well. I really don't see what US can do at this point within the constraints of the system they built.