Transcription
Ukraine has been doing something lately that has been extremely frustrating for China, to say the least. And it's so powerful that I personally don't think it's too strong to say that Ukraine has now single-handedly made it impossible for China to ever successfully invade or annex Taiwan through military action.
Now, that is a bold statement, but it's a defensible statement. And it's not a statement that is merely based on hope or theory or speculation, but instead, it's based on the actual tactics and strategies that we can observe with our own eyes every single day on the battlefield in Ukraine. These strategies are working incredibly well for Ukraine. But perhaps more importantly for today's purposes, they would also work incredibly well for Taiwan. In fact, they would probably work much better for Taiwan than they have for Ukraine, for reasons we'll discuss in today's video.
It's very important to talk about this right now because ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, people have been talking about the potential for China to accentuate the chaos by invading Taiwan. The presumption is that the war in Ukraine has made a Chinese attack more likely than ever before. Some circles even talk as if a Chinese attack is now not only inevitable, it's imminent. It could literally happen tomorrow. And these fears have only gotten even worse since the United States attacked Iran. Europe is now occupied on its own eastern flank, and the United States is distracted, its navy occupied, and it has drawn down on its limited stockpile of interceptor missiles. The timing seems perfect for China to make a move. And even if it's not perfect, it's hard to imagine the timing ever getting any better than this.
Now, I understand all these fears, but I think when we look deeper, the situation is actually completely the opposite. And when we really analyze what has happened in Ukraine and now in Iran, and we think like a military planner rather than a doomsday prophet, we realize that everything has now completely changed in many positive ways. A lot to discuss today. So, let's get into it.
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So, today's topic is going to be, in my opinion, one of the most interesting topics possible. And it's precisely topics like this that convinced me to make my channel on geopolitics. Not just politics, but geopolitics. Because today, we get to make all of the connections, and we get to see how our modern world as a whole is evolving beyond just the headlines we see every single day. We get to look at the war in Ukraine, of course, and how that is changing modern warfare as a whole. But then we get to apply those lessons to Asia, to China, and we get to realize how much the world is changing before our eyes, or maybe not before our eyes, because honestly, I don't see a lot of people talking about these things, even though they're so clearly happening.
At a high level, we're going to talk about how the lessons in Ukraine are now being applied in Southeast Asia, around the South China Sea, and also in India, where countries, predominantly Taiwan and India, are now adopting Ukrainian technology and Ukrainian strategy to help them win their fight against China. That's fascinating in and of itself because that changes the headlines we'll probably read tomorrow, away from what our parents and grandparents might have thought was going to happen in our world. But it's also fascinating because it shows us how Ukraine is taking a bigger role in the modern world, one that, again, a lot of people haven't given them credit for.
I guess we should start with the high level at the beginning, though, by defining how much the war in Ukraine has changed modern warfare and why that is so terrifying, in particular, to China. So, when China looks at the war in Ukraine, they learn two crippling lessons. One of these is a more general, high-level lesson about how the nature of warfare in general has changed. One of these is a more specific, more damning lesson about how the nature of naval warfare has changed. In particular, how hard it is for a modern navy, even a modern navy, to survive against swarms of cheap, easy-to-produce naval drones. When you put all of these together, you realize China's got a problem when it comes to Taiwan.
Let's talk about that high-level lesson at first because this is just fascinating in general, and it doesn't just apply to Taiwan. It applies to any country in Southeast Asia that China might want to wage war against to take territory away from them. I'm looking particularly here at India. And the high-level lesson we've learned from Ukraine is that a lot of the assumptions the world made about warfare are no longer valid in the modern technological age. Because what Ukraine has proven is that a small power can outlast and overcome a much larger power over time. You know, traditionally, a lot of the assumptions about warfare were, if you were a large enough country, if you had enough resources like Russia, you could eventually overcome your opponent just by sheer attrition. In fact, this was sort of the strategy of the Soviets. Old warfare used to be so resource-intensive, so manpower-intensive, that small countries basically didn't stand a chance, even if they fought much better than their opponents. And this was the operating assumption going into the war in Ukraine. Most people looked at the size of Russia compared to Ukraine and they said, "This war will be over within a matter of days, within a matter of weeks." But here we are in the fifth year after that, and Ukraine is going strong. And in fact, not only are they going strong, they now have Russia on the back foot. And most analysts think that Russia will not win this war. And even if they do, quote unquote, win this war, it will be a Pyrrhic victory that certainly was not worth the cost.
So, what happened? It is modern technology. Ukraine implemented drone warfare. But what's fascinating here is it's not just that Ukraine has superior technology to Russia, but rather modern technology so favors the defender that it's difficult to overcome. Throughout most of the war in Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine have been largely at parity when it comes to drone technology. Ukraine is now racing ahead because they finally have some accumulated advantages. But throughout the entire war, Russia and Ukraine have been largely at parity. So, you would think that Russia, as a larger nation, would be able to overcome Ukraine, but it turns out that that's not true. Modern warfare doesn't just allow a smaller country to be able to defend itself better. Modern warfare makes it prohibitively expensive, prohibitively, or basically impossible, even for a larger country to break through a sufficiently supplied opponent.
Now, watching this high-level lesson play out between Ukraine and Russia in Eastern Europe is particularly terrifying to China because, as much as this is true in Eastern Europe, it is probably true to exponential levels in the theaters of war where China would potentially engage. These are theaters of war, of course, where China would either attack Taiwan and have to overcome a body of water before they reached the enemy's territory, or it would be if China were to attack India, and they would have to overcome the Himalayas, a massive mountain range, before they could reach their enemy's territory there. Both of these are natural barriers that, even in traditional forms of warfare, have been considered almost impossible to overcome. And there's a reason China hasn't done it yet. That isn't true, though, in Eastern Europe. And even in Eastern Europe, Ukraine is defending well. Of course, Eastern Europe is basically mostly a flat plane. And a lot of people would say one of the reasons Russia wants Ukraine in the first place is because it's such a flat plane. And the idea was they wanted to take over Ukraine so they could position their borders around the mountains so that they weren't exposed to this flat plane through which, traditionally, a lot of the countries that have invaded and attacked Russia have traveled. It should be very easy for Russia to overcome Ukraine on a flat plane because a flat plane favors the attacker more than the defender, even traditionally, especially if the attacker can move quick enough. That is a terrifying lesson on its own.
There's also the terrifying lesson that when Ukraine started this war, they didn't start with sufficient drone technology. Most of the drone solutions we see now were created in the heat of battle. Ukraine was innovating these on the spot. They were making things up as they went, and these things were working. And even as Ukraine made it up as they went, even when they weren't sufficiently supplied, it was enough to surprise Russia and hold them back. They couldn't move forward. If China were to attack India or Taiwan now, though, that situation would be different because Ukraine has already learned these lessons and developed these technologies. They will be in the hands, for example, of Taiwan or India or any other Southeastern Asian country long before China arrives, which means the defenders will have these advantages from day one. So that's concerning enough on its own.
But now, let's get even more specific and let's look at Taiwan in particular and that naval theater of warfare, because this is actually even scarier than the general lesson. The general lesson is that Ukraine is still fighting a war against Russia where they haven't been defeated yet because of new technologies. The more specific lesson is that in a specific theater, Ukraine has already defeated Russia, and that is not disputed. And the specific theater where Ukraine has already defeated Russia years ago is the naval theater in the Black Sea, where Russia has essentially surrendered. They have retreated. They have become so vulnerable to Ukrainian strikes, even though Ukraine itself does not have a navy, that they have been forced to relocate their fleet away from operating waters. And basically, their fleet sits at port, hoping Ukrainian drones don't sink their ships.
Now, Russia never exactly had a modern navy to begin with, but by most measures, when the war started, it was considered modern enough, certainly modern enough to overcome Ukraine, which again, did not have a navy. And Russia, with their quote-unquote naval superiority, they had to learn a tough, tough lesson. And that was that a big, expensive ship can be sunk by one missile or by one drone that hits you in the right area. And the problem with a ship at sea is that it is really difficult to protect yourself against swarms and swarms of enemy drones that surround you. Ukraine was able to send out relatively inexpensive naval drones and sink so many different Russian ships. This is why the Russian fleet has retreated.
This lesson though hasn't just applied to the Black Sea. I would personally argue that it applies to Iran and it applies to the Strait of Hormuz. There is a reason that if you look at maps of where the US Navy is positioned right now, they are not positioned in the Strait of Hormuz. They're positioned well away from the Strait of Hormuz, where they're within range to send fighter jets to attack Iran, but not in close enough range to where they could be quickly overwhelmed by Iranian drones. Iranian Shahed drones that cost between $20,000 and $50,000 US a pop. Even in this theater, the United States has been forced to realize that a multi-billion dollar naval vessel can still be sunk by a $20,000 drone. This is not a speculative theory. It's not something that just applies to one theater. It is a universal fact in modern warfare. And while, you know, countries might be trying to develop solutions for this, those solutions don't yet exist at a level to where you can actually be confident enough to protect your expensive naval vessels. And we don't actually know that the solutions will ever be made. We might have confidence that they will be, but that's not a guarantee. The economies of scale, the economics of how cheap drones are compared to how expensive warships are, it might just be a change in the nature of warfare as a whole. And as much as that applies to Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, and as much as that applies to the Black Sea, it certainly applies to Taiwan.
Now, this is where China gets a real, real problem because Ukraine has been sharing their naval drones with Taiwan. And not just the technology, but the expertise in how to use them and all sorts of other things. And let me tell you, Ukraine's naval drones are way better than Iran's Shaheds that are currently keeping the US Navy, the most powerful navy on the planet, at arm's length away from Iran. So, you can realize this is such a huge, huge deal when you ask yourself a simple question. And that question is, why has China not invaded Taiwan yet? China has been talking about invading Taiwan since 1947. There's been so many different times in history where people have said it's imminent, and it has never happened. Why? The reason it hasn't happened yet is because the cost has always been understood to be too high. And that was even under more traditional warfare circumstances. China has always known that if they were to attack Taiwan, to take it by force, that would be a mass casualty event with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Chinese soldiers being killed. Not just wounded, killed, because of the nature of how difficult it is to conduct an amphibious landing in general, but also how difficult it is to do it in particular on the island of Taiwan, which has limited landing spots, most of which are in areas that are very easily defended. China's always understood this would be difficult, and they've already concluded in previous years that the cost has been higher than they've been willing to pay. And what the war in Ukraine has just shown us is that that cost has just gotten exponentially higher.
I don't actually think anybody knows how high that cost would actually be. There's, of course, warfare projections and estimates, but we have to remember there were projections about how the war in Ukraine would go. And Ukraine has overcome even our most optimistic projections. And the projections for China, they've never really been very optimistic. When you consider how difficult this would be for China, the fact that they would have to send hundreds and hundreds of amphibious vessels, vessels which, by the way, they do not currently possess, in order to get enough troops to Taiwan. And when you consider how relatively easy it would be for Taiwan to take these vessels out with drones, whether they be naval drones or Shahed-type of drones, you realize that this is a terrifying cost for China to try to pay. All Taiwan has to do is hold their beachheads long enough to take all of China's ships offline, or enough of China's ships offline that they cannot continue to send troops. And at that point, China doesn't have much of a strategy anymore.
What is China's alternative to this? Well, China's alternative, of course, is a naval blockade. But again, we look at Ukraine, which was not a naval power, and we ask ourselves, how well did Russia's naval blockade of Ukraine go? Where is Russia's flagship today? And what are Ukraine's grain ships doing today? Well, they're still delivering grain because Russia was unable to blockade Ukraine, which again, is a much easier problem to solve than China blockading Taiwan would be.
Now, all of these facts do something much more powerful for Taiwan than merely giving them a legitimate chance of defeating China on the battlefield. And that is, they drastically reduce the odds that Taiwan will have to do that in the first place. As they say, the best war is the one you never have to fight in the first place. The best victory is avoiding the battle to begin with. If you don't have to fight and you can get the same outcome, that's better for everybody. It's better for the defender, and it's better for the attacker that didn't waste resources to get nothing.
For China, the reason that these facts change things so much is because, in any case, even a best-case scenario, it's always been kind of iffy if there's any actual value for China to take Taiwan in the first place. Taiwan, of course, is an incredibly economically powerful nation. But the reason they're economically powerful is because of one thing in particular, and that is semiconductors. These semiconductors, the reason they're so specific to Taiwan is because the facilities to build them are prohibitively expensive, and TSMC on Taiwan basically has a monopoly on the facilities. If China were ever to attack the island of Taiwan, they would not capture those facilities. Those facilities would be destroyed. China is not just going to give them to China. They're not going to let China have them. So for China, the idea of taking Taiwan has very little value in general, other than perhaps bragging rights, talking points. And even China doesn't sacrifice millions of lives for a shot at having bragging rights because if you lose that fight, well, not only do you not get your bragging rights, but you get shamed and humiliated instead. It's just not really a worthwhile proposal, even for an actor like China who we could assume is not rational.
Now, Taiwan, of course, they are part of this island chain, and there's a lot of talk about this, how China wants to secure access to this island chain to ensure that its trade is safe and all of that. I don't really buy into that argument because China has free access through that island chain right now. And part of me thinks one of the reasons that China threatens Taiwan so much is to ensure that Taiwan never does try to close off access to China because they're afraid China will attack them. In other words, China gets all of the value from attacking Taiwan by simply threatening to attack Taiwan. And there's no value in them actually carrying out the attack. But there's a lot of value in them talking about it all the time. It turns out the same goes for bragging rights and national cohesion. China likes to talk a lot about their "One China" strategy, how one day they want to unify with Taiwan. And, you know, it's very important to their national narrative because, you know, communism is the best ideology, the best system, the whole world should be communist, right? But again, it does China a lot of good to talk about that. So far, since 1947, they haven't considered it to do enough good to actually carry through on the talk. And what has happened in the modern day with modern technology has just pushed things so much further in that direction.
That said, these lessons, as interesting as they are, they do not just apply to Taiwan. Like I already said, these are lessons about naval warfare in general. And that means they apply to every country that has felt threatened by China's naval power. And I'm looking here now at the South China Sea as a whole, where China has, of course, done all of these aggressive moves to try to claim territory, claim fishing waters exclusively for itself, with implicit threats about how they will overcome these other countries like Vietnam or the Philippines, all these other countries that have much less naval power than China does. The lesson we've learned from Ukraine and Iran is you can overcome a naval power even if you are not a naval power yourself. And every country in the South China Sea now has an incredibly affordable option to respond to Chinese aggression if China gets the wrong idea. China knows that. China knows that their time of being able to pressure people and get away with it, that's going away. Because even if these countries can't take things from China, they don't plan to do that in the first place, but they can defend their own territory from China. They can defend their own fishing vessels from China, and that's all they would need to do.
These lessons also apply, as I said, to India. If you're not aware, China and India have massive land disputes, and they've actually fought small-scale wars over those land disputes. China has these problems where they are trying to build dams in the Himalayas that would have drastic effects downstream on India and all sorts of things. They also do that for the rest of Southeast Asia, by the way. But the new nature of warfare means that for China, it is dramatically more risky to cause wars that they may not be able to win. It is dramatically more risky for China to go to war with India because it's going to be so hard to do offensives. It is dramatically more risky for China to start wars in Southeast Asia because it will cost them so much if they do offensives. China is sort of boxed in. They have always been boxed in by geography, and from time to time, they have tried to push the limits of that geography, and they haven't been successful. Now, there are technological limits that help to backstop the existing geographical limits, and it is hard for me to imagine that China could push anywhere, at least anywhere to its south or to its east.
There is one direction that China could push, though, and that direction is north. Now, this is where things start to get really interesting. When I look at India, for example, purchasing drone technology from Ukraine, you have to realize that when India does that, they are replacing a different weapons supplier, and that weapons supplier, of course, is Russia, who traditionally has supplied India with all sorts of military equipment that India has purchased primarily as a deterrent against China, also Pakistan, but primarily, I would argue, China. So, India is watching the war between Ukraine and Russia right now. And even though it looks like they are voting on Russia because they're buying cheap oil from Russia, when it comes to their actual future defense, they're relying more and more on Ukraine. They're placing their bets on Ukraine when it comes to them being able to defend themselves against China. Of course, they will take advantage of cheap Russian oil. That is something they do to keep their economy running so that China doesn't get an advantage. And there's a reason that the West has generally been okay with India purchasing Russian oil, at least at a discount where Russia doesn't get that much profit, because India purchasing Russian oil, while it hurts the situation between Russia and Ukraine, it potentially helps the situation between India and China, or at least it prevents that situation from getting worse, allowing China to get relatively more powerful. Again, geopolitics, it's super interesting. Connect all the dots. There's more than one theater in this world to think about.
But the reason it's so interesting to look at India purchasing Ukrainian technology to help them in their fight against China is because that puts pressure on Russia from India from two fronts, actually. Not only is India supporting Ukraine now and in the future, and by the way, India is the second largest weapons exporter, or sorry, weapons importer in the entire world. Not only is that helping Ukraine grow in power and helping Ukraine invest more in its defense industry, but it is also giving China fewer options because it makes India look like a much harder target to penetrate. And that, in turn, makes China, if they want to go on the conquest path, if they think that's necessary for whatever reason, it pushes China in only one direction, and that direction is north. North towards Russia.
Now, I've talked about this before, but Russia holds a lot of traditionally Chinese land. And a lot of areas in Russia that surround China, they actually speak the Chinese language. A lot of the businesses are owned and run by Chinese nationals. There has been a concern in Russia that China has a strategy to slowly take over their territory from them. And it's actually militarily much more feasible for China to do that than it is for them to do anything else. Fascinating topic. I'm not going to cover it in depth here because it's like a 40-minute length topic on its own. But there are a lot of details here. And again, this is not just speculation. There is history and geography and all sorts of interesting stuff behind this.
So, if you take away nothing else from this video, take this: The war in Ukraine is changing the world as we know it. Not just Eastern Europe, not just Ukraine, not just Russia, the whole world. When we look at the full scope of what's happening and the second and the third and the fourth order effects, we can come to a conclusion that while the war in Ukraine is bad, and none of us would ever wish for it to happen in the first place, we can have some solace that because Ukraine has held on, they have caused a lot of good for the world that may, in the net, actually be a net benefit, a net positive, despite the high cost that has been paid. And we really all probably owe a lot to Ukraine for them choosing to hold on and fight back against Russia instead of caving into them.
And I would point this particularly at the United States. We don't realize how much we are benefiting from the fact that Ukraine is continuing this fight against Russia, not just in first-order effects, but in second and third-order effects. We look at Taiwan. We look at how much the US military spends on an annual basis, a lot of that to try to oppose China if they ever were to attack Taiwan and threaten our global power. And we consider how much that cost has been reduced, at least if we will allow it to be reduced, by Taiwan using naval drones or drones in general instead of what they may have used, which would have been American lives. We realize that Ukraine holding on and the technology they've created, it has a massive benefit for us. And that massive benefit far exceeds, if you actually do the math, anything that we have actually given to them. So, Ukraine is definitely worthy of all of our support. They are not only protecting themselves. They are becoming, for at least the near future, an arsenal of democracy. An arsenal of democracy that is allowing us to potentially solve global problems that we have been worried about for literally generations. We've been talking about China invading Taiwan since 1947. Ukraine has now possibly solved it. That is a huge deal. And really, this evolution in modern warfare needs to be analyzed a lot more.
Now, one place you will see it analyzed more is right here on this channel. So, if you enjoyed this in-depth discussion, be sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel. It's completely free. Helps me a lot. If you enjoyed this analysis a lot and you want to keep me independent, consider becoming a YouTube channel member or a patron. Thank you guys so much for your support. I'll see you on the next video.
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