I think the PRC is actually approaching the situation with Taiwan much more cautiously than they would in the alternative world where semiconductor manufacturing does not take place in Taiwan, due to its geopolitical importance and the concomitant risks.
This is compatible with almost any model though
I don’t think China wants Taiwan due to strategic advantage over other superpowers.
This is very obviously (conditional on them taking decisive military action), why they would be willing to take action despite retaliation from the United States.
I think a historically well performing prior for modeling the foreign policy of superpowers is “what is in their geopolitical interest”. I’d privledge it pretty highly over arbitrary narratives, as psychologizing like “America has a missionary ideology” for say “democracy” would lead you to making a lot of bad predictions about American foreign policy. Superpowers in general operate in a pretty realpolitik way, like I don’t think it’s worth it trying to dissect “why does Putin say the invasion of Ukraine was justified actually”.
Oh yeah definitely agree with this, should’ve included that as well. I generally was trying to point towards “I think a realpolitik model of thinking about foreign policy is a better predictive model than trying to ascribe broad traits to a whole nation like ‘how inward looking are they’ or looking at stated motivations by leaders without interpreting that via the incentive structures at play”.
This is compatible with almost any model though
This is very obviously (conditional on them taking decisive military action), why they would be willing to take action despite retaliation from the United States.
I think a historically well performing prior for modeling the foreign policy of superpowers is “what is in their geopolitical interest”. I’d privledge it pretty highly over arbitrary narratives, as psychologizing like “America has a missionary ideology” for say “democracy” would lead you to making a lot of bad predictions about American foreign policy. Superpowers in general operate in a pretty realpolitik way, like I don’t think it’s worth it trying to dissect “why does Putin say the invasion of Ukraine was justified actually”.
I don’t think you can accurately predict what superpowers do when you ignore their internal politics.
If you take the invasion of Ukraine by Russia it’s worth understanding why Putin gained an increase in both domestic approval and power through it.
Oh yeah definitely agree with this, should’ve included that as well. I generally was trying to point towards “I think a realpolitik model of thinking about foreign policy is a better predictive model than trying to ascribe broad traits to a whole nation like ‘how inward looking are they’ or looking at stated motivations by leaders without interpreting that via the incentive structures at play”.