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One of the more interesting aspects of modern global warfare is the fact that, should the world decide to stage another world war, pretty much everyone is going

One of the more interesting aspects of modern global warfare is the fact that, should the world decide to stage another world war, pretty much everyone is going to run out of a lot of these strategic resources within a few months to years. This, plus the fact that nuclear warfare is going to be extremely limited due to lack of available weapons, and the virtual impossibility of invading a country you don't share a land border with, puts a very hard limit on the amount of aggression any one nation can muster up. Even the mighty US military is a paper tiger after a few steady months of all-out combat.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
The USA has plenty of rare elements to mind as long as the military doesn’t mind paying more. The USA is already a resource powerhouse, but China has undercut it severely in refining because they hadn’t been caring much about their environment. The USA military also really really excels at strategic logistics, I’m pretty sure they have more than just a few months stockpiled.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  The military has to compete for these resources with the private sector, you might be surprised at just how much the current logistics toolchain simply buys from private companies off the shelf.
  - detaro 8y ago
    Assuming a world war scenario, there likely is no competition with the private sector, which will have a choice between producing what the government wants it to produce or being put under government control and then producing what the government wants.
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    The government can, and will in any WWII-level war, choose to ration industrial metals that are in short supply. The US government in WWII effectively allocated who was allowed steel, copper, tin, cobalt, etc. to ensure that sufficient material was diverted to military needs.
mattmanser 8y ago
Why is it impossible to invade a country without a land bridge when the US have regularly done it in the last few decades? Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq. I bet China could, quite easily, invade Japan, The Phillipines or Taiwan if it wanted to. I bet Australia probably could too. Here's Australia practising amphibious assaults: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3AEd5BmQgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3AEd5BmQgU
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  Fighting a limited war action is very different from the total war scenario I detailed. China would have a really tough time invading Japan. The country is extremely mountainous, limiting ship landings to a few easily-defensible locations, and air transport is going to be limited by anti air weaponry that can be hidden pretty much anywhere. I'm not saying it can't be done and I'm by no means an expert, but even if that was all China had to do, meaning they could pour the entire resources of the country into it, they'd find it really hard. If they had to fend off Russia at the same time? Forget it. Japan is basically Switzerland and the UK rolled into one. China found it easier to expand a thousand miles to the west than to conquer an island 3 hundred miles to the east. China couldn't even conquer Korea, much less Japan. I'd have to ask Rotty to be sure, but I'm fairly sure that 90% of the war plans end with negotiated settlements rather than complete surrender.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  > Why is it impossible to invade a country without a land bridge when the US have regularly done it in the last few decades? Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq. The United States invaded Iraq from Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan from Pakistan, Afghanistan (note that Afghanistan was more or less in a frozen civil war), and Uzbekistan. Amphibious assaults are the most complex and riskiest kinds of military attack. It requires expert command of logistics to keep the landing ships providing supplies and men to the beach, even when the environment may be working against you (such as the tide), and where there is far too much to be crammed into too little space. It requires control of the sea and the skies, because you have masses of ships with masses of people just waiting to be bombed out of existence. Even if you do make it to land, you now have to supply your entire front-lines. If you don't capture a port, or if the port you captured was sabotaged by the defending army, you have to supply your entire assault from a beach that's not really capable of providing the deepwater capabilities to handle cargo ships of serious capacity. In the event of a war, the South Chinese Sea would likely be a contested zone, where neither China nor the US has sufficient control of the area to effect an amphibious assault. It is far from "quite easily."
pjc50 8y ago
> nuclear warfare is going to be extremely limited due to lack of available weapons There's 15,000, which is easily enough to destroy a lot of cities and kill maybe half the world's population? https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohasw... I'll admit that we don't know what total warfare looks like in the 21st century when jets take a decade to build. I suspect it would look a lot more like Syria.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  Nuclear weapons won't target cities, there simply aren't enough weapons to hit all of the military targets, so none would be left over for counter value. It makes little sense to target civilians, who can't directly inflict damage on your nation's military or citizens, when you have available military targets that will further the accomplishment of objectives. So all nuclear warfare in total war is counter force.
  - krapp 8y ago
    >So all nuclear warfare in total war is counter force. And yet the only real example of nuclear warfare targeted civilians...
    - vinceguidry 8y ago
      Japanese society of the time integrated their wartime weapons manufacturing inside cities, a fact that isn't true today. So both Nagasaki and Hiroshima were legitimate targets. The other issue is that towards the end of the war, there wasn't much left to bomb. If we had had nuclear weapons at the beginning of the war, we'd have likely targeted naval installations.
  - saudioger 8y ago
    It's near impossible to hit many military bases without drastically impacting local civilian population with fallout.
    - 8y ago
Nasrudith 8y ago
In reality nuclear warfare is always extremely limited and that is a good thing. Either they can dictate terms or they have a cold war. Look at India and Pakistan- they have long hated and fought with each other but are relatively cordial for two nations with borders disputes because they are both nuclear powers. Even sociopaths and meglomaniacs know nuclear warfare is like having a polonium tipped knife fight in untreated sewage- even if you win you lose. The lack of supplies is also a good thing to irrelevant - most wars are too quick to involve significant production during combat and the superior equipment takes a lot of to build but are often one vehicle armies compared to the old fast to produce ones given the lopsided casualty ratios. And even if things somehow lasted that long without peace breaking out and it was worth doing resources are still subsitutable even if they are strictly worse otherwise. We can run cars on coal but don't for many reasons. That applies to many of the best options that so overshadow alternatives that almost nobody does it.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

The USA has plenty of rare elements to mind as long as the military doesn’t mind paying more. The USA is already a resource powerhouse, but China has undercut it severely in refining because they hadn’t been caring much about their environment. The USA military also really really excels at strategic logistics, I’m pretty sure they have more than just a few months stockpiled.

vinceguidry 8y ago
The military has to compete for these resources with the private sector, you might be surprised at just how much the current logistics toolchain simply buys from private companies off the shelf.
- detaro 8y ago
  Assuming a world war scenario, there likely is no competition with the private sector, which will have a choice between producing what the government wants it to produce or being put under government control and then producing what the government wants.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  The government can, and will in any WWII-level war, choose to ration industrial metals that are in short supply. The US government in WWII effectively allocated who was allowed steel, copper, tin, cobalt, etc. to ensure that sufficient material was diverted to military needs.

mattmanser 8y ago

Why is it impossible to invade a country without a land bridge when the US have regularly done it in the last few decades? Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq. I bet China could, quite easily, invade Japan, The Phillipines or Taiwan if it wanted to. I bet Australia probably could too. Here's Australia practising amphibious assaults: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3AEd5BmQgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3AEd5BmQgU

vinceguidry 8y ago
Fighting a limited war action is very different from the total war scenario I detailed. China would have a really tough time invading Japan. The country is extremely mountainous, limiting ship landings to a few easily-defensible locations, and air transport is going to be limited by anti air weaponry that can be hidden pretty much anywhere. I'm not saying it can't be done and I'm by no means an expert, but even if that was all China had to do, meaning they could pour the entire resources of the country into it, they'd find it really hard. If they had to fend off Russia at the same time? Forget it. Japan is basically Switzerland and the UK rolled into one. China found it easier to expand a thousand miles to the west than to conquer an island 3 hundred miles to the east. China couldn't even conquer Korea, much less Japan. I'd have to ask Rotty to be sure, but I'm fairly sure that 90% of the war plans end with negotiated settlements rather than complete surrender.
jcranmer 8y ago
> Why is it impossible to invade a country without a land bridge when the US have regularly done it in the last few decades? Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq. The United States invaded Iraq from Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan from Pakistan, Afghanistan (note that Afghanistan was more or less in a frozen civil war), and Uzbekistan. Amphibious assaults are the most complex and riskiest kinds of military attack. It requires expert command of logistics to keep the landing ships providing supplies and men to the beach, even when the environment may be working against you (such as the tide), and where there is far too much to be crammed into too little space. It requires control of the sea and the skies, because you have masses of ships with masses of people just waiting to be bombed out of existence. Even if you do make it to land, you now have to supply your entire front-lines. If you don't capture a port, or if the port you captured was sabotaged by the defending army, you have to supply your entire assault from a beach that's not really capable of providing the deepwater capabilities to handle cargo ships of serious capacity. In the event of a war, the South Chinese Sea would likely be a contested zone, where neither China nor the US has sufficient control of the area to effect an amphibious assault. It is far from "quite easily."

pjc50 8y ago

> nuclear warfare is going to be extremely limited due to lack of available weapons There's 15,000, which is easily enough to destroy a lot of cities and kill maybe half the world's population? https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohasw... I'll admit that we don't know what total warfare looks like in the 21st century when jets take a decade to build. I suspect it would look a lot more like Syria.

vinceguidry 8y ago
Nuclear weapons won't target cities, there simply aren't enough weapons to hit all of the military targets, so none would be left over for counter value. It makes little sense to target civilians, who can't directly inflict damage on your nation's military or citizens, when you have available military targets that will further the accomplishment of objectives. So all nuclear warfare in total war is counter force.
- krapp 8y ago
  >So all nuclear warfare in total war is counter force. And yet the only real example of nuclear warfare targeted civilians...
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    Japanese society of the time integrated their wartime weapons manufacturing inside cities, a fact that isn't true today. So both Nagasaki and Hiroshima were legitimate targets. The other issue is that towards the end of the war, there wasn't much left to bomb. If we had had nuclear weapons at the beginning of the war, we'd have likely targeted naval installations.
- saudioger 8y ago
  It's near impossible to hit many military bases without drastically impacting local civilian population with fallout.
  - 8y ago

Nasrudith 8y ago

In reality nuclear warfare is always extremely limited and that is a good thing. Either they can dictate terms or they have a cold war. Look at India and Pakistan- they have long hated and fought with each other but are relatively cordial for two nations with borders disputes because they are both nuclear powers. Even sociopaths and meglomaniacs know nuclear warfare is like having a polonium tipped knife fight in untreated sewage- even if you win you lose. The lack of supplies is also a good thing to irrelevant - most wars are too quick to involve significant production during combat and the superior equipment takes a lot of to build but are often one vehicle armies compared to the old fast to produce ones given the lopsided casualty ratios. And even if things somehow lasted that long without peace breaking out and it was worth doing resources are still subsitutable even if they are strictly worse otherwise. We can run cars on coal but don't for many reasons. That applies to many of the best options that so overshadow alternatives that almost nobody does it.