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Unfortunately, "there are two oceans between us and any potential aggressors" is no longer a viable defensive posture. If you're gonna be drawn into a war today

Unfortunately, "there are two oceans between us and any potential aggressors" is no longer a viable defensive posture. If you're gonna be drawn into a war today it's unlikely to come with years of lead time.

xtracto 6y ago
Anericans live so scared!
- catalogia 6y ago
  With all that defense spending, I can't imagine why any American would need to fear any foreign military threat.
- culturestate 6y ago
  I think there's a difference between living scared and living...I guess pragmatically. I'm not worried that e.g. Russia is going to drop a missile into midtown Manhattan, but I do acknowledge that there are real threats in the world and - for the moment at least - we can't all just get along. If the United States changed its military posture tomorrow to be strictly isolationist and brought every soldier home, someone else would step into the void. That may not necessarily be a bad thing, but it would be a different thing and at this point few people are seriously interested in finding out what kind of thing it would be.
kjksf 6y ago
Here's what would happen if any nation would be stupid enough to send a single missile into US soil: a button is pressed and a nuke 1000x stronger than Hiroshima is sent. The end of "war". U.S. has been involved in quite a number of wars in the last century. Always as an aggressor, never as a defendant. Let's not entertain the fantasy that a military budget of $732 billion, the size of 10 next biggest budgets combined, exists to defend US soil from invasion.
- culturestate 6y ago
  > Let's not entertain the fantasy that a military budget of $732 billion...exists to defend US soil from invasion. Obviously not in its entirety, but it's also worth recognizing that the world is a different place in 2020 than it was in 1940 and that no country - the United States or otherwise - can afford to purchase a national defense at the last minute. Once you realize you need one, it's already too late.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  Apparently December 7th 1941 no longer lives in infamy.
vkou 6y ago
Logistics in 2020 aren't much easier than they were in 1920, or in 1820. And the lead time for ICBMs to kill ~ a billion people has been ~40 minutes for the past 40 years.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  The 82nd airborne division can be in planes on it's way to drop anywhere in the world 18 hours after a phone call from the White House. The Russian equivalent is called the CRRF, and has a similar force mix for obvious reasons.
  - vkou 6y ago
    The 82nd airborne division will be out of fuel, ammunition, and food within a week after dropping anywhere in the world, without an international logistics network of shipping to support them, and all the baggage that comes with keeping that network operating. Look at the massive logistics effort that was necessary to invade and occupy Iraq, a country one-tenth the size of the US, where half the opposition deserted before a shot was fired, half of the rest deserted after the first shots were fired, and where half of its neighbours have US or NATO military bases in them. No other country in the world is capable of doing this across an ocean.
    - Godel_unicode 6y ago
      > No other country in the world is capable of doing this across an ocean. 1 - Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 2 - Even if that were true, American allies are frequently not across oceans from Russia/China/Iran/North Korea. Are you suggesting that the United States should back out of NATO? Tell Japan and South Korea we don't like our treaty obligations and to fend for themselves?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

xtracto 6y ago

Anericans live so scared!

catalogia 6y ago
With all that defense spending, I can't imagine why any American would need to fear any foreign military threat.
culturestate 6y ago
I think there's a difference between living scared and living...I guess pragmatically. I'm not worried that e.g. Russia is going to drop a missile into midtown Manhattan, but I do acknowledge that there are real threats in the world and - for the moment at least - we can't all just get along. If the United States changed its military posture tomorrow to be strictly isolationist and brought every soldier home, someone else would step into the void. That may not necessarily be a bad thing, but it would be a different thing and at this point few people are seriously interested in finding out what kind of thing it would be.

kjksf 6y ago

Here's what would happen if any nation would be stupid enough to send a single missile into US soil: a button is pressed and a nuke 1000x stronger than Hiroshima is sent. The end of "war". U.S. has been involved in quite a number of wars in the last century. Always as an aggressor, never as a defendant. Let's not entertain the fantasy that a military budget of $732 billion, the size of 10 next biggest budgets combined, exists to defend US soil from invasion.

culturestate 6y ago
> Let's not entertain the fantasy that a military budget of $732 billion...exists to defend US soil from invasion. Obviously not in its entirety, but it's also worth recognizing that the world is a different place in 2020 than it was in 1940 and that no country - the United States or otherwise - can afford to purchase a national defense at the last minute. Once you realize you need one, it's already too late.
Godel_unicode 6y ago
Apparently December 7th 1941 no longer lives in infamy.

vkou 6y ago

Logistics in 2020 aren't much easier than they were in 1920, or in 1820. And the lead time for ICBMs to kill ~ a billion people has been ~40 minutes for the past 40 years.

Godel_unicode 6y ago
The 82nd airborne division can be in planes on it's way to drop anywhere in the world 18 hours after a phone call from the White House. The Russian equivalent is called the CRRF, and has a similar force mix for obvious reasons.
- vkou 6y ago
  The 82nd airborne division will be out of fuel, ammunition, and food within a week after dropping anywhere in the world, without an international logistics network of shipping to support them, and all the baggage that comes with keeping that network operating. Look at the massive logistics effort that was necessary to invade and occupy Iraq, a country one-tenth the size of the US, where half the opposition deserted before a shot was fired, half of the rest deserted after the first shots were fired, and where half of its neighbours have US or NATO military bases in them. No other country in the world is capable of doing this across an ocean.
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    > No other country in the world is capable of doing this across an ocean. 1 - Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 2 - Even if that were true, American allies are frequently not across oceans from Russia/China/Iran/North Korea. Are you suggesting that the United States should back out of NATO? Tell Japan and South Korea we don't like our treaty obligations and to fend for themselves?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]