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> You don't need divisions to make an impact, you need someone willing to set off a suicide vest in a police station, a pregnant woman to sit an a VBIED and dri

> You don't need divisions to make an impact, you need someone willing to set off a suicide vest in a police station, a pregnant woman to sit an a VBIED and drive past a checkpoint or someone strong enough to fire an RPG. I understand what you're saying, but those are all self-inflicted vulnerabilities from trying to "nation build". > It's of course important to prepare for a larger scale war against China, Russia, etc. but realistically we're more likely to be fighting a handful of goat herders in Afghanistan with an AK and a bag full of rice before we're taking on an armored division. Broadly, I think there are 2 theories of conflict. The first is what I'll call the "justice" theory of conflict: people fight because they are oppressed. The second is what I'll call the "rational basis" theory of conflict: people fight because they think they can win, or because their backs are against a wall and they have nothing to lose by fighting. IMO, the second theory has much, much more explanatory power. If you buy the second theory, then the major reason there is no war between the US and China or Russia is because they don't believe they can win (which is probably true, as long as the US doesn't try to invade). But in order for that to continue to be true in the future, the US needs to continue to invest in military assets that are effective in fighting near peer opponents. It is also important to be good at fighting developing nations. But ultimately, being good at that doesn't matter as much. If the US goes home from Afghanistan, that might affect the Afghans, but it doesn't really have global implications. But a hot war between the US and China would result in a truly enormous number of deaths. Also, I don't really see much evidence that the US has ever really been successful at nation building. The last real success was South Korea. And it's just as easy to see that as a fluke rather than the result of US presence (during the peace - obviously the US helped immensely during the hot part of the conflict).

remarkEon 6y ago
I think you’re mostly right. One thing about “nation building” though is that the US has only been successful (broadly defined) when we occupy the country completely, like a colony, for a generation and essentially administer their government for them for a long time. Now, there’s obviously a lot of warts involved in doing that but Germany, Japan, and South Korea are the last times we really went “all in” (South Korea is a much more murky example as you’ve pointed out). To be clear, Iraq and Afghanistan are very different for reasons that should be obvious (OEF 12-13, here), and while I’m not saying that treating those places like a colony would’ve worked better (I don’t think it would have, for enough reasons to fill a PhD thesis) it’s an interesting historical thought experiment. Back to the actual topic, I share the skepticism of tech Uber alles expressed like others, and trying to predict the future of warfare is mostly a futile exercise. Probably best to index on flexibility and tight training regimens and make some informed inferences about how to structure the force.
- paganel 6y ago
  Another major difference between nation-building in Germany post-WW2 and nation-building in Iraq post-Saddam was that the occupying forces (mostly the Americans) left most of the Nazis in place (with a few notable exceptions at the top), while in Iraq almost the entire Baath Party structure was obliterated. One of my favourite examples is Hans Speidel [1], a Wehrmacht lieutenant-general by the time the war ended, who got to be "Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe from 1957 to 1963", plus the major shareholder of Mercedes in the 1960s who had been a big Nazi sympathiser during the war (his name escapes me right now, and I can't google him easily, the official Mercedes history does not mention him), to say northing of how the infamous IG Farben was split between BASF and Bayer (among others), and not immediately raised to the ground and liquidated. I don't think the Americans that occupied Iraq in 2003 were as friendly with the company that stood behind Saddam's chemical attacks against the Kurds in the 1980s. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel
  - patrickk 6y ago
    Fanta also has an interesting history: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-nazi-germany https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-naz... Also overlooked in the post WWII analysis (apart from historians) is the influence of the Adenauer government: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder There’s a great book called “the shortest history of Germany” that covers it nicely. It’s fascinating. This type of government action (included devaluation of citizens money but allowing companies to retain their value, cheap, highly motivated and educated labour force) likely had a much great impact than the Marshall Plan which is what you always hear about today. The book also goes into details on how the border of the Roman world still today predicts the richest regions of Germany, and created a split in the East/West “world”.
    - paganel 6y ago
      > There’s a great book called “the shortest history of Germany” that covers it nicely. It’s fascinating. Do you happen to have an easy link to it? Sounds really interesting. > The book also goes into details on how the border of the Roman world still today predicts the richest regions of Germany Just a couple of hours ago I was looking for a .kml or .geojson file of the Roman "limes", I was trying to prove its relationship to some toponymy-data from the Carpathians. It's crazy how influential the Romans were.
yhoiseth 6y ago
Good points. I think you’re right about the importance of being able to fight near peers. > If you buy the second theory, then the major reason there is no war between the US and China or Russia is because they don't believe they can win (which is probably true, as long as the US doesn't try to invade). There’s also the issue that even for the winner, a war is probably net negative for its people. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231748269_Rationalist_Explanations_for_War https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231748269_Rationali... has interesting reasoning on how we can still get war even if states would prefer not to.
vagrantJin 6y ago
> The last real success was South Korea. Haha. Nation building involves a boatload of money and the US post war policy was essentially to own the governments of the rebuilt nations. SK, JP are good examples of this and have modeled their development goals to mirror American way of life. From small things like TV shows (to non americans JPN and SK television is as obnoxious as US television with everything being over the top and colourful.) To much broader economic policy. Be that as it may, the big countries generally dont fight each other because the losses on both sides will be massive but other than the US the other countries generally dont mess with smaller countries unless it has an immediate political outcome eg. Russia and ukraine. Miltary history can teach all of us a lot but its inportant to take it with a shovel of salt. Victors write the books and rarely do they write about shortcomings. War is a terrible mess and almost entirely dependent on allies. Lastly I would like to point out our naivete if we think a whole state will stand and wait for a belligerent nation to invade them in their father's ancestral land. The scars of war tend to fester. Should the big countries go to war, the outcome will not be anything like we hope or predict.
- amadeuspagel 6y ago
  > From small things like TV shows (to non americans JPN and SK television is as obnoxious as US television with everything being over the top and colourful.) You take this evidence that japanese and south korean television shows consciously try to imitate the US? Maybe that's just what most people like?
  - poutrathor 6y ago
    well are europeans show likewise ?
    - amadeuspagel 6y ago
      Much of european TV is like the most awful american TV. For example there's some kind of equivalent of the daily show in almost every european country. But that's not because the US forces it on europe, it's just what people like.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Also, I don't really see much evidence that the US has ever really been successful at nation building Compare West Germany to the GDR. Japan turned out absolutely amazing all things considered. But they had national identities before we were there. Iraq has 10,000yr of cultural baggage that needs mopping up. Afghanistan is only really a "nation" in the sense that the land isn't controlled by any of the neighboring countries. I'm not sure where Vietnam stands. I think Korea is the only "success against the odds" story.
- 542354234235 6y ago
  > Iraq has 10,000yr of cultural baggage that needs mopping up. I would disagree that it was cultural baggage and not massive mismanagement of the post invasion landscape by the US. After the invasion, that absolutely crucial mistake made was to not have any plan on how to provide security in the immediate aftermath of the complete toppling of a foreign government. CENTCOM, the Army War College, and the Army Chief of Staff, among others, warned that we needed a robust plan for security. These were ignored by civilian leadership and the Pentagon, so there was no real “Phase 4” post invasion plan. Policing the streets, securing weapons depots, tracking down loyalists, etc. was just not planned for and as a result, the country slipped into chaos. It is estimated that there were no more than about 5,000 fanatical loyalists post invasion, with almost everyone else being undecided and just seeing what would happen. The mass unemployment of security and military forces pushed a lot of them into the insurgency out of anger and the need for a job. The widespread looting, crime waves, and resulting economic stagnation destroyed the goodwill the US could have had for freeing people from a blood thirsty dictator. All these things allowed for an insurgency to grow, harden, and fill its ranks with military trained fighters that would fight for the next 5 years. The chaos and lack of security allowed for jihadists like Al Qaeda to move in and take advantage, eventually splitting off into Al Qaeda in Iraq and pushing the country to the brink of civil war. It wouldn’t have been easy, regardless of the plan, but the failure of Iraq was 100% foreseeable and avoidable.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    It would have been nice if we didn't do a bad job but my point is that a "good job" still isn't gonna come out looking like Japan. The national unity isn't there. I know everyone wants to write wall of text rants about everything that went wrong in Iraq and there's more than enough content there to do that but my point is that if you take a step back from the detailed specifics of how we went about nation building it becomes clear that even a "win" doesn't look all that pretty.
hnracer 6y ago
I think we need a third theory of conflict: political-religious extremism/propaganda/brainwashing. Islamist terrorists and white supremacist terrorists derive some motivation (but not all) from their indoctrination. If the Quran and the Hadiths were a much more tame and apolitical document then we wouldn't get the extent and mode of fighting that we experience now. Japan in WW2 fits into this third theory of conflict as well. Yes it was partly fear of the Soviets, partly resentment (and fear of missing out) over European colonialism, but the rabid belief in nationalism and race superiority was also a big causal factor as well. Their reasons for advancing so aggressively into China and South Asia have nothing to do with oppression and nothing to do with a rational theory of conflict. Many thought the war with US was impossible to win, their industrial production capacity was 1/20th that of the US for instance. Pearl Harbor was a suicidal all-in motivated by them running out of oil combined with their inability to surrender (rabid nationalism). Very often these human drivers related to cognitive bias, fanatic belief, tribalism, are at the root.
- 542354234235 6y ago
  > If the Quran and the Hadiths were a much more tame and apolitical document then we wouldn't get the extent and mode of fighting that we experience now. I think this is a mistake and is not backed up by history. Christian Europe warred for hundreds of years, often using religious doctrine as justification. But the reality is that these conflicts were struggles for resources, power grabs by heads of state, instability created by power vacuums, incompetent leaders, ect. The exact flavor of each conflict was influenced by the religion, but fertile soil for conflict was very terrestrial causes. The Middle East had long periods of stability. It is only in the 100 years in the post WWI landscape, where the longstanding empire collapsed, European interests carved up the region with little regard, and installed puppet regimes that were often specifically tied to ethnic or religious differences. This created the fertile ground for conflict, revolution, and oppressive regimes. Since many of the puppet governments were ethnic or religious minorities only ratcheted up those aspects in the future conflicts, and it is exactly what we see now. The idea that Islam is just destined to be violent and chaotic is just as misguided as seeing Middle Ages Europe, reading Jesus’s “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword”, and saying the same thing about Christianity.

remarkEon 6y ago

I think you’re mostly right. One thing about “nation building” though is that the US has only been successful (broadly defined) when we occupy the country completely, like a colony, for a generation and essentially administer their government for them for a long time. Now, there’s obviously a lot of warts involved in doing that but Germany, Japan, and South Korea are the last times we really went “all in” (South Korea is a much more murky example as you’ve pointed out). To be clear, Iraq and Afghanistan are very different for reasons that should be obvious (OEF 12-13, here), and while I’m not saying that treating those places like a colony would’ve worked better (I don’t think it would have, for enough reasons to fill a PhD thesis) it’s an interesting historical thought experiment. Back to the actual topic, I share the skepticism of tech Uber alles expressed like others, and trying to predict the future of warfare is mostly a futile exercise. Probably best to index on flexibility and tight training regimens and make some informed inferences about how to structure the force.

paganel 6y ago
Another major difference between nation-building in Germany post-WW2 and nation-building in Iraq post-Saddam was that the occupying forces (mostly the Americans) left most of the Nazis in place (with a few notable exceptions at the top), while in Iraq almost the entire Baath Party structure was obliterated. One of my favourite examples is Hans Speidel [1], a Wehrmacht lieutenant-general by the time the war ended, who got to be "Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe from 1957 to 1963", plus the major shareholder of Mercedes in the 1960s who had been a big Nazi sympathiser during the war (his name escapes me right now, and I can't google him easily, the official Mercedes history does not mention him), to say northing of how the infamous IG Farben was split between BASF and Bayer (among others), and not immediately raised to the ground and liquidated. I don't think the Americans that occupied Iraq in 2003 were as friendly with the company that stood behind Saddam's chemical attacks against the Kurds in the 1980s. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel
- patrickk 6y ago
  Fanta also has an interesting history: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-nazi-germany https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-naz... Also overlooked in the post WWII analysis (apart from historians) is the influence of the Adenauer government: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder There’s a great book called “the shortest history of Germany” that covers it nicely. It’s fascinating. This type of government action (included devaluation of citizens money but allowing companies to retain their value, cheap, highly motivated and educated labour force) likely had a much great impact than the Marshall Plan which is what you always hear about today. The book also goes into details on how the border of the Roman world still today predicts the richest regions of Germany, and created a split in the East/West “world”.
  - paganel 6y ago
    > There’s a great book called “the shortest history of Germany” that covers it nicely. It’s fascinating. Do you happen to have an easy link to it? Sounds really interesting. > The book also goes into details on how the border of the Roman world still today predicts the richest regions of Germany Just a couple of hours ago I was looking for a .kml or .geojson file of the Roman "limes", I was trying to prove its relationship to some toponymy-data from the Carpathians. It's crazy how influential the Romans were.

yhoiseth 6y ago

Good points. I think you’re right about the importance of being able to fight near peers. > If you buy the second theory, then the major reason there is no war between the US and China or Russia is because they don't believe they can win (which is probably true, as long as the US doesn't try to invade). There’s also the issue that even for the winner, a war is probably net negative for its people. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231748269_Rationalist_Explanations_for_War https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231748269_Rationali... has interesting reasoning on how we can still get war even if states would prefer not to.

vagrantJin 6y ago

> The last real success was South Korea. Haha. Nation building involves a boatload of money and the US post war policy was essentially to own the governments of the rebuilt nations. SK, JP are good examples of this and have modeled their development goals to mirror American way of life. From small things like TV shows (to non americans JPN and SK television is as obnoxious as US television with everything being over the top and colourful.) To much broader economic policy. Be that as it may, the big countries generally dont fight each other because the losses on both sides will be massive but other than the US the other countries generally dont mess with smaller countries unless it has an immediate political outcome eg. Russia and ukraine. Miltary history can teach all of us a lot but its inportant to take it with a shovel of salt. Victors write the books and rarely do they write about shortcomings. War is a terrible mess and almost entirely dependent on allies. Lastly I would like to point out our naivete if we think a whole state will stand and wait for a belligerent nation to invade them in their father's ancestral land. The scars of war tend to fester. Should the big countries go to war, the outcome will not be anything like we hope or predict.

amadeuspagel 6y ago
> From small things like TV shows (to non americans JPN and SK television is as obnoxious as US television with everything being over the top and colourful.) You take this evidence that japanese and south korean television shows consciously try to imitate the US? Maybe that's just what most people like?
- poutrathor 6y ago
  well are europeans show likewise ?
  - amadeuspagel 6y ago
    Much of european TV is like the most awful american TV. For example there's some kind of equivalent of the daily show in almost every european country. But that's not because the US forces it on europe, it's just what people like.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>Also, I don't really see much evidence that the US has ever really been successful at nation building Compare West Germany to the GDR. Japan turned out absolutely amazing all things considered. But they had national identities before we were there. Iraq has 10,000yr of cultural baggage that needs mopping up. Afghanistan is only really a "nation" in the sense that the land isn't controlled by any of the neighboring countries. I'm not sure where Vietnam stands. I think Korea is the only "success against the odds" story.

542354234235 6y ago
> Iraq has 10,000yr of cultural baggage that needs mopping up. I would disagree that it was cultural baggage and not massive mismanagement of the post invasion landscape by the US. After the invasion, that absolutely crucial mistake made was to not have any plan on how to provide security in the immediate aftermath of the complete toppling of a foreign government. CENTCOM, the Army War College, and the Army Chief of Staff, among others, warned that we needed a robust plan for security. These were ignored by civilian leadership and the Pentagon, so there was no real “Phase 4” post invasion plan. Policing the streets, securing weapons depots, tracking down loyalists, etc. was just not planned for and as a result, the country slipped into chaos. It is estimated that there were no more than about 5,000 fanatical loyalists post invasion, with almost everyone else being undecided and just seeing what would happen. The mass unemployment of security and military forces pushed a lot of them into the insurgency out of anger and the need for a job. The widespread looting, crime waves, and resulting economic stagnation destroyed the goodwill the US could have had for freeing people from a blood thirsty dictator. All these things allowed for an insurgency to grow, harden, and fill its ranks with military trained fighters that would fight for the next 5 years. The chaos and lack of security allowed for jihadists like Al Qaeda to move in and take advantage, eventually splitting off into Al Qaeda in Iraq and pushing the country to the brink of civil war. It wouldn’t have been easy, regardless of the plan, but the failure of Iraq was 100% foreseeable and avoidable.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  It would have been nice if we didn't do a bad job but my point is that a "good job" still isn't gonna come out looking like Japan. The national unity isn't there. I know everyone wants to write wall of text rants about everything that went wrong in Iraq and there's more than enough content there to do that but my point is that if you take a step back from the detailed specifics of how we went about nation building it becomes clear that even a "win" doesn't look all that pretty.

hnracer 6y ago

I think we need a third theory of conflict: political-religious extremism/propaganda/brainwashing. Islamist terrorists and white supremacist terrorists derive some motivation (but not all) from their indoctrination. If the Quran and the Hadiths were a much more tame and apolitical document then we wouldn't get the extent and mode of fighting that we experience now. Japan in WW2 fits into this third theory of conflict as well. Yes it was partly fear of the Soviets, partly resentment (and fear of missing out) over European colonialism, but the rabid belief in nationalism and race superiority was also a big causal factor as well. Their reasons for advancing so aggressively into China and South Asia have nothing to do with oppression and nothing to do with a rational theory of conflict. Many thought the war with US was impossible to win, their industrial production capacity was 1/20th that of the US for instance. Pearl Harbor was a suicidal all-in motivated by them running out of oil combined with their inability to surrender (rabid nationalism). Very often these human drivers related to cognitive bias, fanatic belief, tribalism, are at the root.

542354234235 6y ago
> If the Quran and the Hadiths were a much more tame and apolitical document then we wouldn't get the extent and mode of fighting that we experience now. I think this is a mistake and is not backed up by history. Christian Europe warred for hundreds of years, often using religious doctrine as justification. But the reality is that these conflicts were struggles for resources, power grabs by heads of state, instability created by power vacuums, incompetent leaders, ect. The exact flavor of each conflict was influenced by the religion, but fertile soil for conflict was very terrestrial causes. The Middle East had long periods of stability. It is only in the 100 years in the post WWI landscape, where the longstanding empire collapsed, European interests carved up the region with little regard, and installed puppet regimes that were often specifically tied to ethnic or religious differences. This created the fertile ground for conflict, revolution, and oppressive regimes. Since many of the puppet governments were ethnic or religious minorities only ratcheted up those aspects in the future conflicts, and it is exactly what we see now. The idea that Islam is just destined to be violent and chaotic is just as misguided as seeing Middle Ages Europe, reading Jesus’s “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword”, and saying the same thing about Christianity.