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The US will never be involved in a defensive war - geography makes that more or less certain. It's not like we'd ever allow a neighboring nation to join a milit

The US will never be involved in a defensive war - geography makes that more or less certain. It's not like we'd ever allow a neighboring nation to join a military alliance with an adversarial force, and so there simply will never be a ground threat. And ocean based threats are also probably obsolete. Send a bunch of carriers and destroyers against any modern nation, and they're going to go pop. This, famously, is exactly what happened in a wargame over a hypothetical war with Iran! [1] So if another country ever attacks the US, it's going to be in the form of a massive nuclear strike. Conventional military forces have been largely relegated to invading non-nuclear nations, or engaging in proxy wars against other nations. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

nozzlegear 3y ago
> It's not like we'd ever allow a neighboring nation to join a military alliance with an adversarial force, and so there simply will never be a ground threat. For what it's worth, I agree with your argument, but I want to point out that the only reason we have the luxury of never allowing a neighboring nation to join alliances is because we have such massive military and technological advantages that aren't being sabotaged from within.
ActorNightly 3y ago
>The US will never be involved in a defensive war - geography makes that more or less certain. It should be pretty clear by now that the next actual war won't be boots on ground, it will be fully digital. The fact that in 2024, a large number of people are going to vote for Trump if he makes it to the ballot is pretty much an indicator that a country like China can use the existing AI technologies to pretty much throw US into a civil war and then take over economically if there is no active defense against it.
dralley 3y ago
How do you define "defensive"? The US has repeatedly been involved in wars to defend our allies from external attack.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  If you are invaded by another country, then you are in a defensive war. Beyond that, countries often will claim they are in defensive wars, when reality is somewhat more ambiguous. Imagine Mexico announced plans to enter into a military alliance with China, which would entail setting up nukes right on the US border. We would invade Mexico approximately 0 seconds later, to ensure such an outcome never happened. The closest we ever came to intentional nuclear war happened over this exact sort of scenario with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Is that defensive? Let's say we're slightly more subtle with the above. And we 'compel' a region in Mexico to declare their independence and announce an association with the US; we immediately acknowledge their independence. Mexico predictably seeks to shut down said rebellion and invades. We then come to their aid, and start a war against Mexico. Is that defensive? What if said independence seeking was completely organic instead of compelled? I'm not speaking rhetorically. These questions are difficult, if not impossible to answer. So when I say defensive war, I am speaking literally of the most basic form imaginable. Otherwise, you end up with a million scenarios where the line between defender and invader often come down to one's perspective, instead of some objective qualification. You also risk recreating WW1 where a Bosnian Serb assassinating an Austro-Hungarian royal results in Brits killing Germans over it, and everybody has a plausible claim of behaving defensively, somehow.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
    I'm always irked to no end when someone omits the context of the cuban missile crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (Spanish: Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (Russian: Карибский кризис, romanized: Karibskiy krizis), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba. (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis and countless other sources) They were just a response, tit for tat. And were only removed after the USA removed theirs. Secretly, the United States agreed to dismantle all of the offensive weapons it had deployed to Turkey. (same source) That aside, what about some conventionally armed IC/SLBM-swarm advising via ADS-B: NONUKE/JUSTTNT/KINETIC/GODSRODS/HELOKITY/WHATSUP/DIPLOMAT/COURIER/MESSAGE/AIRMAIL/DELIVERY/BLOWME/FORFUN? Let's call it the W69-MK6...maybe deployed by some LongDong YeeHaa...

nozzlegear 3y ago

> It's not like we'd ever allow a neighboring nation to join a military alliance with an adversarial force, and so there simply will never be a ground threat. For what it's worth, I agree with your argument, but I want to point out that the only reason we have the luxury of never allowing a neighboring nation to join alliances is because we have such massive military and technological advantages that aren't being sabotaged from within.

ActorNightly 3y ago

>The US will never be involved in a defensive war - geography makes that more or less certain. It should be pretty clear by now that the next actual war won't be boots on ground, it will be fully digital. The fact that in 2024, a large number of people are going to vote for Trump if he makes it to the ballot is pretty much an indicator that a country like China can use the existing AI technologies to pretty much throw US into a civil war and then take over economically if there is no active defense against it.

dralley 3y ago

How do you define "defensive"? The US has repeatedly been involved in wars to defend our allies from external attack.

somenameforme 3y ago
If you are invaded by another country, then you are in a defensive war. Beyond that, countries often will claim they are in defensive wars, when reality is somewhat more ambiguous. Imagine Mexico announced plans to enter into a military alliance with China, which would entail setting up nukes right on the US border. We would invade Mexico approximately 0 seconds later, to ensure such an outcome never happened. The closest we ever came to intentional nuclear war happened over this exact sort of scenario with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Is that defensive? Let's say we're slightly more subtle with the above. And we 'compel' a region in Mexico to declare their independence and announce an association with the US; we immediately acknowledge their independence. Mexico predictably seeks to shut down said rebellion and invades. We then come to their aid, and start a war against Mexico. Is that defensive? What if said independence seeking was completely organic instead of compelled? I'm not speaking rhetorically. These questions are difficult, if not impossible to answer. So when I say defensive war, I am speaking literally of the most basic form imaginable. Otherwise, you end up with a million scenarios where the line between defender and invader often come down to one's perspective, instead of some objective qualification. You also risk recreating WW1 where a Bosnian Serb assassinating an Austro-Hungarian royal results in Brits killing Germans over it, and everybody has a plausible claim of behaving defensively, somehow.
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
  I'm always irked to no end when someone omits the context of the cuban missile crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (Spanish: Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (Russian: Карибский кризис, romanized: Karibskiy krizis), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba. (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis and countless other sources) They were just a response, tit for tat. And were only removed after the USA removed theirs. Secretly, the United States agreed to dismantle all of the offensive weapons it had deployed to Turkey. (same source) That aside, what about some conventionally armed IC/SLBM-swarm advising via ADS-B: NONUKE/JUSTTNT/KINETIC/GODSRODS/HELOKITY/WHATSUP/DIPLOMAT/COURIER/MESSAGE/AIRMAIL/DELIVERY/BLOWME/FORFUN? Let's call it the W69-MK6...maybe deployed by some LongDong YeeHaa...