7 ms·

I agree with you, but if the US truly has the best military (and it does 100x) then when push comes to shove, the US will destroy anyone who tries to undermine

I agree with you, but if the US truly has the best military (and it does 100x) then when push comes to shove, the US will destroy anyone who tries to undermine it. Very dangerous game to oppose it. Being able to construct things quickly is important, but if the US can militarily seize nearly every country on earth in days, the power is not necessarily where the kit is located

rayiner 11mo ago
If you take nukes off the table, the U.S. doesn’t have a 100x military advantage. If China seriously mobilized its industrial capability, the U.S. may not have even a 2x advantage. Remember that, right before World War II, the US didn’t even have a top-10 military, having demobilized it after World War I. It’s vast industrial capacity is what enabled it to build a larger military than all of Europe combined within a few years.
- eastbound 11mo ago
  The US was also much more unified at the time. That’s the thing about history: Like economy, it’s human matter, and you could reproduce and experiment twice and get completely different result because your systems are not isolated in location or time.
  - potato3732842 11mo ago
    >The US was also much more unified at the time Were we? Or is that just after the fact revisionism that makes things "easy" If Europe had managed to keep it together a few more years the US may very well have had a bunch of communism adjacent social strife and FDR may have died a deposed tyrant. We were certainly more unified on certain broad cultural and values axis, but things were still very divided.
- pjmlp 11mo ago
  The most important fact, that people overlook, is that its industrial capacity was never bombed during the war, and Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got directly attacked.
  - nostrademons 11mo ago
    So Australia & New Zealand are the next superpowers. I remember when I was around middle school or early high school, I attended a geopolitical simulation at MIT that wargamed out a crisis between major world powers, and that was the exact result. New Zealand won, in alliance with Australia. They were able to invest heavily in technology while everyone else was nuking each other, and then ended up with space lasers or whatever the endgame tech was while everyone else ended up back in the stone age.
    - ndsipa_pomu 11mo ago
      Reminds me of how I used to play Risk (which I now consider to be one of the worst designed games in a similar fashion to Monopoly) when I'd sit in Australia and just keep building troops until other players weaken themselves with fighting. Of course it helps that there's just a single position to defend Australia and as it's the smallest continent, people usually aim to attack elsewhere.
      - fosco 11mo ago
        “Modern” risk boards have Australia with 3 borders to defend including the normal and addingcross-map Argentina to New Zealand and Japan to Philippines (I believe this map comes from a risk computer game)
        ndsipa_pomu 11mo ago
        Have they re-balanced the continental rewards etc? IIRC North America had three borders, but was worth a lot more. However, I have no desire to play Risk again as the dice mechanic is infuriating and it's almost the opposite of a euro-game i.e. Players can get eliminated a long time before the end of the game and the game length can be arbitrarily long. Also, if a player falls too far behind the other players, it's very unlikely that they can turn things around (excepting the infuriating dice mechanic which can let a single soldier defeat hordes of invaders).
roenxi 11mo ago
The US military isn't that scary; the evidence to date is that it's ability to destroy counties ends somewhere around Iran's strength. The modelling I've seen is that any US-China war will take place in Asia and China will probably win it unless the US gets a lot of help (always possible). And the US has already been undermined by the likes of China, Russia and India and there isn't a lot they can do about it in the short term. They certainly don't have a military option to use against that grouping. At least not one that hasn't already been used in the case of Russia and failed to coerce them into cooperating.
- kiba 11mo ago
  America doesn't and shouldn't fight China or Russia alone, so I don't know why we're talking about that. Russia is basically on its way out as a military power. It can't even conquer Ukraine. As for China, you don't fight China alone. What do you think military bases in Japan are for? Anyway, for the world's sake, China shouldn't start a war, but sometime you just can't stop stupid.
  - the_gipsy 11mo ago
    America is on a isolation downward spiral. Russia will conquer Ukraine, any other prediction at this point is absurd. See point one, America is alone now, it will take decades to repair the damage.
    - pfdietz 11mo ago
      Some would dispute the "downward" part there. Not trying to be the world's policeman would allow tremendous downsizing of the military and its associated expense. Decoupling and isolation is a very rational response if nuclear proliferation is going to accelerate, in order to avoid having entangling alliances pull the country into a nuclear equivalent of the first World War.
      - the_gipsy 11mo ago
        "World's policeman", that's what you tell little kids America was doing. America didn't invade Iraq or Afghanistan for world peace. There were strong economic and strategic motives behind those invasions. At the same time, soft power is also vanishing.
usrnm 11mo ago
You cannot keep a good military for very long when you enter the economic decline stage, this has been proven by every empire in history.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
rcarr 11mo ago
Replace the word US in this paragraph with Nazi Germany and the issue with this statement becomes apparent. If the only way you can maintain power is via physical force over others then you're a bully and it won't be long until others unite against you. The US may have the best military in the world but it does not have the ability to take on the entire globe. It's previous status actually came from the fact people used to look up to and admire it - something that has been steadily declining for quite some time now. Growing up, I used to think the US was the coolest place on Earth. Yesterday, I felt sick watching a video on YouTube about how an estimated 1500 people are living in the flood tunnels of Las Vegas and routinely die whenever there is heavy rain. Every place has problems, but you can't just shout "We're the best country on Earth" anymore and have people believe you when on a daily basis the world is seeing so much evidence to the contrary.
- Qem 11mo ago
  > Yesterday, I felt sick watching a video on YouTube about how an estimated 1500 people are living in the flood tunnels of Las Vegas and routinely die whenever there is heavy rain. I didn't know about this. Can you share a link?
  - rcarr 11mo ago
    https://youtu.be/7MkAs99O1LQ https://youtu.be/7MkAs99O1LQ
usrusr 11mo ago
The US military is as clueless as any other (except those two) about combat in the age of disposable drones.
sharts 11mo ago
100x and yet it only took a couple of decades to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.
amrocha 11mo ago
I’m supposed to be scared of the military who has spent the last 80 years losing wars against nations a fraction of its own size? The US couldn’t “seize” afghanistan in two decades, what makes you think it could “seize nearly every country on earth in days”?

rayiner 11mo ago

If you take nukes off the table, the U.S. doesn’t have a 100x military advantage. If China seriously mobilized its industrial capability, the U.S. may not have even a 2x advantage. Remember that, right before World War II, the US didn’t even have a top-10 military, having demobilized it after World War I. It’s vast industrial capacity is what enabled it to build a larger military than all of Europe combined within a few years.

eastbound 11mo ago
The US was also much more unified at the time. That’s the thing about history: Like economy, it’s human matter, and you could reproduce and experiment twice and get completely different result because your systems are not isolated in location or time.
- potato3732842 11mo ago
  >The US was also much more unified at the time Were we? Or is that just after the fact revisionism that makes things "easy" If Europe had managed to keep it together a few more years the US may very well have had a bunch of communism adjacent social strife and FDR may have died a deposed tyrant. We were certainly more unified on certain broad cultural and values axis, but things were still very divided.
pjmlp 11mo ago
The most important fact, that people overlook, is that its industrial capacity was never bombed during the war, and Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got directly attacked.
- nostrademons 11mo ago
  So Australia & New Zealand are the next superpowers. I remember when I was around middle school or early high school, I attended a geopolitical simulation at MIT that wargamed out a crisis between major world powers, and that was the exact result. New Zealand won, in alliance with Australia. They were able to invest heavily in technology while everyone else was nuking each other, and then ended up with space lasers or whatever the endgame tech was while everyone else ended up back in the stone age.
  - ndsipa_pomu 11mo ago
    Reminds me of how I used to play Risk (which I now consider to be one of the worst designed games in a similar fashion to Monopoly) when I'd sit in Australia and just keep building troops until other players weaken themselves with fighting. Of course it helps that there's just a single position to defend Australia and as it's the smallest continent, people usually aim to attack elsewhere.
    - fosco 11mo ago
      “Modern” risk boards have Australia with 3 borders to defend including the normal and addingcross-map Argentina to New Zealand and Japan to Philippines (I believe this map comes from a risk computer game)
      - ndsipa_pomu 11mo ago
        Have they re-balanced the continental rewards etc? IIRC North America had three borders, but was worth a lot more. However, I have no desire to play Risk again as the dice mechanic is infuriating and it's almost the opposite of a euro-game i.e. Players can get eliminated a long time before the end of the game and the game length can be arbitrarily long. Also, if a player falls too far behind the other players, it's very unlikely that they can turn things around (excepting the infuriating dice mechanic which can let a single soldier defeat hordes of invaders).

roenxi 11mo ago

The US military isn't that scary; the evidence to date is that it's ability to destroy counties ends somewhere around Iran's strength. The modelling I've seen is that any US-China war will take place in Asia and China will probably win it unless the US gets a lot of help (always possible). And the US has already been undermined by the likes of China, Russia and India and there isn't a lot they can do about it in the short term. They certainly don't have a military option to use against that grouping. At least not one that hasn't already been used in the case of Russia and failed to coerce them into cooperating.

kiba 11mo ago
America doesn't and shouldn't fight China or Russia alone, so I don't know why we're talking about that. Russia is basically on its way out as a military power. It can't even conquer Ukraine. As for China, you don't fight China alone. What do you think military bases in Japan are for? Anyway, for the world's sake, China shouldn't start a war, but sometime you just can't stop stupid.
- the_gipsy 11mo ago
  America is on a isolation downward spiral. Russia will conquer Ukraine, any other prediction at this point is absurd. See point one, America is alone now, it will take decades to repair the damage.
  - pfdietz 11mo ago
    Some would dispute the "downward" part there. Not trying to be the world's policeman would allow tremendous downsizing of the military and its associated expense. Decoupling and isolation is a very rational response if nuclear proliferation is going to accelerate, in order to avoid having entangling alliances pull the country into a nuclear equivalent of the first World War.
    - the_gipsy 11mo ago
      "World's policeman", that's what you tell little kids America was doing. America didn't invade Iraq or Afghanistan for world peace. There were strong economic and strategic motives behind those invasions. At the same time, soft power is also vanishing.

usrnm 11mo ago

You cannot keep a good military for very long when you enter the economic decline stage, this has been proven by every empire in history.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

rcarr 11mo ago

Replace the word US in this paragraph with Nazi Germany and the issue with this statement becomes apparent. If the only way you can maintain power is via physical force over others then you're a bully and it won't be long until others unite against you. The US may have the best military in the world but it does not have the ability to take on the entire globe. It's previous status actually came from the fact people used to look up to and admire it - something that has been steadily declining for quite some time now. Growing up, I used to think the US was the coolest place on Earth. Yesterday, I felt sick watching a video on YouTube about how an estimated 1500 people are living in the flood tunnels of Las Vegas and routinely die whenever there is heavy rain. Every place has problems, but you can't just shout "We're the best country on Earth" anymore and have people believe you when on a daily basis the world is seeing so much evidence to the contrary.

Qem 11mo ago
> Yesterday, I felt sick watching a video on YouTube about how an estimated 1500 people are living in the flood tunnels of Las Vegas and routinely die whenever there is heavy rain. I didn't know about this. Can you share a link?
- rcarr 11mo ago
  https://youtu.be/7MkAs99O1LQ https://youtu.be/7MkAs99O1LQ

usrusr 11mo ago

The US military is as clueless as any other (except those two) about combat in the age of disposable drones.

sharts 11mo ago

100x and yet it only took a couple of decades to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

amrocha 11mo ago

I’m supposed to be scared of the military who has spent the last 80 years losing wars against nations a fraction of its own size? The US couldn’t “seize” afghanistan in two decades, what makes you think it could “seize nearly every country on earth in days”?