4 ms·

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

by 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).
        ghaff 11mo ago
        Another major feature of Risk (more or less whatever side rules you're playing with around alliances and so forth) is the role of the cards which pretty much dominate everything else in the endgame.
        ndsipa_pomu 11mo ago
        Yep, and the endgame can last for hours longer than the rest of the game. That's when the remaining players get to argue and hate each other,
- mystraline 11mo ago
  When was Pearl Harbor attacked by Japan? Now, when did Hawai'i become a state? And when and by whom was their king deposed? > Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got directly attacked. Uh, which country again was it? (Edit: -4, really? Damn, people are salty about actually knowing history versus going against the US public school system's propaganda that "We (royal) were attacked". In reality, the occupier forces, the US military, were attacked, having deposed the government at the behest of Sanford Dole, of pineapple infamy. But the simple bumper sticker slogan "Remember Pearl Harbor", short circuits and somehow gets people to ignore history at the behest of ruthless hegemonic expansion and irrational patriotism.)
  - jleyank 11mo ago
    Hawaii was a US territory as was Alaska (which was also attacked). As is Puerto Rico today.
    - mystraline 11mo ago
      An occupied territory, sure. The Japanese only attacked the occupiers (USA). They didn't go after any of the native peoples' cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Kingdom In 1887, King Kalākaua was forced to accept a new constitution after a coup d'état by the Honolulu Rifles, a volunteer military unit recruited from American settlers. Queen Liliʻuokalani, who succeeded Kalākaua in 1891, tried to abrogate the new constitution. She was subsequently overthrown in a 1893 coup engineered by the Committee of Safety (run by Sanford Dole), a group of Hawaiian subjects who were mostly of American descent, and supported by the U.S. military. The Committee of Safety dissolved the kingdom and established the Republic of Hawaii, intending for the U.S. to annex the islands, which it did on July 7, 1898, via the Newlands Resolution. Hawaii became part of the U.S. as the Territory of Hawaii until it became a U.S. state in 1959.
      - Workaccount2 11mo ago
        On geopolitical scale, you either need to have big guns or big friends. No one has any true right to any land. If you don't have the foresight to recognize that, you probably don't have a place in the future. This isn't even something only cold imperialist superpowers adopt. Hawaii itself was populated with warring chiefdoms that were killing each other and taking land for centuries before a bigger fish showed up. Small fish happily eating smaller fish but then are upset when they get eaten...
- zmgsabst 11mo ago
  Actually, Alaska and the West Coast were attacked during the war — but only relatively lightly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood That last one, in which a Japanese sub bombarded Santa Barbara, played a role in the later Japanese internment by escalating fears of an invasion.

by rayiner 11mo ago

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).
      - ghaff 11mo ago
        Another major feature of Risk (more or less whatever side rules you're playing with around alliances and so forth) is the role of the cards which pretty much dominate everything else in the endgame.
        ndsipa_pomu 11mo ago
        Yep, and the endgame can last for hours longer than the rest of the game. That's when the remaining players get to argue and hate each other,
mystraline 11mo ago
When was Pearl Harbor attacked by Japan? Now, when did Hawai'i become a state? And when and by whom was their king deposed? > Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got directly attacked. Uh, which country again was it? (Edit: -4, really? Damn, people are salty about actually knowing history versus going against the US public school system's propaganda that "We (royal) were attacked". In reality, the occupier forces, the US military, were attacked, having deposed the government at the behest of Sanford Dole, of pineapple infamy. But the simple bumper sticker slogan "Remember Pearl Harbor", short circuits and somehow gets people to ignore history at the behest of ruthless hegemonic expansion and irrational patriotism.)
- jleyank 11mo ago
  Hawaii was a US territory as was Alaska (which was also attacked). As is Puerto Rico today.
  - mystraline 11mo ago
    An occupied territory, sure. The Japanese only attacked the occupiers (USA). They didn't go after any of the native peoples' cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Kingdom In 1887, King Kalākaua was forced to accept a new constitution after a coup d'état by the Honolulu Rifles, a volunteer military unit recruited from American settlers. Queen Liliʻuokalani, who succeeded Kalākaua in 1891, tried to abrogate the new constitution. She was subsequently overthrown in a 1893 coup engineered by the Committee of Safety (run by Sanford Dole), a group of Hawaiian subjects who were mostly of American descent, and supported by the U.S. military. The Committee of Safety dissolved the kingdom and established the Republic of Hawaii, intending for the U.S. to annex the islands, which it did on July 7, 1898, via the Newlands Resolution. Hawaii became part of the U.S. as the Territory of Hawaii until it became a U.S. state in 1959.
    - Workaccount2 11mo ago
      On geopolitical scale, you either need to have big guns or big friends. No one has any true right to any land. If you don't have the foresight to recognize that, you probably don't have a place in the future. This isn't even something only cold imperialist superpowers adopt. Hawaii itself was populated with warring chiefdoms that were killing each other and taking land for centuries before a bigger fish showed up. Small fish happily eating smaller fish but then are upset when they get eaten...
zmgsabst 11mo ago
Actually, Alaska and the West Coast were attacked during the war — but only relatively lightly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood That last one, in which a Japanese sub bombarded Santa Barbara, played a role in the later Japanese internment by escalating fears of an invasion.