When you finish, we’ll all be waiting for you out here in the suburbs and rural areas armed to the teeth. Have fun in the Appalachians.
Yes, of course you can use active sonar to find our quiet subs. But the trouble with active sonar is that it is, well, active. You have to broadcast a powerful sound burst and listen for the echoes. And that, of course, is like painting a giant bulls-eye on yourself. Every sub in the area is going to know exactly where you are, whereas you only have a chance of detecting the other subs. Using active sonar in today’s submarine warfare environment is signing your own death warrant.
And again, the trouble with wiping out the US air force is the number of intercontinental sorties your planes can fly vs the number of local sorties our planes can fly. I imagine that the US vs USSR war games included large scale nuclear attacks on all our military bases. If you allow that, then you can indeed catch a large percentage of our planes on the ground. But that does you no good, since your country is exposed to retaliatory nuclear strikes. MAD. If your country has 10 planes that can fly intercontinental bombing or air supriority missions, one locally based plane can fly the same number of sorties. During the Guld War our B-52s could launch from Diego Garcia and bomb Iraq with impunity, but that was only because Iraq had no military assets outside of Iraq. An invading enemy would have to contend with US carrier forces, and US air bases around the world. And again, local air defense is 10 times easier than projecting power globally.
The United States was able to accomplish this against Iraq, but that was matching up the world’s most advanced air force against a third world country. But if you look at our record in Vietnam it wasn’t all our way. We took lots of air casualties, and even though we could dominate any one particular area and bomb pretty much wherever we wanted, we still couldn’t win the war.
The US military CAN be defeated, of course. But that requires that the enemy has some structural advantages that the US simply can’t match, or can’t afford to match. Any US invasion of any other country has the potential for us to be very badly beaten, even by third world countries. But when looking at an invasion of the US, all the advantages those countries had against the US suddenly become advantages for the US. The invading country would have to have military superiority over the US comparable to US military superiority over Iraq. And no such country exists. Even for the forseeable future, that country can’t exist without some major major changes in the world economy. The US would have to be practically destroyed allready. Maybe in 100 years when the US is in Road-Warrior style anarchy and China has bases on Mars they might accomplish it. Bat that again assumes that current US military forces don’t exist, and that the enemy will have vastly superior military forces that currently don’t really exist.
Yes, that was my point.
I don’t think it’s arrogant to point out that (at least for now, and certainly for some time to come in the future), the answer to the OP’s question is “no”. As has been pointed out, this doesn’t mean the U.S. couldn’t suffer defeats abroad, as in Vietnam; this doesn’t mean the U.S. couldn’t be the victim of major terrorist attacks, as in September 11; and it doesn’t mean mean the U.S. couldn’t be subject to a ballistic missile attack. It also doesn’t mean the U.S. could invade and defeat any other country it wants to. But there just isn’t any reasonable set of assumptions that would allow for a successful invasion of the United States. Aliens from outer space in giant starships? Kim Jong-Il’s mad scientists whip up a matter transporter in their secret underground North Korean lab? After the Global Economic Collapse of 2027, and the Second American Civil War in the '30’s, the new Christian theocracy which rules what used to be the mainland U.S. eschews foreign espionage as sinful and rejects all space travel (spy satellites) as being against the will of God? Then maybe it could happen.
I’m assuming not all North and South American nations aren’t included in this, like Cuba. And what about the Faulkland Island dispute between Britain and Argentina? Didn’t we side with the Brits? And finally, what of Greenland? It’s Nort American but owned by the Danish. Is it included?
Not all states are signatories, but Cuba is. Mexico is a signatory, but denounce the treaty last September (I haven’t found any sign of their reasoning for this, but I’m looking).
With the Faulkland Islands War, Argentina attacked a territory of the UK. This was outside of the area governed by the North Atlantic treaty (Europe & North America), so the UK didn’t/couldn’t call in outside assistance under the treaty. Argentina had no grounds to call in the assistance of the other signatories, since the UK response was not an “Unprovoked armed attack by a State against the territory, the people, or the land, sea or air forces of another State” (article 9, para a) or an “Invasion, by the armed forces of a State, of the territory of an American State” (article 9, para b)- Argentina provoked it by seizing the islands.
Greenland appears to be within the treaty area (defined in article 4) as far as I can tell without a globe to check, but Denmark is not a signatory to the Rio treaty. It is covered by the North Atlantic treaty, so the US & other NATO countries would consider an attack on Greenland equivalent to an attack on all of them.
Persephone
Well, since you asked. . . 
If a non-nuclear nation successfully invades a member of the nuke club, all the other members have a distinct interest in preventing this potential change in the current balance of power. Even though they are not our friends, The Russian Federation doesn’t want China to successfully invade California, and gain access to US infrastructure, and particularly US nuclear submarine bases on the Pacific. Likewise the French, or British, who happen to actually be our allies, Can’t let Mexico become a new member of the nuke club by invasion of the US. We can’t let Pakistan and India fight one out, either.
Also there is the matter of the character of our nation, in a post defeat posture. We are fairly good to folks we have beaten in a war, if our past record is any indication. But we might be sore losers. If so, we would be sore losers with big guns.
Whether or not we should do it, or want to see it done, the fact remains that an America in defeat might well become the thing the fanatics all accuse us of being now. Some of our military thinkers already came up with the plan they called “Operation Spoil Sport.”
The idea is that you sequester a small number of launchers that are never used, even in a final defense. But the military operatives are sequestered as well, and they are supplied to wait out the six months, to a year after the defeat of the country. (In our case, it was Submarines hiding under the polar Ice Cap, which, at the time no one else knew how to get around under.) After that time, they come out of hiding long enough to launch the most devastating possible attack upon the capital city of the aggressor. Not to win the war, but purely to make winning the war unprofitable for the government which planned it.
Because this type of planning is obvious to any set of strategists in a multi nuclear powered nation, every nuclear powered nation has to prevent every other one from being successfully invaded by another country. It just won’t do to have cold vengeance hanging over the heads of the entire world for decades. The new capital of the Great Peoples’ New Republic of Amerika in Pierre is doomed from the get go, by the inevitable strike by our own forces in hiding. And the folks who started it can pretty much be sure their own capital is a future parking lot, with built in twenty for hour lighting. Not because we cannot loose, but because we will not loose.
War is very ugly. America is very good at it. Yes, a very well planned, and widely supported covertly launched invasion by massive military force could conceivably succeed in overwhelming our active military forces at home. The civilian partisan resistance would be extremely ugly, very long lasting, and those nuclear submarines are, in fact very damned hard to find. And you better find every damned one of them, because any one of them can destroy any country in the world. Entirely destroy all its major cities. It’s not a militarily effective counter to an invasion. But it is a very likely consequence to a successful one.
So, even if it is possible, who wants to play?
It also happens to be true that many of these same arguments bear in some measure on the question of who could, or should invade any country. Say, . . . Iraq.
They don’t have the same technology. But some of them might have the same level of patriotism. We should be sure we are going to get what we want out of this little war, because no small number of little boys will become war orphans during it. And they might well become warriors, some day. And they might become biologists, too.
War is getting harder and harder to win, for everyone.
Tris
" The worst policy is to attack cities. Attack cities only when there is no alternative." ~ Sun-tzu ~
Wow. That’s a plan-and-a-half! I mean, it seems kinda sneaky, but I do understand it, and I understand why no one would want to have that hanging over their heads. Do other non-nuclear nations have similar backup plans like that?
Damn, there’s some good information in this thread. I appreciate you folks taking the time to explain these things to me. It’s fascinating!
I had no idea Mexico had pulled out of the Rio Treaty. Obviously, this is just the first step in Their sinister plot to destroy America. First, They bribe, blackmail, or otherwise persuade top Mexican officials to withdraw from the Rio Treaty. That leaves Mexico open to a lightning invasion by the elite shock troops of the Liechtensteiner-Monegasque-Sammarinese “Axis of Evil”. Once Mexico has been conquered, it can be used as a staging ground to mount an invasion of the U.S. across the vulnerable border with New Mexico (Pentagon Strategic Planner: “Someone’s invaded New Mexico? Whaddaya mean, New Mexico’s a state? You mean they ain’t a ferrin’ country? Well, shoot!”). And once the World’s Only Remaining Superpower™ has been taken care of, the Axis powers will have a free hand to deal with their Andorran arch-rivals.
According to the START II Agreements I think we are limited to 1750 warheads in our sub fleet. That’s a lot of deterrence.
I can’t find any reasoning for Mexico to pull out, but according to the treaty, a denunciation isn’t effective until two years after receipt of the notice of denunciation by the OAS. Peru denounced the treaty in January 1990 (possibly connected to border squabbles with Equador?), but withdrew the denunciation in December 1991, before it took effect.
Maybe they’ll change their mind, like Peru did.
The only way I could see it happening is in a political situation that is not likely to happen anytime soon. The only way I could see someone pulling it off would be with Canada as an ally, and even then it would be difficult, because even if we didn’t know what the rest of the world was planning we would still notice a large military buildup, especially if the units had to be delivered by sea and air, and that’s where our naval superiority comes in again.
On second thought, I don’t think it could happen. The USA has repeatedly stated that we are perfectly willing to use nuclear weapons strategically and tactically in an otherwise conventional war. If someone started bringing armies to one of our neighbors, we would know. If a neighbor started building an army, we would know (esp. if it was done with foreign aid). Any fleet that attempted an amphibious invasion on any of our coasts would not last long. If a force that presented a real threat somehow did manage to sneak up on us we would wait until it was forced through a bottleneck (possibly a city) and then nuke it, just as we planned to do in case of a Soviet land invasion of Western Europe during the Cold War.
Fifty years from now, who knows what might happen. I wrote a story once in an Oklahoma that had been incorporated into a Chinese empire, but that still didn’t happen until the 2030s.
I meant with Canada as an ally of the invader, of course. Just realized I did not make that clear.
Actually, no. Haven’t seen it in years.
Hmmm… here’s an interesting tid bit regarding Norway and Germany during WW2.
Prior to, and during WW2, Germany got much of it’s iron ore from Sweden, mainly via the Norwegian port of Narvik. Regardless that both Sweden and Norway had declared neutrality in the upcoming conflict between Germany and Britain, the Allies planned to invade Norway in 1939 to cut off Germany’s iron ore supply.
But on April 9th, 1940 - just 24 hours after the British commenced laying sea mines in the harbour of Narvik - the Germans beat them to it. Shielded by fog, German gunboats arrived in numerous Norwegian ports disgorging thousands of infantrymen. Meanwhile, paratroopers - the first ever used in warfare - seized Norway’s major airfields. It took 2 months to subdue Norway - including many ‘blitzkrieg’ Stuka attacks - compared to little Denmark - which Germany atacked simulataneously to provide a clear path northward - Denmark collapsed in just 4 hours.
Nonetheless, Norway’s illequipped army - joined by a hastily organised militia - fled to the snowbound mountains, hiding in caves, and waged a guerilla war against the occupiers.
Still, Hitler had won not merely an uninterrupted supply of ore (Sweden, now isolated, could not refuse him), but bases from which to attack Britain.
Yet (and this is where it gets VERY interesting) victory had it’s downside; 300,000 troops had to be stationed in Norway to subdue the local population, far from any battlefront - and despite their presence, the country remained, like Denmark, a hotbed of resistance.
So consider the parallels - the general rule of thumb is this - to totally occupy a country against it’s will (as averse to occupying a country with it’s complicit acceptance like Vichy France for example) it’s said that you need approximately on soldier on the ground for every 15 member of the general population - such is the presence needed to totally suppress guerilla warfare.
By this yardstick, it would require an awful, awful lot of soldiers to force the US on it’s knees against it’s will - and those soldiers would have to arrive in the country somehow - either by land or by air.
We’re talking at least 12 million soldiers I’m thinking. That’s how many would be needed to “totally” commandeer every single aspect of American life - from TV stations to radio stations to printing presses to power stations to bridges to airfields to you name it, they’d need to be there.
Given the nature of the USA’s amazing satellite surveillance etc, I kinda doubt you could get 12 million men onto US soil without an obscene amount of casualties along the way.
There are a couple other aspects of this that need to be considered.
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In order to invade the US, their country must be completely independent from the US economy, as I doubt many business transactions would be concluded with the invading country, or that their assets here would remain in their possession for long.
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They would need to be able to counter the nuclear threat, either with their own or with as “star wars” or patriot missile like system.
I don’t think that at this time either of these points apply to any country in the world. With the US economy predicting ~75% of the worlds money no other country could allow the invasion to happen either, since it would drop the world into the worst depression ever seen.
China may be able to do it, if everything stays non-nuclear.
If I were to have to plan something like this, I would use immigration and smuggling as my initial foundation. Send in 20 or 30 million immigrants over the course of 10 years. These immigrants would be the young, loyal soldiers that I had effectively brainwashed as children and trained in the military since then. Use smugglers to get tactical supplies into the country (you know things like automatics and military grade munitions) while allowing (and encouraging) them to buy local arms as well. Have 10 or 20 percent join the national guard. These could then be used as shock troops
Then you get agreements from South America which lets you land lots of soldiers in their country which you march north, or failing that you send in more immigrants.
Then when you are ready to invade, march your citizens (about 5 or 6 million 18-21 year old boys a day) into Russia. They are the diversion. Their job is to cause enough disruption to the rest of the world that nobody notices the increase of refugee ships from China to the rest of the world. Citizens fleeing the anticipated retaliation from the rest of the world leave for the rest of the world (2 million troops to America, dressed as civilians and 1 million citizens sent to the other western countries total, not each, and also per day) That is how you would get your troops here. What they would do when they got here would depend on how successful your national guard infiltration went and how successful your smuggling was.
How’s that for a 5 minute job?
What technologies might become more available in the next few decades that would help counteract the USA’s strengths?
Satellite imagery will be available to anyone capable of fielding an army, but that won’t really help counteract the USA’s already excellent intelligence.
An effective way of preventing nuclear retaliation. Not going to happen too soon, ICBMs are too effective and when the bad guys get a missile shield we’ll switch to stealth cruise missiles.
A way to undermine our communications - this one is possible, a few nukes detonated in low Earth orbit over the USA would cause a lot of chaos, even though a lot of military equipment is shielded against EMP.
I think drone technology (which the USA has been using a lot of lately) may help terrorist groups with lots of cash but a lack of suicide bombers do a lot of damage. Wouldn’t help with an invasion.
Advances in submarine technology might hurt us a lot if someone managed to get ahead of us again. We rely a lot on our navy.
Naval forces are also very visible and slow-moving targets. If any future enemy builds up a nice space program, they could drop crowbars on them from orbit to sink them. Tactical nukes and cruise missiles would also be effective at crippling our navy.
I agree that policing the USA would probably be an impossible task for a conquerer, even if they could somehow beat us.
Ignorant Question Alert!
What’s a “shock troop”?
Shock troops are typically defined as soldiers specially trained to lead an invasion.
The U.S. takes in roughly 1 million immigrants a year. You’d have to double or triple that number, all immigrants for a decade would have to be your brainwashed soldiers, and you’d have to get around assorted facets of U.S. immigration law–for example, I don’t think we would allow all our immigrants to come from Villiania or Evilstan or wherever it is. Finally, your brainwashing has to be good enough that all 20 or 30 million soldiers aren’t seduced by the American Way of Life (or some cute American member of the opposite sex) and remain dedicated to the plan. If your brainwashing has a 99.99% success rate, that’s two to three thousand informants singing to the Feds.
Autonomy from the US is the name of the game here - and mainly on the part of the EU. If (and it’s a big if) the EU get’s it’s act together and manages to organise a coherent military force that eliminates the duplication in capabilities the EU nations see today, then it would certainly be able to wield a military on a par with the US. You have to remember that it already does technologically (exceeding that of the US in certain areas) - it’s only in numbers that the EU is <severely> lacking.
As others have mentioned, the militaries of EU nations are designed around defence. Only the UK and France have any kind of offensive capability with teeth.
The EU is already starting to contruct it’s own GPS satellite network (Gallileo) much to the annoyance of the US. This system will be superior (more modern) to the US’s own GPS network. That would solve the problem of co-ordination and communications in any attack on the US (non-reliance on US systems).
Realistically any attack on the US is going to have to involve the Navies, Armies and Air Forces of Europe, Russia, China, India, Australia (and possibly Canada). Russia and Europe combined have the necessary troop and equipment transports (at least Europe will in a few years - hence I’m thinking 15-20 years down the road). In terms of Naval power Europe will have the UK’s 2 new super-carriers (not as big as the US carriers, but close), France’s nuclear carrier plus around 5 other smaller carriers. There is also Russia’s large carrier, India’s carriers plus any that China has. In terms of destroyers, frigates and subs, combined they will out-number the US. Europe’s and Australia’s will equal them in terms of tech, with Russia’s and China’s boats lagging behind a little in that department.
Taking out the US carriers would be the first priority, and this can be done with subs. The UK’s subs are more than a match for those of the US (the ballistic subs being more modern, and new attack subs under construction now). The problem again is in terms of numbers, but if the above nations clubbed together then things would be weighted more in favour of “the rest of the world”. Sinking a US carrier has been done in UK-US wargames - a UK frigate pretended to be a fishing trawler, got into weapons range, and the told the carrier they’d put a volley of missiles through her hull. I know the same situaiton isn’t likely to happen in a war, but surprise is the key element here. If the carriers can be struck simultaneously before any invasion takes place then it should be possible.
I would go with the actual invasion plans of others. Get enough fighters into Canada and South America and everything seems plausable. Europe has advanced air-superiority fighters. China and Russia has the man-power. In a couple of decades, provided Europe organises it’s military and focuses spending in the right areas, combined they could take the US.
But of course all of this is going to result in nuclear armageddon
Interestingly enough, the only thing preventing Europe building up a military the size of the US is co-operation between nations and a will to plough exorbatant funds into the military. Economically, Europe is roughly on a par with the US. If there was the will to build up the military to equal that of the US it could be done in 20 years or so…