Does the American Civil War pass the true scotsman test for democracies going to war with each other?
Relevant Straight Dope column: Is it true there has never been a war between two democracies?
I think the biggest point in this argument is that the world has moved beyond the idea of war for the purpose of territorial expansion. The parts of the military that are designed to seize and hold large amounts of territory are obsolete. We didn’t want to conquer Afghanistan. We wanted to kill particular people in Afghanistan. Being able to forge alliances with neighboring countries, make friends with people who we want to replace the current government, gathering intelligence to figure out exactly who we want to kill and where they are, and having an extremely large bank account to bribe the people we want to kill but cant, and having super-duper expensive weapons we can kill someone with from far away using a high tech camera and xbox controller; all those were way, way more important in Afghanistan than having a couple hundred thousand boots on the ground with guns showing everyone we’re not fucking around.
I agree 100% with the idea presented in the original post. Cut the manpower of the military, which is not as important as the technological, diplomatic, and intelligence edge. Wars are won with technology, alliances, and intelligence, not the army.
Likewise.
Unless you think playing Call of Duty qualifies people to operate the technology and, as I said above, work smoothly as a team, we’re going to be in a world of hurt if we ever have to use the stuff.
Cecil left out one example: Imperial Japan was a democracy (although it might not meet a True Scotsman test). But Japan had a parliament, multiple political parties, and there was a general election held during the war in 1942 (the pro-war party won a resounding victory).
I’ve heard the United States may have gone too far in the opposite direction. In the last twenty years, we’ve gotten so focused on fighting against insurgents and small countries, we let our capacity to fight a large conventional war deteriorate. Our old problem was that we had military units that could fight an armored division but we didn’t have units that could fight a guerrilla band. Well, now we have units that can fight guerrilla bands but we don’t have very many units left that can fight an armored division. And some countries - like Russia and China - still have armored divisions and big conventional armies. A brigade combat team (which has become the Army’s de facto main combat unit) might be great for the missions it’s been called on to fight recently but it doesn’t have the depth to fight a major conventional battle.
The army is not a police force, their training traditionally was go in, kill pretty much everything that moves and garrison an area. If you want policing, it is entirely different training.
Bleed and look for IEDs is less of an occurrence if the population is dead. Dead population also do not tend to make IEDs.
Making the army a police force is what is inefficient. What is the line from 1776 - it is a war, you have to piss off somebody?
Another thing we don’t have is a populace that would stand for the casualties that such a war would produce. The sacrifice would be too great, given the likeliest theaters of operations. Would Americans accept 50,000 casualties…to free Tibet from China, or an hypothetical breakaway republic from Russia? Where are China and Russia likely to find a use for their own armored divisions?
If it really comes down to it, the U.S. is willing to throw a full nuclear spasm and burn everyone dead. Unsporting, but convincing. You just don’t invade England in a nuclear world.
However, it seems to me that we do need a fairly large military, to provide the raw personnel from which special forces are internally recruited. The regular forces do the first level of screening. Could special forces, as we know them, survive by recruiting directly from the populace?
In the minus column of the Scotsman test, the government could only exist on the whim of the Army and the Navy. In a legal sense, not in the threat of a coup sense. From wiki:
Both of you: personal insults are not allowed in this forum.
Another serious defect in the Japanese political system was the armed forces essentially were beyond civilian control. They pretty much set their own goals, acted on them, and then expected the civilian government to ratify their decision after the fact. This was true even when the military policy had significant political implications.
This is actually fairly common in the modern world. Egypt, Pakistan, North Korea…
North Korea? I’ve always thought the North Korea was the epitome of a country with a centralized government. Nobody in North Korea, including the military, dares step outside of the lines.
Walk down middle of road, squashed like grape!
Or, “I wish you were either hot or cold, but you are tepid, and so I spit you out of my mouth.”
Wow, this little spambot increased the size of the thread by an order of magnitude.
The Military pretty much IS the Government.
Seems like the government consists a line of people named Kim Something-something.
I assume you’re saying that the Kims are just puppets and the real power is held by the military. But just last week, General Ri Yong-ho, the Chief of General Staff of the Korean People’s Army was dismissed from all of his posts by Kim. Kim had previously dismissed Vice Marshal Jo Myong-rok, the head of the army’s Political Department. Ri and Jo were both replaced by people from outside the military leadership. Kim has also assumed the rank of Marshal himself.
So it’s certainly looking like Kim’s in charge of the military and not the reverse.
To address the OP:
I think our army needs to be the biggest in the world, on defense. Defense of our strategic goals and our homeland.
War used to be a "win at all costs’ scenario. What changed?
Marketing? Conscience? Nuclear deterrence? Maybe any number of things, but I think war should still be a win at all costs type of thing. I think that would be it’s own deterrent.
If war actually meant war, we’d almost never have one.
Donald Rumsfeld was/is a congenital fuckwit with no feel, skill-set or capability for the cabinet portfolio he was given. He’s not fit to run a hot dog stand, let alone the US military.
He argued vociferously with his Army commanders in the planning for 2003’s invasion of Iraq - telling them that the 2:1 man-for-man superiority the US would need to do the job properly (the commanders’ advice) was wrong and that he could do wit with a third of the forces requested.
And what happened next?
America announces a [cough] “surge” - which is just back-pedalling for “right-sizing the number of troops we should have had there in the first place”.
Rumsfeld is a classic example of someone needing a neurosurgeon, and instead hiring a carpenter. Completely unfit for purpose.