If these sides fought “to the last man” or until their respective countries fell to invading forces and everyone else stayed neutral (including NATO) who wins or would it be an eternal stalemate? If nothing else if Russia took back the Ukraine at the same time that China took back Taiwan and N. Korea took S. Korea wouldn’t our goose be cooked?
It depends on who is invading who and how much time each side has to prepare.
The US and the UK could not invade and occupy Russia and China at the same time. If given some warning, the US could certainly repel Russian, Chinese and North Korean advances, even if they were simultaneous.
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North Korea could probably be stopped just by the South Koreans, so our assistance there would pretty much depend on how much support the N. Koreans were getting from the Chinese in terms of troops and materiel.
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China, as far as I know, doesn’t have the air and naval superiority to pull off an invasion of Taiwan that would have a good chance of success. A tough fight to be sure, but I don’t see very many people these days that believe China wouldn’t be repelled if they were to invade at this time.
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Russia invading Ukraine is a bit more difficult. This is the only one that would require significant US boots on the ground and would also be the one to require significant warning for the US to really stop. The US and UK could provide air assistance fairly quickly from Germany, but I don’t think that either have any way to provide infantry or armor - especially if China and North Korea were invading at the same time.
It’s not even remotely a fair fight. The Chinese alone would just swamp everyone else with human wave tactics. Their soldiers wouldn’t even have to be well-armed. They’ve got a population of over a billion and can afford to lose over half that.
Ok … and how do the Chinese get anywhere? Does the Chinese Army’s Navy have that many ships to transport them all? Does it have enough ships to protect the transports from the American and British attacks that will easily sink unescorted transports?
They walk. Or use an armada of small ships. If you’re sending over tens of thousands of ships, it doesn’t matter if a few thousand get sunk.
Walk … to the U.S. or the U.K.? The Chinese must have powers that I’ve never heard of to be able to walk on water.
The CIA Factbook lists the Chinese army to have a manpower available and fit for military service listed at 208,143,352 (2004 est, males 15-49). They’re supposed to transport 208 million people by boat? I’m not sure if the Chinese have that much boats that can make it to the United States.
Globalsecurity.org lists the Chinese navy as having 372 amphibious warfare ships to carry troops and vehicles in. How many troops do you expect could go in each one? How long do you think it would be before U.S. planes come to sink these?
The US Navy submarine attack force would be nearly unstoppable in defending the coasts. I don’t expect any significant invasion would be successful, unless done by air, and since you can’t move heavy artillery or armor by air, it’s a slam-dunk that the US would not lose against an invading force, unless they were (heh) Canadian. 
The Eurasian nations are a much more ambiguous situation. China has the human mass, Russia/Siberia has geographic barriers, Iran and Syria have a latent fanaticism. It’s a toss up on who would win the various conflicts, but the sad fact is that virtually everybody involved would lose in some way.
War may be good for war profiteers, but for peoples and national economies, wars suck.
Stranger
My money is on Oceania soundly defeating the Eurasian forces. Especially after the decisive battle in the Sahara.
Uh, but we’re at war with Eastasia. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
To Room 101 for you, Gabe.
In other news, chocolate rations are increased from 500g to 230g in the next Five Year Plan. Big Brother loves you!
Stranger
We are war with Oceania. We have always been at war with Oceania.
Wait a minute. I thought we were Oceania?
Uh? Opps! I mean, NO! Don’t take me! Not to the Ministry of Love! I LOVE Big Brother!
Stranger
- North Korea could probably be stopped just by the South Koreans, so our assistance there would pretty much depend on how much support the N. Koreans were getting from the Chinese in terms of troops and materiel.
Highly unlikely, bucko, since N. Korea possesses the fourth largest army in the world. Militarily, they are fit-as-hell. And besides, China’s on their side…and nobody wants to mess with the big China.
As for the UK and US, they have nothing without their nukes. Why? Because they never really knew much about the “others”. Yet their military superiority was always enough to significantly weaken the opposition. However, in this particular case, since the two elites of the West, blinded by a sense of civilizational aristocracy, will undoubtedly fail against China, Iran, and Russia. Why?
Because China has always believed we live in a multipolar system, where countries with the largest populations (e.g., Russia, India, etc.) constitute poles in the world. China believes the multipolar system is natural, and needed, to maintain a balance of power. The U.S.'s hegemony, therefore, only exists in the prevailing ideology of the West–i.e., there is only one superpower, since the fall of the USSR, and that renders the world unipolar. So, clearly, countries like the U.S. and UK enter this war at a major strategic disadvantage, since they don’t realize that the worldviews of China, Russia, Iran, and others collectively contradict the marginal, yet predominant, worldview of the West.
Furthermore, Russia, China, and Iran have trade relations with each other, as well as with the UK. Plus, Iran, stamped as part of an axis of evil, mainly through the lens of the West (i.e., the U.S., specifically) that likes to further demonize “the other” at its whim, has survived the 10 years war…a war with Iraq in which the former dictatorship was supplied with unlimited financial and military resources to bludgeon the living crap out of Iran. When a country like Iran who was, in effect, at war with the world–including Europe, the U.S., the Arab World, and other sychophantic states who fully supported Saddam (and his U.S./British allies) in his invasion, and the gassing and slaughter of over one million Iranian civilians–yet still managed to kick Iraq out, and survive despite its obvious military disadvantage, can surely hold its own in a war against the UK and the US.
Okay, that’s my stop. I need to go now.
You say no nukes…but are we also ruling out chemical and biological weapons? THAT might skew things a bit…especially since the US & UK’s biological and chemical programs are (as far as I know) been somewhat neglected in recent decades, compared to, say, Russia’s.
Why do Mr Bush, Mr Blair, Mr Cherac (and those others in the “special” nuclear friendship club) think I am happy or I approved with them having nukes?
Does Mr Bush actually think I trust him more then I trust Iran? What does he base this trust on?
If Mr Bush can have nukes while jumping about threatening people then surely they should have the same…level playing field and all that. Isn’t it the right of every country to protect itself? Ok playing the non declaring card didn’t work for Sadam but it works for Mr Bush.
Personaly I prefer NO one ANY where having nukes. It doesn’t comfort me that the nukes are on “my side”.
Serious question…Who inspects the US, UK etc for WMD?
No one does?
Oh goody.
The free press and the electorate.
Whose electorate?
Damn I hate missing those world elections.
Yeah they do go quick.
Look, who verifies the weapons programs of democracies was your question. The answer is obvious, the press, the electorate and the opposition. Hardly foolproof of course, but rarely do you get to see a budget line item on ICBM maintenance from China. Of course I now eagerly the 2003 Chinese line item. 
Now back to the ridiculous OP. God, last man standing? What is this an AoE Death Match?
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The US blockades/mines the Chinese pacific ports. It then uses cruise missiles to disable the power plants of the coastal cities. It then goes ahead and bombs fertilizer plants and the 3 rivers gorge damn. It then sits back and watches as China starves.
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The UK blockades Russian northern ports with her subs. It also launches a few missiles to sever the pipelines to Western Europe while at the same time ramping up production of the North Sea field.
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Syria/N. Korea get ignored and/or blockaded until they starve.
In this case The US/UK doesn’t need to win; they simply need to outlast the others while keeping them under a crippling siege. Ugly, unproductive and futile for everyone involved.
Oceana wins. Sort of. It’s a long story, and an even longer war.
Sorry, bucko, but you don’t know what the heck you’re talking about. North Korea may have a numerical advantage, but nearly every bit of their military is technologically out of date. The South Korean military would achieve air superiority in a matter of days - if even that long. North Korea’s armor division is still largely comprised of T-62 tanks built in the 1960s and 1970s. South Korea’s armor divisions have the latest technological developments on them like main gun stabilization, thermal imaging, etc. Basically, it’s the difference between the US armor divisions in the first Persian Gulf war and the Iraqi armor divisions.
It would be a very destructive war for both sides, but there’s little doubt that the South Koreans would prevail in a one on one fight.
Which is why it would hinge on how much support the Chinese gave them, which I stated in my initial post.
Except for technological advantages in nearly every aspect of their militaries, and clear naval, air and armor capabilities.
Irrelevent babbling.
Sorry, kid, but Iraq was hardly given unlimited financial and military resources. If it had been unlimited, the Iraqis would have been driving the latest US armor and flying the latest jets - but they weren’t. They were using older Russian models - and the US was providing Iran with the missiles necessary to take them down.
That ignores the intelligence assistance given to Iran by both the US and Israel, as well as the arm sales to Iran by both the US and Israel.
Neurotik, that’s what always gets me about those who claim that Iraq was a US client state before we decided Saddam was a bad guy. If Iraq was a former US client state, why were they using obsolete Soviet hand-me-down equipment?
If we go to war against Saudi Arabia, we’ll be facing people using US equipment…US made aircraft, US made tanks, US made rifles, US made everything. If we go to war against South Korea same thing. If we had went to war against Iran in the late 70s we’d have been facing people equipped with US made gear. Those countries can legitimately be called US client states.
So why didn’t Saddam have US-made tanks, aircraft, trucks, missiles, etc, during the first Gulf War? If we were supplying him against the Iranians, why didn’t we bother sending him war materiel? Why was he using second-rate Soviet crap? And the answer is that Iraq was a SOVIET client state, which was why we were supporting IRAN and the Shah, until that unfortunate incident where the country revolted and kicked him out and turned against the US for inexplicable reasons. See, we used to regard the persians as a pro-western counterbalance against those commie-loving arabs. Hard to believe from the hindsight of 2005, I know.
And the contention that China views the world in multi-polar terms is simply laughable. No, China views the world in uni-polar terms, and the sole pole (I slay me!) is China. Other barbarian countries have their moment in the sun…the US, the Mongols, whatever…but they are just barbarians after all.
As for the contention that China can win any war simply by equipping 100 million peasants with rifles and telling them to march towards the enemy is laughable. Does no one remember World War One? All that it takes to kill an army of light infantry are sandbagged machine guns, some barbed wire, and artillery in the rear. The riflemen can’t take the machine gun pits, the artillery chews them up, and they die by the millions. And each new soldier requires food, each dead soldier spreads disease. I don’t care how fanatically nationalistic the peasants are, eventually they are going to refuse another order to charge emplaced machine guns without support. The whole point of tanks isn’t to kill other tanks, but to go over the barbed wire and kill the machine guns so the infantry can move forward behind without getting slaughtered.
Human wave attacks don’t work. The Russians didn’t win WWII with their famous human wave attacks, they didn’t crush German strongpoints that way. The German strongpoints were bypassed, cut off, and beseiged. Sure, Russia could afford to lose more people than Germany, and they did. But if they had kept up the human wave style attacks they would have lost all those people for nothing. A machine gun doesn’t care how brave you are. If untrained infantry try to storm machine guns they will take loss ratios of hundreds to one, rather than 10 to 1.
And need I mention that these sorts of debates are really kind of pointless? The military doesn’t exist as an end in itself, like a game of WarCraft III. The military exists as a means to enforce political goals. You can’t just say something like: “Russia and the US fight, who wins?” without postulating some sort of goals for both powers. What does Russia hope to accomplish by fighting the US? What does the US hope to accomplish by fighting the Russians? Does Russia “win” if it retains it’s status as an independent country without annihilation? Does it win if it annexes Ukraine? Does it win if it loses less than half its population? Does it win if Europe is occupied by Russian troops? Does it win if the US is occupied by Russian troops? Does it win if the entire population of the US is killed and replaced by honest slavic peasants? Does it win if it is the first civilization to send a spaceship to Alpha Centauri?