U.S. vs. E.U. -- Who wins?

Even assuming an extremely favorable outcome for the US in such an exchange, the result wouldn’t just leave the US hurt, the United States would be devastated in under a day to a level that no nation has ever been hit with in the course of an entire war. That the EU would be even more of a radioactive cinder would be a pretty poor consolation.

Consider for the moment only the UK’s arsenal on its 4 Vanguard SSBNs. The UK has 58 Trident II D5s with an estimated 200 MIRVed warheads for them. Being very generous to the US and assuming only 1 in 4 of these warheads survives to be used in a retaliatory strike, this still means the 50 largest cities in the US each get a visit from a 100 kiloton airburst. Describing the result of such a war as an American victory when DC, New York, LA, Dallas, Philadelphia, and another 45 major population centers have all disappeared in a flash and a mushroom cloud would be pretty odd.

The power of even such a relatively small arsenal is why it is simply impossible to try to take nukes off of the table. Any nation with them will use them if pushed hard enough, and the very threat of their use will be a constant factor in any conflict.

I couldn’t agree with you more, and it’s almost absurd that this even needs to be pointed out, but French bashing is still in vogue in the states.

Personally, I doubt a nuclear option would ever happen in such a war; it’s essentially MAD all over again. Why would either side consider it unless someone’s capital was about to be occupied?

And beyond that, nobody’s come close to stating a convincing reason or scenario whereby US and EU forces would be fighting on the ground- IF that were to happen, it wouldn’t be the “US Invasion of SW France”, it would more likely be some sort of fight over resources, most likely N. African or Middle Eastern oil.

If that was the scenario, the US would have a huge advantage, with 60-70 years of logistical expertise and planning under their belt, along with a huge navy to both protect their ships and hunt down the enemy’s. Doesn’t hurt that their navy is the one with the most recent combat experience, and has the 2nd longest naval tradition either.

On the ground, I think the more recent combat experience of the Americans, coupled with the relatively rare beast of a huge, professional, volunteer army would emerge victorious over the Europeans, although it would NOT be a Gulf War I or II type scenario at all. Thousands would die, and hundreds of tanks would be destroyed, but ultimately the training and the experience of the Americans, coupled with a likely in-theater numerical superiority would win the day.

Combine that with the ability of the Americans to conduct diversions of all sorts with the USMC, and it’s possible that the Europeans would have quite a large number of their most mobile troops tied up to counter that threat.

bump The US has the second longest naval tradition?

And here’s me thinking that us Europeans have not only the first but 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on and so forth

Almost every strategic simulation NATO ever did on general war with the Soviet Union that ALLOWED nukes to be used resulted in them being used. A country with nuclear weapons is not going to lose a full scale war while pulling that punch.

Some limited local war (Vietnam was such a war) might not go nuclear. A full scale direct war would.

A honest-to-God shooting war between tow powers with significant nuclear arsenals means a nuclear holocaust.

On an imaginary battlefield, sure.

In the real world, how were you planning on getting them all to Europe? The United States simply does not possess the capability to mount a cross-Atlantic invasion with all its ground combat power.

And to be honest, the U.S. Army isn’t as big as I think you believe it to be. The entire Army consists of just ten divisions, the US Marines of three divisions, plus such reserves and support formations as can be mustered. Thirteen divisions is certainly a lot - it’s more than any one country in Europe - but it’s not that many to try to invade a gigantic modern industrial power, and I assume the USA would want to retain something in reserve. They couldn’t possibly grind through Europe before the Europeans had gathered all the battle experience you claim they lack.

I want to discuss the proxy war issue more. Does anyone think that the US would have been able to pacify Iraq if they had been supplied with modern European help and weaponry? And vice-versa, I could imagine the rest of the world suffering massively in any conflict, economically as well.

The US could have pacified Iraq with existing equipment and weaponry, without the Europeans. You see, there was one problem with the war as prosecuted: there was no plan beyond beating up the army and killing Saddam. Seriously. No plan to retrain the army (we let them go, disbanded the army, sent them home.), no plan to pacify villages, no plan to establish local governments. There was no plan for anything besides the direct military application of force. And that plan was executed like a Clan Batchall: with the minimum amount of soldiers. In fact, a sub-minimum amount of soldiers. My source on this is Cobra II, by Michael Gordon (Chief Military Correspondent, NYTimes) and General Trainor (USMC, rtd).

If you ever want to get in a mood to hang Bush and Rumsfeld by their necks until dead, read this book. Blood and ashes, McNamara wasn’t this evil. Hell, NIXON wasn’t this evil.

You misunderstand me :slight_smile: I mean what if Europe was supplying the Iraqis? I think it would be very difficult for even the success seen so far to have been achieved, which makes the proxy war almost as difficult as the real one.

Not withstanding the mass unemployment, and recession that hostilities between the worlds biggest economies would cause.

Oh. Er.

Actually, uh, yes, I’m pretty sure we could have. The limitations here would be training, education, and command and control. It’d get a bit more serious, but basically, in a desert environment? Not really an issue. Just more things we blow up on the ground.

Now, if you’re talking about pacification of post-war Iraq with Euro armament, we’d have to discuss how Europe was feeding these arms. Iran was tricky, because of the shared border, but even that was limited. I don’t think you’ll be able to smuggle all that much in.

I think you’re giving the EU too much credit… remember, it’s nothing like the US and never will be: as soon as one party declared war on the other, most of the EU members would fold (Iceland would join the US cause in a heartbeat but we’re not in the EU …yet), leaving pretty much Germany, France and Holland (should we even mention Italy?) to try to pick up the pieces and defend themselves. Heck, Israel has more fighters than Germany and France (although not combined) and more tanks than all four combined, and the Russians are not exactly friends of the EU as it is–the war would be over by lunch without much need for the US to even send a lot of troops over.

I think that in such an event there would be the Chinese and Russia waiting to take advantage of the situation.

Moving in on whichever side was the most weakend to "Help the suffering population " and prevent a “further escalation of the hostilities”.
I think that the U.K. and France would actually go Medieval,on any real or fabricated pretext and take out Russia preemptivley with nuclear weapons.
Russias response as opposed to a similar by the U.S. would be survivable even if their reaction time was swift enough for them to get off a launch.

I think that the Atlantic would become a death zone for surface vessels of both sides,submarines nowadays are a little more sophisticated in their destructive power then the U boats.

I think that it would become a stalemate resulting in an incredible down slide for civilisation worldwide.

Well, the premise is “US vs. EU”. If half of them are on the US side, then we’re talking aout an entirely different premise.

Yeah, I know - the premise is absurd. But that’s how it is.

Well, then that fantasy world would end right then and there: nuclear is not just an option but inevitable when you’re facing eradication. Wait …nuclear is off the table??? How did this get to be such a limited debate with such few limitations?

I think only cross-Atlantic nuclear is off the table. We Europeans might still make use of an excellent opportunity to settle some old debts by going nuclear on our neighbors. For instance, I could imagine Iceland would want to nuke the shit out of London.

You can add Berlin and Amsterdam to that as far as I’m concerned, Rune. Rune… rings a bell… Föröyar?

Would be pretty difficult to do seeing as Iceland doesn’t actually have any nukes,nor is likely to in any forseeable future.

Iceland would only have to send a battalion of those big blonde buxom wenches to the UK.

We’d soon surrender, well I would anyway :smiley:

The Royal Navy currently has 4 SSBNs, with 48 more entering service between 2010 and 2020, and (at the momeny) 58 Trident missiles, each with four warheads.

Assuming even one sub penetrated the (greatly reduced since 1991) Atlantic defense net, it would be able to depopulate pretty much every major city on the Eastern seaboard (and a couple of inland cities too - bye, Chicago).

On the other hand, presumably RN captains have little or no experience trying to penetrate the American defense net, and of course it’s not what the boats were built for.

The IAF has about 750 combat and non-combat aircraft, which is more than the Armee de l’Air, but if you include French navy aircraft the numbers are about even.

Actually the U.K. has Cruise and Aircraft delivered Nuclear weapons over and above the Sludgemarines delivery systems.

But I would find it very hard to believe that troops that have continuinly exercised together,had exchange training programmes ,exchange postings and most of all had intermixed commanders could actually fire on each other.

I’m a "Roughy tuffy " ex UK SF soldier but I would find it incredibly difficult to initiate a firefight with soldiers who had been fighting along side us in Iraq and Afghan,no matter how less efficient they were then us or reluctant to buy a round.

And I suspect that basically being in awe of our fighting performance they would have the same reluctance ,even if they DID.NT bow down to to us.

But I;ve said too much.

That’s 4-8 more, not 48 more. They’re not gearing up for war just yet. :smiley:

The W.E. 177 bombs have all been decomissioned, and the 1998 Defence White Paper declared that Trident alone was a sufficient nuclear deterrent.