Yep. In America’s case, Congress and the President write the cheques and call the plays. The military does as it is told even when it contravenes accepted military doctrine. Consider, for example, Clinton’s infamous insistence on the use of low key Blackhawks rather than his AC-130s or the like leading up to the Mogadishu scandal. A military dictatator like Soeharto or Pinochet (former bestest buddies of your government too I might add) would have said, “Fuck subtlety and PR”. My point is; what military doctrine insists on limited enemy casualties, civilian or otherwise? None. Give the military, any military, their head and they’ll nuke, infect and gas anything in their way when they have such capability. It’s what they do, their reason for being. The constraints on your military are put there by the politicians and rarely for humanitarian or moral reasons. Those same politicians will still let the gloves come off when they can get away with it sans political repercussions. My hope is that independent media will keep the focus on Coalition conduct. If they can maintain the heat on Bush, Blair et al, they’ll keep tight leashes on their forces so as to save their own political hides.
I’ll take the side of prophesy on this one as it seems fairly tenable (although the predictions are that the US will win.
- a Siberian archbishop predicted the end of the world when China invaded Siberia, a land that used to belong to Asiatics, not Europeans until recently. Why invade? Lots of natural resources, Chinese are well used to the cold, and it provides a land bridge to North America. This means that the US Navy can be largely circumvented.
Why China? It has enormous industrial power (if you notice just about everything is manufactured there and they have far too many men compared to women anyway. What are they lacking? One thing that I can see - a space programme that will allow them to knock out US satellites. If they send up say 10 manned shuttles armed with some sort of weapon able to destroy satellites, I don’t know how fast the US could recoup the loss quickly. Without the satellites, the GPS weaponry is blind. I wonder how feasable space to air weaponry would be. If the AWACs are knocked out, it would be another big blow for US air power.
Incidently, there is a woman in Georgia who keeps dreaming that the Western half of the US is overrun by Chinese troops. I presumed they would attack from the coast but the previous thread about driving down the centre actually makes much better sense. The West Coast would then be overpopulated and hungry.
Next, Nostradamus predicted the Arab invasion of southern Europe. This would be understandable in light of Tony Blair and Nato after this Iraqi war, which is not being received very well. If it ends quickly, then everything may still be all right but if it drags out a couple of years, I don’t know. In any case, this would be the distraction China needs to be free to fight the US.
Unfortunately, these prophesies go into nukes. A Ukranian priest was rescued from Soviet execution by the Virgin Mary and shown a map of the Soviet Union with 50 flames where there would nuclear disasters. There was a long line along the Urals like the West had stopped a Chinese invasion there. The Siberian Archbishop (Orthodox) also seems to point to nukes being used. And last a Lithuanian seer predicted the end times would come when the US was in flames, then would be England but that was also nuclear, then was Russia, also nuclear. We have had the first one with the Twin Towers. I did not understand him to mean just an isolated location, so was confused. So the people in the US can relax for a while if he is correct.
Sources: Siberian archbishop: BBC radio book off the shelf about 1999. Nostradamus, Georgian woman, from a series of about three shows on NBC? back in about 1995. Lithuanian seer: from a book I read here. He lived in France after WWI.
—How on earth can you interpret that as absolute advantage in most productive fields? Thats a huge productive advantage, there really can only be one outcome when you have such a massive disparity in economic output.—
Guh. We’re not talking in absolute output: we’re talking about comparative vs. absolute advantage in production technology and produtivity. The situation was one in which the U.S. would have to produce everything for itself. I’m pointing out that this would not really put us in such a bad shape. Maybe decades from now, if our manufacturing base is completely gone. The U.S. gains from world trade, but not necessarily because it’s incapable of producing imported things as well or even better than our importers. We just happen to be even better at some other things, so it pays to specialize in them now.
—The US accounted for 20.9% of world GDP in 1995.—
I still find it odd that people use “GDP” to describe the total productive capacity of the world.
—Oh, and Apos, the Blue Angels Flying Team trains in a manner similar to that of the Chinese pilots you described (admittedly they no doubt get more flying time in, but it’s not a totally useless method), —
Oh, I wasn’t saying it was useless. It isn’t funny just that they did it: it’s funny that it used to be almost ALL they did (presuambly because they didn’t want to waste fuel). And it was funny because I saw this on a special produced by the Chinese government to promote the power of their forces.
Actually, the constraints on the military are put there by international convention, treaty, tradition dating back to the medieval period, and the vain hope that someone the US fights will have as much respect for the Geneva Convention as the Nazis did in WWII.
A professional military always wants to fight by the rules, because the rules protect the professional soldier and potentially his family. If the rules go away there is no surrender, potentially unlimited civilian death, and horrible atrocities.
Just part of the effort that goes into just picking a target or a weapon for the target is immense. The lawyers–yes, lawyers–that help select the ordinance appropriate to the target to minimize civilian damage work with CENTCOM. It does not matter what the President orders the military to do in this regard, the targeting will be done in a legal manner. Any order which suggested that the rules of war be thrown away would be contravened as an illegal order.
Sure, there are grey area cases. Should one use a 5,000 lb. penetration bomb, or would a 2,000 be more appropriate, is one example. Nobody is suggesting the MOAB over a mosque, even if the Iraqis have put two T-72s inside. If you really think the latest denizen of the White House or his staff can make the military change its ways by simply giving an illegal order, you don’t know much about the US military and its relationship to civilian authority.
Which do you think is more important? Absolete output, or comparative or absolete advantage? It doesn’t matter how efficient the US is vs the world, whats matters to total output. If the US and the world had roughly equal manpower and resources, then efficiency would matter. The fact remains that the world has a massive advantage in manpower and resources - its the number of ships and planes matters, not how efficiently they were produced.
So what would you use to describe the total productive capacity of the world? Please provide a cite.
I’m willing to accept that GDP isn’t a perfect measure of potential military output. But the fact remains that the world outproduces the US by a factor of 4. Even if you argue that GDP isn’t an perfect measure, it can’t be that so wrong that it is a factor of 4 out.
I repeat - there is just a massive difference between the US and the worlds (excluding the US) economic output that there can only be one outcome to a hypothetical war between them.
That’s one of the reasons why the U.S.A. would lose: To underestimate your enemy could prove fatal in combat.
As for your World War II example: I think it rather indicates that the USA would lose against the rest of the world - you mentioned that Nazi Germany had better equipment. They also had better trained troops, but the superior numbers of the allies - most notably the Russians - wore them down nonetheless.
I’m not a military buff, but I’m curious: What about new sorts of attacks such as information warfare?
If someone took out all of America’s GPS satellites, would the navy or airforce still be able to operate? What about hackers disrupting communications and supply lines? What about the mass civilian panic caused by power outages?
America may have the strongest military, but they most certainly do not have the best hackers.
In case you’re wondering, I’ve been playing Splinter Cell. 
I think you need to learn the diference between a military asskicking and a political one.
Where is the theater of battle. Is in North America? China? Europe? Sam Stone’s Thunderdome scenario?
What is the objective of the war? Is it a capture the flag battle? Is it occupation? Are there rules of engagement? The only thing keeping us out of Baghdad right now is that we don’t want to level the city into a parking lot. That allows Iraq to use tactics that would not be effective against a less compassionate enemy (suicide bombers aren’t effective if you shoot every civilian you see).
This is not necessarily my opinion but is put up for debate purposes.
I think the American people would destroy the Nation in from the inside.
There are so many people now that would surrender to anyone who threatened them and would roll over and give aide to the enemy just to keep from being presented with the threat of violence that our military would be undermined.
With the fight being in other places it is not necessary for them to do anything to save their own asses.
We are so conditioned to non violence that if an enemy gained our shores, there would be enough informers looking out for them selves that any guerilla fighter would be turned in at once.
We would self implode because as a group, we have lost the desire to personally fight.
I think the old saying of, “Better Red than Dead.” is very much alive and well in the country. We even condemn those that would defend their own life unless it is done gently and always with more consideration for the killer that the victim.
We had better hope that a war does not start on US soil. A lot of people will be very shocked at the gutless wonders we have reared since the 1960’s.
A large percentage of our fighters are already doing it. I do not think our moral reserves are as deep as we would like to think. Everything is somebody else’s fault and we only sue now.
Owning a weapon does not make a fighter. Just watch the news. Even long time gun owners are incredibly stupid when some one really starts shooting.
If our military can’t do it, we are had. For the most part, we have become a gutless country on an individual level.
Think about the town you live in right now. Al our military are gone and an Army is right there. How many do you think will really take up arms and fight? Of the ones that do, how many will be fighting after they see the first person shot to doll rags?
We are so far removed from strife and struggle compared to most of the rest of the world that we had better hope our military can do the job because I am afraid the majority of us don’t have the will to do it at a personal level.
The difference in out look form when I was in the military to when my son was in the military and what I see and hear from soldiers of these times is scary when it comes to in your face fighting.
I am not saying all, but when it comes to resolve. We are weaker than at any other time in our history.
New twist:
Which world leader would be best in hand to hand combat?
Imagine:
Bush vs Saddam ? That, I’d realy like to see.
Blair vs Chirac ?
Aznares vs Putin ?
Ok…umm…whaa???
I am not a red but I live in a country that now exists as a free state because it chose to be red rather than dead. Yes, there were terrible consequences and a third of the population disappeared, but we are still here and we have a chance to recover. Our purpose here as people is to live, become better, and to help others, not insist on some type of government, which is sort of rather small compared to the above purposes.
Communism was based on the idea that people, not money, were important. Yes, production suffered dramatically and because they felt themselves at war with the world, freedoms were drastically curtailed, and worst, Lenin forgot to pay much attention to government, allowing power hungry people to seize control (supposedly even poisoning Lenin himself and recently it has been theorised Stalin as well) which devolved into a dictatorship that was nearly impossible to shake. But there were many good things. For example, children and health were more important than money so houses had enough enclosed green spaces next to them where children could play while a parent could watch from a window. Health care was available to everyone, not just the rich. Yes, the medicine itself was different from Western but more patient oriented rather than dollar oriented. You got an x-ray because you needed one and not because the doctor had to pay for his new gadget. Women were respected and received a year’s paid maternity leave and had no problems staying home with a sick child. Etc.
So before you start saying how bad another system is, first learn about that system.
If the world wanted to, it could defeat the U.S. easily, and here’s how:
The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population, yet we consume 25% of the world’s oil. We consume much more oil than we produce. You want to defeat the U.S.? Two words: Oil embargo. Then sit back and wait a few years. You can’t run a conventional military without oil.
Not true. The Germans developed processes to convert coal into oil. It is more expensive than pumping oil out of the ground, so not generally used. And the US has penty of coal. So for military purposes, no lack of oil but there would be a world-wide economic depression in that case.
Possibly. This or something superior would be just about the only way for it to happen.
Question though. Since Star Destroyers have a big laser that nearly equals a nuke, thn is it ok for us to hit one with an ICBM (They can be targeted staright up you know. They don’t have to land back on Earth…)? I would think that would be effective enough, if only for a short time. I’m thinking that the bus on top of an ICBM should travel fast enough to ensure that only a “luck” shot from the Star destroyer’s PDS would be able to defend it.
I think they’d win after a while. And then laugh at the rest of the worlds militaries.