Hate to (air)burst ya’lls bubble,but there is no way the U.S. will stand still and take a asswhippen at the hands of the rest of the world.As much as I hate to say it, if the situation gets that bad its a safe bet that Paris,Berlin,Moscow,etc get remodeled as glowing green glass craters.Russia would be about the only nation able to return the favor and their ICBM and SSBN forces are not in the best of shape.France, China and North Korea don’t have a delivery system that can reach the CONUS. Germany does not have nuclear weapons at all. About the only thing the U.S. would have to fear besides a couple of russian ICBM/SLBMs that might make it thru is airborne fallout from the blasts in asia
And the final winner is the cockroaches!
Peace
LIONsob
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The US lose? You did not just say that. We have the most powerful military in the world. Hell the most powerful with everything except oil. And when and if it really came down to it, Donahue and Rosie O’Donnel will be the first to push the button, don’t think they won’t? Once the -IStans start effin’ with anybody, India will jump in and kick some ass, just for breakfast and take their oil. And the second we find out which country is invading us on our coastlines, we’ll blow the shit out that country, until their so poor, they won’t even have row boats or paddles to swim through all the blood we left them in, much less getting back to our coastlines again. Any country with an Air Force is pretty much pathatic, except for a few, and even then it’s still pretty sorry. As far as China. Yes, they a few billion that could whoop some serious ass on our 280 Mil. But as mentioned earlier, we the best Naval and Air Force known to man. We could shrink them from 4 Bil to nil in a matter of minutes. You say they have nukes. So do we, probably 20 times the number we’ve admitted to. Probably a number large enough to cover the whole galaxy in green ice. Once China get’s one in the air, it’ll be hit by 3 of ours.
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Disclaimer: This is just my opinion on what would happen if WWIII happened.
I disagree. (How’s that for an intro?)
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Here’s where you make your first mistake. Assuming the US and the UK see the war coming and it isn’t a surprise attack, the US/UK will either strike first or move their forces around. If there was seriously a situation like pre-WWI, there would be enough time to get your shit in order. The combined strength of the US/UK air forces in Europe would be more than enough to destroy the French/German Air Forces and to fend off a Russian attack, and also to seriously harass Continental ground forces and manufacturing centers. The UK would take serious damage, but France/Germany would take worse.
Except that’s not true. There are no forces in the world with the logistics ability to mount a serious invasion of the US. Furthermore, within a fairly short amount of time the US/UK navy would be the sole naval power in the oceans. There would be enough enemy subs/whatnot to harass shipping and fleets, but not enough to mount an invasion.
I agree that Russia/China would be the economic and manufacturing backbone of the war for the non-US/UK. But the US could very easily take the war to Europe/Asia. And they would, for the reasons I stated above. Air and sea superiority leaves the US relatively impregnable.
[quote]
With stalemate comes the slow strangulation of the U.S. Trade basically dries up, the U.S. economy goes into the shitter, and unless peace is made quickly, America becomes a hollow shell of herself in a few years and starts suing for peace.[/qutoe]
Not even remotely realistic. Assuming the rest of the world is neutral (not likely, but we’ll assume it for this scenario) they will still trade with the US. Sea lanes will remain open. And trade with Latin America/Canada/Brasil stays intact whether the oceans are hazardous or not. Economic strangulation is just not realistic since Russia/China does not have the ability to enact a blockade.
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It gives the stock market jitters. Stock market != economy. Furthermore, the US has enough of a manufacturing base and natural resources to go on without significant world trade. Also, economy != ability to wage war - the economy sucked in pre-WWII but the US did just fine.
The real problem with this game is that if Russia, France, China, Germany, Iraq, and North Korea went to war, it wouldn’t just be against the US and the UK. Neutral countries wouldn’t stay neutral. Iraq doesn’t have the ability to attack the US or the UK so they would likely invade Kuwait and maybe Saudi Arabia. Certainly Israel would not stay neutral facing a threat from Iraq with the US distracted. Iran would probably go to war with Iraq at that point, possibly allying with Israel in a bizarre twist. Syria and Egypt would probably just stay neutral since they have reasons they would want Israel and Iraq to beat the living crap out of each other. Turkey jumps in against Iraq, too. The Kurds are wiped off the map.
Similarly, North Korea could only really invade South Korea. Japan would be a target for China due to its alliance with the US, the US military presence there, and for its strategic position. India would stay neutral for a while, but would probably jump in against China if it felt China was on the defensive and try to take a chunk out of it. Which means that Pakistan would come in against India against China.
The Chechens would start getting some nice military aid.
Australia and Canada would probably jump in with the US/UK in the event of a serious war.
So the real situation would be Turkey, Israel, maybe Iran, maybe Egypt, maybe Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, the UK, India, Japan, South Korea and the US against Russia, China, Pakistan, Iraq, maybe Syria, France, and Germany.
Let’s not forget that MAD not only prevented nuclear war, but that they prevented ALL direct conflicts.
Since WWII, the US has fought nothing but proxy wars against major powers. I honestly don’t think nuclear-armed nations have the restraint to avoid the use of nukes when THEY are being attacked (not their forces in the field have a world away).
The first time a mainland area of one of the major powers is attacked, even conventionally, like we’re about to attack Baghdad, the nukes would be pulled out. Can you see the US sitting still after Russian bombers flatten, say, Norfolk and Virgina Beach (legit. military targets on the US mainland)? Or the Russians sitting still if we send some stealth bombers to take out the infrastructure of Moscow or Stalingrad? Nuclear threats would be exchanged immediately, and things would likely escalate to the point of actual deployment.
Actually, all those countries together could not even threaten Britain, let alone the USA. The countries suggested simply do not have the military capacity to invade and conquer a fully developed Western country with sophisticated weaponry.
In fact, I doubt that any of them in accord could even defeat Spain - short of manipulating the place into another civil conflict.
Looks like Madagascar would win.
Kiribati is the real winner.
Uhh… To even suggest the conflict would stay conventional is stupid. In 15 minutes of an attack on UK, the nukes would be flying. We would be kissing our asses goodbye. The movie Sum of all Fears sums it up pretty much…
The initial attack may not be enough to retaliate against, but a full blown aerial attack would be enough to seriously consider detonating nukes.
Well… If the theatre missle defense is put up, we won’t have to worry about retaliation, and Russia is not in a posiiton to make more nukes… So… We are virtually untouched.
The missle defense system the US is working on right now would not have the ability to seriously deter a full nuclear strike from Russia- they have thousands of warheads in ICBM’s. The system is designed to block a small number of missle’s, say from North Korea, and could be used to blunt an ICBM strike from China. That being said, MAD would probably keep China and Russia from using nukes. And without nukes, geographic distance and vast naval superority makes any serious damage to the US mainland very unlikely - only Russia has the ability to fly land-based bombers to the US, and these bombers would likely be in shot down or fall apart due to poor maintance. And the French and Russian aircraft carriers would likely be sunk in the first weeks of the war.
I would expect Iraq to immediately attack the oil fields of Kuwait and Iran and also (along with Syria) to attack Israel.
I would also expect the NK to attack Japan and for China to attack Taiwan. If successful, these attacks would be a blow to the US economy.
The two wild cards are India and Israel. The big question is whether the Russians and Chinese would able to sneak a sub in close enough to launch nukes at the US. Frankly, I just can’t see anyone other than NK actually trying to use nuclear weapons.
I think the US and UK could maintain a stalemate easily absent nukes, but actually attacking and overtaking China or Russia would difficult because of the numbers of people and the size of the land. Also, I think their militaries are better than we credit them.
Keys for the Axis: Cut off US supply of oil. Isolate US and UK economies. Make US and UK focus on defending allies. Get India on their side.
Keys for Allies: Control the seas. Maintain supply lines. Contain nuclear threat. Defend against terrorist attacks.
Probably outcome: French surrender immediately, bestow medals on all of their valiant heros, denounce the US for forgetting that the French supported them in the 1700s, and seek war reparations. Germans lose. Iraqis lose. North Koreans lose. Russia and China stalemate. India abstains. Israel takes on more territory.
Of course, everything I know about war I learned from Tom Clancy books, so who knows.
For the record, I think the Germans would fight with the US and Britain before it fought against them. They have been very cooperative in freeing up US troops in Afghanistan, despite their rhetoric.
On a strictly military viewpoint without nukes, I think the US will come out of this quite nicely, if the war doesn’t last too long. No other country has as much experience at force projection in modern warfare as the US. This includes things like strategically placed bases, carrier groups around the world which can be quickly deployed, midair refueling, AWACS and space surveillance. As soon as the winds of war begin to blow, US intelligence gathering should be good enough to reveal where the massive militarization is coming from. There is no way that such a large force will be disguised from US satellites and airplanes. Given what air power can accomplish and the great toys of the US Air Force, I think that over certain theaters air superiority will be acheived rather quickly. With that, I think that we can severely disrupt the rest of the world’s industrial capacity quite quickly.
At the beginning of hostilities, the US stages anti-radiation and superiority missions from carriers, with B-2s flying in from Missouri to help out on hardened positions and heavy duty artillery from destroyers in the carrier group. Following this is B-52 runs and Special Ops palcement to take care of hardened troop positions, sofetening it up for a establishment of a beachhead. Once a beachhead is established, more is possible with helicopter gunships and standard air power. After air superiority is established, you can have hardcore bombing runs against industrial centers anywhere on the planet.
Coastline and border defense are a problem, but I think that the Rest Of The World needs to have an undetected or protected force capable of making a landing or an invasion. That’s not going to happen, at least initially, with the power and mobility of the US Armed Forces, especially around the continental US. They just don’t have the ability to stretch their supply lines as much as the US.
It would be far easier for the Rest Of The World to do it economically. Any sustained war by the US would require certain reserves that the US just does not have. This would either curtail any prolonged war or make it necessary for the US to go in and take those resources.
Let’s see, first France would see a German flag and surrender to Spain. Next, Germany tries to make noise but runs out of money after 2 days of fighting. The U.S. cleans out western Europe, and sends in Donohue, O’Donnell, Oprah and Dr Phil to make everyone feel better about losing. After taking out Iraq, they head to N Korea, “losing” a few missiles in the “area” around Iran and Vietnam. Russia sees a new possibility for another Empire. And I, while drinking a beer and grilling steaks, pay taxes to restore these countries to something resembling a civilization, all the while cursing the French. And at some point, Scotland goes for full independance and takes over France with 3 bottles of whisky and a bad hangover (see Die Hard With a Vengeance)
I almost forgot, there is NO way china sides with N Korea. They would have to deal with the influx of refugees, they would have to pay for a border war, and they would forever lose the cash flowing in from the US. China was a concern 30 years ago, now they are are on the verge of being as big a trade partner as Japan. They may be commies,but they’re not stupid.
The first country the US would invade in the event of a full scale world war, would be Mexico and Canada, witout its oil gas and natural resourses, th eUS knows theyy are dead in the water cause they will be cut off from the rest of the worrld.
Also remember the most important asset in a war is People and people have to eat, I guess the war will be fougth with biological weapons that strangle the US food supply in the flat plains, so thta means STARVATION on a biblical scale, and I am not talking just on this side of the atlantic, russia ans Chin awould face even worse scenarios, there would be all kinds of small wars in the middle east and posible nukes in India an d Pakistan.
The war would not last more tahn 2 years because before that someone would pull the trigger on the nukes if this goes for 2 long and if that comes to pass then Just Ton Hanks and its punny little island in the middle of nowhere would be alive …and the cockroaches
If we take WWII as some basis, it took the allies 5 years to put down the combined forces of Germany and Japan. During that time, weapons tech advanced at an amazing pace. Just look at all the German inventions made during the war, Jets, V2s, bio-weapons (never used). And the american A-bomb.
Now, the americans a fairly bright people, and the US currently has the biggest, most polished war machine, …but that is now.
But if a full scale war starts, France, Germany, Russia, China would start spending, thinking, eating and drinking war 24 hours a day. Unless the Yanks can take them all out in 6 months, the combined pressure of manpower, resources and brainpower of the rest of the world would make them cave in.
Right?
So, make love, not war.
I have to agree with ChaosGod. The US has a huge initial advantage in ‘force projection,’ the quality of its equipment and the training of its troops.
However, a war of this magnitude would last a loooong time. You simply cannot attack countries on other continents without massive preparation. The US’ initial avantage would be worn away through conflict and as China, Russia, Germany, France all started spending and focusing on their military development and production the US’ advantage would decline even further.
In the end, I think neither the US, Russia, nor China would ever fall to invasion…they are simply to large and to populous. An eventual truce would be declared and the world map would be redrawn around the huge remaining powers.
I really think it would be too close to call. It wouldn’t be a war comparable to any other.
Modern warfare appears to confer an astounding advantage on the side with the technological edge, but the downside to that technology is that it is found only in highly limited numbers.
Nobody wants to mess with the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet, for example. But how many fleet submarines does the Royal Navy have? Twelve, according to Haze Gray.
The B-2 is unquestionably a strategic weapon of potentially devastating power and penetration. How many have we got? I think about sixteen. The aircraft are individually named.
How about the F-22 Raptor? Nothing can touch it, but mainly because the United States only just ramped up its production to the formidable rate of thirty-six a year. They’re hard to shoot because they’re hard to find, because they aren’t there.
And of course all American and UK air traffic would be guided by the remarkable E-3 Sentry. How many of those do we have? About 42 between the US and the UK. NATO, France, and Saudi Arabia have about 26, all told.
This is just a guess, but it looks to me like the United States can field perhaps four thousand combat aircraft of all types, most of them superior but not overwhelmingly so against the indeterminate number of aircraft which could potentially be arrayed against them. A squadron of F-22s might prove just as useful in the conduct of a new world war as Adolf Galland’s ME-262s did at the end of WWII: that is, not useful at all.
And similarly, America’s peacetime shipbuilding program generally posits years for the construction of capital ships. And then of course there is the highly specialized training that virtually every member of the armed forces must undergo in order to utilize and maintain these wonder-toys.
But the flip-side to the problem is this: any one of those toys can cause massive strategic damage if properly deployed. That’s why I say it’s a tossup: these weapons, so rare as to probably be unique on any single battlefield of a world war, could shift the balance of the entire conflict. But the loss of even one is a loss so dear it might make those in control of them unwilling to risk them. You’d probably have to fight it out to see who would would be clever enough to win with–or without–these amazing machines.
Well its not really a toss up. The US/UK are the only ones with a chance at winning. China and Russia may successfully defend their homelands but thats as far as its going to get. Even with the entire worlds forces combined there is no way they could muster an amphibious landing in the US. Such a feat would require overwhelming naval, naval air and amphibious transports to even have a chance. Naval air being especially important and even with the worlds forces combined it wouldn’t even be close to defending its navy from the US Air Force and US Naval fighters and bombers. It would be the biggest mass suicide ever. Amphibious landings are serious business.
UK/US don’t have the man power to occupy Russia or China. Who would want to? But they could destroy the bulk of their armed forces and maybe get something out of it. Maybe occupy some strategic areas. Once this happens its a whole other story. Remember the Japanese and the Germans did it from much smaller countries.
Sofa King,
I agree with this one. The official Royal Navy web site claims seven boats of the Trafalgar Class, five of the Swiftsure Class.
Really? I think we have 21 of them. More importantly, so does the Air Force** fact sheet on the B-2. One of them is the test platform, but I just wanted to give the correct number. You didn’t mention [url=“http://www.af.mil/news/factsheets/B_1B_Lancer.html”]B-1B Lancers or B-52s, but we have 72(+18 National Guard), and 85 (+9 reserve) of each, respectively. Just in case anyone was interested.
A general note about US Air Force capabilities… we have 396 F-15s (non-E models), and an additional 126 in the Air National Guard. We have an additional 217 F-15Es active. We have 732 F-16s on active duty, 70 in reserve, and 579 in the Air National Guard. If you’ll add those numbers up, you’ll find we have slightly over 2100 planes of those three types alone. Unfortunately, the Naval website (I try to use the official sources wherever possible) doesn’t actually list numbers for their F-14s and F/A-18s, but I’d assume several hundred more fighters in projectable force.
Yeah, but that’s offset by the number that we have. Right now, we have 14 full-sized Aircraft Carriers in various stages. 12 of them are fully operational (but some are undergoing maintinence and whatnot at the moment), while the last two Nimitz-class carriers are currently being built. The French have one small carrier, the Russians have a rustbucket or two, and no one else has anything larger than helicopter or Harrier carriers. Also, the Russians are the only other country besides the US and the UK that could field a full submarine fleet… but actually, I don’t know if they can even do that anymore.
Not that any of this matters in a hypothetical war like this. Both sides would be forced to use nukes and use nukes early, because they know the other side will. It’s like game theory… it may be better for everyone if no nukes are used, but the penalty for not using them far exceeds the lesser penalty of doing so. Alaskan_in_NYC, the same thing would apply to biowarfare.
Therefore, just for fun, assume that all the nukes and bioweapons spontaneously vanish and force a conventional war. The US and the UK wipe up. The UK will be hit hard, no doubt about it, but their fleets (especially subs) will keep anything from actually being able to land on the island. Meanwhile, US carriers would range up and down the oceans of the world at will for the most part. Only a concentrated submarine or air attack has a chance at taking out a fully prepared carrier, and the task group that escorts a carrier has both anti-sub and anti-air capability. F/A-18s would be smashing ports and industrial centers near any coastline, and B-2s and B-52s would be smashing targets far inland (they have intercontinental range, especially with airborn tankers). No one else, save Canada (which would be siding with the US and the UK) and Russia (via long range bombers) has a chance at hitting the US heartland.
The US has the food supplies in the form of the Great Plains, oil under Alaska, and enough mineral resouces to run a war, so supplies wouldn’t be a problem in general for the military. No more SUVs and gigantic banquets for the civillians, but that’s a small price to pay for living, right?
ChaosGod,
Six years. September 1st, 1939 to September 2nd, 1945. But at the start of the war, the US had a tiny army and a vastly underfunded military. AND there was this little thing called the Great Depression that was still bearing down heavily on the people. Now, of course, the US is the only country with global projection wherever we want, the new Bush budget puts military spending through the roof (not that I think it’s good), and countries like Germany and Russia are no longer set up for war like they were back then. China would be ready in a heartbeat most likely, but they don’t even have the trans-oceanic transport capability to take Taiwan, much less invade the US.
Doubtful. The French and German militaries are nicely polished, of course, but not terribly large. Nor do they have the vast natural resouces that the US has. Russia lacks the funding… even with the stimulus of a war, they couldn’t revive the old Soviet military machine. China, as I already said, has a fine military, but it isn’t capable of non-local operations.
Basically the US would be taking out industrial centers and shipyards at will, while no one else could really do all that much. Eventually we’d probably just start terror bombing (like Dresden and the Tokyo firebombing) to get the civillians screaming out for peace. It’s really all we could do, since launching a full invasion of France and Germany would be hard enough. China would be impossible, unless we had India’s manpower on our side.
-Psi Cop
i prefer a simple answer;
we’d all be fucked. everyone. no matter where you live, or what side you’re on.
everyone on earth = fubared.