The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party back in April became the latest in a long list of groups to conduct a wargame examining a potential U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan. Yet the most important question about such a conflict is the one none of these organizations ever ask: What is the vital national […]
The comments on that article are wild. It’s a strange mix of realistically evaluating China’s improving capabilities and reconciling that with deteriorating US hegemony. All while the undercurrent of nationalism and American Exceptionalism looms in the background like a puppeteer guiding their thoughts…
I mean I don’t jive with the “USA #1” shit, but let’s be realistic. China has a military with both hardware and personnel structure built around Russian platforms and systems. About 35% of their current standing military is 2 year conscripts. We’re currently watching our hardware from 2-3 generations ago annihilate Russia in Ukraine. I think it’s safe to say that invading Taiwan would be WAY worse for China than for us.
Ah yes, the triumphant Ukranian army, winning so hard they’re resorting to sending amputees back to the front lines.
I know that not everyone has heard of hypersonic missiles, but anyone who has shouldn’t be surprised when the pacific carrier fleet becomes a new coral reef.
The US literally couldn’t achieve their goals in Afganistan. If they couldn’t beat the Taliban, what makes you think they could win against a super power?
Idk, comrade. They got plenty of money from opium trade, not to mention stealing government funds. Plus they ensured the region is destabilised and deindustrialized. Sounds like mission accomplished
You’re not entirely wrong, but you have to understand that there a couple levels to US foreign policy. One the material base you mentioned, where the US wants to take out possible competitors all over the globe. The other is that of the “idealists,” the neoconservatives who are the US foreign policy establishment. In what sense they are “conservative” has always been a little unclear, because their understanding of geopolitics is in a lot of ways ultra-left: the US is an armed base for freedom and liberalism, and if the country does not continually export, via war and color revolutions, its own version of “democracy,” that same democracy at home will wither away and die. During the Bush years, I thought it was just rhetoric, but the sheer suicidal stupidity of their actions in Ukraine has since convinced me they actually believe all of this. They tend to be opposed by the Brzenzkyites, who favor a much more hard-headed approach to foreign policy – the divide-and-conquer game essentially, such as Nixon played with China and the USSR. The Brzenzkyites were once the foreign policy establishment, but since the 90s their place has been mostly taken by the neoconservatives.
The neoconservatives have been enabled by US corporations and mega-conglomerates who, for the sake of immediate profits, want global competitors taken out; without this base, the neocons would never have risen to power. But because they are idealists, the neocons regularly go above and beyond all rational neccesity, promoting sanctions when diplomacy would have worked, wars when sanctions would have been sufficient, etc, all with a goal toward toppling “undemocratic” regimes and ushering in “democracy” – the latter never happens, but here we have the madman’s dilemma, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This cycle of escalation creates mass death abroad and social and economic problems back at home, which latter do end up hurting the US ruling classin some degree. The long range goals of US corporations would probably be better served by the slow, methodical approach of Brzenzkyite foreign policy, but capital is by nature short-sighted and geared toward immediate profit. Thus, the US ruling class has created a monster it cannot well control, leading to a sort of prisoner’s dilemma. When neocon wars fail, as they always do, to achieve the objectives set out by their ideologues, capital profits; but that same failure makes the US populace disillusioned with the neocons, and creates political pressures that put the US ruling class in danger of losing their attack dog in Washington. That is why a big portion of the US elite were freaked out about Trump. His policies were not much different from those of his predecessors, but his election articulated a kind of right-wing populist distrust in the mechanisms of global American power, which many members of the US ruling class took as a sign of things to come.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? The supposed disillusionment with the ruling “elites” (hate the term tbh, there’s nothing elite about those bastards) doesn’t lead to the population abandoning the espoused ideals. Instead it leads to supporting the same kind of filth, but in a different coat of paint. So now we’re stuck between neocons high off their own fumes, willing to nuke the world “in the name of democracy”, and cynical bastards who don’t bother pretending it’s all for profit. And both are deep in the pocket of the ruling class, and protected by the spook apparatus. Wunderbar.
Yes, but it isn’t sustainable. The US nowadays is mostly deindustrialized, without any substantive economy. Everything, and I do mean everything, is based on either financial speculation or the entertainment industry. The fact that the dollar is still the global currency has long insulated us from the worst effects of having an economy like that, since the governent can create “growth” via debt and by printing money. But for real wealth, the US is entirely dependent on production in other parts of the world, mainly China. As US actions undermine the dollar as the global currency, the day of reckoning for the US economy comes closer. And when enormous sectors of the US population start facing real grinding hardship – I mean “Russia in the 1990s” levels of grinding hardship – the propaganda will cease to be effective. To a certain extent, it is ceasing to be effective now, though the system is mostly working as intended. But cracks are showing, and those in control are starting to worry. The thing might ultimately be salvageable, if we did the sort of major political restructuring we did during World War II. But I promise you, there are no Roosevelts anymore.
Meh the US is usually pretty bad against an insurgent force using guerilla tactics (Viet Cong, Taliban, insurgents during Iraqi occupation). It’s great at engaging in large scale battles where there are clear targets though.
When was the last time the U.S. was in a war like that? WWII?
Edit: hit post mid sentence.
US failed in their push to the Yalu River against 1950s China. That was China at its weakest point when it was poor and unindustrialized. It was literally less developed than Sub Saharan Africa back then.
Now that China is the host to the world’s largest industrial sector. The Chinese make the best hypersonics, the best drones, and the best surface combatant ships. All produced in numbers impossible for US industry to match. What makes you think that the US will fare any better?
The Iran was the one the that dealt the mortal blow to Iraq. The Iran-Iraq War, the First Gulf War, and the sanctions left Iraq as a powder keg of religious and ethnic tensions. 12 years of sanctions on Iraq contributed to the defeat of their regular army more than anything the US military itself did.
The US never fought in the large scale operations that the Soviet Army did in WW2. No US operation rivaled the size of Operation Bagration or the Manchurian Strategic Offensive.
If the US loses or has severe trouble winning in every war they have been in for years even against small groups of farmers then I really don’t think they stand a chance against the PLA and its allies.
When did this happen?
Like?
Ukraine is being devastated, and the US weapons have proven again and again to be nothing but a paper tiger.
You have to be kidding, right? A paper tiger? US javelins alone were responsible for utterly crippling the Russian air superiority.
It seems we have transdimensional traveller here. Seems from very far dimension because in this one Javelin isn’t even anti air missile lmao.
It’s really shocking how propagandised the masses are. I’ve never seen anything quite like this and I’m old.
My bad, I misspoke. Us javelins are anti-tank. UK javelins were anti air.
Source? Even if I search “uk anti air javelin”, the results that come up say they’re anti-tank:
In my quickness to reply, I mixed up Patriot system with javelin. I didn’t mean that the UK were sending anti air, just that the UK once HAD a SMAA that was called a Javelin. Entirely my fault.
The US patriot blew its load of 36 missiles in two minutes and then got hit by a single hypersonic missile and destroyed. US is only able to produce around 150 of these missiles per year at the moment, and each one costs $4.1 million. Anybody capable of doing basic math can see that Patriot is an utter joke of an air defence system.
The Patriot system could not even reliably shoot down the modfied SCUD rockets Iraq fired during the first gulf war…
They also suck as anti-tank weapon. A tank has a “slightly” larger range and reactive armor to counter those kinds of missle. The russian military did not sleep the last decades.
All of the mighty US Wanderwuffe were destroyed or didn’t cause much in terms of advancing, and as all of you liberals like to say, Russia was using shitty goatherder Soviet weapons. Furthermore if you actually read the article you would see that the US is highly deindustrialised and cannot sustain a prolonged war and that’s not going to change because those are the effects of neoliberalism.
Guess what happens after a week? Besides if the US would invade China there would be no reason for Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and plenty of other countries to provide support, I’d like to see how much your wunderwaffe will do there.
Sorry, forgot I was replying to a totally badass amazing military strategist big brain boi. I’ll take my librul tearz and go home :(
Will you address the claim made in the article which you clearly only read the headline of:
You seem to just assume that the US can somehow magically appear missiles into existance, but I mean think about it, is it the US or China that deindustrialized? Also, why does the US wargame conclude that at least two US aircraft carriers would be downed in the first two weeks?
Where did I say that? There’s a whole lot of conjecture in your statement. Nothing in the article gives the vastly different rules of each of the war game scenarios they ran. Also, congressional war games are often utter and complete bullshit, run by people that have no idea how the American military and its supply chain and contractors operate. All I ever said was that I think this shit would be worse for China than for us.
How does the US losing two aircraft carriers and running out of missiles way before China equate to China being worse off than the US?
Even if I grant that whatever game or simulation they ran isn’t entirely accurate, I’m still not willing to go to war based on the gut feelings of some guy on the internet. Especially since a lot of people, speaking on similar “gut feelings” and a good ol’ conservative distrust of the “experts,” were confidently telling me just a few months ago that Ukrainian troops would absolutely be in Crimea by now.
I tried to change my display name to “a totally badass amazing military strategist big brain boi” for the meme reply but I guess that was too long…
In seriousness though, do you really think we’re responding to you for your “librul tearz”?
That would have been an amazing name. And in serious? The person I responded to used ‘you liberals’ and ‘neoliberalism’ towards me, I was just mocking them.
Are you operating under the assumption that we are using “liberal” like american conservatives? Because that isn’t what we mean when we call you a liberal, which you absolutely seem to be.
The Russian air superiorty that still exists and is causing the US to greenlight German trainers to train Ukrainian pilots on US fighters so that maybe in a few months there might be some counter to it? That Russian air superiorty?
If the US is doing so well at arming Ukraine and defeating Russia, then why are they losing? Why is Russia still taking land and why is this “counteroffensive” that the US and Ukraine talked so much about utterly failing?
Well, no. Ukrainian forces themselves stated that they need real anti-air capabilities because those javelins are useless. Please stop getting your news from NAFO bots.
>implying ruzzian air superiority was crippled“We” are seeing the literal opposite…
[citations needed]Here Conscription Laws
Here Weapons
Here Military Structure
Any others you want?
None of those articles contain any actual evidence to support your claims, just assertions by US government institutions and US government-funded institutions like the CSIS and the USNI. If there’s no evidence, you can only judge the sources by their reputation, which is very close to rock bottom for all three
Good lord man. It’s like you’re from some alternate timeline where everything is backwards. Wherever you get your information from, drop it.
You can find some info here more based in reality.
Those NATO trained Übersoldaten with Leopard 2A6s are really taking their sweet time against those shovel armed conscripts with Bukhankas.
Do they plan on severing that land bridge any time soon, I guess their Crimean summer beach party is canceled?
The only thing that was annihilated was the credibility of American economic warfare.
You’re not being realistic though.
Chinese military and personnel aren’t outdated. They have cutting edge ships, drone tech, and missile tech. The worst you can say is that they are too peaceful as a country so haven’t had as much chance to use their ordinance in the field. Training and war games exist though. Being in constant war for basically their entire existence hasn’t exactly improved the US’s track record.
As far as the Ukraine bit, US hardware is being blown through at an unprecedented rate. So much so that the US is running out of things to send Ukraine and is falling back on cluster munitions because, by their own admission, they don’t have anything else to give them. Ukraine continues to just take all of that and throw it away on Russian defenses for little to no gain. The US may have started the war to try to drain Russia of resources, but it functionally seems to be doing the opposite. Great news for the weapons manufacturing industry though.
Even if, hypothetically, we ignored all of that and accepted that China was outmatched militarily, going to war with China would be FAR worse for the US. Look at how much most of the EU is suffering under their own sanctions placed on Russia. Now imagine the same happens to the country that owns a huge amount of US debt, it would be absolute economic suicide even without a single round fired.