It's hard to predict what the next outbreak of war will look like.
Are we going to see more Syria/Yemen/Sudan-type conflicts or will we get back to a conventional war with tank battles and all?
In the 20th century warfare evolved trench warfare to asymmetrical war.
You don't need divisions to make an impact, you need someone willing to set off a suicide vest in a police station, a pregnant woman to sit an a VBIED and drive past a checkpoint or someone strong enough to fire an RPG.
To assume robots or technology is going to solve those problems is probably a naive position.
It's of course important to prepare for a larger scale war against China, Russia, etc. but realistically we're more likely to be fighting a handful of goat herders in Afghanistan with an AK and a bag full of rice before we're taking on an armored division.
The best line in the article was "We can’t hope endlessly that technology will make warfare easier or less brutal or less costly, [because] The reality is, it doesn’t; it changes it. It makes it harder in many cases."
Note: I was in the US Army from 03-07 serving in the Rangers with 4 deployments and have seen ingenuity trump technology
> You don't need divisions to make an impact, you need someone willing to set off a suicide vest in a police station, a pregnant woman to sit an a VBIED and drive past a checkpoint or someone strong enough to fire an RPG.
I understand what you're saying, but those are all self-inflicted vulnerabilities from trying to "nation build".
> It's of course important to prepare for a larger scale war against China, Russia, etc. but realistically we're more likely to be fighting a handful of goat herders in Afghanistan with an AK and a bag full of rice before we're taking on an armored division.
Broadly, I think there are 2 theories of conflict.
The first is what I'll call the "justice" theory of conflict: people fight because they are oppressed.
The second is what I'll call the "rational basis" theory of conflict: people fight because they think they can win, or because their backs are against a wall and they have nothing to lose by fighting.
IMO, the second theory has much, much more explanatory power.
If you buy the second theory, then the major reason there is no war between the US and China or Russia is because they don't believe they can win (which is probably true, as long as the US doesn't try to invade). But in order for that to continue to be true in the future, the US needs to continue to invest in military assets that are effective in fighting near peer opponents.
It is also important to be good at fighting developing nations. But ultimately, being good at that doesn't matter as much. If the US goes home from Afghanistan, that might affect the Afghans, but it doesn't really have global implications. But a hot war between the US and China would result in a truly enormous number of deaths.
Also, I don't really see much evidence that the US has ever really been successful at nation building. The last real success was South Korea. And it's just as easy to see that as a fluke rather than the result of US presence (during the peace - obviously the US helped immensely during the hot part of the conflict).
I think you’re mostly right. One thing about “nation building” though is that the US has only been successful (broadly defined) when we occupy the country completely, like a colony, for a generation and essentially administer their government for them for a long time. Now, there’s obviously a lot of warts involved in doing that but Germany, Japan, and South Korea are the last times we really went “all in” (South Korea is a much more murky example as you’ve pointed out). To be clear, Iraq and Afghanistan are very different for reasons that should be obvious (OEF 12-13, here), and while I’m not saying that treating those places like a colony would’ve worked better (I don’t think it would have, for enough reasons to fill a PhD thesis) it’s an interesting historical thought experiment.
Back to the actual topic, I share the skepticism of tech Uber alles expressed like others, and trying to predict the future of warfare is mostly a futile exercise. Probably best to index on flexibility and tight training regimens and make some informed inferences about how to structure the force.
Another major difference between nation-building in Germany post-WW2 and nation-building in Iraq post-Saddam was that the occupying forces (mostly the Americans) left most of the Nazis in place (with a few notable exceptions at the top), while in Iraq almost the entire Baath Party structure was obliterated.
One of my favourite examples is Hans Speidel [1], a Wehrmacht lieutenant-general by the time the war ended, who got to be "Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe from 1957 to 1963", plus the major shareholder of Mercedes in the 1960s who had been a big Nazi sympathiser during the war (his name escapes me right now, and I can't google him easily, the official Mercedes history does not mention him), to say northing of how the infamous IG Farben was split between BASF and Bayer (among others), and not immediately raised to the ground and liquidated. I don't think the Americans that occupied Iraq in 2003 were as friendly with the company that stood behind Saddam's chemical attacks against the Kurds in the 1980s.
There’s a great book called “the shortest history of Germany” that covers it nicely. It’s fascinating. This type of government action (included devaluation of citizens money but allowing companies to retain their value, cheap, highly motivated and educated labour force) likely had a much great impact than the Marshall Plan which is what you always hear about today. The book also goes into details on how the border of the Roman world still today predicts the richest regions of Germany, and created a split in the East/West “world”.
> There’s a great book called “the shortest history of Germany” that covers it nicely. It’s fascinating.
Do you happen to have an easy link to it? Sounds really interesting.
> The book also goes into details on how the border of the Roman world still today predicts the richest regions of Germany
Just a couple of hours ago I was looking for a .kml or .geojson file of the Roman "limes", I was trying to prove its relationship to some toponymy-data from the Carpathians. It's crazy how influential the Romans were.
Thank you, my pet peeve is how the entire Iraqi Army was fired. Was it morally the right thing to do, even considering ISIS was basically boosted from obscurity to a decades long pain in the ass from that move alone?
According to the wikipedia article you link to, your summary of Spiedel's life misses an important point. I think the US did recruit Iraqi defectors.
> Speidel joined the German Army in 1914, fought in the First World War, and stayed with the Army as a career soldier after the war. He served as chief of staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during the Second World War and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1944. Speidel participated in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, and he was tasked with recruiting Rommel for the resistance. After the plot failed he was arrested by the Gestapo. At the end of the war, he escaped from Nazi prison and went into hiding. He was the only major member of the 20 July Plot to survive the war.
I saw that, but by July 1944 the Wehrmacht had been directly responsible for millions of civilian deaths on the Eastern Front (less so in the West because the Allies had just landed in Normandy), this guy (and his other coup colleagues) were just unlucky because they went for the king and missed him. That doesn't absolve any of them of the war's atrocities of which the institution they worked for was directly responsible (among many others in the Nazi regime, of course).
I agree he's morally reprehensible. I was just saying that similar people in Iraq (Iraqis who participated in the Iraqi govt while it committed war crimes) who defected were treated similarly.
Haha. Nation building involves a boatload of money and the US post war policy was essentially to own the governments of the rebuilt nations. SK, JP are good examples of this and have modeled their development goals to mirror American way of life. From small things like TV shows (to non americans JPN and SK television is as obnoxious as US television with everything being over the top and colourful.) To much broader economic policy.
Be that as it may, the big countries generally dont fight each other because the losses on both sides will be massive but other than the US the other countries generally dont mess with smaller countries unless it has an immediate political outcome eg. Russia and ukraine.
Miltary history can teach all of us a lot but its inportant to take it with a shovel of salt. Victors write the books and rarely do they write about shortcomings. War is a terrible mess and almost entirely dependent on allies.
Lastly I would like to point out our naivete if we think a whole state will stand and wait for a belligerent nation to invade them in their father's ancestral land. The scars of war tend to fester. Should the big countries go to war, the outcome will not be anything like we hope or predict.
> From small things like TV shows (to non americans JPN and SK television is as obnoxious as US television with everything being over the top and colourful.)
You take this evidence that japanese and south korean television shows consciously try to imitate the US? Maybe that's just what most people like?
Much of european TV is like the most awful american TV. For example there's some kind of equivalent of the daily show in almost every european country. But that's not because the US forces it on europe, it's just what people like.
Indeed. US seems to be the primary distributor of what we can call "universal culture" - i.e. the things that culturally outcompete other things. It's not even that the US has the best cultural ideas - but being the strongest and relatively free market economy for most of the 20th century let the US import ideas from all around the world, distill them through market competition, and re-export globally as "American".
Indeed, the US pursued cultural export to Europe and Asia very aggressively, as a deliberate, planned policy [3] after the war. E.g. the Marshall plan granted convenient access to American film, pop music, and later on television to the Western European market [1] [2]. After the US built a huge culture industry, it was much easier to maintain momentum.
Good points. I think you’re right about the importance of being able to fight near peers.
> If you buy the second theory, then the major reason there is no war between the US and China or Russia is because they don't believe they can win (which is probably true, as long as the US doesn't try to invade).
There’s also the issue that even for the winner, a war is probably net negative for its people.
>Also, I don't really see much evidence that the US has ever really been successful at nation building
Compare West Germany to the GDR. Japan turned out absolutely amazing all things considered.
But they had national identities before we were there. Iraq has 10,000yr of cultural baggage that needs mopping up. Afghanistan is only really a "nation" in the sense that the land isn't controlled by any of the neighboring countries. I'm not sure where Vietnam stands. I think Korea is the only "success against the odds" story.
> Iraq has 10,000yr of cultural baggage that needs mopping up.
I would disagree that it was cultural baggage and not massive mismanagement of the post invasion landscape by the US. After the invasion, that absolutely crucial mistake made was to not have any plan on how to provide security in the immediate aftermath of the complete toppling of a foreign government.
CENTCOM, the Army War College, and the Army Chief of Staff, among others, warned that we needed a robust plan for security. These were ignored by civilian leadership and the Pentagon, so there was no real “Phase 4” post invasion plan. Policing the streets, securing weapons depots, tracking down loyalists, etc. was just not planned for and as a result, the country slipped into chaos. It is estimated that there were no more than about 5,000 fanatical loyalists post invasion, with almost everyone else being undecided and just seeing what would happen. The mass unemployment of security and military forces pushed a lot of them into the insurgency out of anger and the need for a job. The widespread looting, crime waves, and resulting economic stagnation destroyed the goodwill the US could have had for freeing people from a blood thirsty dictator.
All these things allowed for an insurgency to grow, harden, and fill its ranks with military trained fighters that would fight for the next 5 years. The chaos and lack of security allowed for jihadists like Al Qaeda to move in and take advantage, eventually splitting off into Al Qaeda in Iraq and pushing the country to the brink of civil war. It wouldn’t have been easy, regardless of the plan, but the failure of Iraq was 100% foreseeable and avoidable.
It would have been nice if we didn't do a bad job but my point is that a "good job" still isn't gonna come out looking like Japan. The national unity isn't there.
I know everyone wants to write wall of text rants about everything that went wrong in Iraq and there's more than enough content there to do that but my point is that if you take a step back from the detailed specifics of how we went about nation building it becomes clear that even a "win" doesn't look all that pretty.
The nation building was based on starving people to death and destroying any industry as well as R&D capability. It took years of "boots on the ground" reporting about growing discontent because soviet occupation zone "at least had food" till the west german efforts for independent country were accepted, with very strong shackles. And a lot of it was for a proxy war with another empire.
I think we need a third theory of conflict: political-religious extremism/propaganda/brainwashing.
Islamist terrorists and white supremacist terrorists derive some motivation (but not all) from their indoctrination. If the Quran and the Hadiths were a much more tame and apolitical document then we wouldn't get the extent and mode of fighting that we experience now.
Japan in WW2 fits into this third theory of conflict as well. Yes it was partly fear of the Soviets, partly resentment (and fear of missing out) over European colonialism, but the rabid belief in nationalism and race superiority was also a big causal factor as well. Their reasons for advancing so aggressively into China and South Asia have nothing to do with oppression and nothing to do with a rational theory of conflict. Many thought the war with US was impossible to win, their industrial production capacity was 1/20th that of the US for instance. Pearl Harbor was a suicidal all-in motivated by them running out of oil combined with their inability to surrender (rabid nationalism).
Very often these human drivers related to cognitive bias, fanatic belief, tribalism, are at the root.
> If the Quran and the Hadiths were a much more tame and apolitical document then we wouldn't get the extent and mode of fighting that we experience now.
I think this is a mistake and is not backed up by history. Christian Europe warred for hundreds of years, often using religious doctrine as justification. But the reality is that these conflicts were struggles for resources, power grabs by heads of state, instability created by power vacuums, incompetent leaders, ect. The exact flavor of each conflict was influenced by the religion, but fertile soil for conflict was very terrestrial causes.
The Middle East had long periods of stability. It is only in the 100 years in the post WWI landscape, where the longstanding empire collapsed, European interests carved up the region with little regard, and installed puppet regimes that were often specifically tied to ethnic or religious differences. This created the fertile ground for conflict, revolution, and oppressive regimes. Since many of the puppet governments were ethnic or religious minorities only ratcheted up those aspects in the future conflicts, and it is exactly what we see now.
The idea that Islam is just destined to be violent and chaotic is just as misguided as seeing Middle Ages Europe, reading Jesus’s “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword”, and saying the same thing about Christianity.
> The idea that Islam is just destined to be violent and chaotic
I agree with you on this point, and this isn't my claim. My only claim is that the doctrine plays some non-trivial causal role in the entire picture, in that it provides motive in addition to the geopolitical context. I also agree with you that without the spark of geopolitical circumstance, the doctrine itself may not be a sufficient condition for war/terrorism etc. It does however acts as a significant magnifier.
Consider this thought experiment: If the Quran (or Bible for that matter) were instead absolute pacifistic in stance: explicitly condemning all political violence and terrorism, all war except that which is strictly defensive, and explicitly outlines a delineation between doctrine & state -- would we see more or less conflict, war, terrorism, etc?
These are not impotent documents that play zero role in motivating (or at least, failing to attenuate) specific behavior as a direct outcome of the prescriptions outlined in the text. To an extent they're used as a post hoc justification, but they also play a motivating role (especially if we take the words of Islamist terrorists at face value).
We have evidence of this causal role (doctrine to behavior) by looking at governance in some Muslim majority countries that adopt Sharia, e.g. in Iran. Without this specific doctrine, their system of governance would in a literal sense be entirely different. If the Quran prescribes that the state should be secular, I believe that would have had quite a large causal impact on the Arabic world.
Another example of the causal role of doctrine was when Christians cherry-picked parts of the bible in support of slavery. If the Bible was less self-contradictory in this instance, it's easy to see that it would've been easier to eliminate slavery faster than it happened.
It's also interesting that the only time that the doctrine to action causal path is contested is in the cast of Islamist terrorism. Why does this get contested but everyone accepts a causal role when it comes to white supremacist terrorism, Japanese motives in WW2, and Nazi motives in WW2 (partly driven by anti-semitic beliefs/propaganda, in addition to the more pragmatic Lebensraum motive and a wounded national ego after Treaty of Versailles & WW1 loss)?
> To an extent they're used as a post hoc justification, but they also play a motivating role (especially if we take the words of Islamist terrorists at face value).
Absolutely. But that is what I was saying, that religion determines the exact flavor of conflict, but the root causes are rarely religious. If it was different (if the Middle East was Christian and Europe was Muslim for instance) the Middle Ages would have still been a violent chaotic time for Europe, and the Middle East would have still been a violent chaotic time after WWI.
> It's also interesting that the only time that the doctrine to action causal path is contested is in the cast of Islamist terrorism
I think largely it is because it is so often been used (especially in the post 9/11 era) as a shoulder shrug “well that’s just how Muslims are” excuse. In this very thread, people have said that the post invasion Iraqi chaos was due to “10,000yr of cultural baggage that needs mopping up” when it was directly a result of the US failing to have any plan for post invasion security after collapsing the government. The picture is often painted that these issues in the Middle East are unsolvable because it’s all because of Islam and they have been fighting for 1,000 years and that’s not going to change. To use your Nazi example, it would be like looking at Germany during WWII and saying “well they are religious anti Semites. That’s why they fight and they will always fight and we can’t change their religious beliefs so that’s just the way it is.”
Of course I know you aren’t saying this, but enough people are that I feel it needs to be contextualized. How people understand the situation in the Middle East effects what strategies we support in dealing with the Middle East. If people keep believing that the situation is caused by religion (something we cannot change) instead of economic instability, proxy conflict by regional and global powers, power vacuums from collapsing dictatorships, etc., then it will continue to hamper our foreign policy. Even terrorism is primarily a small number of globally focused jihadists infecting and coopting local causes and grievances.
> Another example of the causal role of doctrine was when Christians cherry-picked parts of the bible in support of slavery. If the Bible was less self-contradictory in this instance, it's easy to see that it would've been easier to eliminate slavery faster than it happened.
Even this I think is overblown in its influence. Many Christian countries gave up enslaved Africans much easier than the US. If the Bible was silent on slavery, I think it would have still gone very similarly for the US. Slavery was propping up the plantation based economy of the southern States, the 3/5th voting rules allowed for the less populated southern states to have outsized electoral power compared to the northern states, and the rapid expansion West (and the proposed rules on slavery for incoming states) threatened to upset that Southern power. In other words, I think people put too much stock in religious justifications, when underlying structural reasons are often what really shape things.
I can agree with this, but I believe my point stands that the specific contents of the doctrine can act as a significant magnifier when the additional geopolitical context is in place.
Nationalism and belief in racial superiority in Japan (especially among the military which basically ran the show given a lack of oversight or control by representatives) played a huge causal role in their actions. I would go so far as to say it was a necessary but not sufficient condition for what occurred in the Eastern theatre of WW2.
Regarding religion, if the Bible & Quran were explicitly pacifistic and forbade war (instead of glorifying it in certain instances), I believe the world would look quite different. If we accept this, then we accept that the specific contents of the doctrine do play an important causal role. Is it plausible to see Jain individuals becoming terrorists in support of a political objective? It seems rather dubious that that would happen.
> The idea that Islam is just destined to be violent and chaotic is just as misguided as seeing Middle Ages Europe, reading Jesus’s “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword”, and saying the same thing about Christianity.
It is well known that any culture where polygyny is the norm will be more violent than a similar culture where the norm is monogamy.
Well, robits have done fantastically well for the US military. A predator drone, killing people in Afghanistan, while being controlled from a base in Las Vegas, is a wet dream for military chiefs and policy makers, not to mention war mongers.
I suspect the end game is to drastically reduce humans and have robots to conduct the war, remotely killing the 'enemy'.
One more sad step towards de-humanizing the enemy.
> One more sad step towards de-humanizing the enemy.
Much worse than that; it's one more step towards screening people from the monstrosities of the war, creating therefore a culture that endorses it because any negative effects are hidden. Families are often opposed to war because they know some of their kids won't make it back; that's a powerful deterrent and is the reason why after a while showing soldiers coffins was forbidden to US TV networks during the last Gulf War: they recalled the protests during Vietnam after it became clear that soldiers weren't taking a walk in the park down there.
Now if we make it certain for one side to never lose any soldier because every action is being performed from safe distance by a drone pilot, war suddenly becomes a videogame in which one side cannot lose anymore, but more importantly that same side won't have any negative feelings associated to the war because it doesn't bring any suffering.
This is the recipe for creating a state of eternal war, and I'm strongly opposed to that. I want all sides - including mine - to experience deaths and mutilation, grieving families, babies who will never know their parents, etc. If we take those away, we take away all reasons to not want wars.
I don't think it's necessarily technology that created this culture (although, it helps!). After Vietnam, the US just didn't do "War" in a classical sense, with only a few and short-lived exceptions.
Our all volunteer force does war, but it's now known as "targeted killing," "combat advisory," and other buzzwords. This is because if we want to actually do war, we have to ask Congress, the American public, etc, and actually face down the moral questions inherent to that process. The last few times we actually had to do that it was plainly disastrous.
As you say, this method of doing video game wars has a way of making smaller, more automated "enforcement actions" a more or less permanent state of affairs. I believe the start of this was Vietnam. As a result, strange things happen. I remember the public's reaction to ISIS -- it was pretty much complete bewilderment. "Why the hell do these guys hate us so much?"
I don' think that will ever happen because you can't keep tech in a bottle. The tech will spread and people on the other side will also fly their war drones from sofas.
Yeah, we're seeing it already, from Mosul (I think ISIS pioneered DJI quadrocopters dropping frag grenades) to the current Nagorno-Kabarakh conflict with much larger UAVs. The stuff is everywhere and every military needs to work anti-UAS tactics into their training plan.
OK, I've cancelled the order for a new "smart couch". The AI-driven massage mode was tempting, but being strangled by "APT"-hacked furniture seems an ignominious way to die...
> One more sad step towards de-humanizing the enemy.
I think it's a step in completely opposing direction. If you're in the battlefield, you don't have any possible room to error on the side of mercy, because that kind of error will get you killed.
But when you move to Las Vegas, see your family every day, get enough sleep and don't risk even a light injury, that's exactly the kind of environment where you can allow yourself not to be so trigger-happy.
This logic is absurd on the face of it. Being in a safe environment will never let you empathize with those who you kill. In fact, with killer robots conducting wars, dont be surprised if the video feed is edited by an AI in real time, to blur out blood and gore, justbecause 'we want to protect our boys from PTSD'.
Remote control allows for escaping the horrors of war, without stopping the war.
> Being in a safe environment will never let you empathize with those who you kill.
And being shot by them, or expecting to get shot by them will?
> Remote control allows for escaping the horrors of war
That's exactly my point. Horrors of war are exactly what makes people shoot first and think second.
I think that the core reason people are opposed to this is because it just feels unfair. It is. The side of war that has the drones is much stronger than the opposition. But historically, mercy has always been the business of those who're so strong that they're sure in their victory and don't feel threatened. People who are afraid and desperate are inevitably much more cruel.
I'd argue nukes make the next outbreak of war fairly predictable. The large nuclear powers are essentially unassailable by conventional means: Russia, France, China, Britain, the US, India, Pakistan, and probably North Korea are all untouchable by conventional assault.
Pakistan and India only (edit: ok, mainly) care about each other. The US and Britain are tightly aligned and they are separated from Eurasia by water, a non-trivial obstacle in its own right. The remaining Eurasian nuclear powers, Russia, China, and North Korea share borders. They are surrounded by essentially a skirt of nations. These nations are where proxy wars will occur. Various pretexts will develop from time to time.
The wars have not all been American. Russia has fought the Ukraine and the US continues to support Georgia (the country). China was heavily involved in Korea and Vietnam. The English Wikipedia is tracking 29 ongoing proxy wars, 21 of them are Eurasian (1).
Why are there so many proxy wars in Eurasia? First, ethnic violence. Racism is not uniquely American, and the slow migration of humanoids across Eurasia over history has left a lot of ethnic groups to quarrel with their neighbors. It is not uncommon that one of the major powers gets pulled in for some reason, and then other major powers see an advantage in supporting the opposing combatant.
Second, the major powers have always wanted buffer states like a chess player wants pawns. The US has Canada and Mexico, and a large number Central and South American states. China's empire has stretched from time to time as far as Okinawa and the Philippines to Mongolia, Korea, and brief intrusions into Japan proper. Russia has opposed the entry of the former Eastern Bloc states into NATO. Most recently, Russia has sold S-400 radars to Turkey, creating tension between NATO's newest and oldest members. Russia and China have both demonstrated they are willing to use armed force to extend their borders. Russia in Crimea, and China in the South China Sea (9-dash line). They have also demonstrated they will use economic means to advance their soft power (Russia creates dependencies through oil and gas trade, China floods various islands with money and cuts deals with the locals to "lease" their land (a trick they learned from the British, see Hong Kong).
The other battlefield is of course the Internet, ranging from intrusions and malicious behavior (e.g. stuxnet, N.K. vs Sony, Titan Rain) to open source information ops (Russian interference in the US 2016 election).
Crimea is too important for Russia to realistically expect it to continue being Ukraine territory. They let it be while Ukraine was pro-Russia, but everyone who understood how things work, was sure that Russia would take it back immediately if Ukraine ever turns to NATO. I'm actually surprised that it took over 20 years to happen. Russia needs to control black sea to survive. And I think that in the end it was a good outcome. No blood was spit. Population in Crimea is Russian, despite what you might hear from western propaganda, the majority really voted for Russia in 2014 referendum and happy with the outcome.
Other than Crimea, Russia did not get any new lands. I think that in the future they'll join eastern parts of Ukraine and it's also likely that Belarus will join Russia, but for now I don't think that there are any more serious claims. Of course Russia will continue proxy wars and support pro-Russian countries, just like any other major power does.
> The large nuclear powers are essentially unassailable by conventional means: Russia, France, China, Britain, the US, India, Pakistan, and probably North Korea
Just having nukes doesn't necessarily save you. Israel might be too small to mount a counterattack (you could nuke all of it in first strike). Same goes for the UK, which is why UK has nuclear-armed submarines that can launch a counter-strike.
I'd describe the India situation as: India feels like there's an existential need to defend against China, and Pakistan feels like there's an existential need to defend against India.
Asymmetrical war wasn’t invented in the 20th century. It exists wherever a weaker force encounters a stronger force. In the revolutionary war Americans were criticized by the British because they wouldn’t line up to shoot.. they would hide behind trees and fire from cover. Or more recently in the Iraq war (2) we got to watch as the Iraqi military dissolved into an insurgent force (this was before alqueda moved in).
We see more of it today because so many wars today are imbalanced. It’s not US v China.. it’s US v Afghanistan. They have no choice but to attack from the shadows.
> It's hard to predict what the next outbreak of war will look like.
Look at Armenia vs Azerbaijan: drone destroying anything on the ground, one second you're not even aware you're in active combat, the next you're dead. You can also look at what ISIS is doing, strap a mortar round to a commercial drone, fly over an enemy position, drop the round [0][1]
!!! Spoiler: war footage, don't click if you don't want to see people dying
Armenia had no real modern anti air weapons to combat this. If this were tried on any other modern military those drones would have been shot down at the border.
Iranian drones blew up Saudi processing facilities in 2017; Russian thermite drones exploded two major Ukrainian ammo dumps in 2017. Both Saudi and Ukraine are modern military powers, certainly more so than Armenia.
It's not quite as simple as "shoot it down" - few places have 360-degreee 24/7 coverage of all their borders that is effective (and cost-effective) against both 50,000-foot high altitude UAVs and a swarm of DJI thermite shell drones (not to speak of the semi-truck driving up five miles from your facility and unloading such a swarm.
> or will we get back to a conventional war with tank battles and all?
The answer is: no.
There isn't a single country in the entire world that could challenge USA to a 1-1 military battle. There is no more such thing as tank warfare. At this point it's impossible to defeat USA on the high seas, or on land.
> There isn't a single country in the entire world that could challenge USA to a 1-1 military battle
I guess that really depends on what you consider a "1-1 military battle." Gentlemanly warfare used to be people marching and staying in formation and going straight at each other until they died. With that battle strategy, the victor is generally going to be the one with more people covering more ground.
But that strategy hasn't been used in a long while, because there are smarter ways to fight. Tanks and so on are the old way of fighting battle. The US has a decidedly bad post-WW2 record since nobody is really fighting by the "old ways" that much of the American military fights by, and the biggest advantage is the US can just drop bombs indiscriminately basically forever (decidedly not 1-1 combat) and hope to destroy every living thing imaginable (which still failed in basically everything from Vietnam onwards).
The claim that the US will beat any country isn't backed by any evidence. At all. There are theoretical situations where maybe the US has more people, more money, more whatever and will win if you line soldiers up and have them fight Napoleonic style, but in reality, successful wars following WW2 include... the Gulf War? Which just ended up leaving Saddam in power, ending up with the unmanageable chaotic wars we've had in the middle east these past 2 decades.
> I guess that really depends on what you consider a "1-1 military battle." Gentlemanly warfare used to be people marching and staying in formation and going straight at each other until they died. With that battle strategy, the victor is generally going to be the one with more people covering more ground.
The US practically pioneered modern "all out war" with the civil war, which is certainly nothing like gentlemanly colonial wars. Trench warfare in WW1 turned every attack into an ambush basically. Of course by ww2, air power and moving fast with technology crushed that.
It's certainly important to add context to history by talking about the larger picture and how things play out practically. But we really don't need to replace every word with a metaphor that has a political statement behind it. Narrowing the argument to military objectives specifically (as opposed to political), and considering whether one side or the other has the ability to achieve them, is still important because when wars are against existential threats, those political gloves will come off.
> which still failed in basically everything from Vietnam onwards
Dropping bombs didn't fail in Vietnam. It succeeded. North Vietnam was defeated militarily. They only took over South Vietnam after the US Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by withdrawing funding so the US troops had to leave.
> The claim that the US will beat any country isn't backed by any evidence. At all.
Certainly it is. Given a clear objective, the US military has achieved it in every case. The reasons that the US often fails to capitalize on such victories are political, not military.
> the Gulf War? Which just ended up leaving Saddam in power
Because removing Saddam from power was explicitly not a military objective in that war; the military objective was to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, and that objective was met.
When the US decided it did want to remove Saddam from power, in the second Gulf War, it succeeded. Again, the reasons why the aftermath of that war became a debacle were political, not military.
Americans were fighting in Vietnam for about a decade. Bombing was already at high levels in 1965. America pulled out a decade later.
The idea that bombing was working and political issues were the only reason America failed aren't supported by any facts. Saying politics were the issue is mostly used merely an unfalsifiable statement.
If the goal of the wars are redefined to some really narrow goal like just eliminating Saddam, which is revisionist at best, it seems like sending in troops when one targeted bomb on a political event would've worked better is a big oversight. The invasion just caused chaos and more trouble and we still haven't gotten ourselves out of it. Afghanistan is also total chaos, 20 years later. Military might sure isn't helping there.
In most recent conflicts, the winners are generally people with motivation to fight and unpredictable attacks. Sending in aircraft carriers and deploying 50000 young guys to a place they don't know or care about is neither unpredictable or fueled by any deep motivation. People handed a gun and taught how to make a bomb and acting to protect their family from foreign invaders are both.
It seems probably maybe you would actually agree with the OP. They would say, "given no interference from politicians the US Military would win" and you might say "yes but politicians always interfere, there's no such thing as 'no interference'"
Any of the situations you highlighted all have restrictions set by politicians, not military. For example full military might hasn't been released in Afghanistan. The politicians restrict what the military is allowed to do there. I'm not saying that's good or bad. In my un-informed opinion we shouldn't be there. But you can't claim it's the military losing there when the military is not allowed to actually use all its power and resources.
Wars aren't fought by militaries who want to demonstrate the latest military toys (one hopes, at least), but to achieve policy objectives. So of course the politicians decide what the military is allowed to do. Unless we're talking about a military dictatorship, though in that case it's maybe more accurate to say that the military high command has taken over the policy functions of the state rather than the military existing in some magic policy-free environment.
Or to quote von Clausewitz: "War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means."
I mean, politics defined the objective for Vietnam as limiting the spread of communism and proscribed the only way in which the US could certainly have achieved that objective and 'won' the war militarily (nuke the entire population). So yes, it defined the terms of their failure, but I'm not sure one can meaningfully claim victory without politics anyway. Politics also defines the temporary grounds on which the US can be said to have enjoyed temporary and limited success (enabling a separate South Vietnam to persist whilst they were present, considering South Vietnamese losses tolerable in context)
But the military element is clearly a large part of that political failure. The US military didn't feel they could win the war on the terms they'd been given without calling up 2 million conscripts, and couldn't eliminate the Viet Cong quickly enough for the public to tolerate this, with military setbacks like the Tet Offensive strongly influencing the political shifts.
Nah, America was losing Vietnam. It couldn't be won the way it was fought. That country is no slouch. Within three decades they fought off three world superpowers. Veteran soldiers, local knowledge, sympathetic populace, terrain advantage.
None of America's aims could have been achieved there meaningfully.
Big guys lose to small guys all the time. Sometimes you've got to know how much it's worth risking. Britain was a world hegemon. Still lost to an upstart collection of colonies.
> Veteran soldiers, local knowledge, sympathetic populace, terrain advantage.
And lots of aid from the USSR and China. Aid from two superpowers sure helps in fighting one superpower.
> None of America's aims could have been achieved there meaningfully.
It depends on what you think those aims were. The aim of preventing South Vietnam from being taken over by North Vietnam was achieved militarily; then the US Congress threw it away.
> Big guys lose to small guys all the time.
Big guys lose to small guys that are being helped out behind the scenes by other big guys all the time, yes. If the small guys have no help from other big guys, then no, the small guys pretty much just lose.
> Saying politics were the issue is mostly used merely an unfalsifiable statement.
Not at all. There are plenty of historical treatments that clearly document the political issues that prevented the US from capitalizing on its military victories. For example, see H. R. McMaster's book Dereliction of Duty.
It is true that much of the blame lies with military leaders; McMaster's book makes that clear. But the reason for that is that those military leaders were acting like politicians, not military leaders; they were telling elected politicians what they wanted to hear, instead of telling them the military reality. Politicizing the military does not do either the military or the country any good.
> If the goal of the wars are redefined to some really narrow goal like just eliminating Saddam, which is revisionist at best
That was the military objective, and it was achieved. No redefinition at all.
The political objective was never clearly defined, which of course is not a recipe for success.
> Afghanistan is also total chaos, 20 years later. Military might sure isn't helping there.
If you ask the military to do a political job, and don't even clearly define what the political job is, of course they're not going to be able to succeed. That's not the military's fault. It's our political leaders' fault (and our fault as citizens for allowing them to get away with it).
True for now but the Chinese navy is expanding at a rate not seen since the peak of the Cold War. If they sustain the effort for a couple decades then they'll be in a position to defeat the USA on the high seas.
US will just be a seideshow, do you think India, Japan and (at least) South Korea will allow China to dominate the area without a war? US will arm everyone there, especially India and have China try to do something. China has no real friends over there https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/territo...
This is incredibly optimistic. If their hypersonic missiles work properly they could theoretically gain control of the SCS decisively in the next 5 years, at a massive cost of course. This should be expected, military power is more or less a function of economic power, and as they rival the US in economic power they will also rival the US in military power in their own backyard.
In a few decades, they could possibly outmatch the US outside the SCS as well.
> In a few decades, they could possibly outmatch the US outside the SCS as well.
China's has a number of very big problems they have to solve before they'll reach regional hegemony let alone global dominance. India is next-door, they have a massive demographic bomb coming because of the one child policy, and buying friends is unsustainable long-term, especially as those friends get wealthier too. This isn't to mention internal instability that massive concentration camps are unlikely to solve. We'll see what happens I suppose but one thing I do wish is all the best for the Chinese populace.
India being next-door is not that big of an issue.
The fixation on their demographic issue is quite ridiculous. Demographic problems are not problems in a vacuum. Demographic decline is only an issue insofar as it prevents economic growth.
It turns out, the CPC is acutely aware of the issue, and considered it before putting the policy into place. The crucial fact is this one:
Over 25% of the Chinese population is employed in agriculture. However, only 2% of the American population is employed in agriculture.
This fact is the root cause of the demographic decline being planned and indeed wished for by the CPC. They, in effect, have a 20+% population surplus, that could be got rid of without a negative economic impact.
Therefore, the Chinese economy is very unlikely to implode because of the upcoming demographic shock, as it will not negatively impact economic growth and will thus not lead to issues with either the retirement system (China already has one of the lowest retirement ages), nor with economic growth.
This inscribes itself further in the process of proletarianization in which the Chinese economy is engaging in order to continue its development, as well as calculated so that the peak population will coincide with the carrying capacity of Chinese arable lands. The CCP are a lot of bad things, but they really aren't idiots.
An issue that was not foreseen, however, is the gender imbalance that was created, but even that is not that bad of an issue - involuntary celibacy is significantly lower in China than, for example, the United States, and is actually one of the lowest in the world, but this is still a problem, especially for more long term relationships.
People have been clamouring for the imminent fall of China for this or that, but objectively I don't see it happening.
> An issue that was not foreseen, however, is the gender imbalance that was created, but even that is not that bad of an issue - involuntary celibacy is significantly lower in China than, for example, the United States, and is actually one of the lowest in the world, but this is still a problem, especially for more long term relationships.
Would you mind providing a source for this? Not doubting you, just curious.
Not in the way GGP was implying. The fact that India is next to China will lead to neither the collapse of China, nor prevent it from projecting power in the South China Sea.
The rise of India as a competitor to China will likely be on timescales even longer than 5-25 years. By then, circumstances will be significantly different. In any case, India is not a problem that will prevent the continued economic development nor the increased power projection ability of China.
Collapse is always a strong term, bordering on being a strawman.
The fact is the SCS has too many benefactors to cede it to China. There are too many local nations that don't want that to happen in addition to the entire west.
Even if China can win head to head against the US there is no way it can compete with that alliance, and there are no other potential allies that will tip the balance in China's favor.
India has much to gain from joining such an alliance, if it were ever to come to that, they could finally resolve their border dispute and solidify it. They have already signed a military pact with the US last month. They matter.
Without US, China can, trivially. China is 3x larger in population than all other SCS claimants together with 7x higher GDP. PLA Navy is building more tonnage in ships than the region combined. There's also the fact that they will never align with each other against China because they are simultaneously disputing against EACH OTHER, a fact that many people conveniently forget. USN is pretty much the only entity preventing full blown Chinese Munroe doctoring in SCS, and in many ways they've already been squeezed out. Everyone in the region is just leveraging the situation for better deals with China, i.e. Philippines and China are finally doing co-oil exploration in the region.
>border dispute and solidify it
This would be a huge win for China. A large reason China is pressing Ladakh so hard is because India is incapable of resolving border disputes with China who has ratified 12/14 land borders, while India has poor record settling border disputes. It's hard to cede land as a democratic leader, but Modi might pull it off. India ratifying Chinese borders would basically end Chinese fears of western theater and allow China to focus on east / Taiwan / SCS and maybe allow India to get it's shit together.
And until they do, they don't substantially matter. India always matter as potential, on paper, but Indian democracy hasn't delivered, and IMO won't.
Handwaving again. The US is clearly part of the alliance, and with it NATO. You can't just remove them from the story because it suits your POV.
Your second point doesn't make sense. If India would just ratify what China wanted there would be no conflict. India is not doing that because they don't agree. India would take advantage of allying with NATO, SCS bloc, so that they can force China to agree with their definition, not China's.
You propositioned a scenario where regional countries can contain China without US.
>Even if China can win head to head against the US there is no way it can compete with that alliance
I am alleging they cannot without USN, with specific reference that USN is the only thing keeping China from rolling over the region. Also why would NATO try to contain China? A in NATO is Atlantic, which Ocean is China on? There is a lot of unsubstantiated wank of random global coalition forming blocs to contain China, but very little evidence such a coalition will form apart from QUAD, especially regionally as China integrates more with ASEAN year after year.
The second point is India is bad actor when it comes to settling border disputes. If you evaluate Indian border settlement history with her neighbors. It's not isolated to China. India doesn't agree because it's difficult for democracies to settle borders which often requires compromise, but such compromises require ceding land. Ceding ANY land is political suicide, especially in democracy. India is simply incapable of being a good actor on border issues, as seen in her settlement history. Unlike CCP China, who has settled 12/14 inherited land disputes, majority with larger concessions, because an authoritarian government has enough control over people to cede land. Which brings back to India right now, China see's in Modi someone with sufficiently strong cult following and authoritarian power to get border ratifications done, because it's now or never.
The Chinese economy is over three times larger that of India + SCS countries + Australia combined.
India, no matter how much help she gets, will never ever be able to resolve their border dispute forcefully. The best they will ever be able to do is to get a settlement between the two, but India's dysfunctional political system prevents her from doing what's in her best interests here.
In addition, if you're going to put India there, you're also going to have to add Pakistan, which considerably changes the balance of force.
India is simply not that big of a challenger. It is counterbalanced by Pakistan, and has swathes of internal problems, as well as a dysfunctional economy.
> The Chinese economy is over three times larger that of India + SCS countries + Australia combined.
In case of Chinese aggression this is no longer true. China's economy is so large because of its status as an exporter. If countries stop importing it loses much of that status.
And again with leaving the US out - do you live in a world where the US doesn't exist?
> India is simply not that big of a challenger. It is counterbalanced by Pakistan, and has swathes of internal problems, as well as a dysfunctional economy.
"nation has problems, more at 11." Every nation has problems. So what?
India on its own isn't a 1 to 1 challenger. So what? Your point is irrelevant - India ISNT a 1 to 1 challenger. You rely too much on the strawman.
There is no claim of Chinese agression here. China isn't going to ruin the good thing they've got going. It's in a vague situation or a defensive situation.
The Chinese economy is mostly domestic, relying about 15% on exports, and this is declining. Indeed, the Chinese economy is more inwards oriented than many countries in the alliance you're proposing.
I'm not saying that India is a 1 on 1 challenger. It's closer to an eight of China. I'm saying that the entire coalition you're proposing is simply not enough. It's biggest member, India, doesn't have some problems - it's comparatively bordering on dysfunctional.
Moreso, you're assuming that the alliance will somehow work perfectly together and that their interests are perfectly aligned, which is ridiculous. Every single member of that alliance except India and the US rely hugely on Chinese trade, and not only that but they all have conflicts with each other!
And so, for a good alliance to form, one must have a strong, near-peer figure. This could be either India, or the US. The US is very far away and, given recent technological developments, might not even be able to project a significant amount of power versus a Chinese missile interdiction of large surface ships combined with strong bombardment of Guam and, if necessary, Okinawa, as well as other bases.
Because the US is simply very far away, while China is in its backyard. The US needs to project power from thousands and thousands of kilometers away and maintain supply lines with lead times in the weeks, while China can literally operate fully out of their mainland using a few other bases for auxiliary capacities.
So you have an alliance that falls short to begin with, but not only does it fall short; it's a very imperfect alliance with many of the members in severe conflict with each other but also economically dependent on the enemy.
All of this, while the US economy is getting more and more stagnant and while severe problems with its political structure are evolving, with seemingly no interest from the ruling class to actually solve them.
Yeah, no. Beating China in their own backyard at a time where they will be close to the global #1 economy is a pipe dream.
> If their hypersonic missiles work properly they could theoretically gain control of the SCS decisively in the next 5 years, at a massive cost of course
Live by the sword die by the sword. American vessels are vulnerable to hypersonic anti-ship missiles. So are Chinese.
Firing on American boats on the South China Sea will turn the water into no man's land. Everyone will lose influence. Nobody will gain.
Naval power is a means of force projection. You can control a sea without a single ship. The US is a naval power. The US cannot project power into the South China Sea without the use of Naval Power.
China, however, can. Easily, in fact.
Indeed, if you look at the J-20, you will notice that it is significantly larger than the F-22 and F-35. Why is that? In order to store very long range weaponry, and much higher amounts of fuel.
This design aspect reflects the doctrine of sea control via air and missile power, not naval power.
So, if for some reason there were no way to sail a vessel near the SCS, the China automatically, decisively, gains control thereof.
Moreso, China and Russia are significantly ahead of the US in hypersonic flight technology.
Added to that China has built the world a really nice base near the Spratlys that I'm sure could be quite quickly overwhelmed by another country and used as a nice forward base to control the SCS.
Guam is not sinkable, but it's very vulnerable to mission kills. Guess what's the point of the PLA Rocket Force? Hint: they train often about massive strikes on Guam and Okinawa.
If US bases are disabled by overwhelming missile attacks, and hypersonic missiles successfully interdict the US Navy, it's only a matter of time before Chinese air superiority over them makes them completely useless and barren.
Remember, the US is a fundamentally naval power. The US simply cannot project power outside of the Northern Atlantic without it's naval capabilities.
Can. Mutual denial isn't control. (Seoul doesn't control the DMZ.)
As you said, "naval power is a means of force projection." If China can't sail the South China Sea its options for projecting force e.g. across the Taiwan Strait are diminished.
Their coastline will be safer from incursion. But offensive options will be constrained.
I don't know why you would interpret what I wrote as mutual denial. It's not mutual denial, it is supremacy.
The US requires naval power to project power into the South China Sea, China doesn't. Without naval power, China has almost uncontested control. US Military Doctrine cannot hope to control the SCS without naval control, Chinese military doctrine is built around that.
Even with the US having access to advanced hypersonic missiles, China retains the option of an amphibious landing on Taiwan, for example. Indeed, hypersonic antiship missiles, for a great many reasons, only work very well against large, slow-maneuvering ships that are far away from their destination (and thus offer the attacker the option to choose when to launch), because of kinematic and targeting concerns far away from traditional targeting assets.
Their offensive options are more than sufficient using purely air and missile power over the South China Sea. From then on, the ability to project power can be used to disable enemy missile launch options progressively, until the point at which supply lines can be reaffirmed.
> US requires naval power to project power into the South China Sea, China doesn't
I understand your point better now. Thank you.
> Without naval power, China has almost uncontested control
The United States has bases in the region. Large bases. They're not configured to pack a strike group's firepower. But there's no reason they couldn't be.
> hypersonic antiship missiles, for a great many reasons, only work very well against large, slow-maneuvering ships
Large, slow, surface ships will go the way of the battleship when hypersonic anti-ship missile technology matures. (Unless missile defense does something unexpected.) That doesn't mean other modes haven't been discussed. (Swarms being the concept du jour.)
> offensive options are more than sufficient using purely air and missile power over the South China Sea
Planes and missiles don't hold territory. Denying large Chinese ships their coast significant curtails their force projection capability onto their neighbors.
Planes don't hold territory, but neither do boats. Only boots on the ground hold territory. Planes and ships are mostly equivalent.
Now, while it's very true that the US has many bases in SCS, they are completely untenable without naval power. Indeed, US bases are fundamentally cut off from US productive capabilities. In a serious war, the US won't be able to hold Guam if they cannot maintain naval control - Guam will be targeted by a large barrage of missiles, and will then be interdicted in the way we discussed earlier
Really, only Okinawa is left as a base, and China vs Okinawa is a win for China.
The truth is, the US is fundamentally a naval power. The reason why the US, like Britain before, has so many bases all around the world is because it can maintain naval dominance. Without naval dominance, US ground bases lose significant power - its still possible to supply then via air, but how do you maintain air supremacy after a missile barrage without naval dominance
This is evident from the makeup of the PLAAF and PLARF. If you look at most Chinese platforms, you can notice the emphasis on range. Indeed, the Chinese military trains to disable Guam without any naval usage, and without the use of tankers.
The US, on the flipside, cannot supply Guam sustainably without the use of naval power.
I think that we were living the past 40 years in a kind of military anomaly, where the US basically didn't have to care about overextending its supply lines, and the basis of that is unpredecented total naval domination. Without that, the world completely changes, and the advantage of any given theather being close to your mainland increases significantly.
Now, of course, while I think China would be able to achieve its strategic objectives, the US is going to inflict incredible amounts of damage before that could be possible, which is why, unless somehow the conflict is forced, I don't think they will attempt this until much more than five years.
Yaogan 30 group, launched in triplets. Last year they had ~40 minute coverage of SCS for ~5 passes per day. They've accelerated launch schedule and probably reached ~8 hours of daily coverage with 06-07 group this year. A few more launches away from full optical SCS persistence, though I think current combo of optical, radar and electronic detection has SCS mostly covered.
China also just released video of Jilin-1 tracking planes in Atlanta airport. It's part of Gaofen group for commercial use (Yaogan explicitly military) , so they're trolling civil-military fusion capabilities. China moves fast, maybe they couldn't find a USN carrier reliably 5 years ago, but they should now.
I'm also curious the role that work culture plays. I remember a couple years ago several humiliating incidents for the American navy that many vet friends attributed to the fact that american soldiery don't get a reasonable amount of sleep, that shifts are unreasonably long, and that equipment goes un maintained.
If other militaries don't have similar issues, could they snuff american boats through simple unforced errors on the part of the Americans? They're crashing boats into stuff in peacetime, how will things go in their first real war in 80 years?
These kinds of issues are the case with essentially all militaries: China, Russia and various European Union states have their fair share of similar issues. I actually think this is a domain where the US has an edge.
Hypersonic missiles have very poor terminal guidance it’s physics... all extra-atmospheric ballistic missiles are hypersonic and aren’t suitable for moving targets.
Hypersonic missiles have one advantage over ballistic missiles and that is that their flight path is much lower making detection harder but it doesn’t makes it easier to hit.
The US has experimented with hypersonic missiles in the 60’s and it became rather clear it wasn’t particularly worth it.
In warfare, logistics and production are major factors. In protracted conflicts, factory capacity and transportation infrastructure are vital, and therefor targets. Nukes, delivered by subs, aircraft, or ICBMs are the most effective way to destroy those targets.
The days of nation states fighting other nation states with their own production capacity are forever over on planet earth, baring full out nuclear warfare.
"There isn't a single country in the entire world that could challenge USA to a 1-1 military battle."
That was also true of Nazi Germany. But is actually quite possible to defeat USA on the seas and on land if different countries join against it.
Europe is not Iraq or Afganistan, as a whole, it is stronger than the US. I have lived and worked in China(and the US) and while I believe they way weaker(China) than what they project, they can f*ck the world immensely. They can contaminate the Pacific Ocean (with radioactivity and other poisons) forever.
BTW most of the intelligent and educated(engineers, scientists) people in the US comes from outside the US. Not reasonable to believe they will contribute against fighting their own countries.
This "war on everything" American mentality needs to stop.
> Europe is not Iraq or Afganistan, as a whole, it is stronger than the US.
Militarily there is no doubt that Europe is not. The only country in Europe that can really project force is France. (I’m assuming the UK is not getting into a war with the United States).
> BTW most of the intelligent and educated(engineers, scientists) people in the US comes from outside the US. Not reasonable to believe they will contribute against fighting their own countries.
A lot to unpack behind this weird assertion.
First-> many (most?) of these smart people are working at companies like Facebook to hook kids into endlessly scrolling.
Second -> your claim is unfounded.
Third -> even if it were true, the skills and knowledge to win wars do not have a 1-1 correspondence with the skills of these so called experts. Even then, who is to say given the right opportunity there are plenty of other smart people around.
Fourth -> those same smart people have families in the US. You think they’re just going to go transfer some Amex points and hop on a Delta flight home? There wouldn’t even be a way to leave the US.
Finally -> the idea that “all the smart foreigners will betray the US” gives ammo to arguing points by suspicious white supremacists. So you probably shouldn’t do that.
First, thank you for your service. 03-07 were quite some rough years.
> realistically we're more likely to be fighting a handful of goat herders in Afghanistan with an AK and a bag full of rice before we're taking on an armored division.
Absolutely true. And to keep this statement true in the future as well, it will make sense to heed FDR’s advice to speak softly and cary a big stick. We need advanced weapons not in order to use them, but in order not to use them.
"Big sticks" don't help against irrational actors. Mutually Assured Destruction assures that there will be no direct conflict between superpowers, but if individuals become radicalized, they become willing to act irrationally(from a game theory definition of "rational").
This is the real reason we started a war against terror. Terrorism and asymmetric warfare are about the only external thing capable of actually bringing our country down.
> Mutually Assured Destruction assures that there will be no direct conflict between superpowers
If a conflict stays below a certain threshold, it doesn't go nuclear. Russia is always prodding to see how far they can go. Ability to answer in kind is something you need, and autonomous tanks seem to fit the bill quite well.
One thing which is pretty obvious imho but often overlooked...
It doesn't matter how many tanks you have when your opponent has atomic bombs. The same is true for most of the airplanes, ships and robots.
So from a western perspective all those weapons are only useful in an offensive war against a weak opponent (no atomic bombs).
In this context it also makes sense to have less but better trained soldiers. Reducing casualties reduces bad press. You don't need millions of soldiers to bomb away Irak anyway.
If you assume that military leaders have basic logic reasoning (i think they are smart actually), you see that self defense is not the primary goal for western countries (except Switzerland).
> In the 20th century warfare evolved trench warfare to asymmetrical war.
I think you mean "back to asymmetric war" which appears to have been the norm through history, even taking in the extensive literature of set-piece battles. In fact the American revolution was primarily an asymmetric conflict.
>I was in the US Army from 03-07 serving in the Rangers with 4 deployments
Thank you for your service!
> but realistically we're more likely to be fighting a handful of goat herders in Afghanistan with an AK and a bag full of rice before we're taking on an armored division.
Why should we be fighting goat herders in Afghanistan? I can understand the justification for striking back at the structures that committed the 9/11 attacks, but I can't understand the failed nation building and staying there forever and putting our troops in harms way.
We trained rebels against the USSR occupation so we could do the same thing on our own dime to the tune of multiple trillions of dollars for two decades:
Prop up a secular government
Defend women’s rights and education
In the midst of an Islamic country much of which does not want us or our values there.
War should sicken everyone involved, with each soldier that comes home dead acting as a motivation to ask the question "Is this worth the cost?". If one side never has to ask that question, how do you slow the war machine?
Related, I'm currently not afraid of my government using the military against us any time soon. I think the morals of the soldiers would severely limit this. With a fleet of robots, it seems it would be much easier to suppress the people.
Everyone knows this is the future, and saw it coming, but wow, I naively thought it would take longer.
This might be a controversial take, but I grew up in a very rural community in the Midwest and military service was widely seen as a pathway to stability and to a degree, glory, for those that didn’t have the opportunity to pursue higher education. It’s essentially a massive job creator that we don’t really talk about as a massive job creator. It’s always framed with national security in mind.
We often talk about the human cost of war, but as I’ve gotten older and seen the never-ending military presence in the Middle East, I can’t help but wonder how much of that is driven by this political desire to provide these kinds of jobs to thousands of young men and women that don’t have many opportunities back home.
Of course, it’s not really talked about this way, but I remember first thinking about it watching Ken Burns Vietnam war series. It wasn’t the rich kids that died in that war either, it was the children of the working class.
Military is just as much of a domestic political tool as it is a force to shape geopolitics globally, and it’s deeply effective in communities that are reliant on military presence.
You know, you can also just pay them to build bridges to nowhere. Roads to connect those bridges. And then resorts and mountain getaways to connect those roads. And build mass housing for everyone. This would still be far cheaper than endless wars. And you at least get some useful infrastructure out of it.
I'm a fan of this idea. If we have these people employed by the government in a highly disciplined environment, why not give them something constructive to do?
Grew up lower class, and am now comfortably making 120k a year. Family and extended family is all still lower class. The military gave me structure, discipline, and then a GI bill. Only catch was to survive a deployment in 07. But yeah, my case is not unique, and most the people I served with are doing well now compared to where they would have been without it.
Being too lazy to research this myself, I wonder if the "survival rate" of someone in the military is higher than the rate in other jobs, like construction.
The military is not an especially dangerous occupation, especially because politicians tend to be sensitive to the resulting news reports of soldiers dying. The US military has 2-3 million people, and even with recent wars at peak I don't think the US lost more than ~1k people/year.
In other words, you're looking at a rate in the upper tens of people per 100,000 in an active war. According to https://stats.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-in..., that would probably put it in the top 5 (fishermen might still have a higher death rate than the military). In a more peaceful time, it's probably not going to hit the top 10.
Those numbers are insane! Are they really per year? Every year, one in a thousand loggers die? When using paper you often hear warning about saving the forest, but it seems there is a big blood toll as well.
Just quick stubby pencil work, probably a bit safer to be active duty at ~100 per 100k per year. Once you're out of the 15-24 age range, mortality rates start to elevate rapidly. Of course those all include military deaths, but the overall effect should be relatively low given the small percentage of active duty vs. rest of the country.
That's by design, poverty is the main supply creator for recruitment; and the trillion dollars spent on war benefits on both fronts the military complex, meaning it's money they get to use and it's money not spend on reducing poverty. In developed countries without a huge military (eg Norway, Japan) there are many better options to escape from poberty, and it's less prevalent amomg it's citizens.
There isn't necessarily a causal relationship. Norway was poor while being a neutral country with a tiny military, it's more the resource blessing than anything which helped. Similarly, I have huge doubts that wealth redistribution of eliminating military in the USA would end up with the poor.
Maybe, but I could also see the shift towards automating war as a profit incentive for the military industrial complex.
It’s very clear that the military has enjoyed decades of relatively lax financial oversight. IIRC, the military branches were ordered to become audit-compliant during the Obama admin and they never did. Every once in a while, some general would retire in disgrace after financial impropriety was discovered, but by and large, its been a massive cash-rich free-for-all for those with military contract connections.
I think this is just next evolution of the private military sector tbh.
> It’s essentially a massive job creator that we don’t really talk about as a massive job creator.
This is very accurate. Similarly, the TSA doesn't protect america from terrorists, it functions as a conservative-palpable socialist jobs program.
The obvious counterpoint is that the attraction for furthering Dick Cheney's imperialist wars abroad almost entirely vanishes if you don't need to kill foreigners to get free healthcare and education.
So sure it's a jobs program, it's a path to education, and it's a guarantor of healthcare (it actually isn't, the VA is a dumpster fire), it does all three things perfectly awfully.
The problem with war is that if your side doesn't develop its armies, the other side will. Today, that other side is China. For all the faults of the United States, of which there are many, i'd prefer it any day over the Chinese politburo.
But even if you are being sincere, and usually nobody using china as a boogeyman are, we aren't using our military to defend ourselves from a nonexistent chinese invasion. We used our military to kill iraqis, syrians, libyans, vietnamese, etc.
If chinese did 1/100th of what we did, hypocrites would be crying they were the most evil nation on earth.
We have nukes to deal with china. We don't have armies to deal with china. They've got 1.4 billion people.
Pretty much all our wars have been offensive wars of conquest/genocide/domination. But yeah, it's china that's the bad guy.
Can you think of the last defensive war we've fought? Even ww2 wasn't really a defensive war as we already attacked japan with sanctions.
Edit:
> China is not yet strong enough to do that outright with the west like it does within Asia and its maritime claims.
Within Asia? Are you saying it's china that has troops in korea, japan, etc? It isn't china that colonized philippines, indonesia, india, etc. Lets be honest here, asia isn't in need of liberation from china, it's in need of liberation from the west. Just think about it.
> With the west, it has taken on a different approach: infiltrate all levels of political, educational, and corporate institutions.
Is that why everyone has a good opinion of china? China has infiltrated everything, that's why we started a trade war with china? If anything, I could understand if you said israel or saudi arabia has infiltrated all levels. But certainly not china or russia.
When it comes to china, all I see is projection. Everything we are accusing china of doing, we are guilty of. We are the ones who invaded and brutalized asia ( including china, india, etc ). We are ones that invaded and occupied. And as best as I can tell, it's us who are meddling in chinese affairs and telling them what they should do or not do.
Edit1:
> I can't name another empire or superpower in human history that has shown more restraint.
Is this a joke? We wiped out an entire continent full of people. Dozens of native nations were exterminated. We dropped nukes on civilians. That's restraint? And we've been involved in wars in every corner of the earth. What amazing restraint.
For those hypocrites downvoting me, try replacing US with china for every historical act. 9/11 happens and china invades afghanistan and iraq murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. I bet every hypocrite downvoting would call them monsters.
I'm not gonna change your mind, but I personally am glad I live in an era (for now, at least) of American hegemony. I can't name another empire or superpower in human history that has shown more restraint. Obviously it has done some terrible stuff, but on the whole America has been uncommonly benevolent.
The Chinese government is putting ethnic minorities in camps. The American government did that too, in WWII... The difference is, it's a point of national shame.
> but on the whole America has been uncommonly benevolent.
I bet you'd feel a little different if you were born in Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria for that matter. Conflicts the US triggered have cost close to a million human lives since 2003. And honestly, a lot more can be said of the "Benevolent" superpower of yours.
> However, in March of that year, 15 Syrian schoolchildren were arrested and tortured for writing graffiti that was inspired by the Arab Spring. One of the boys was killed.
> The arrests sparked outrage and demonstrations throughout Syria. Citizens demanded the release of the remaining children, along with greater freedoms for all people in the country.
> But the government, headed by President Bashar al-Assad, responded by killing and arresting hundreds of protestors. Shock and anger began to spread throughout Syria, and many demanded that Assad resign. When he refused, war broke out between his supporters and his opponents.
> ISIL was founded by the Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi under the name Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999 and gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive,[103] followed by its capture of Mosul[104] and the Sinjar massacre.
Apparently its founding purpose was actually to overthrow the Jordanian government for being insufficiently Islamic:
> Al-Zarqawi started JTJ with the intention of overthrowing the 'apostate' Kingdom of Jordan,[1] which he considered to be un-Islamic. After toppling Jordan's monarchy, presumably he would turn to the rest of the Levant.[1]
> For these purposes he developed numerous contacts and affiliates in several countries. His network may have been involved in the late 1999 plot to bomb the Millennium celebrations in the United States and Jordan.[12]
> The American government is putting ethnic minorities in camps right now too.
That's a false equivalence. While I do not endorse the treatment of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers at the US border, it's quite different from what the PRC currently doing, which is forced imprisonment and indoctrination of its own citizens.
And it's a national shame that contributed to the largest mandate in American presidential election history. I think people misunderstand my point. America is far, far from perfect. It's just that other empires have been far worse.
The Japanese Concentration Camps are not a point of national shame. Instead, they are a point of American pride.
Case in point: One of Trump’s goons, Carl Higbie, referred to the Japanese Concentration Camps as “precedent”. [1]
If this word came from some random racist prick, then nobody would bother paying him any attention. But instead, it came from one of Trump’s closest associates.
> The Chinese government is putting ethnic minorities in camps.
No. They are putting separatists/terrorists funded by the west in "camps". They aren't putting minorities in camps.
> The American government did that too, in WWII...
No. Our government exterminated our minorities. It's how a nation of 13 states became 50. Of course we became a nation of 13 states by genocide as well.
The idea of benevolence is laughable. Not only did we nuke japan, burn german cities to the ground, use biological weapons in korea, etc ( and these are our vassal, or allies ). Look at how we benevolently nuked japan. As I said, for everything we've "benevolently" done in history, switch that to china.
Invasion doesn't need to be with armies. China is not yet strong enough to do that outright with the west like it does within Asia and its maritime claims. With the west, it has taken on a different approach: infiltrate all levels of political, educational, and corporate institutions.
China is using its money to achieve world domination in such a vastly smarter way than the US (Belt and Road initiative, controlling natural resources) that I expect my children will be learning Chinese someday the way that Chinese kids had to learn English.
Well, I expect that China is building world domination for the benefit of the Chinese people, not the benefit of everyone who comes under their dominion, similar to the white men who built American world domination.
This is a false moral equivalence. The US was founded on the idea that "all men are created equal." The US has made terrible mistakes, such as not immediately banning slavery and not extending voting rights to women, and the US still has room to improve today. However, the founding ideas of the US provide a mandate and inspire people to work towards a more equal society. I would greatly prefer the US over China as the world hegemon.
I am Chinese-American, so if China were to displace the US as world hegemon and put Han people at the top of society, that would personally benefit me. However, I do not want that, as I support racial equality.
The revolutionary war started because we wanted to take more land from the natives and the king forbade that because he wanted good trade relations with the native peoples. That's it. Everything else is just propaganda.
> I am Chinese-American, so if China were to displace the US as world hegemon and put Han people at the top of society, that would personally benefit me.
China will never be world hegemon due to geographical, racial, historical, etc issues. China vs the US, Europe, Russia, Australia, Canada, etc isn't even a fair contest. Not to mention western aligned nations like india, japan, etc wouldn't allow china to be a hegemon. Also, how would it benefit you if the chinese government view you as a traitor?
> However, I do not want that, as I support racial equality.
If you equate hegemony with racial supremacy, why would you support US hegemony? How about "no hegemony"?
Don't you think the world would be better if the US didn't have to maintain a world empire? The world wouldn't have to worry about invasions and we can finally start investing in american infrastructure. When I see the amount of infrastructure china has built the last few decades ( heck just the last 10 years alone ), I have to say I'm a bit envious. Instead of sinking trillions in foreign wars, imagine all those trillions were invested in new railways, new airports, nuclear energy, green energy, reviving inner cities, etc.
and china is called "the people's republic", what US or China call themselves is irrelevant.
I am Chinese as well, I do not think Chinese has ambition for world domination, but I believe it deserves the right to develop and enjoy a living standard similar to the west.
I agree with you that people in China deserve a standard of living similar to the West. I also think that people in China deserve to have more freedoms and a representative government, as opposed to a closed one-party bureaucracy. Historically, the West opened up to China as China economically liberalized, in the hopes that China would also grant more freedoms to its people. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Now, China is also trying to expand its territory. I fear that Chinese hegemonic status will have negative consequences for other Asian peoples. I hope that one day, people in China may enjoy their right to a liberal democracy.
Well how do you define a representative government? is election the only method of creating a representative government?
Any Chinese can take up posts with in the government. Instead of worrying about what the color of the ties to wear because it polls better for a target group, chinese officials are given a KPI like deliverable to complete and that's how you rise through the ranks. Sorta like any modern private company.
I'm aware there are pros and cons to both models but so far i think the chinese government is doing the right things to develop economically.
Yes, as long as you're Han chinese, you have the opportunity. What he means by representative govt is other ethnic groups having the same say. If not, then be prepared to fight many wars.
That is simply not true. Ethnic minorities in china get preferential treatments when it comes to college admission, job placement, they are also exempted from the one child policy. Of course you wouldn't know that because that doesn't fit the western narrative of chinese oppression of minorities
Not the person you were replying to, but I am aware of the college affirmative action for minorities and the exemptions to the one-child policy. From what I understand, the current trend is that such policies are being rolled back as the Chinese government begins to force the assimilation of minorities more heavily.
(In case this is on your mind: As for college discrimination against Asians in America, although many people conflate this issue with affirmative action, it is actually separate. One must make the distinction between pro-minority affirmative action and Asian penalization relative to the white majority. Asian-American penalization relative to white Americans is morally comparable to the historical Jewish quota, and the justification that affirmative action corrects for historical injustices absolutely does not justify anti-Asian discrimination. Nevertheless, I am also against pro-minority affirmative action because it is illiberal, but it is orthogonal to Asian-American rights.)
A lot of the discussion of China revolves around treatment of minorities. I would also like to draw attention to oppression of the Han majority. One example is that the Chinese government blocks websites, even for trivial or oversensitive reasons. (China recently blocked https://scratch.mit.edu, the children's website where I was introduced to programming...) Another example is that the Chinese government performed forced abortions to enforce the one-child policy. Now in America, there is a complicated political debate over the morality of abortion that involves issues of fetus rights, personhood, and choice. However, it seems to me that whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, the one-child policy, which involves abortions that are not up to choice, is profoundly immoral.
I believe that all human beings are endowed with certain unalienable rights, including the right to freedom to voice opinions without government censorship and the right to partake in democracy (whether that be a direct democracy, a republic, or another form of democracy). Everyone in the world inherently possesses these rights, regardless of whether their government recognizes them. I wish for the government of China to recognize these rights, because human rights are Chinese rights.
I'm not a political theorist but the Chinese government is out-competing the US government by leaps and bounds. The current President is busy whining that he won while the Chinese are building probably 100 railroads at the same time.
I didn't realize this when I wrote my earlier comment, but something that I found disturbing was that you seemed okay with the prospect of your own children being discriminated against, since you merely "expect that China is building world domination for the benefit of the Chinese people." I certainly don't want my future children to be discriminated against. Why do you think that a future where your progeny are second-class citizens is a morally acceptable one?
Even if we suppose that America and China are morally equivalent (which I strongly disagree with), just out of the self-interest of yourself and your family, why would you prefer China over America?
I do not believe that it's "morally acceptable." I believe that it is where the world is going. America is fracturing itself while China just keeps executing. Our bridges and electrical grid and transit systems rot into oblivion while people riot in the streets against their political opponents. While China is building up its hard power, soft power, and economic force projection with the Belt and Road initiative.
Was a incalculably powerful US that toppled democratically elected regimes in Latin America/Iran/etc. a morally acceptable one? No but that's what it is and all you other fucks had to learn English to get some of our money. Now the shoe is on the other foot and we are the fucks who will need to learn Chinese. Serves us right but I still ain't happy about it.
> Historically, the West opened up to China as China economically liberalized
We "opened up" china by war. Opium wars? Boxer rebellion? I'm not chinese and I seem to know your history more than you. Why is that? And china opened up their economy as a result of threat of nuclear war by the soviets and the west.
> in the hopes that China would also grant more freedoms to its people.
This is just propaganda. Since when did we care about freedom for chinese people? Did we invade hong kong while the british ruled it to give freedom to them? Heck, for most of the 20th century, chinese people like you were banned from even coming to the US. The only nationality to specifically be banned for immigration to the US was your people.
> Now, China is also trying to expand its territory.
You mean take back its territory right? What non-chinese territory is china expanding to?
> I fear that Chinese hegemonic status will have negative consequences for other Asian peoples.
More propaganda.
> I hope that one day, people in China may enjoy their right to a liberal democracy.
More standard propaganda.
> people in China may enjoy their right to a liberal democracy.
The founders hated the idea of liberal democracy. It's why the US is not a liberal democracy but a constitutional republic. You seem to be very keen on what the US was founded for. It wasn't for equality and it certainly wasn't for liberal democracy.
It's hard to take you seriously when you claim to be chinese and you spout anti-chinese propaganda. Not just in this comment but your other comments - "false moral equivalence", "US was founded on the idea of all men are created equal", etc. It would be like an iraqi claiming that the US invaded iraq to bring freedom. You sound exactly like gordon chang except I don't think he's aspiring to be a hacker. And for an aspiring hacker you sure seem down on your state propaganda.
Xinjian, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Taiwan are all non-chinese territories. china is also claiming maritime rights into neighboring territories that don't belong to them.
So does every country, but not at whatever cost, i.e. it does NOT deserve the "right" to systematically commit racism or genocides against people who are not Han simply because they are in the way.
When they wrote "all men are created equal," they had black slaves. Why do you take their words at face value?
It's possible to have this conversation without framing it as some sort of binary choice between xi jinping's happy social currency reeducation camp club, and white america's causally racist military industrial imperialism. Imo you can't love your country without always seeking to improve it.
My comment doesn't contradict anything that you're saying. I pointed out that America has made many grave mistakes, such as slavery, and that we can still improve America today. The words of the Declaration of Independence are an inspiration and mandate to work towards the goal of equality.
Our founding fathers were certainly hypocrites and flawed men, but that doesn't invalidate the truth of their words.
China for all of their 5000 years of existence as a civilization, has never invaded a distant country. They have never brought wars, death, destruction, slavery, genocide, and concentration camps to those distant lands.
Yes, they expanded along their periphery, which is how they got to their size today.
But even when they had boats, they visited as far away as Africa, and traded with them, instead of enslaving them.
However, in contrast, let’s list all the countries that have enslaved foreign lands.
Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, United States, Netherlands, Australia. Yes, you guessed it. All these are European countries that have brought an untold number of deaths and destruction to the lands that they visited.
But of course, you are free to turn a blind eye to all their injustices that they have done in the past.
If you're going to count the United States as having "enslaved foreign lands", you'll have to include the Chinese domination of Korea, Mongolia, Manchuria, Tibet, and the Tarim Basin at various points in history, since those are ethnically non-Chinese areas that were ruled by China at different points in history.
China also established a pretty extensive tributary system in the past, requiring a variety of local states to pay tribute every few years. This is really venturing far from my knowledge of history, but I believe this system would have included much of modern central Asia (the -stans), and all of East and Southeast Asia, through much of the Indonesian islands.
You made a mistake. Mongolia invaded China. And they succeeded, back in the 1200s.
Then the Manchurians invaded China, and they also succeeded, back in the 1600s.
The key distinction here, is that the Mongolians and the Manchurians invaded China, and succeeded, only at their own peril, where they essentially subsumed themselves and their culture into the mainstream Chinese culture.
China for all of their 5000 years of existence as a civilization, has never invaded a distant country.
I like how you inserted "distant" in there as if it matters.
Even in just recent history, China has:
- Invaded Vietnam, purely for political reasons as they were stymieing China's aspirations in SE Asia, Cambodia in particular
- They provided military support to North Vietnam as a way to increase their sphere of influence and offset the USSR in SE Asia
- They are currently expropriating land and sea for economic purposes that although justified in their own public statements, I'm not sure even they believe
Honest question for those in the know: at what point in history did non-adjacent invasions become feasible and beneficial? I'd imagine if a country ever had a large army and a desire for more land, they would choose neighbors just because of how much simpler it'd be to fight and rule after conquering.
This is a strange thing to say. Are you implying for example that every German must bear the sins of Hitler? An offshoot of Chinese governance exists as quite possibly one of the most egalitarian democracies on earth right now in Taiwan, how can you paint such a wide brush of entire nations as if you're describing single individuals?
The last time the US was involved in anything resembling actual warfare was Vietnam. I can say this as somebody who has been in the Army for 23 years and deployed 5 times. The risk of traditional warfare is astonishing low because the costs are too high and the superior modern force moves too fast. You have to keep in mind 10x more people have died in the Mexican drug conflict than all the years the US had been in Afghanistan.
Those things said I find it strange that anytime somebody mentions investment in revision of military tactics or technology somebody cries about some unrelated moral ambiguity from some value vacuum.
> The last time the US was involved in anything resembling actual warfare was Vietnam.
I'd count the First Gulf War as the last conventional war the US was involved in, although the Iraqi army did not prove up to the task of actually fighting a modern army. If you consider wars the US hasn't fought in, Russia's invasion of Georgia is probably the last conventional war, although again, it was pretty one-sided.
I was in the Army for 7 years and deployed 3 times. What does "actual warfare" look like? If what I experienced wasn't war, what is? You are minimizing the sacrifices that we and our combatants have made which is, quite frankly, disgusting.
The risks related to traditional warfare are incredibly high, not low, and risk will continue to grow as technology becomes the strongest variable in military dominance and success. Simply put, from now and well into the future, lethality will become greater. We can kill faster and with greater accuracy than we ever could in the past. Our capacity to kill is there -- just restrained.
The situation in Mexico [and further south for that matter] is dire and probably incredibly similar to that of Afghanistan after the Russians left. The cartels are the law. There is no effective form of government in Mexico.
I suppose it is drawing a distinction between warfare (strategic engagement) versus combat (tactical hostilities). For example Mogadishu was a battle not a war.
Huh. Not my son's experience. He did convoy duty. Three times they encountered bombs causing death and dismemberment. Mortar attacks on their camp were a daily occurrence. His turret on the vehicle he was gunner for resounded with the pings of small-arm fire.
Twice he survived mortar attacks - one exploded on the wall behind the staff during morning assembly in the yard. Another crashed through the roof on the other side of the wall when he was in the phone room talking to his Mom.
It took years for him to finish surgeries and physical therapy at the VA. His college degree took extra years to complete because of it.
That 10x figure doesn't sound right to me. Between the Taliban and government forces, Wikipedia says there were over 130,000 killed. Have over a million Mexicans died in the drug war?
Otherwise, (as I assume) you are comparing foreigners killed in Afghanistan to Mexicans killed in Mexico, which doesn't seem like a fair comparison.
Technically, Afghanistan has been in a continuous state of warfare since 1979 the most bloody of which were the civil wars of armed militias around Kabul in the early 90s although the Soviet invasion was pretty unconcerned with collateral damage. The Taliban eliminated that and arguably saved many lives in the process. In the broadest since the entirety of the Afghanistan conflicts easily stretches into millions dead, but I was only speaking to the US conflict.
While it is usually the assumption that only one side has access to some kind of groundbreaking technology in these dystopian futures, that is rarely the reality in actual conflicts. Consider the Arab Spring, largely held with cellphones most of us would consider heavily outdated. Citizens were still able to communicate and plan protests against the will of their governments despite the fact that their governments obviously had the capital and resources to invest in better technology than existed in consumer hands at the time.
In a civilized world, the only thing stopping rapid equalization of technology in peoples' hands is intellectual property law, preventing thousands of copycat companies from ripping off the new iPhones until the price is so violently driven into the ground that you can find them at dollar stores. In a world at war, IP laws don't apply, and the only thing stopping the "other side" from standing up their own robot army is the will to invest in and support that technology. We may consider it to be secret government technology now, but all you need is one hardware hacker with some JTAG wires and one disabled unit for all of their secrets to spill out onto the open Web.
The Arab Spring was mostly a failure, and then up against some very weak an ill-funded regimes.
'The people' are never going to gain access to networks of information systems, complicated weapons, training / support etc..
You can overthrow a weak government by getting a lot of people on board, some of them with AKs, but not much otherwise.
And it's not 'IP laws' that stop China from building the same weapons as the US it's 'trade secrecy' - my gosh Boeing doesn't just 'patent and make public' their tech, they keep it very secret. Also - there's tremendous 'know how' in there, all the unspoken stuff, skill, knowledge that isn't very well summarized in any kind of document.
China in 2020 is still having a hard time making it's own 5th gen jet engines, having to buy from Russia, though that may change.
> 'The people' are never going to gain access to networks of information systems, complicated weapons, training / support etc..
Who make up those networks if not people? Turncoats decide the fate of battles for a reason. The government cracks down hard on people like Snowden for a reason. These networks are only as secure as the weakest, and least loyal, link.
> my gosh Boeing doesn't just 'patent and make public' their tech, they keep it very secret.
How secret can you keep an aircraft once it gets shot down? The Russians reverse engineered the B-29 [1] , the Americans reverse engineered the Hind [2], the Chinese reverse engineered the F-22 [3], in part using wreckage from an F-117:
"On 27 March 1999, one of the US Air Force’s stealth bombers was shot down in the NATO raid of Yugoslavia during Operation Noble Anvil.
The wreckage was sent to China to study the stealth phenomenon except for the cockpit, which remains in a Belgrade museum."
> Also - there's tremendous 'know how' in there, all the unspoken stuff, skill, knowledge that isn't very well summarized in any kind of document.
Of course! It would take time to unravel this "know how" and get it documented. But the clues are there if you can afford to look. Almost every proprietary system can be documented and clean-room-reverse-engineered if you dedicate enough resources to it. Could a people's army do this? Maybe not, but it's not impossible either.
> China in 2020 is still having a hard time making it's own 5th gen jet engines, having to buy from Russia, though that may change.
I can guarantee you this project would advance much quicker if we were actually at a state of war, rather than peace with heightened tensions. These engines are not the end-all-be-all when compared to all their other priorities, but they could become a priority if war breaks out (obviously I hope it never does). When they do become a priority, history is on their side in terms of insurmountable odds beaten by skilled teams (see Manhattan Project, Have Blue, etc.)
??? Nobody in the Middle East is going to get to 'form' or 'control' their own Military Industrial Complex.
They may be able to 'assemble a crude drone' but they are not going to be 'creating their own GPS system' and 'air force' with 'global drones' and 'hyper guided weapons'.
"How secret can you keep an aircraft once it gets shot down?"
You can't but what's your point?
How many F22's shot down? F35s? Heck F18s?
If the Russians captured an intact F22 it would take them 15 years to copy it. There's an incredible about of know-how and knowledge in those sytstems.
And what are 'People on the Arab Street' going to do with an F22? Absolutely nothing.
And yes, the Chinese are 'very aggressively' pursuing their own Engine technology, they have been for 20 years.
There are literally only like 4 countries in the world that con produce modern, 5th Gen fighter engines - let alone the 'rest of the jet' which gives you an idea of how far away the 'Arab Street' is to doing anything with tech.
They are fighting with sticks and stones. If there are a million bodies there, they can have power, but aside from that, the only hope is political terror within their own borders against dysfunctional regimes.
> I think the morals of the soldiers would severely limit this.
You should read War & Peace, or any number of other legendary books about war written since the 19th century to learn how quickly millennia of military training has conditioned young soldiers to turn morality off when it is required of them.
I feel one of the domestic risks here is the combination of robots & less than lethal weapons.
For a gov to take the step of gunning down crowds is significant with backlash. And while I dont doubt countries could head this way I think for the west its much easier for governments to deploy robots that use any of the less than lethal tech and keep enough of the population on side while they deal with those <insert politics you dont like> trouble makers. And this could be the start of a very slippery slope.
I really think this is going to be one of humankinds great challenges: 1) tech where few can increasingly control many + 2) Advanced nations ability to conduct war with limited human cost on their side.
> 1) tech where few can increasingly control many
> 2) Advanced nations ability to conduct war with limited human cost on their side.
Indeed. Moreover anti-war protests often are conducted on a "don't get our children killed in your war" stance, therefore 2) will considerably reduce them. See squarefoot's comment above.
1) will be useful against protests at home, and also (to some extent) to control the population of an occupied country.
Or the hundreds of civilians killed, raped, etc for every soldier killed. The biggest victims of war are the civilians. In ww2, vietnam, iraq wars, etc, the civilians accounted for the vast majority of the casualties, not the soldiers.
> how do you slow the war machine?
You can't. The elites who control the war machine control the propaganda in every country. Once they want war, the entire propaganda apparatus beats the war drums and anyone in their way gets steamrolled. Ask the dixie chicks, phil donahue, etc. Remember freedom fries? Go look at how quickly germany turned from being the heart of european civilization to nazi germany.
> I think the morals of the soldiers would severely limit this.
Has nothing to do with morals. Is it moral to go to another country and kill people? If you are labelled "enemy of the state" ( a great movie btw ), then you are fair game.
> Everyone knows this is the future, and saw it coming, but wow, I naively thought it would take longer.
It's not the robots that are worrisome. It's the concentration of money and power.
Mercenaries already exist, and the mercenary leaders hold political power. I don't think robots change the picture significantly.
When you say the morals of the soldiers, maybe you mean racism of the soldiers? American soldiers are more than happy to act immorally, and it's not like suppressing and torturing foreigners is very different to home. You can look to Portland for supposedly moral people suppressing locals
Is it worth the cost? Literally, yes. The United States having the world’s most powerful and expansive military is what makes it the best place to invest your money and keep your stuff. I keep all my stuff in the United States, don’t know about you.
> The United States having the world’s most powerful and expansive military is what makes it the best place to invest your money and keep your stuff.
This needs a stronger argument.
Russia, North Korea, and Turkey have very powerful militaries, yet are much less safe for investment than various comparatively weak small European countries.
A country being a good climate for business seems to have more to do with a lot of factors other than military strength.
> yet are much less safe for investment than various comparatively weak small European countries.
That is because those weak small European countries’ security is guaranteed by the United States and its allies.
Ultimately, force underlies prosperity and stability. Right now the United States maintains the greatest ability to apply force and subsidizes the security and guarantees the security of Europe.
I think this is the relevant part about the robotic aspect being discussed
> Cold War doctrine envisioned engaging the enemy along what’s called the Forward Line Of Troops, or FLOT. In the new concept, according to a briefing at the conference, a Forward Line Of Unmanned Aerial Systems (FLUA) will fly ahead through no-man’s-land into enemy-held territory, followed by a Forward Line Of Robots (FLOR) on the ground, followed in turn by the Forward Line Of (Human) Troops. The unmanned systems will flush out the enemy, stumble into meeting engagements and ambushes, take and receive the first hits, and map the enemy position for the human troops coming along behind them.
Patton famously told his scouts to “go down that road until you get blown up then, report back”. Presumably robots would be assuming this role going forward.
It's pretty incredible how just by coincidence the recommendation exactly matches what would be most profitable for contracting firms, have the least amount oversight from the public on how the tax dollars are used and is also the best strategy for avoiding the politically costly ordeal of hurting children of people who vote in American elections.
Saddam had the fourth largest land army in the world with some seriously experienced commanders and veteran troops, dwarfed only by china, russia, and vietnam, and we wholly defeated them in 42 days because we could launch missiles from ships in the persian gulf instead of deploying traditional armies and tanks to the front lines. This sort of development isn't new, it's how modern warfare has been fought for 40 years and will continue to be fought.
Well that is exactly why. Could you imagine the fallout of NK or Iran using nuclear weapons on an invading US allied force? It would unleash a clusterfuck of untold effects worldwide and probably a lot of death. There is a reason why they haven't been used in any conflict since WWII despite all this chaos in this world, they are a powder keg.
In the case of desert storm, The US along with 34 other countries were coming to aid of Kuwait which Iraq invaded and annexed over an oil spat.
Probably because not many consider the end result as a success.
They might have lost the war but guess who gets the cavity search before boarding the plane to visit grandma. Guess who is freer after enjoys more privacy after the war relatively to before the war.
The war no longer ends at the battlefield.
To have a nice old school nationalistic wars you have no choice but to have a civil war first to weed out people that aspire anything else than nationalistic pride first.
It's a common trope to take this kind of attitude, but this dynamic is not some kind of nefarious kickback scheme. It is the natural result of the Revolution in Military Affairs concept and the political impossibility of developing these technologies in-house.
Think tanks exist to rationalize unpalatable policies to the american public in plausible ways like that. Salaried teams spend all day inventing cover stories - that's why they exist as institutions.
We're told there's some elaborate other system at play yet they never make a decision or recommendation which goes against the margins and stock prices of the corporations funding the think tanks. Instead, if there's multiple options they always seem to conclude that the most profitable is the best.
Until this impeccably consistent 1000 batting average is broken we can be forgiven for suspecting it's all just manufactured nonsense.
> Think tanks exist to rationalize unpalatable policies to the american public in plausible ways like that. Salaried teams spend all day inventing cover stories - that's why they exist as institutions.
I could describe the EFF in these terms. People don't want to be inconvenienced. The EFF makes inconvenience in pursuit of privacy palatable. This is profitable for the technology sector from which--surprise!--the EFF's support originates.
This model doesn't work because knowledgeable people have a vested interest in what they know. Sometimes this presents a conflict of interest. But often it's just experts converging. (Other times, you're missing most of the debate.)
> Until this impeccably consistent 1000 batting average
America produces lots of think-tank literature. I'd be surprised if more than one in five hundred proposals see light of day.
An MQ-9 Reaper costs no-where near what a modern Gen 4++/ Gen 5 fighter costs (F-15X, F/A-18F, F-22, F-35) does, neither in unit flyaway cost, nor in cost per flying hour.
What about the RQ-4A or the MQ-4C? Cherry picking is a two player game.
If you can show a faithful effort that leads to a cost reduction then I'll rescind my claim. I'm totally open to learning however I'm also pretty suspicious of grifters passing off stories as information. The material reality has to match.
Fair enough, those two airframes are inexplicably expensive. Some discussions hint at satellite-grade sensors as a factor.[1] But they are also <= 25% of the UAV inventory, much as F-22's aren't the bulk of our fighter force. So to avoid cherry picking, we could average across the entire airframe category (so all single-or-two seat fixed wing fighters vs all MALE UAVs). I haven't crunched those numbers but I think the point would stand in that case: manned costs => unmanned, considering the large number of $50-100MM jets in service that drag up the average. That said, I would caveat the conclusion by pointing out that use cases and mission sets are significantly different. If we were building UAVs with the same capabilities as an F-35....it would probably cost as much as an F-35 too.
Yes there's complex reasons behind these things. My point is, and it's rather crude, that if everything always points in one direction, the complex reasons can be replaced with far simpler, less flattering ones.
I don't see how slow flying would be a problem. Low flying certainly is, but current air defense systems have taken out cruise missiles. Of course the systems don't always succeed and they can be overwhelmed by swarms.
"Should an air-defence radar lock on to it with malicious intent, though, the drone will follow the radar signal to its source and the warhead nestled in its bulbous nose will blow the drone, the radar and any radar operators in the vicinity to kingdom come."
As someone who studied Robotics in Uni I remember the ethics classes, and the focus on military usage of robotics.
Still, I wonder how many people from Robotics would accept a military application development job offering? I would guess the number would be higher than most people would feel comfortable to admit. I certainly would, if the technical aspect of it sounds interesting & challenging (and well paid) and if the opportunity was given when other opportunities are scarce.
The latter was the case of the local market when I graduated; the country of my residence had very low number of any robotics jobs, so most people I knew went in to traditional industries (or CS) anyway. Less than 20% of the classmate I knew is right now working in robotics. If any of them would've given the chance to work in what they studied (and found fun) they would probably take it even though it would include military application.
A couple of notes for those seeking solace at the far ends of the spectrum (chicken-hawks and peaceniks): no one hates war more than soldiers. We'd all go home if we could. But the enemy gets a vote. Few countries are necessarily our enemy, and we'd like to keep it that way. Making a military success unpalatable helps keep it that way. Detente is in many ways offers a more stable peace than pacifism, particularly for a major world power entangled in many alliances.
What a dystopian world it'll be when the US gets its hands on this! The only thing stopping warmongers in Washington is the US public opinion in having American soldiers killed in random wars meant to enrich the MIC. Once the human cost is removed, every nation on earth will be forced to turn into a vassal and the Anglo-Saxon imperial termites will run the world again.
The British empire is dead, long live the American empire.
I view health as the other end of the spectrum to war - with an open mind and open heart, found through practices to heal past unhealed/unprocessed trauma - and so spending on health and good policy regarding protecting and supporting health (preventative, proactive) you're in fact combating war (civil and otherwise); plus lead by example, role model.
Task and Purpose on YouTube just did a video about mixed weapon squads and how this was a relatively new development in WWII. Traditionally you would have entire regiments of the same weapons line up and face off.
At the very least the straw man in your second paragraph is probably attracting downvotes. As far as your first paragraph, I think the succinct counter-argument would be, "It's not that simple."
We've been there for 20 years, and killed 600K+ people (mostly civilians) in Iraq alone. It is that simple. GTFO. Never come back. They're not a threat. They've never been a threat. Saddam never had WMD.
We're not there (now) because of Saddam, or WMDs, or even ISIS. We are there to:
1. Undermine the "Shia crescent". The US doesn't want the Iranians to have an unrestricted land corridor that extends from Tehran to Beirut. It is considered a security threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the key to OPEC, and OPEC supports US Petrodollar dominance.
2. Restrict Chinese OBOR expansion. The lack of stability makes the region unviable for Chinese infrastructure building. This degrades China's ability to pivot away from their Sea Lines of Communication, which are currently a major economic weakness.
It's risky at this point. The middle east is a jenga tower held up by coalition troops with no good governments able to fend against internal threats due to the rampant local corruption. The U.S. pulled out of iraq and isis promptly took over half the country. I think pulling out from the middle east entirely would do far more harm than good considering all the backing these various extremist militias have from foreign nations, inching to pounce and seize power and enact their fucked up agenda on the populace. Imo, we should replace drone strikes with sniper rifles or highly trained SEAL teams to verify and take out targets. Way too much taking people out and not nearly enough verifying is the problem, not that the troops are there at all.
imo charge soldiers who commit warcrimes and continue trying to train a new generation of leadership. that second point will probably take another decade at least.
I don't think many people would argue with you that invading Iraq was a mistake and a catastrophe. That doesn't necessarily mean pulling out immediately (even after 20 years) would be better. I'm not saying it wouldn't, just that it's not that simple.
There's no way to win there, under _any_ definition of "win". The British failed. The USSR failed. The US failed once already, and will fail again. We can fail after killing 600K and spending $3T. Or we can fail after killing 1.5M and spending $6T. But we _will_ fail regardless. It is not possible to win an unconventional land war with people who are fighting for their own land.
All these "robots" are basically technological masturbation: great for milking the taxpayer and nothing else. They do not change the situation on the ground, especially when you're fighting with a bunch of semi-literate dudes with Kalashnikovs who are not afraid to die.
> “Be cautious of revolutions in military affairs,” said Donald Sando, Donahoe’s civilian deputy and an intellectual mainstay at Fort Benning for many years. “We can’t hope endlessly that technology will make warfare easier or less brutal or less costly, [because] The reality is, it doesn’t; it changes it. It makes it harder in many cases.”
I can't imagine the mental gymnastics those working on this horrible idea must go through just to look themselves in the mirror every day.
It's not mental gymnastics. It's often someone that has seen a side of humanity that most people haven't. It's not even a side you can eradicate. You can create conditions where it lays dormant, but it's never really gone and when it does show up it's better to be prepared.
Are we going to see more Syria/Yemen/Sudan-type conflicts or will we get back to a conventional war with tank battles and all?
In the 20th century warfare evolved trench warfare to asymmetrical war.
You don't need divisions to make an impact, you need someone willing to set off a suicide vest in a police station, a pregnant woman to sit an a VBIED and drive past a checkpoint or someone strong enough to fire an RPG.
To assume robots or technology is going to solve those problems is probably a naive position.
It's of course important to prepare for a larger scale war against China, Russia, etc. but realistically we're more likely to be fighting a handful of goat herders in Afghanistan with an AK and a bag full of rice before we're taking on an armored division.
The best line in the article was "We can’t hope endlessly that technology will make warfare easier or less brutal or less costly, [because] The reality is, it doesn’t; it changes it. It makes it harder in many cases."
Note: I was in the US Army from 03-07 serving in the Rangers with 4 deployments and have seen ingenuity trump technology