
US ‘would lose any war’ fought in the Pacific with China - admiralspoo
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-would-lose-any-war-fought-in-the-pacific-with-china-7j90bjs5b
======
londons_explore
Why is the US publishing the outcomes of its war simulations? The enemy
knowing in which ways you think you might loose is pretty handy strategic
info...

Could this info either be deliberately false, or perhaps used to scare someone
into handing over more funding?

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mrlonglong
It all comes down to simple economies. The country that can out-produce the
other country in terms of war material will win the conflict. The US proved
that during WW2. China has a huge industrial complex that can do this if it
needs to do.

~~~
dntbnmpls
Thate doesn't explain the Vietnam War. The economy and military production is
big part of it, but not the complete picture. Logistics, technology,
population, geography, national cohesion, political unity, etc all play a
role.

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imvetri
Don't promote articles about war

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jessaustin
We've lost every war fought in my parents' lifetimes, in the Pacific and
everywhere else on the planet. So, this seems like an accurately predictive
wargame!

~~~
dragonwriter
> We've lost every war fought in my parents' lifetimes, in the Pacific and
> everywhere else on the planet.

If your parents are even 30 years old, they were alive for the 1990 invasion
of Panama, the 1991 US-led war against Iraq, and the 1999 NATO intervention in
the Kosovo War, among others.

I don't think any of those three can reasonably be spun as a war lost by the
US side.

~~~
booi
Arguably there are no winners in war

~~~
exclusiv
No, there are winners. And it's important to understand that otherwise a huge
% of people would be speaking German these days as an example.

~~~
jessaustin
My parents were born after WWII.

There are vast differences between the military at that time and the mess
we've built since then.

~~~
frank2
We disagree then. I consider the US government's performance during the Cold
War to be more impressive than its performance during WWII. In particular, the
US managed to avoid using nuclear weapons in anger, managed to prevent its
adversary from using nuclear weapons in anger, managed to prevent its
adversary from invading Western Europe and managed to break its adversary's
hold on Eastern Europe.

Diplomacy and soft power were more important in the Cold War than they were in
WWII, which is why I feel the need to use "US government" in that last
sentence rather than "US military". In particular, the US used free trade as
an incentive to induce the governments of Western Europe, Japan, South Korea
and even mainland China to go along with US plans to stop the expansion Soviet
influence.

But putting aside the performance of the State Department and the other non-
military parts of the US government during the Cold War, I consider the
performance of its military specifically to have been good. The most important
consideration during Vietnam War for example was to show Europe that the US
would uphold its security guarantees even at large cost to itself in money and
American lives, and the US military succeeded in that. It would have been nice
for it to have saved South Vietnam from being conquered, but that was not
strictly necessary to winning the Cold War. Another important consideration
was for the US military to conduct the war humanely enough that the other side
would not end up hating the US for generations, and the US military seems to
have succeeded in that goal: these years, public opinion in Vietnam toward the
US is generally positive and the Vietnamese government (even though it is
still communist) is generally friendly to the US.

~~~
jessaustin
I agree it's good that nuclear weapons haven't been used since 1945. I
disagree that the actions of USA are to be credited for that. We created them
in the first place, although the exigencies of WWII were probably an excuse.
All of the nuclear weapons built between 1945 and 1949 were built by USA. No
American then had any illusions about how terrible nuclear weapons are.

If during that time we could have credibly committed to stop building nuclear
weapons, we could have forged an agreement with USSR that would have made the
entire planet much safer for many decades. Stalin wasn't a great humanitarian,
but so much of the effort and resources he put into the USSR military was a
reaction to well-earned distrust of USA's intentions. Also, _he didn 't have
them yet!_ (The first ones he did get to work were obvious copies of American
weapons, because why would the agencies in charge of foiling Soviet spies care
more about their mission than about keeping the gravy train going?) Follow-on
effects of a nuclear ban would have meant humanity as a whole would have
considered such weapons beyond the pale, probably for centuries. Instead, we
developed vastly more destructive fusion weapons!

Of course, weapons manufacturers wanted to make money, and neither Truman nor
any of his generals (including Eisenhower) were brave enough to contradict
that. No politician or military officer or popular journalist has been brave
enough ever since then, either. Occasionally someone like Trump comes along
and halfway pretends during a campaign to oppose our endless stupid wars, but
that's quickly forgotten after the election. It is worth remembering, that all
of the carnage and waste of the Cold War and our later Stupid Wars, and all of
the menace of nuclear fusion weapons, and all of the effects of these things
that we have yet to suffer, have been imposed on humanity in order that
American armaments manufacturers might thereby profit.

To address Vietnam specifically, we didn't cover ourselves in glory there
either. To begin, it was a colonial war started on behalf of _a different
colonial power_. What the hell has France ever done for us, that we should
help them menace other hemispheres? Lafayette wasn't all that. Also there is
the fact that like most of our wars it was started based on a shameful lie, in
this case the fake, never-happened Tonkin Gulf "incident". Also there were all
the many atrocities. Also we intentionally spread the war to other nations who
were even more innocent than the Vietnamese. Also we got our asses handed to
us by rustic peasants. Not for the last time.

To speak more directly of the military, Vietnam showed them to be a paper
tiger, and no war since has contradicted that judgment. (I can already hear
the atrocityfans' cries of "What about the invasion of Panama! That wasn't
terrible!") Their fathers had been rousted out of civilian life to build a
military that had never existed and beat two invincible empires. They did beat
those empires, to bloody pulps. Two decades later, under a Pentagon bloated
from bingeing on the cream of the most blessed economy in history and an even
more bloated officer corps, their sons couldn't fight their way out of a paper
bag.

Somehow we didn't take a long look in the mirror in 1975 and reconsider this
whole idea of outspending the rest of the world, combined, on our military. We
also didn't execute multiple CIA and NSA personnel for treason for tricking us
into the stupid war in the first place. The joke was on us, because over the
next decade and change we were tricked into spending even more on our inept
military and clueless intelligence services. While USSR was failing so
obviously that the Politburo selected Gorbachev to lead the old mare out
behind the shed, we just had to build more nuclear and conventional weapons.

I'm sure I haven't convinced you of anything, even though I've stated only
facts. You have come to the bizarre reflections of reality you describe above
through constant gaslighting from every corner, here in USA. It's sort of a
small injury, when compared to the atrocities we've inflicted on others, but
the injury to our public thought imposed by the military-industrial complex is
one that I feel keenly. No one in public life can utter obvious truths about
geopolitics in the way that anyone could have done in the 1930s, lest they
lose their careers permanently. You've argued here that the USA is to be
credited for preventing the use of weapons that it invented, that it has
tested more than all other nations combined, and that only it has ever used!
Please, reconsider this folly.

------
salawat
Mirror: [http://archive.is/OvIZB](http://archive.is/OvIZB)

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metacritic12
Paywall bypass?

