@steephie - What? You think your puny little nation is going to stand toe to toe with the might of the US military complex?

You're such a refined and sophisticated human being Draug :D

Now, your nation, redhouse, I respect. Nevermind it is the same nation. It's a different netizen who inhabits it and makes the nation all that much different.

America's overwhelming military might only relevant up to a point. It's useless, for example, to think about whether the United States could establish air superiority over Russia or China. A conflict with either of those powers would go nuclear well before US fighters were strafing the Kremlin or Zhongnanhai. The United States has no peer when it comes to conventional forces, but in the nuclear realm every state with the bomb is effectively equal. It may not be quite mutually assured destruction, but it's certainly mutually assured devastation.

The weakness of America is that any democratic vote can overturn a military strategy carefully put in place over the years. That and your commander-in-chief is a completely clueless figure. The inability of western forces to sustain mass-occupations like Iraq and Afghanistan (and even if we do sustain them, what do we really sustain?) is why I think the military should have this double character. And countries like Iraq and Afghanistan would be all special operations as far as I was concerned.

"but in the nuclear realm every state with the bomb is effectively equal."

Well, not really. Having the bomb but not having a delivery mechanism cpable of reaching your enemy like N Korea presently has does *not* make you the equal of your enemy when he can deliver his bombs to you like the USA can.

So, Kim Jung Un =/= to Barack Obama just because they both have "the bomb." KJU's bomb can't even reach but maybe Hawaii (so we lose a vacation paradise) where as BO's can all reach any point on the earth.

But it can reach Seoul. It can reach Tokyo. Due to our mutual defense treaties that's almost the same as Honolulu or Los Angeles. Seriously? Firefox doesn't think Los Angeles is a word? Moving on, the power of any nuclear weapon is so devastating that the potential for its use negates any and all conventional options. You don't need MAD for the absence of war since the cost of even just one nuclear explosion is so high no nation will accept it.

But that doesn't makew them the equal. Sure, they could trash Japan (woohoo, no more deficit!) and we would retaliate. But when it was done, they would be a slag heap, the word would be seriously damaged, but this side of it would generally come out on the better end of the deal.

@ Invictus

I dispute the assumption that any conflict between Russia, red China, the US, or any other ICBM/SLBM-equipped nation would immediately and inevitably go nuclear.

No one is going to go nuclear until they have nothing to lose. The red Chinese aren't going to loose their nukes until the Americans burst through the gates of the Forbidden City. The late Tom Clancy wrote a book called "Red Storm Rising". It laid out a scenario that could result in a conventional WWIII. It almost escalated to tactical nukes when the Russkies had their backs against the wall, but finesse on both sides averted their use. It's very realistic for a work of fiction.

"The red Chinese aren't going to loose their nukes until the Americans burst through the gates of the Forbidden City. "

Why would we invade a museum?

"The inability of western forces to sustain mass-occupations like Iraq and Afghanistan (and even if we do sustain them, what do we really sustain?) is why I think the military should have this double character."

The US largely did what it set out to do in Iraq. Built up the local army and police and handed power over. For whatever reason in Afghanistan we seem dead set on screwing things up with the Taliban, having not learned that alienating the Baathists was the biggest problem we had in Iraq.

Had we let Karzai make peace with the Taliban ages ago when he wanted to I think we could have been out of there by now.

@ Putin33

"Why would we invade a museum?"

Fuck off, it was a metaphor.

"Had we let Karzai make peace with the Taliban ages ago when he wanted to I think we could have been out of there by now."

The question is whether or not the Taliban are as "bad" as AQ. Does their tacit tolerance of AQ within their borders make them as "bad" as the Taliban? If so, why have we not invaded Pakistan and Yemen using the same justification that we used to invade Afghanistan.

I think the Taliban are a much more heterogeneous grouping than Al Qaeda. At any rate I don't think we can say Pakistan or Yemen are tolerating anything like AQ in their midst.

(I acknowledge that such a reasoning for invading Afghanistan was a poor one to begin with).

There are several things I'd like to dispute.

First off, the idea that all nuclear powers are made equal. Completely wrong. In the nuclear world there's two levels: Russia and the US, and then everyone else. Only Russia and the US have the capacity to hit any target anywhere in the world (maybe the Chinese could as well. They certainly have the ability to produce ICBMs, but idk if they have). Everyone else would just be a whole lot of worthless in a nuclear war against the US.

Also what matters is the concentration of nukes. The US and Russia have theirs spread out via dozens of locations and launch vehicles. India? I think one or two firing bases, and they're in the process of making a sub. So conventional attacks - if done early enough in a conflict - could potentially knock out their nuclear card.

Another thing that matters is the strength of the nuke (not as much now that the US and Russia have retired their big boys). Do you have a nuke that can wipe out a few square miles or one that could level an entire metropolitan area (hydrogen bomb).

Regardless though, I highly doubt any conventional war could come close to escalating into a nuclear war. And the country that is closest to going toe-to-toe with the US military is China

"No one is going to go nuclear until they have nothing to lose. The red Chinese aren't going to loose their nukes until the Americans burst through the gates of the Forbidden City."

A war is highly unlikely to start just because of the non-zero chance of a nuclear exchange. I don't think you really appreciate how bad that would be, even a very limited one. And I never said a conflict would inevitably go nuclear, just that it would before, in my words, our fighters were strafing the centers of power in these countries.

Once a nuclear power starts to lose a conventional war resorting to the use of nuclear weapons is more and more likely. It just natural that, when pushed into a corner, humans use more desperate means to defend themselves. A successful American landing in Guangdong or a Chinese landing in California (both basically impossible, but this is a hypothetical) would be such a disaster that the losing nation would be much more likely to resort to nuclear weapons than risk the collapse of the state by losing the war.


"he late Tom Clancy wrote a book called "Red Storm Rising". It laid out a scenario that could result in a conventional WWIII."

You must have a better foundation for your argument than a work of fiction.


"At any rate I don't think we can say Pakistan or Yemen are tolerating anything like AQ in their midst. "

Whaaaat? Bin Laden lived in Pakistan's West Point for years. While the Yemeni government may not support al Qaeda, it and allied groups run rampant outside of Sanaa. How can you say something like that?

"First off, the idea that all nuclear powers are made equal. Completely wrong."

I should have been more clear. Of course the United States and Russia are in a wholly different league when it comes to gross power. I jut argue that the results of a single nuclear attack or exchange are so extreme that, effectively, any state with the capacity to launch one is de facto equal to the others. It doesn't really matter if we turn North Korea into a lake if Seoul and Tokyo are gone, or if do the same to Iran and Israel and our Gulf allies no longer exist.

"How can you say something like that?"

Because Pakistan routinely kills, arrests and/or expels AQ figures, including most recently Adil Azeem Sheikh. The case of OBL doesn't negate that. And in OBL's case he had no guards or anything of the sort furnished by ISI or anybody else. The OBL case is a colossal blunder but not evidence that the Pak government is aiding and abetting AQ. Yemen is involved in an intense civil war with AQ affiliated militants, who have seized territory for themselves independent of government control. How on earth can that be described as Yemeni government tolerance of AQ?

@ goldfinger

As I recall, the US and Russia got rid of their really, really, *really* big bombs. The strategy of having bombs with absurd megatonnage went out the window when someone figured out that conventional subsonic high-altitude bombers could be stopped easily. It's not like there are still B41s or Tsar Bombas floating around. The US and Russia also eliminated their land-based MIRV-equipped ICBMs. Both the US and Russia can glass a whole lot of area if they wanted to, but they couldn't blow up the world twice over like they could in the bad old days.

@ Invictus

"And I never said a conflict would inevitably go nuclear, just that it would before, in my words, our fighters were strafing the centers of power in these countries."

We could have F-22s strafing Beijing by this time tomorrow. Doesn't mean red China is going to nuke us. No one is going to nuke *anyone* until they have *nothing* to lose and no one is around to inject some sanity into the decision-making process.

Conventional shooting wars between world powers are still possible, and they won't go nuclear. I *do* think that unconditional surrenders are a thing of the past. Every big war will be settled by treaty or armistice from now on. Red China, America, and Russia would rather take everyone with them in a giant nuclear firestorm than surrender unconditionally.

You really believe bin Laden could have lived for years just a short distance from a major headquarters of the Pakistani military and they knew nothing? Come on. The military there has been playing on both sides of the conflict since the beginning.

As for Yemen, I said the government was against al Qaeda. I said basically the same thing as you. But the "government" there is more or less just the city council of Sanaa, which maintains shifting alliances among self-governing tribes and warlords in other areas. Their impotence is indistinguishable from tolerance.

F-22? Wasn't that the Raptor boondoggle? Didn't they discontinue that?

I'm sad to say I think a conventional war between China & Russia is imminent. As soon as the US gets out of its own way in East Asia & the Middle East you better believe the Sino-Russian rivalry will heat up. There is no way China will not expand into Central Asia in its quest for energy, and expand its population invasion of the Russian Far East and there is no way Russia will tolerate it. The two powers are destined for conflict.

"You really believe bin Laden could have lived for years just a short distance from a major headquarters of the Pakistani military and they knew nothing? Come on. The military there has been playing on both sides of the conflict since the beginning."

By 'they' if you mean the high command of Pak intelligence & the Pak political elite, yes, I can believe that. This is the same intelligence service that thought that Operation Gibraltar would work. If the higher-ups knew about OBL they would have done more to provide security for Bin Laden. That compound was wholly inadequate to the task.

"Their impotence is indistinguishable from tolerance."

That's ridiculous. I assume you also want to argue that the DRC "tolerates" M23. Renders the term meaningless.

"We could have F-22s strafing Beijing by this time tomorrow. Doesn't mean red China is going to nuke us. No one is going to nuke *anyone* until they have *nothing* to lose and no one is around to inject some sanity into the decision-making process."

Assuming we could attack Beijing like that, a war between us and them would have escalated past the point nuclear exchange is possible before that becomes an issue. If we're fighting over China's capital it means we've beaten their navy and taken out their coastal anti-ship ballistic missile installations, since our carriers would have to get closer than they'd be able to if those threats still existed. We would have dealt crushing blows deep in the Chinese homeland. You're telling me the CCP wouldn't respond with a nuclear attack once its situation was so dire?


"Conventional shooting wars between world powers are still possible, and they won't go nuclear."

I never have said conventional shooting wars were impossible. Why don't you listen? I just say that they would escalate to the nuclear stage well before we had to worry about dogfights over enemy capitals. A limited war over South China Sea claims that stays limited is possible. Risky for escalation, but possible. If it stays confined to that theater nuclear exchange is virtually impossible. But if we started attacking China proper or they do the same to Guam or beyond, then you're starting to get into scary nuclear war scenarios. States don't need to already be in hopeless positions to use them, just be on the brink of them such that the use of nuclear weapons can seem like a game-changer that can avert disaster and make hopefully make them relatively better off in the post-war situation.

I have to agree with Putin here. The US is the only think preventing Russia and China from bashing heads right now.

Also, gunfighter you may want to rethink some of what you said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/6/russian-bombers-again-fly-close-to-us/?page=all

Forget about Yemen. We're arguing semantics.

"By 'they' if you mean the high command of Pak intelligence & the Pak political elite, yes, I can believe that."

Well I disagree. And here, for once, I think we can cordially agree to disagree. I find it hard to believe that the highest levels of the Pakistani military were not totally aware of bin Laden being there. This is getting into murky, cloak-and-dagger, spy-versus-spy stuff, however. We're just going to be yelling opinions at each other with neither having anything solid to back themselves up. We'd each be much richer people if we correctly understood the internal workings of Pakistan's military.

"The US is the only think preventing Russia and China from bashing heads right now."

Maybe Pat Buchanan is right and China will steal Siberia sometime soon. However, I'd bet China just waits out the Russian demographic disaster and turns a largely empty, but more Muslim, Russia into a satellite by propping up an ethnic Russian dictatorship. This also avoids the risk that a naked Chinese war for power in Asia will united the rest of the world against it. For all the ill will a lot of the world feels towards America I bet they'd rather have it be the paramount power on Earth rather than a China that successfully controls much of Asia as a result of conquest. No, I'll put my bet on a steady, and for all intents and purposes legitimate, creep of Chinese influence in Russia that maybe late-period Putin but definitely his successor will have to accept as the Russian nation steady dies out.

@Invictus - I highly doubt the particular scenario you painted (well, the one you painted as an alternative). The puppet-state scenario sounds very Chinese. The war of aggression does not. China has historically been in moreso of an economic-political position of power over its neighbors rather than a military one.

So, you agree with me? Your post seems to say two things.

Well, I'm saying I agree with you, but I disagree with the alternative you proposed.

Russia will expel the Chinese or at least severely restrict their movement into the country before they take over demographically. China cannot wait that long before their appeasement policy towards Russia in Central Asia becomes too much of a burden for their economic needs. Russia & China (and the US for that matter) should count their lucky stars that their respective governments aren't more prone to the whims of popular will because if Russian and Chinese nationalists were in power this conflict would have already occurred.

I really don't think China gives a damn about regional animosity towards it. I don't buy the notion that they haven't historically acted militarily against its neighbors either. Certainly the invasions of Burma, Vietnam, Mongolia, Turkestan, and Tibet disprove that. China has done very little to ingratiate itself towards its neighbors diplomatically.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12180567

And even despite China's tightrope walking on C. Asia, they still manage to pull off things like the above, driving Dushanbe into the arms of Moscow.