America's Military Supremacy Is Fading | Hacker News Reader

America's Military Supremacy Is Fading

nationalinterest.org

42 pointssmacktoward77 comments

A U.S. carrier group, by itself, would be a top-10 navy in the world, and its carrier air wing would make a respectable national air force. Only two other nations operate aircraft carriers remotely in the same class as a Nimitz-class, and the United States has ten.

No other country has the same ability to project power that the United States does. It's perhaps unprecedented in the history of the world. Perhaps its military might is reduced from Reagan-era heights, but Russia is also a shell of what the Soviet Union was, and China has not yet filled that void.

Carrier groups are an extremely important projector of power, but they are not invulnerable. See: China's significant investments in "carrier killer" missiles. Such missiles don't even need to be fired in order to be effective regional deterrants; the mere threat of a sunk carrier would give us pause in the event of an escalating situation in, say, Taiwan.

The article doesn't argue that China or Russia are going to project power off the coast of New York anytime soon; merely that our relative capability to project power off of their coasts is in decline.

It's also worth noting that power projection is also different because of different balances of other interests. The kinds of things other countries want to do is different, and the lengths to which the US is willing to go to affect them is different. In my opinion, these factors might be just as great or greater than relative military superiority.

This is why a carrier strike group will have Agies destroyers to combat ballistic threats, and for other threats CIWS systems do a pretty good job.

Ship defense systems are quite advanced these days for the most part they can knock out anything out of the sky no matter how low or high it flies.

Ship defense systems are quite advanced, but to a first order approximation, the US's carriers would be neutralized if China can sink a carrier for less than the cost of a carrier (where the lives of the 4300 sailors and pilots on the latest US carriers are to be considered part of the cost), and the cost of a single carrier buys a lot of radars, satellites, subs, missiles and R&D.

In theory yes, in practice it's not that simple. You still need to be able to produce enough launchers, missiles, and train enough crew to saturate the air defense systems of a carrier group to be effective.

Yes it can be done, but it's just as easily can be countered through asymmetric means by the US the only thing they'll have to do is to change their doctrine.

SAM's were considered the end of air combat as well initially, in 1973 SAM's pretty much devastated the Israeli air-force, the US learned from that experience and developed made quite a bit of changes to their 'Wild Weasel' doctrine which allowed them to routinely destroy soviet SAM's in Vietnam from 1975 onwards. The Israelis then took that and improved upon and 1982 destroyed all of Syria's SAM sites in a single day of what then was the most advanced Soviet SAM installations in the world outside of Russia by using drones as the lead target aircraft instead of an F4E phantom with jamming equipment and covering the sky with anti radiation missiles as soon the drones got painted. Today you have solutions like these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0acJ3xyhaJo that build on top of that and bring it to the next level.

Combat isn't a static game of RPS, if China has carrier killing missiles then the 1st shot in the war will be to take those out, using, drones, submarine launched guided missiles, electronic warfare or what ever else will be developed to combat that threat. Once the threat has been reduced to a level which allows the carrier strike group to operate it will be put into action, yes not all missiles might be destroyed but any residual threats will be dealt with by the air defense systems of the carrier and it's supporting vessels.

Now again this isn't claiming that this gives a US carrier group some super immunity, fucks up can still happen, but if your doctrine is set up correctly it's not going to be a case well gosh they've made some carrier killers now we can't use our carrier anymore.

Thanks for going into greater detail.

Deploying a "carrier killer" would require the stomach to deal with a U.S. response.

... which would be substantial, to say the least.

An operational carrier houses over 5,000 sailors, airmen, and marines. Sinking a carrier is akin to completely obliterating a small city in terms of loss of life. In terms of economic cost, it's even greater - a carrier costs around $5b just to launch. Add in the costs of fuelling, salaries and training for the crew, armament, the aircraft aboard... the other dozen or so ships in the strike group...

I don't think it's unwarranted to assume that the total economic cost to build and deploy a US carrier strike group exceeds the budget of most countries' navies.

To counter your "carrier killer" scenario, don't you think China itself would be hesitant to take out, well, anything American? That is essentially guaranteed to turn any "crisis" or "escalating situation" into a declaration of war. Consider China's island building in the Pacific. We routinely fly all over that airspace no matter how much the Chinese tell us to leave "their" airspace. We're such a hawkish nation that I really don't imagine us standing down to China in a shooting match. Quite frankly, I'm surprised the government-sponsored industrial espionage isn't a bigger issue.

See: SBIRS, and missile defense in general. There are also issues with updating the location of carriers, since communications can be jammed and carriers are not stationary. Just being able to know when something is launched (SBIRS) gives the US a defense against these weapons. In addition to that, I would be very surprised if there was not a way to shoot these things down, with lasers or otherwise. We're talking about the US military budget, and maintaining the investment of 50+ billion dollars just spent on building the carriers over the years.

It remains to be seen if their "carrier killer" missiles are effective. Very likely the countermeasures a current carrier group could deploy would be effective in stopping such an attack.

A picture says a thousand words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercarrier#/media/File:USS_J...

A slightly more group "oriented" photo than the above: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Abraham-...

It's been a while since I was around these ships (at the Norfolk Naval Ship Yard) but I'll try to comment on what's shown in agreement with the posts above.

(4) Tactical submarines

(2) Aegis Guided Missle Cruisers

(2) Landing Assault Ships

(1) Frigate (or perhaps an oiler)

There are a variety of other cruisers and destroyers in the picture that I can't make out. I also suspect (as noted above) that there are one or more "boomers" cruising under the waves (but close by).

A US carrier group with a marine expeditionary force will be in the top-10 militaries in the world period. It has more conventional capabilities than most militaries, a stronger air wing than many air forces, and better ground troops than most, not to mention that a carrier group is usually escorted by at least one submarine which have nuclear capabilities.

No other country really has the ability to project power period, Russia can't the Chinese can't, most NATO nations don't have enough supplies for limited engagement and very limited ability to operate even within the local theater (e.g. European forces required US tankers to refuel during Libya, they've also ran out of munitions and jet fuel within the first 3 days of the campaign).

So for the most part I don't see any country with a capability to even remotely threaten US superiority out side of MAD. Russia is completely limited, it's defacto a land locked country without a warm water port this is why they've tried to invade Korea 3 times since the 19th century. And also why NATO mostly overlooked Crimea because they've understood that's the last redline for Russia.

China well, China doesn't even has a joint command, they've never really went to war any where or conducted any military operations. Their military structure is ripe with corruption and every couple of years they lose one of their chiefs to some political investigation once they decide to take one bribe to many or too few.

Their expenditure per soldier is laughable, and their equipment although getting better is still decades behind the US and they've shown to have very little self reliant R&D capabilities, what they can't buy they steal which never results well.

The US Army is still the best professional Army in the world, while we all like to point and laugh that they mostly recruit white trash and immigrants their officers and senior NCO's hold probably the best toolkit of military education and experience in the world.

A U.S. carrier group?

A U.S. carrier group can bomb a country in the ground - a country like Iraq. The safest place for a U.S. carrier group when in a conflict with Russia or China is.... in the harbor at home.

Are U.S. Navy surface ships sitting ducks to enemies with modern weapons? http://www.johntreed.net/sittingducks.html

And by the way, the Falkland Islands war is one of the most underestimated, least understood wars in warfare. The next major conflict will only know two kinds of war ships - submarines and targets.

I'll see your biased source and raise you another. This one has nicer pictures. http://lexingtoninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/aircraft-ca...

Let's weigh them and see which one is a duck! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g

Good luck with that mate! http://theaviationist.com/2015/03/05/us-aircraft-carrier-sun...

About as many major conflicts ignited from fear and desperation as from territorial ambition. 90 years of US hegemony acted as an effective firewall that prevented countless conflicts, although bloody, from becoming regional or global wars. There is no record in history of any hegemonic power, League of Nations or even knights of Camelot bringing stability and security to the world as has the US. Celebrate your new multipolar world, if thats in fact the transition taking place. But I am with Hobbes on this one... Without a Leviathan we will descend into a state of nature where life is nasty, brutish and short. On this point, history sadly agrees.

The European concert and Pax Britannica worked quite well, also for roughly a century without a major war.

I hear you, but personally that strikes me as unduly pessimistic. Geopolitics is not a zero-sum game, the rise of one power does not necessarily come at the expense of another. Britain was eyeing the rising United States in 1900 as warily as the U.S. eyes China today, but the emergence of the U.S. as a world power eventually proved to be a development of great benefit to Britain.

No it didn't. It was just the least worst option. The other were USSR or the Axis.

Britain was beaten hard in the two wars.

The cultural differences between the US (especially in 1900 as you say) and Britain, and the US and China today are much more significant. I don't think these two periods are comparable.

I didn't say that it was inevitable that a rising China would have as good a relationship as the one that emerged between Britain and the U.S. In fact I would classify it as unlikely, precisely because America and China lack the cultural bonds. My point was more limited -- simply that waning hegemons always see rising challengers as great threats, which they don't always turn out to be.

EDIT: To see how the U.S.-U.K. alliance was not necessarily the sure thing it appears to be in hindsight, look into War Plan Red (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red). The U.S. actively maintained a strategic plan for fighting a war with Britain as late as 1939.

Geopolitics is not a 0sum game *for the US.

It is absolutely a 0sum game for China.

And what values or inalienable rights does China stand for? Self determination? Environmental protection? Protection of minorities, children, women? Perhaps... Yet there is zero evidence the rise of any world power other than the US that has brought about as much good in the world? There is evidence geopolitcs is very much a zero sum game for many nations.

speculation. you can't know what was prevented. the chains of events are too many and complicated to predict. but what is the end goal anyway? preventing conflicts is good, so your goal is limiting suffering? then also consider how much more suffering exists now because of US and see what is the net effect.

your assertion is equally speculative. the two things you say should be compared cannot concurrently be measured.

correct. I meant that even if we pretend we can measure these things, then at least try to measure the whole effect.

There is no objective measure that can encompass all. For example take Libya, under Gaddafi it enjoyed relative stability but individuals suffered from the regime. Now certain groups have more than what they had before, but as a whole Libya is in ruins and getting worse by the minute. How do you measure this impact? Is it unequivocally wrong because there is more visible suffering or is it right because there is a chance things will end up working out to less violence and more prosperity? (Which is far from guaranteed.)

These are philosophical discussions and large depend on your own perspective and bias in judging the outcomes.

My personal take is that some evidence exists in that last global open war with direct fighting on all fronts being 70+ years ago (WWII) the world is doing something right.

Edits to fix spelling.

bringing stability and security to the world

This is highly disputable. To the extent that it was true during the Cold War, it certainly isn't true post 9/11. The middle east is neither stable nor secure, and Russia has managed to start a deniable proxy war with the west by destabilising Ukraine and Syria resulting in a huge number of refugees.

Meanwhile US anti-drug and anti-communist efforts have left much of south America plagued with violence and recovering from dictatorships.

The thing that is holding the world together is cross-border trade. Both sides in the Ukraine are dependent on keeping the pipeline open, so they've not blown it up. China depends on exporting to the US. I'm not too worried about the Russians nuking London because half of it belongs to Russian oligarchs.

The last major war was WWII and no war since is comparable in terms of loss of life, cost adjusted to inflation or number of men at arms.

Stability as absence of conflict is a utopian measure. Stability as the truncation, resolution and containment of confict is a realistic measure attribuatable largely to the United States. Recent events and the US economic situation suggest the US cannot continue to play the same constructive role, and as such I fear greater instability is a certainty.

>suggest the US cannot continue to play the same constructive role

Tell me more about that constructive role in the Honduras coup as late as 2009.

How about stability as not initiating conflict, hardship and disruption, such as overthrowing Allende?

The scorecard for "truncation, resolution and containment" really does not look great. The unambiguous successes are probably just Yugoslavia and the UK's intervention in Sierra Leone.

Maybes: Kashmir, Afghanistan, Sudan?

Ongoing failures: Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, South America ("war on drugs") esp Mexico and Colombia, Libya, etc

Restating your argument: American is an arsonist and an incompetent global fire fighter who is responsible for resolving every local and regional conflict, corrupt goverment and ideological struggle. Yes, Russia, China and the UN will do much better job as American power declines. Brave new world.

This is somewhat deliberate. We have the resources to stay on top, but we have other priorities. During the cold war we spent 10% of our GDP on the military. These days it's more like 4%.

Personally I'd like to see the US pull back sharply from its global commitments. There's no reason for US troops in Germany or Japan or Korea.

There's no reason for the US to get involved in land disputes in the South China Sea. If the countries involved fight it out just let us know who wins so we can update our maps.

> There's no reason for US troops in Germany

Russia. (see: Ukraine)

> or Japan

China.

> or Korea

North Korea.

> There's no reason for the US to get involved in land disputes in the South China Sea

The problem is that the U.S. has longstanding treaty commitments guaranteeing the sovereignty of several other countries in that area, such as Taiwan and the Philippines, and significant trade relationships with others, such as Vietnam. A unilateral U.S. pullout from the region would therefore send the message to other nations we have defense treaties with (such as NATO members) that we can't be trusted to stand by our treaty obligations, which would weaken those relationships substantially.

Oh, there's a reason the Germans and the Japanese and the Koreans might want to have troops. There's just no reason for US troops to be there. WW II has been over for a long, long time.

If the Russians attack the Germans, or the Chinese attack the Japanese... why is that a problem for the US? We're not trying to contain global communism or fascism. We should be a friend to freedom everywhere, but not its guardian.

> If the Russians attack the Germans... why is that a problem for the US?

There is this treaty we signed in 1949 called the North Atlantic Treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty), in which we promised the Germans (and the other signatory nations) that we would consider an attack on them as an attack on ourselves. That promise is what underpins NATO, the alliance that is the foundation of American strategy in Europe.

We could tear that treaty up because the world is different now, but don't kid yourself that doing so wouldn't be a big deal. It would be a huge deal, arguably the biggest deal in European politics since the formation of the EU (and maybe even before that). And it would lead other nations we have signed treaties with to start wondering if we're going to be backing out of those too, weakening or terminating those relationships as well. Such fears could start a domino effect that unravels our security arrangements worldwide.

I tend to agree that these relationships need to be rethought -- I thought the 1990s push to expand NATO to include Ukraine, for instance, was irresponsible in that it rekindled the old Russian fear of being encircled by enemies -- but modifying or unwinding them will be a very, very delicate process, not to be undertaken lightly.

>There is this treaty we signed in 1949 called the North Atlantic Treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty), in which we promised the Germans (and the other signatory nations) that we would consider an attack on them as an attack on ourselves. That promise is what underpins NATO, the alliance that is the foundation of American strategy in Europe.

Which made perfect sense during the cold war. What doesn't make sense is we're still in NATO, or even that NATO exists at all. We should definitely leave the organization.

>It would be a huge deal, arguably the biggest deal in European politics since the formation of the EU (and maybe even before that).

Oh, absolutely. The Europeans would be really upset, since they'd have to spend more than 2% on their own defense. But... that's not really my problem, is it? How big is the Russian economy compared to the combined economy of the non-US NATO countries? If the Russians are in a position to dominate Europe from the position of relative economic weakness, who's fault is that?

Of course we should give them time to build their strength, so I'd wait six or seven years before striking the flag. That's plenty of time.

You refer to "the 1990s push to expand NATO to include Ukraine", what is that about?

>If the Russians attack the Germans

The EU crumbles. France and England have some very Polandesque choices to make. Scandinavia goes to war which, historically, can be rather frightening. The economic side would be devastating for the US economy. Many US citizens would get some pretty horrible content in their correspondence with family and friends.

>If the Chinese attack the Japanese

The tech industry is fucked, as two of the largest producers of parts and products shift their industrial capacity to a war footing, and the other big player is caught in between. If China went ham on Nippon, then Vietnam is next, and they would know it. Ditto for the Philippines. As the Island nations lock down, global shipping becomes a memory. Huge portions of the population in the US would watch as their families and ancestral homelands plunge into the dark and decay of a drawn out war.

Frankly, i feel like your post was Bait. Surely no one on this site is that ignorant of global trade, or what would happen if 3 of the five largest economies shifted from peace to war. The refugee wave, from either ocean, would be enough to wreck our little utopia.

I sincerely hope that, should push come to tactical shove, your group (the people that feel as you do) would be drastically outnumbered by the people who give a fuck about oaths, alliances, and friends.

but i wonder...

EDIT: reply limit reached.

You seem to have a very limited understanding of the interconnected nature of global economy, ruling regimes, and scattered family groups.

On top of this, it would appear that you are taking a theoretical approach to potential events that have a historical precedent.

The US is a service industry based economy. for better or for worse we are completely dependent upon global commerce. This notion that we can do everything we need to do is not impossible, or even improbable, it is just unfeasible. The same people that want America to be nice to everyone (whilst simultaneously cutting off our involvement globally... :|) are the same people that will shit their pants when their college degree does not get them out of working in fields and factories that are running night and day.

>The EU crumbles. France and England have some very Polandesque choices to make. Scandinavia goes to war which, historically, can be rather frightening. The economic side would be devastating for the US economy. Many US citizens would get some pretty horrible content in their correspondence with family and friends.

None of that constitutes a reason for the US to get involved militarily.

The idea we should put ourselves in the position of going to war with China because "the tech industry is fucked" is daft, in my opinion. The Japanese are quite capable of taking care of themselves, and they're quite capable of entering into regional security agreements.

>I sincerely hope that, should push come to tactical shove, your group (the people that feel as you do) would be drastically outnumbered by the people who give a fuck about oaths, alliances, and friends.

I sincerely hope we outnumber the people who think the US should be the guarantor of everyone else's peace and freedom. We should not be getting into other peoples' wars without a clear national interest of corresponding importance.

In terms of "oaths, alliances, and friends", well, countries do not take oaths and do not have friends. We do have alliances, but there's no dishonor in dissolving alliances as long as the other party has sufficient time to adjust.

EDIT:

>You seem to have a very limited understanding of the interconnected nature of global economy, ruling regimes, and scattered family groups.

You seem to have a bad habit in which you assume people who don't agree with you are either ignorant or stupid. I understand these things perfectly well. Probably better than you. I just don't think they're worth going to war over.

But you must realize that during such a war, the maximum economy possible in the US would be whatever can work without international trade, which would be comparable to 1900 or so.

S&P down 99+% would be a start. I don't think it matters much what job you have, if it's not farming you lose it. The dollar loses its value for paying for anything not locally produced. We lose any tmechnology that depends on overseas resources, meaning all of them. Meaning with the dollar seriously down, laptops, phones, ipads, tvs, cars, all would massively increase in price on top of that. And then there's oil ...

This wouldn't be a guarantee, but if history is a guide ...

>But you must realize that during such a war, the maximum economy possible in the US would be whatever can work without international trade, which would be comparable to 1900 or so.

So every country except the US is involved in this hypothetical war? Really?

If China attacks Japan, even assuming that drags in Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, and Indonesia that still leaves a whole lot of countries for us to trade with. The idea the S&P would drop by 99% is just daft.

Beyond that it's not like we can't get involved in a war once it starts if we decide it's in our interest to do so. War isn't like a comedy club where they shut the door once the act starts.

> So every country except the US is involved in this hypothetical war? Really?

Happened twice in the last century. Even South America was the least affected, but it wasn't unaffected, and it's not like they'd generate a huge amount of trade (compared to EU/Asia who would definitely be involved).

> If China attacks Japan, even assuming that drags in Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, and Indonesia that still leaves a whole lot of countries for us to trade with. The idea the S&P would drop by 99% is just daft.

Out of the 10 worst stock market crashes, 8 happened during WW2, 7 during the period where the US wasn't actively involved in the war. Depending on the date range you pick you could say it dropped 50% in absolute value, or you could say it stayed about constant. This was during a period with >10% average inflation ratio, so that's pretty fucking bad. "Real value" of the S&P500 (meaning "how many big macs you could buy" for index shares 1935 to 1950) dropped ~74%. And that's still ignoring the fact that many products simply became unavailable, because there was no way to safely acquire them from US soil, at which point price becomes a moot point.

This agrees with anecdotal evidence I heard from my grandfather : the beginning of WW2 (I think he means 1938-1939 onwards, when you could still delude yourself there was peace), there was no violence, there was simply a hell of a lot of people going unemployed very fast, shortages of all sorts of stuff, and a lot of rich people suddenly looking for jobs.

> Beyond that it's not like we can't get involved in a war once it starts if we decide it's in our interest to do so. War isn't like a comedy club where they shut the door once the act starts.

True, but at that point the consequences are a "fait accompli", history, and unchangeable. You don't ever want to get to that point if you can avoid it at all.

>Happened twice in the last century. Even South America was the least affected, but it wasn't unaffected, and it's not like they'd generate a huge amount of trade (compared to EU/Asia who would definitely be involved).

Well, okay. But we traded with (and made a hell of a lot of money from, frankly) the combatants until we entered the war.

>Out of the 10 worst stock market crashes, 8 happened during WW2, 7 during the period where the US wasn't actively involved in the war.

Temporary crashes in the stock market are just noise. Long term investors won't even notice. If a few traders go bust? Meh.

>True, but at that point the consequences are a "fait accompli", history, and unchangeable. You don't ever want to get to that point if you can avoid it at all.

We've done it before. Twice.

No, i honestly believe you are being willfully ignorant; specifically in this situation precisely because i assume everyone on here has a relatively high baseline of knowledge and experience.

Question: what is worth going to war over?

EDIT: more thoughts came to me.

I get the feeling, from rereading your posts, that you may be of the thought group that thinks war is never necessary and always avoidable. I must say that i find this line of thinking (whether you are a part of that group or not) is dangerously naive. The title Warmonger gets thrown at the US constantly. This makes the rash assumption that if any other nation were in the US's position they would comport themselves differently. The Chinese government loves that we cannot agree on the blueness of the sky or the wetness of water. They absolutely do want to take our place, and they are very comfortable with using 'appropriate' aggression. Their actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrate their intentions and resolve.

Having combat units stationed in strategic countries is a small price to pay for avoiding global conflicts. Due to the nature of the global economy, any shooting war between or among the Big 10 means a global crash.

I know this will be frowned upon, but in ASoIaF by J.R.R.Martin, the Night's Watch and The Wall serve as great metaphors for the necessity of vigilance.

>No, i honestly believe you are being willfully ignorant; specifically in this situation precisely because i assume everyone on here has a relatively high baseline of knowledge and experience.

Which is pretty much what I was thinking about you.

>Question: what is worth going to war over?

That's very situational. Obviously an attack on the US itself or US forces is something we would go to war over. We might reasonably go to war over a blockade. It was perfectly reasonable to go to war against Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.

What we should not do is get involved in other peoples' wars. We should not have been involved in Serbia, say, or Iraq. We should not get involved in Ukraine, or Estonia, or Poland or wherever else the Russians think they have casus belli.

>I get the feeling, from rereading your posts, that you may be of the thought group that thinks war is never necessary and always avoidable.

You should pay more attention to what you read and less to how you feel.

>Having combat units stationed in strategic countries is a small price to pay for avoiding global conflicts. Due to the nature of the global economy, any shooting war between or among the Big 10 means a global crash.

No. We should not be going to war over the economic byproduct of other peoples' wars. What's the justification? China attacks Japan, which makes anime more expensive, and therefor we're willing to go to war with China? Go ahead, connect the dots.

Incidentally, having combat units stationed around the world doesn't do much to avoid global conflicts. It just means we'll be involved.

>I know this will be frowned upon, but in ASoIaF by J.R.R.Martin, the Night's Watch and The Wall serve as great metaphors for the necessity of vigilance.

Isn't the man's first name "George"? This is me frowning upon the use of fiction to support a logical argument.

Are you suggesting that fiction cannot be logical? Sorry, i got his name conflated with J.R.R. Tolkien. This is me pokerfacing as you finger a cup of straws.

Your ignorance of military tactics renders this discussion pointless. Your statement, "Incidentally, having combat units stationed around the world doesn't do much to avoid global conflicts." when the entirety of the last half of the 20th century stands in direct opposition to your statement is what leads me to believe this.

I just sat through Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned professor, for two hours. Of all the drivel he spewed, his objection to military spending was the most aggravating. He says we spend to much money. When asked what would be a better amount, he says "(paraphrasing) I dont know less". when pushed to take a stance, he says something to the effect of "in the modern age there is no real need of a large military." He is working off of the relatively recent trend of remotely operated killing machines. If you asked him, separately, about the CIA drone program, i wonder if he would be supportive.

Regardless of our personal sentiments, time will tell. who knows, maybe your camp is right and the world will just be peaceful for the most part, and, when the increasingly rare occasion where a disagreement turns into a conflict they will fight honorably and under self imposed limits. Just like in Syria.

The question (which I wouldn't deign to answer) is whether having troops in those places actually makes any strategic difference one way or the other (see: Ukraine).

In Taiwan, at least, i think the answer is obvious.

You will notice that when Russia invaded Ukraine they took pains to disguise the fact that that is what they were actually doing: they limited their engagement to levels small enough to be explained away as contingents of patriotic volunteers ("little green men": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_%282014_Crime...) who rushed to Ukraine to support the pro-Russian government that had been turned out in the 2014 revolution.

This was almost certainly in order to make the intervention appear ambiguous enough to avoid provoking a NATO reaction. In the absence of a countervailing power, it's likely the invasion would have looked less tentative and more like Hungary 1956 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956) or Czechoslovakia 1968 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czecho...).

Those troops aren't there to fight. They're there to die so we have a justification to get involved in a war. The 40k US ground troops in Germany will have very little effect in a European war involving any of the major powers.

I believe that the author scratches the surface and never develops in a deeper reasoning about what we should expect from this century, what are the short and long term consequences and how they will affect global geopolitics and the current equilibrium.

The article only makes a flat "rise and fall" analysis, and even when presented with the opportunity to explore more interesting arguments (US vs India/China both from a military and economical standpoint, economical repercussions of a weaker army, geo-political consequences in Europe, etc), the author never chooses to do so.

I think that kind of analysis is what you use to fill books.

It is after all the Post-American would with the rise of the rest.

The USA has had an advantage after WW2 for not having anything destroyed in the war, and being able to out produce everyone else. There came many innovations in technology. The other nations buy that technology and now make that technology because the labor is cheaper over there.

The USA had a good economy in the 1990s during the startup bubble rising before it burst in 1999-2000. Good enough to build a military superiority. Sun/Oracle had government contracts to make military systems using their software. I worked as a federal contractor in 1996-1997 to help migration systems from ATCOM to MICOM to save money and move the aviation databases and systems down to the missile command base to save money and combine them so they could work on the drone program.

The drone is remote controlled and not AI based, it is very effective. No risk of our pilots in using them.

But the tech in other nations has caught up to match our military technology. We lost the superiority.

The same with NASA, lost the advantage there due to mismanagement and mistakes. No planned replacement for the space shuttle, have to hitch a ride to the ISS with the Russians. Still using rockets to put things into space.

Many one of the commercial space companies will also make a better fighter jet or something, who knows?

The 1950's through 1980's were a long four decades of wars since WW2. Any advantage going into the cold war shouldn't of carried through to the 90's. And we had little insight into soviet technology in the 80's, so who's to say the technology wasn't on par. Western culture, I think, means that technology is moved from military to public applications faster and was easier to see.

"Still using rockets to put things into space."

Is ... is there an alternative?

I think the OP was implying that the Space Shuttle (or some king of reusable replacement system) is/was better than traditional rockets. It was poorly worded if that is the case - reusable systems all use rockets and it isn't at all clear that they are better in any way.

Proposed? yes In use? no In addition to things like the space elevator, there are some really cool projects like this, http://escapedynamics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Escape-...

The article misses the elephant in the room; the US Dollar is in trouble.

To get some view into why, take a look at the emergence of the AIIB (China's equivalent of the World Bank) and take a look at the reasons why the US has been in negotiations in Iran (Just about nuclear proliferation? There's a bit more to it... http://youtu.be/hs_2zzNyP_M ).

In short, the strength of the US Dollar is seen by quite a few people to be based on its position in international trade, and this position is being challenged (past challenges have led to wars, but that's not going to work for much longer, unless the US intends to start WW3). If the funding base is taken away, the US military is unlikely to remain the dominant force it is today.

Kind of puts the TTIP/TTP/TISA deals into a new perspective too, international deals to reassert the US position by boosting the role of big business.

Yeah I don't think so. You'd have to be a mad men to bet against the US Dollar short term (couple of decades). After that who knows!

It'd only take a few of the oil producing nations to start trading in a different currency. Back in the year 2000 one of those countries started trading oil in Euros. That country was Iraq. What was one of the first actions taken by the US after the US asserted control over Iraq? Replacing the Euro with US Dollars for oil sales.

If one country doing this is enough to spook the US, what does that tell you? Furthermore, this has not been an isolated incident, other oil-rich countries have threatened to leave the US Dollar behind and have faced instability shortly after (Libya, Syria, etc...).

I agree with you. Also, in addition to AIIB, I think that Russia and Japan are setting up some sort of international money clearing house.

I am a USA citizen and I think it is in our best national interest to pull back a bit from the world stage. Nothing too extreme, just close a good fraction of our foriegn military bases and bring our troups home. We could still rapidly deploy if for example a close ally was invaded and needed our help. Troups returning to the USA would be very helpful in working on infrasturcture, etc. I think this would be fair to them as long as they got the same standard of living and benefits.

The US/China relationship going significantly south would have, umm, interesting consequences. Would Wal-Mart survive? How much better would the US financial position be if all of the Chinese holdings are abrogated? What is China's political stability if the flow of money was interrupted? How can the west resurrect a tech manufacturing sector (or any manufacturing sector)?...

It goes on and on. Given the inter-connectedness of the world vs. the isolationism/autarky of the 30's the impact of conflict is magnified. Yes, countries could recreate the various "changes" of the 20th century, but that's not a quick process. And Paul Kennedy would (has?) argue that the US today and Britain in 1900 are quite similar.

Edit/addition: The US political system is currently broken. However, it has shown amazing resiliency when faced with an external threat. I would be willing to bet that few will care what a Kentucky clerk says if it's Sputnik all over again. And there's several strong military traditions in Europe which bear remembering.

> Would Wal-Mart survive?

You seem to say this hinting at trading with China would be significantly reduced. I think we need to worry less about Walmart and more about where everyone will get their stuff

How is America's military supremacy fading? Last time I checked we still have plenty of nuclear weapons

Military supremacy means being able to effectively project power around the world. The article states that this capability is declining.

US nukes was a response at the time late 1940s early 1950s to the reality that adversaries had armies in the millions..

As the US Air and Navy became more powerful in projecting power our nuke weapons became somewhat ineffective..which explains why we signed SALT I and SALT II treaties to reduce nukes..

But even today those with millions of soldiers in armies still lack the air power and naval power to project that powerful army...

Correct. The author also draws a distinction between "supremacy" and "superiority." The former means an overwhelming and almost unchecked ability to impose our will militarily across the globe. The latter means a comparative advantage over our would-be competitors. We are exiting an anomalous and short-lived period in history in which we enjoyed supremacy, and we are entering a period in which we will likely enjoy superiority. This is a relative decline, not an absolute decline.

Will US have superiority though? The pentagon has the uncanny ability to re-fight the last war.

Why is F-35 even existing - you could raise a 100 drones for the price of each (or a 1000 with economy of scale) and just saturate any defense. And you couldn't care less if you lose 99% of them if the objectives are met.

Their reasoning is that f-35 is nuclear capable, whereas the current drones aren't officially. It's not a good reason though, if it came down to it, subs with nukes would be more effective than aircraft.

After the Syrian Red Line and the Invasion of Crimea, very few regimes around the world feel like the US is capable of dropping the hammer.

Once your kid figures out that your post-modern pop-psychology prohibits you from actually disciplining them, it is only a matter of time before your instruction and reproof transmogrifies into Schultzian Honking. Once upon a time, America was a bully with smart friends. But we let those smart friends convince us that our bully tendencies where the problem.

I wonder what the thought leaders in Liberal Europe will have to say about chinese hegemony.

I disagree with this. The U.S. military has no single conventional opponent that can reasonably oppose it, anywhere in the world. Keep in mind this article is coming out after the U.S. simultaneously engaged in two decade-long wars simultaneously while still maintaining continuous presence in Asia, Europe and with hardly a blip on the economic radar in the U.S. During WW2, the U.S. shifted virtually the entire economy to a war footing, and outproduced land, sea and air vehicles and munitions of several other combined nations. The U.S. spends a remarkably small fraction of GDP on war goods at present, but history shows that when it gears up in one direction, it can rapidly turn into a highly militaristic society.

In fact, the U.S. military is optimized for external operations and force projection, home turf is not the kind of advantage it was throughout history. There is no tactical position on the planet that a conventional military can assume that the U.S. cannot effectively target. Americans have absolute dominion of the skies, with a multi-phased air force that can erode even highly fortified air defense systems. American missiles can be launched from ships, submarines, mobile launchers and so on and can strike, soften or destroy armored stationary armored targets. American armor is so advanced, and numerous, that it can fight in the middle of a chem-bio weapons attack, while on the move, take multiple armor piercing rounds, and still fight. American foot soldiers are heavily armed and armored. They're among the best trained in tactical fighting, and can fight in open battles to urban landscapes equally well.

In unit on unit fights, the American military almost always absolutely dominates. The Officer corps is trained at some of the finest military schools in the world, with lessons on logistics, strategy and tactics that span lessons learned from thousands of years of history. The schools are so good, the other countries send their officers there for training. Americans are pragmatic fighters, without doctrine of fighting to the last man or always pushing ahead. It doesn't waste time training for tough-man parlor tricks. There's minimal shame in retreating because it just means you can fight again tomorrow.

On the flip side, the U.S., despite having huge borders, is a virtual fortress. Two huge oceans means any non-American invader needs to project massive military power around half the planet, something no other country can do. Once here, the U.S. is packed full of military bases with something like more than a million active duty soldiers, most of which are veterans of overseas campaigns -- the U.S. has almost been continuously at war since its founding. There's around another 800,000 reservists. Something like between 30-40% of all Americans have been in the military at one time or another. Beyond that, there's another 70million fit for duty and there are as many guns in America as there are people. This is a military of volunteers, people chose to join.

The problem is that conventional wars aren't what's likely to happen. The U.S. maintains a massive conventional force, but also has decades of practice fighting unconventional wars against guerrilla-style tactics. It's not optimized for it, so it doesn't do it very well, but it's further along that route than virtually anybody else -- for example, American air power now has a non-trivial percentage of unmanned, long-dwell, drones, that are increasingly armed and capable. The need to fight against conventional air forces is dwindling.

Going forward, the U.S. is going towards unmanned drones, either autonomous or piloted from thousands of miles away, exoskeleton and armored enhanced ground troops, autonomous tactical walking ground units, auto-aiming and firing weapons, enhanced mesh sensor networks, directed energy weapons, rail guns, higher precision munitions, hyper-spectral computer vision enhanced vision systems, live tactical coordinating AI, advanced 3d models of entire countries down to cm-level precision, simulation systems that can predict everything from enemy sniper locations to how many GPS satellites you're nav system will be able to see from this position in a city, blocked by these buildings, 12 hours into the future.

The U.S. is conceivably 3-5 generations ahead of everybody else on the planet in terms of technology and techniques and is on a path of bringing to bear this future technology without having to put a single American on foreign soil. Even U.S.-level advanced militaries like Britain and Australia are no longer able to keep up. Hyper-advanced economies like South Korea license 2-generation older fighter planes, which are outfitted with lesser avionics and radar systems.

The U.S. still struggles against asymmetric tactics, but its catching up fast. SOF units are developing tactics and are training specifically to counter asymmetric enemies. A combination of intelligence and precision strikes, theories of human organization and communications, anti-enemy-logistics, anti-improvised, anti-etc. If the U.S. can cover conventional and asymmetric warfare reasonably well, there's no force on the planet that can withstand it, not conceivably in the next few generations.

The rise of other powers is more likely to bring Americans out of the complacency of the 90s, and reinvigorate military development and maintenance, not threaten it.

But not the budget

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