Keys to winning high intensity conflicts | Hacker News Reader

Keys to winning high intensity conflicts

austinvernon.site

65 pointsmhb158 comments

Seems like a like of armchair general theory-crafting without much substance. Yeah, a $75,000 gravity bomb with some form of guidance to target ships is cheaper than a cruise missile, but a bomber capable of getting within range of a carrier group to drop such a bomb is far more expensive than the cruise missile.

And it misses the single most important rule of war: weapons don't win wars, logistics does. See Russia's failed push on Kiev last year for an example of this, or Germany for the entire eastern front of WW2.

..and this is why the American war machine is so effective. Their logistics are absolutely amazing.

You know who else is really really good at Logistics? China.

> who else is really really good at Logistics? China.

This remains to be seen. Over-the-horizon logistics are a different beast. China shares Russia’s lot in being a land power. Adapting those lines of communication to long-distance force projection across oceans, something that comes naturally to a maritime power like America (at the cost of raw power), is incredibly difficult.

> You know who else is really really good at Logistics? China.

What do you base this on? And how does it translate to potential military engagements?

They have an enormous civilian shipping fleet, some of which has been designed to meet military requirements. For example, China has a good number of RoRo car ferries which also incorporate military requirements, and even participate in military exercises [1]

[1] https://news.usni.org/2022/09/28/chinese-launch-assault-craf...

How does this translate to logistics? Are you saying during a war these boats will be effectively coordinated logistical supply elements?

Yes. The US does the same with commercial ships[1] and aircraft[2]. Interestingly, in the case of the US, part of the payment for providing this service is priority access to government contracts during peacetime. Which is doubly great for the government - no extra cost beyond operating cost, and the capability is regularly exercised even in peacetime.

[1] https://www.maritime.dot.gov/national-security/strategic-sea... + https://www.maritime.dot.gov/national-security/strategic-sea...

[2] https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045...

Yup! That's how the Allies won WWII - the British Empire had an amazing civilian naval logistics machine. The US had insane industrial capacity (which got juiced by the war!). Over the course of the War the US basically took over that logistics capacity and by the end of it replaced the British Empire.

China have a similarly amazing capacity - the likes of aliexpress are more capable than anything I've seen in Europe. For consumers it's only Amazon who come close.

In a total war situation all of that capacity and - importantly - the deep knowledge - are used for the war effort.

How would China use these boats during a hypothetical war?

To transport troops, vehicles, and equipment to Taiwan. Read the linked article.

China could use these ships as described, but they’d first have to disable Taiwanese defenses and keep the US out of the area, in which case the war is already over. If China were to just send boats like these across the straight without the prior conditions being settled, they’d be sunk and sunk easily since they’re defenseless. Seems like fear mongering to me.

Or to use the infrastructure for a landwar. The "boats" are extremely important part of the logistics chain but there are also rail, road, warehouses etc etc.

In a land war the boats would be moving raw resources to feed their industrial machine, just as they are now.

Shanghai's cold chain failures during the pandemic would seem to disagree, in one small aspect.

Also, the Red Army's logistical skills are not de facto inherited from the civilian population's. Significant hand-over and training would be needed.

Still, yeah, a lot better than the kleptocracy of Russia. Man, they still don't have forklifts. How the hell did we think they were anything?

They thought they were still tough. We can make our own assessments, and we can hack or bribe their officials to get their take -- but if they think they're hot shit, what are we to expect?

And it's clear that they did indeed think they were hot shit: their planning, and eventual failures, reflected that.

If the Russian Army itself didn't think it had a problem, why would foreign intelligence?

Also, they have a large and still functional industrial base.

US industrial production is at or near all-time highs, no?

Tim Cook: “In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields"

And that story repeats all the way up and down the supply chain. In WW II the USA was basically China- they had a thick supply chain from raw materials up, and could spin up factories because they had experienced people who could bring along new employees. We still think of ourselves as being that country but we're not, and a new serious war would play out with a very different script.

In dollar volume yes. In mass of materiel, or flexibility, less so.

There was a great econtalk episode that I can never dig up claiming that even that was mostly about hedonic adjustments for the quality of Intel chips.

> Improved optics and computing allowed the M1 to fire inexpensive shells accurately for thousands of meters

I don't buy it. Optics and computing might well help but you're still dealing with crappy data like quantity and quality of the propellant that throws the shell and you can't account for that. Accuracy of unguided shells doesn't seem high -

"An unguided shell will normally land within 267 meters of where it is aimed at maximum howitzer range (18 kilometers)." (https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20171104.as...) And of the estimates I've come across, this is one of the more generous in accuracy claimed. Guided shells by comparison aren't cheap -

"at $68,000 per [excalibur] shell compared to an $800 unguided M777 shell," (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur)

There's a huge difference between an M1's high-velocity direct fire weapon firing unitary ammunition at 4km, and a howitzer pushing shells with bagged propellant indirectly at 18km. The author is referring to the accuracy of the former.

ISWYM, yep

> Even if the Russians got to fight in their perfect scenario of an artillery slugfest, the US Army could still defeat the fully-mobilized Soviet Union. US artillery and armor could cut down any combination of human waves and simple tank attacks the Soviets could manage.

Important asterisk- this war was never fought and this is all speculation.

Also, the European NATO/Soviet theatre was supposed to be faught in a nuclear hellscape. The reason BMPs and T-72s are so flimsy, is not because they are "bad". They were designed to be used with ABC packages and crawl through corridors already nuked "clean" by nuclear artillery. Even NATO anti-tank helicoptors would have a hard time going in when there at any moment could be a nuclear fireball in your path.

We will never find out if they are any good for what they were designed. Most of them are destroyed now.

Furthermore this would have changed or been different depending on what stage of the Cold War you were in.

Draw downs, shifts to hard fighting in Vietnam, stripping US divisions to supply Israeli forces during the YK War, etc. would have seen very different scenarios play out if shooting started in Europe.

By the time of Able Archer it's likely that NATO would have been able to (eventually) outfight USSR/WARPACT forces, but not without huge losses and devastation -- and maybe nuclear war.

You are just speculating that its speculation, reality is fundementally unknowable.

> The US won World War II

Oh here we go again. It's Allies who won.

Yes, USSR would not have won WW2 without immense supplies from the US, but they suffered the most. Many European countries, and I'm not sure US would win without USSR.

Of course now in Russia they teach that USSR won it almost on its own, and barely even mention the Pacific theater.

> Many European countries, and I'm not sure US would win without USSR.

Many wouldn't have been invaded either.

wow is drone warfare going to go under RAPID evolution, but...

https://austinvernon.site/blog/starshipsuperweapon.html

Nuts and bolts: if the economics mature Starship can deliver kinetic weaponry that is more effective and cheaper than any major artillery round within 30 minutes of anywhere in the world.

... that makes big assumptions about achieving 10$/kg, but likely with the capabilities it enables, the pentagon would be happy with 50-100$/kg.

Starship is a pure economic strategic weapon. It is very difficult to engineer some sort of launch platform with such (purported) economics. While the US is usually the one playing loss leader in weapons usage, Starship would reverse this against any nation state.

It's not just artillery, imagine drones and troop delivery in 30-60 minutes around the world.

BUT, we'll see. Orbital test of Starship missed 2022, it's supposed to be attempted soon?

Starship also enables orbital battle platforms with the mass it can load.

Alas, militarization of space seems inevitable. One of the fermi filters? everyone has nukes, someone gets to space, and has strategic nuke delivery advantage (you can delivery a nuke from orbit to surface a lot faster than an intercontinental arc), that may trigger the nuke exchange before the space militarization finances a piggybacked space economy.

> imagine drones and troop delivery in 30-60 minutes around the world.

To win the fight, you have to get to the fight. Starship re-entry would be challenging in contested air space.

> Starship also enables orbital battle platforms with the mass it can load.

Some ball bearings in a counter-orbit would be a good asymmetric countermeasure.

> Some ball bearings in a counter-orbit would be a good asymmetric countermeasure.

Artificial Kessler syndrome probably the cheapest superweapon available. Probably won't require even an unreasonable amount of bearings. Just enough to shred some satellites do generate more shrapnel.

I need to dig into this more cause I generally dislike kinetic weapons cause they are overhyped. But I have a few issues.

Starship needs to launch, drop, projectiles, and then land. The problem is without of cross range fuel, it is likely to come within range of the enemy. Who will shoot it down and out the cost of whole Starship.

He mentions guidance but guidance is a huge problem with hypersonic missiles and orbital would be worse. Anti-ship are right out but GPS guided is probably doable.

He also mentions projectiles but it might be projectile. The problem is that it takes a large projectile to make it to Earth since smaller ones burn up. Smaller things can return from orbit but they use heat shields to slow down; ICBM warheads slow down to Mach 10. I haven't seen any studies about how projectile needs to make it down.

Also, using Starship like this is really destabilizing. It looks like a reusable ICBM. Starship can carry hundreds of nuclear warheads. Them coming down looks like a first strike. The enemy has to assume that they are nuclear not kinetic. This is why ideas of conventional ICBM for prompt strike fail cause of the risk.

> It is also challenging to produce and transport the mind-boggling mass inaccurate weapons require.

“Garden path sentence.”

how so? is "mass inaccurate weapons" a term I'm unfamiliar with?

It’s hard to partially parse the sentence until the very end. If you remove the word “require”, then “mass” seems more likely to be an adjective, along the lines of “mass destruction” or “mass casualty”.

Inserting a “that” would help. …mass that inaccurate…

It is also challenging to produce and transport the mind-boggling mass THAT inaccurate weapons require.

The sheer mass of steel and explosives that have to run on railways to the Ukrainian front means inevitable shell-hunger. The war is being fought in a kind of slow-motion since materiel is the limiting reagent. I found the author's explanation helpful to find the wisdom in the fancy high-tech US path.

If you really didn't read this as "the mind-boggling mass that inaccurate weapons require", QED.

I saw the title "The Weapons That Win World Wars" and was expecting a list or some information about weapons that won world wars. This does not appear to be that.

You don't "win" a world war in the nuclear era. Everyone loses, guaranteed.

India and Pakistan fought a war in 1999 despite both sides having nuclear weapons, if I'm not mistaken

Afghanistan won a war against both nuclear powers, first against the UDSSR, later against the USA.

when I see statements like this I suspect (disclaimer - I have zero knowledge, apart from reading the news) that america lost the war and definately not.. Afganistan won the war, due to fact there was politics involved in setting the objectives

lets face it, if america REALLY wanted to win at all costs (like the british did) Afganistan would be a complete and utter wasteland - but the political costs would have been too high

But America didn't want to destroy Afghanistan. America wanted to permanently install a western-style Democracy that was generally friendly to the U.S. and would keep Al-Qaeda out, without the presence of significant numbers of U.S. troops. This IMO was probably not an achievable objective.

My non-expert impression is that, largely due to the geography and economics of Afghanistan (extremely rough terrain, very little transportation infrastructure, not a lot of money), the basic unit of organization of power is naturally a valley or some similar geographically isolated area. Trying to institute any strong central government, particularly one that aims to significantly change traditional societal values is an extremely difficult proposition.

I remember this Reddit thread from years and years ago that sadly I can't find anymore, where they were asking soldiers that had been to Afghanistan what surprised them most. One guy said "I was surprised by the number of people I met in Afghanistan that had never heard of Afghanistan." Another guy talked about being in a village about 40 miles from Kandahar and he said most people there were generally aware that Kandahar existed, but few had even ever been there.

> I remember this Reddit thread from years and years ago that sadly I can't find anymore, where they were asking soldiers that had been to Afghanistan what surprised them most. One guy said "I was surprised by the number of people I met in Afghanistan that had never heard of Afghanistan." Another guy talked about being in a village about 40 miles from Kandahar and he said most people there were generally aware that Kandahar existed, but few had even ever been there.

In a different life I used to be in the USMC, and when I was over there I remember doing a patrol to a remote Afghan village vaguely near Kandahar. We were worried they'd hate us or already have ambushes in place. Instead they were kinda surprised that we even bothered to come out, and were vaguely curious.

My translator, a used-car salesman from Northern VA of Pashtun extraction, had trouble speaking to them -- they had a thick accent. Think Appalachian redneck accent, but Middle-Eastern. There was a moment of confusion when we asked if they'd seen any trucks or cars coming through -- they didn't know what a car was. They'd seen trucks -- like Toyota Hilux, Ford Rangers, etc. -- but had never seen a car. Same with aircraft: they absolutely knew what a helicopter was, but what was a jet?

My boss was convinced that they were fucking with us, but our translator was fairly confident these guys were just isolated hicks. We drank a few cups of tea, asked what they needed, and GTFO fairly quickly. I couldn't shake the feeling they were playing games, and everyone was a little on alert, waiting for the inevitable ambush as we left. But nothing happened.

Incredible. Now I remember another amazing comment from that thread. One of the guys said he ran into an Afghani that was asking why they were back after a long time, and it turned out he thought they were the Russians!

Almost no war is won by entirely defeating the opponent. Most wars end because the costs of continuing the war exceed the acceptable threshold for one party. The Taliban got what they fought for - they won. (Whether the Taliban represent the majority of the Afghan Population is a separate matter)

I agree, but a lot of people seem to confuse the fact that america "losed the war" from a political perspective from a technical perpective

people did not 'buy' in to the reason of invading iraq. but from a technical angle america could have obliterated the entire countries of both iraq/ afganistan with out nukes - something USSR could not have done

>Almost no war is won by entirely defeating the opponent

no convential / historic war has been done like this - yes. but newer weapons / tech could do this. again in theory with the correct politics.

Russia has given the world a bit of a wake up. China seems to have bought in to this crazy thinking (I've always thought that China is not very foward thinking) and they do have the politics and tech to wipe out countries like russia wanted to do with UKR

Pretty confusing, it lost it, "could" and technical perspective don't help that - and I doubt that could is even close to certain.. unless you mean they could have gone nuclear and killed everyone?

> Afganistan won the war, due to fact there was politics involved in setting the objectives

That's called winning the war.

"World war" being the operative term. Border skirmishes are not.

Not so fast. The US, having absolute dominance in conventional weaponry, has no reasons to start using nukes first. Only an underdog needs to resort to nukes. But China does not have enough nukes to attack America. America has ballistic missile defense, it's not perfect, but enough to make a first strike by China a pretty nonsensical idea: it would not result in mutually assured destruction, only in self-assured destruction.

China has more than enough nukes to end the US in any meaningful way. A study from the 1950s Britain concluded that hitting 5-10 coastal cities -- which also have most of the population and most of the shipping -- would effectively end the economy and annihilate the population. Most of China's population would be vaporized in retaliation; most of the US population would just starve to death.

There has been a lot of work in alternative massive destruction techniques.

Detonate a few nukes off the coast and cause a tsunami -- how's missile defense going to stop that? Satellite weapons -- "rods from god" -- are probably a thing to some degree. Or as mentioned, balloons.

And who needs nukes when $50 worth of rail road derailing tools can cause a multi-million dollar catastrophe that will poison an entire water table?

A Chinese spy balloon with enough payload for a nuke enters the chat

Oh. I was hoping for tips on communication in high-stakes "conflicts."

The horniness for war machines on this site has just gotten too extreme in the last year. Y'all need to stop fantasizing about the killing machines for entertainment it's bad for your soul.

A year ago a war broke out in Europe—it's still happening. Worldwide that has caused an increased interest in war and technologies associated with it.

Indeed. Two years ago an interest in tanks and artillery shells was about last on my list, almost a historical curiosity. But suddenly I've become extremely interested, as it's become one of the top geopolitical focus points of our time.

But "horniness for war machines" is as far from the truth as you can get. It's really just an interest in what it takes to preserve democracy. We can go for decades of peace and forget that sometimes preserving democracy really does depend on tanks and bullets, when an autocrat decides to attack.

Preserving democracy?

Ah yes, those fine captains of industry from the Military Industrial Complex. Deeply enmeshed in the fabric of Washington policy and always acting for the benefits of freedom and democracy.

"A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes." - Smedley Butler

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that even if you have no intention to fight a war, an aggressive neighbor may have other ideas, so you don't have a choice other than being ready for it, if you want to continue existing as an independent country.

How you're ready for it can vary, but deterrence by having better weapons is one effective way. In the best case, it works and you don't have a war. And if it doesn't, you still have better weapons to end the war - and preferably keep it on the enemy's territory so the destruction happens there and not in your country.

Right now, Ukraine has its cities leveled, while Russia is (with a few exceptions) "only" losing military gear and personnel.

I agree. My point was that democracy has little to do with which nations the US chooses to defend. Moreover, 'peace' is essentially the continuity of economic imperialism and the maintenance of its hegemony - regardless of how inequitable that may be for everyone else.

While this is an undergraduate take, it doesn't discount it from being true.

> even if you have no intention to fight a war

"Crimea would be Ukranian or deserted"

But of course you never heard that.

Ukrainian maritime capability is another point but again you never knew anything abou that.

I'm often intrigued by the use of passive voice in language. This is a particularly interesting one to me. I don't mean this as a criticism of samsolomon. I just find language and its connection to thought and action interesting.

A war did something, as if all by itself. That expression contains so much dangerous obfuscation, but also potential for insight. Russia attacked Ukraine, and in this way "a war broke out".

In the parent comment, the details are not the point. The passive voice serves well to get to the point the author is trying to make. Yet at the same time it reinforces the point to which the author is responding. It glosses over the horror of the war so that we can get to the interesting parts.

>Russia attacked Ukraine

This is accurate, but it isn't the war being fought and it is hardly the first volley.

Ukraine is a mostly unwilling participant in a much larger game. If you choose a most peculiar and narrow view regarding the nature of this conflict, it seems somewhat obtuse to question another comments "voice"

The war started in 2014, with the invasion of Crimea and the Dobnas. The 2022 invasion was an escalation.

  > The war started in 2014, with the invasion of Crimea and the Dobnas.

That's what started it? Any idea what happened the day before the invasion of Crimea?

The Ukrainian president was overthrown for trying to increase ties with Russia?

Which doesn't really justify Russian troops invading (albeit without uniforms) to annex parts of Ukraine.

He was overthrown because he didn't kowtow deeply enough in EU negotiations. As in, they wanted to install full-blown IMF-style austerity and privatization of public assets, and they wanted to do it all yesterday. Yanukovich tried to go slower and bargain for more aid and less austerity. He thought they might come back with a counter-offer. Nuland and her masters grew impatient with EU negotiators, then chose a different option...

This is the point in the discussion at which we usually suffer tired invocations of "Ukrainians had agency!" Sure they did, but if we had polled even the most violent of the protesters as to whether they wanted to import enough NATO weapons to cause a war with Russia, very few of them would have agreed. (Probably more would have agreed that it was good to start killing Russian-speakers in Donbas? Well if the poll was taken in Kiev.) Ukraine was a weak polity, without the sort of solidarity required to resist American (and Russian) exploitation of civic divisions. Maybe they imagined that they would escape the fates of similar polities in Hungary, Georgia, Afghanistan, etc. They have not.

I have found this article to be a good debunker on the above talking point: https://www.thebulwark.com/what-really-happened-in-ukraine-i...

That apologia might be more convincing if the word "NATO" appeared anywhere? Every time Putin speaks, he complains about NATO expansion into Ukraine and the resulting missiles pointed at his house from minutes away.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/70565

NATO is just an excuse, even die-hard Russian nationalists like Girkin don't take that seriously and openly mock his constant whining about NATO.

Bullshit. You could replace Putin with any other Russian politician, and their opposition to encirclement by a pact motivated by opposition to Russia would remain. Care to cite anyone we've heard of and not because they murdered a bunch of air passengers?

At the time, not even Putin himself opposed Eastern European countries joining NATO. A few days after further 7 countries in Eastern Europe officially became full members of NATO, Putin met with German Chancellor Schröder and raised no concerns, and even told the press that "every country can choose their security".

The official statement from the Kremlin:

> Russia has not expressed any fears for its own security over NATO expansion. However, said the President, Russia will design its defence policy with due account of the fact that NATO is moving closer to its borders. Modern threats cannot be removed by increasing the number of NATO member countries, the President noted. However, Russia’s relations with the North Atlantic alliance were developing in a positive way. The Russian head of state expressed hope that any issues that arose would be solved within the Russia-NATO Council. -- http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/30678

Not a word about being under threat by NATO, "reckless NATO expansion", "encirclement" or "broken promises", all of which were invented after Putin consolidated power and his policy shifted towards conquering the former Eastern Bloc countries to restore the lost empire.

Do you think the world has changed much in the 20 years since then?

No. The security architecture of Europe remained the same until Russia started the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. No new signifcant NATO members, no significant troop or weapon deployments, no policy changes. Cold War stockpiles were dismantled to cut costs and NATO was so stagnant that French president Macron even called it braindead.

Well that's the problem, you're wrong to think nothing has changed in 20 years. The world is a very different place. So your assumption is incorrect and that helps explain your position.

When you find yourself in a position where you have no arguments left other than calling names, you might want to consider that you are wrong.

Alright, in the interests of educating I would point out that the US financed and fomented a coup in Ukraine in 2014 to install a pro-US government, which then lead to the Constitution of Ukraine being rewritten so that NATO membership was back on the board.

That's a pretty big fucking change. Imagine Mexico or Canada suddenly having a pro-Chinese government installed and the CCCP forming a military alliance with them. You think the US might see that as a threat? Oh but this is different because the US can be trusted not to interfere abroad lol..

Meanwhile, the people in Crimea and the Donbass region being heavily Russian did not want any part of that CIA-backed Western interventionism that we've used to destroy vast parts of the world. Crimeans then voted to be annexed to Russia while Donetsk and Luhansk tried to break away as independent of Ukraine. The people in these regions DO NOT want to be a US puppet and that shouldn't be hard for us to understand considering our track record. Not that Russia's track record is much better, but at least they associate themselves with Russia. Better the devil you know as they say.

So then the US-backed government in Kiev who has been at war with their own citizens in Donbass and killing them for 8 years decided to cut off the water to Crimea and run their reservoirs dry, leading up to the invasion last year.

Remember this next time you hear our fucking talking heads on CNN & FOX News parrot the same "totally unprovoked invasion" talking point.

Which countries in the world do not recognize the current government of Ukraine and all preceding governments since 2014 as the legitimate governments of Ukraine?

Which countries recognize the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk?

If both answers are "Russia, Syria and North Korea", then I'd re-evaluate my views if I were you. The unprecedented international isolation of Russia and the total lack of support for its narratives speaks for itself.[1][2] Even Taliban voted against Russia, and I don't think anyone could argue that they have much sympathy towards "CIA-backed Western interventionism".

[1] https://gdb.voanews.com/01bd0000-0aff-0242-c65b-08d9fd1b1991...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...

  > Which countries recognize the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk?

Which countries recognize Kosovo, and now tell me how that's different? Hint: because we said so. And that's it.

Also, I love how you claimed nothing has changed in the last 20 years and then didn't refute a single thing I said showing how wrong you are, because you can't. We were behind a coup on their border and we pretend to be surprised that the Russkis didn't like it? lol k

There is nothing to refute. Kosovo is recognized by 101 UN members (out of 193). The narrative you described is a fiction that nobody in the world shares, not even Belarus is fully behind it (doesn't recognize LNR and DNR).

  > There is nothing to refute.

Well no, it's a fact that we were behind the coup. The question is why wouldn't you think it's obvious that Russia would have a problem with that?

It's also a fact that Kiev cutoff the water supply to Crimea. The question is, why wouldn't you think it's obvious that Russia would have a problem with that?

So knowing this, how can you say the response from Russia was "totally unprovoked" when we did everything we could to provoke it?

Also, the only difference between Kosovo being recognized by more countries is because the US wants it that way, and we get our way in the UN with most countries. But Kosovo doesn't deserve independence any more than the people of the Donbas, do they?

> Well no, it's a fact that we were behind the coup.

There was no coup and no-one recognizes it as such.

> It's also a fact that Kiev cutoff the water supply to Crimea. The question is, why wouldn't you think it's obvious that Russia would have a problem with that?

Don't invade other countries and you won't have to deal with such issues.

> the only difference between Kosovo being recognized by more countries is because the US wants it that way

The US is not all-powerful and has a long history of initiatives that have failed to gain traction despite best efforts to build support. But never before has Russia been in such international isolation. No-one besides Syria and North Korea find their narrative convincing.

Why no-one supports Russia, not even countries that are usually sympathetic?

  > There was no coup and no-one recognizes it as such.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/event/2014-coup-ukraine

https://truthout.org/articles/the-ukraine-mess-that-nuland-m...

https://archive.is/ysr3B

https://www.salon.com/2022/02/02/in-the-rapidly-worsening-uk...

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/01/azov-f01.html

https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia...

https://progressive.org/latest/us-reaping-sowed-in-ukraine-b...

..and on and on. Also, we have a long history of these shenanigans in Ukraine going back decades, see - https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/11/covert-ope...

  > Don't invade other countries and you won't have to deal with such issues.

Crimeans voted to be annexed to Russia. Are we not supporting their right to self-determination? Let me guess, this is different?

Also, when you talk about not invading other countries do you not realize the irony of that when we have invaded more countries in the last 50 years than the rest of the world combined?

> we

I am not "we the US". I was born in the USSR and I live in Eastern Europe.

> ..and on and on.

You can write anything you want on a website. Mafia shot Kennedy. Moon landing was faked. Covid doesn't exist. It doesn't make it true. Nor is salon.com authoritative source for assessing legitimacy of a government. I've set the benchmark to how many UN members endorse the view, and Russia has unprecedented lack of support for their current narrative, be it the illegitimacy of Ukraine's government, independence of LNR and DNR, or the Crimean referendum.

> Crimeans voted to be annexed to Russia. Are we not supporting their right to self-determination? Let me guess, this is different?

Again, virtually no-one recognizes it. The majority of United Nations, 100 countries, voted for a resolution calling this a mock referendum. Only 11 countries opposed: Russia, Syria, North Korea and a few other failed states.

The only argument you could possibly come up with is that for a decade, the US has somehow managed to force the whole world against Russia, from tiny Pacific island nations to India and China (including even Taliban!), but that's an obvious nonsense. No-one wields such power. Could it be that Russia is... just wrong? Violating every norm of international relations to a degree that it has lost all support it ever had among other countries?

  > I've set the benchmark to how many UN members endorse the view

You could have just said you blindly support the US position regardless of facts, and saved us both some time.

If you think that the US controls foreign policy of almost all 193 members of the United Nations, including some if its greatest rivals like China, then this is just another view not supported by reality.

US de facto controls foreign policy through the UN and other international orgs for a majority of countries on earth. China and Russia are the two largest exceptions. We use economic pressure like a bully. This is a fact that nobody would dispute. You can agree with the aims of the US without pretending that we don't force other nations to do our bidding all the time.

Meanwhile, you never addressed the point that the US invades more nations than anybody else. Why are you ignoring that?

> US de facto controls foreign policy through the UN and other international orgs for a majority of countries on earth.

This is demonstrably false. For example, the US was very strongly against the UN resolution that declared Jerusalem's status as Israel's capital null and void, but nevertheless the resolution passed with 128 votes against 9.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...

Meanwhile, you never addressed the point that the US invades more nations than anybody else. Why are you ignoring that?

I am not interested in introducing another debunked internet copypasta into this conversation. It bears no relevance to the international recognition of LNR and DNR's independence, legitimacy of Ukraine's government and the Crimean referendum.

It seems like you have nothing to respond to the fact that these events have no international recognition whatsoever, nor can you explain it within the framework of your beliefs without resorting to easily debunkable conspiratorial thinking. That's an indication that your beliefs may be wrong.

  > It bears no relevance to the international recognition of LNR and DNR's independence, legitimacy of Ukraine's government and the Crimean referendum.

Sure it does, it speaks to our hypocrisy and why our position on these matters is irrelevant. We recognize Kosovo and twist others arms to do so, and then not respect Crimeans desire to be annexed to Russia or LNR & DNR independence for no other reason than it doesn't fit our foreign policy objectives. It has nothing to do with the desires of the actual people that live there.

But you're right, it's a waste of time to discuss. You're such an apologist for our foreign policy fuckups that you can't even acknowledge the trainwrecks we've caused along the way.

I already showed how the assumption that the US can "twist others' arms" is not gounded in reality. The UN has a long and rich history of adopting resolutions that criticise US policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet here no-one sides with Russia.

It's quite surprising that even Belarus, which is internationally isolated, heavily depends on Russia, is deeply infiltrated by Russian intelligence services, and hosts a large contingent of Russian armed forces on its territory (to the extent that some don't even consider it independent anymore), refuses to fully endorse Russian narrative. Are they too under American influence?

Takes a strange kind of provincialism to attribute everything that's going on in the world to the US.

   > the assumption that the US can "twist others' arms" is not gounded in reality.

It took me this long to realize you've been trolling me. Well played.

You are the only troll here. Instead of engaging in a conversation, you just throw talking points at me, and when I debunk them, you desperately try to move to new talking points. Not once have you said anything that would leave an impression of you as of a human; it feels like I am responding to someone reading off a script. Throughout the conversation, I've known three steps ahead what you'd write, because it's the same old tired script without any freedom to deviate into topics like the foreign policy of Belarus regarding Ukraine, LNR and DNR. I've seen zero original thought. Even utterly brainwashed Russians have some original reasoning to glue official talking points together to cope with the situation and justify it. You offer nothing.

Even modern chatbots aren't this stiff and stuck to the script.

Parent comment doesn't actually include any name-calling.

Yup, a coup on their border. One that directly impacted the majority Russian regions of Ukraine including Crimeans who voted to be annexed to Russia since they're mostly all Russian. We recognize Kosovo who did the same thing, but not Crimea. There is no difference.

Then Ukraine cut off water supplies to Crimea which eventually led to the more recent invasion after the reservoirs had almost run out.

Remember that next time you hear our State controlled media parroting the "totally unprovoked invasion" line.

I didn't ask why I said it's bad.

They're machines. People find machines and how they function interesting, regardless of their purpose.

Yes and this is bad. Their purpose is part of what they are you shouldn't ignore it just because you think they're nifty.

Do you have a concept of self-defense? If we stop being interested in being one step ahead, we become slaves of another. That's how it goes, no matter how much "peace, love, and happiness" you try to manifest.

What about self defense requires you to use the technological sophistication of war weapons as entertainment?

What? Military research has benefits outside of military use. V-2s became Saturn Vs on the way to the moon, which begat ICBMs. Haber-Bosch method gave us more fertilizer, but also more explosives. Lasers can be used for hair removal surgery, or as guidance systems for rockets. Explosives themselves can be used for civil engineering purposes. The Me 262 was meant to be an agile fighter, but now we use its technology to haul millions of people a day across the world.

Thinking about war technology as strictly evil and "must avoid" is honestly stupid.

ok sean I think you've moved the goalposts pretty far now to be justified in calling me stupid. I surely am but only for participating in this experiment in paring away context until fighter jets become tools for human thriving.

good work here I really think you should go watch some videos of them being used though especially the ones with children involved.

You confuse me. People are interested in technology because its cool and neutral. All technology can be used for both good and bad things, and that's historically provable. Making specific areas of science off limits for virtue points is unreasonable. And I didn't call you stupid. I called that point of view stupid. I'm sure you're not a generally stupid person.

> its cool and neutral

I cannot be more clear than this then and I hope it resolves your confusion: cool is debatable but these technologies are not neutral. They are bad, and engaging with them as if they are neutral is bad for you. That's the point I originally made and the one I'm still making.

Then I suppose we can end on a hard disagree. My point is the usage of technology can be good or bad, but technology is itself not good or bad.

one of my childhood fantasies was to create weapons that kill very effienctly

once I had the opportunity to get a job in this field (electronics area) in my early 20's, I then questioned my morals and realised I didn't want to contribute to killing people

many decades later, I'm not so moralistic - esp with the UKR / rus war

but that ship has sailed

Viruses kill a lot of people. Is it bad to interested in viruses?

Is there a large scale multi-generation propaganda campaign to normalize the creation and deployment of lethal viruses on a global scale and to recruit people into their construction to that purpose? If so yes it's bad to be interested in viruses.

most technical advances are a double edge sword

there is no good or bad science

Is there a large scale multi-generation propaganda campaign to normalize the creation and deployment of lethal viruses on a global scale...

We're still not supposed to criticize whatever happened in Wuhan. Fauci certainly seems multi-generational...

Yes it's called "gain of function research".

How are you using the word entertainment? You seem to be attaching a moral judgment to the word: that which is entertaining is agreeable or morally acceptable. If that’s the case, I would disagree. But in order for me to have disagreed with your comment, I had to first entertain it, which then has lead me to seek understanding. We don’t have to agree with ideas to entertain them, especially when the goal is to seek understanding. War and its tools should be understood, but first we have to entertain the thought of them and not shut our minds to them. Entertaining an idea is a precursor to understanding, which can lead to solutions for less suffering.

I'm using entertainment in the sense of amusement or diversion not consideration.

I'd argue that war machines are some of the most influential technology that will shape the world. They are very interesting to me.

A lot of DoD people read HN too. These kinds of articles will attract them over, say, bitcoin or neuroscience articles.

So?

I'm not a fan of a lot of the assumptions and hand-waves deployed in this article. As soon as we get out of theory land and start talking about the artillery fight, things start getting weird.

Both the soviets and the US prioritized SPGs, mobility, networking with their artillery. It's just that the soviets and now the Russians had/have a lot more of it at all organizational levels. M777 is a US towed gun at use right now in Ukraine to great effect. He talked a ton about DPICM. A weapon that the US signed a treaty against using and Russia uses constantly. He talked about mass vs precision and speed.

Russia has highly networked and automated their artillery killchain. They can go from intelligence gathering to rockets/rounds leaving the barrel in minutes sometimes with very minimal human involvement. This was all the talk since 2014 when Russia started obliterating entire Ukranian battalions with MRLS strikes guided by UAS. The US Army has been talking about an artillery gap, an IRBM gap. This isn't because they're worried about ineffectual ww1 style barrages against static positions, it's because they're worried about highly accurate, lighting fast fire strikes deep into our rear against targets of opportunity, guided by an advanced network of UAS, ELINT, counter battery radars etc. This is why they spent millions sticking an absurdly long barrel into the already ship-of-Theseus style hodge podge of upgrades that is the M109... It's because they've seen pictures from 2014/2015 that look like the highway of death, with roads littered with destroyed vehicles with burnt bloated bodies hanging out of trees.

Now lets get down to the real real. Us rapid reaction forces in Europe, in the baltics mostly consist of light and medium brigades using towed guns anyway. Stryker and airborne units.

its just the further from theorycrafting to reality, the more out of touch the article becomes.

m109 and msta are PEER weapons m1 and T80b, t80bvm, t90b3, t90a are PEER weapons if you like it or not they share the same general features, accuracy, armor, mobility. Differences in their doctrine and TOE are more important and completly missed in this article.

>cut down any combination of human waves and simple tank attacks the soviets could manage

THE US COPIED THE ENTIRE CONCEPT of operational art from the soviets. Airland battle doctrine was a direct reaction to the fact that the soviet conception of land warfare was operating on a mental level an entire echelon above NATOs tactical obsession. You can argue the pro's and cons of each doctrine, its implementation, levels of training and equipment efficiency for either side you prefer. But 'human wave and simple tank attacks' is just vastly misinformed.

We know everything about the US systems, tactics and weapons, but we dont anything about the chinese.. thats for sure an advantage to the chineses..

That’s an awfully interesting assumption.

could point me point out similar analysis about the Chinese welfare?

Do we?

Lots of this seems plausible at a glance, but overall it is highly theoretical. USA hasn't "won" a war since 1945. That result was mostly determined by USSR. The USA portion of the result was determined by a quickly-assembled force of farmboys and factory workers led by the same rather than by a professional standing army led by the Pentagon. The Pentagon is incapable of developing weapons and tactics that win wars, because for its entire existence it has been judged by a different metric. We should expect conflicts over which the Pentagon has some influence to be extended and made more resource-intensive than even the marketing can justify. The Pentagon always does that, because that's how armaments manufacturers make more money.

We should avoid wars in general, but we should especially avoid a world war with China, Russia, India, and the rest of their many allies. We got beaten by the Taliban, but if we fight 3 billion people we'll get curb-stomped.

You should brush up a bit on your military history. The standard combat-readiness training time was 8+ months during WW2 (see [0]), which puts it quite a distance from a "quickly-assembled force of farmboys and factory workers".

Similarly, the USSR's victory and WW2 as a whole is much more accurately called an allied victory. The US played a significant role in supporting soviet industrial capacity with programs like Lend-Lease that allowed them to actually fight the war. Other nations contributed to the war in their own ways. It's not a contest for who deserves all the credit.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7wwo7w/how_l...

Eight months seems pretty quick to me but maybe that just shows I'm not brushed up like you. Maybe I admire the Greatest Generation more than I should. The Ukrainians have had a year of war plus the preceding eight years under the Minsk Accords to perfect their technique of killing people using USA weapons, yet somehow the victory guaranteed by our war media has thus far eluded them. Our employees in Afghanistan had twenty years to learn our great training of fighting Taliban. I honestly think some of our leaders were surprised by how poorly the training went! Perhaps they will revamp some training plans!

Sure call WWII an "allied victory": Stalin did. I'm not talking about "credit". TFA pretends to be a practical analysis, so I criticize it on that basis. The Soviets learned more about war than we did, and we've forgotten most of what we learned. TFA, in turn, crouches about the shins of hobbits.

Ukraine was supplied with an insignificant amount of weapons before 2022. Their kit was basically USSR kit plus some new things like Stugna, lase guided shells, distributes artillery control app etc

If Ukraine had couple brigades of Lepards, HIMARS and few hundred 777 at the start of the war, this all would have went a lot differently. Alas lesson here is simple under no condition do you give up nukes.

> Eight months seems pretty quick to me

Even less nowadays. I think I saw that infantry training in the US Army was extended in the past few years from 14 weeks to 22 weeks (including basic combat training). On top of that, both times I deployed, we had people fresh from initial entry training who hadn't been in the unit a month before we shipped out, leaving minimal time for additional training. Most of that time before deploying was spent doing various types of paperwork, processing, briefings, and other stuff that wasn't training.

This notion that the US is somehow weak because it has seemingly not won any wars since ww2 misses something:

The US has historically been held back by internal unease over human right violations and the morality of the wars. Were the US to prosecute wars like how Russia does (for e.g., in Chechenya and Ukraine) the results would likely be devastating.

The Taliban did not beat the US. The US realized it was a fools errand to try to democratize Afghanistan. The fool-proof way to "fix" Afghanistan would have been to level it, lay waste to it, making it virtually uninhabitable, but that was morally indefensible.

First off, India is not friends with China. They're generally aligned with the west.

And also, a world war doesn't mean USA vs everyone else. It means USA+UN+NATO vs. Russia, China, and their respective vassal states. Worst case (and most likely) scenario is everyone loses. But we wouldn't be exclusively curb-stomped.

India happily talks to and does business with everyone. (In Pakistan's case one might not say "happily"?) Over the last year, it has not taken part in the economic sanctions that USA and its vassals have attempted to impose. Both India and Russia have profited from this decision. We can expect India and similar nations throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America to continue to pursue their own interests. Therefore, they will form part of our opponents' industrial base. They won't attack our forces until we attack theirs, but they won't be any more "aligned" with us than they are right now.

Since much of our own industrial base is in China, our military will prosper while the rest of us will lack most human comforts. Some portion of our military will be diverted from the battlefield to curtail the resulting unrest. We will lose, much more painfully than we lost in Korea or Syria or any of the intervening wars. Alaska, Hawaii, and all Pacific territories will be gone. We'll lose most of our foreign bases. The dollar will be worthless. American-owned intellectual property will disappear. Australia will be (re-)colonized. Germany will re-militarize, and Europe will remember why that's bad. (One might expect that also of Japan, but they are probably too geriatric now.) The portion of Ukraine that Russia doesn't take will be taken by Poland. Israel will abandon us in favor of the Saudi/UAE axis, but that group will decide to coexist with regional rivals rather than follow us down the drain. USA itself might split into several pieces, none of which would be capable of the sort of excessive militarism we've inflicted on the world for the last 120 years. So, not totally bad.

Didn't the US win the First Gulf War? What else would you call that?

At the risk of becoming a guy who recommends a ten-hour podcast in answer to single questions, here's a ten-hour podcast to answer your single question: https://blowback.show/Season-1

I would call it many things, but "a war we won" is not one of them, not at all.

Isn’t that about the second gulf war?

His explicitly stated point was about the first.

That is the subject of the first couple of episodes.

If you win the war you get to go home. USA presence in the Arabian peninsula was cited by ObL as the reason for 9/11. Kuwait does export useful hydrocarbons, but much less than the Kingdom which could have increased production to make up for a temporary pause of Kuwait exports. The pause would have been temporary because Iraq would have restarted the export of Kuwaiti hydrocarbons as soon as possible. If anything, fighting a war disrupted the market more than not fighting it would have.

A war that was fought for no reason, that didn't end before causing the most disastrous attack on USA soil since 1814, I would call "dumb".

>If you win the war you get to go home

so America lost WWII then by that logic, because they never went home?

>>A war that was fought for no reason

Serious ignorance, right there.

The entire reason the war was fought was to enforce the principle that taking other sovereign territory by force is not acceptable.

It is the same reason that we support Ukraine's fight for self-determination.

You can always make excuses to allow bullies to win. As you pointed out, we didn't rescue Kuwait for their oil, which Iraq would have soon put back on the market. We — the entire alliance of free-world nations — did it, and are helping Ukraine, to support self-determination.

Once the principle is established of allowing bullies and autocrats to take what they want, it will never end until they have everything.

The entire reason the war was fought was to enforce the principle that taking other sovereign territory by force is not acceptable.

A better way for USA to support that principle would have been not to invade the sovereign nations of Cuba, Philippines, Hawai'i, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Serbia, etc. Those are just a selection of the invasions our leaders admit. There have been far more unacknowledged actions in various parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as violent actions that didn't include uniformed USA troops like when we paid Saddam Hussein to have a horrible war with Iran. Also there have been violent actions for which some local support could have been argued, such as when Suharto and his CIA handlers killed millions of people in Indonesia. Also we genocided American Indians for centuries. As soon as there weren't any more of them to kill, the exact same USA army officers were doing the exact same racist violence in Philippines. USA's existence is one continuous rejection of sovereignty.

Crackpot realists ITT will gleefully point to my list of USA military victims and crow about "victories" in "war". Many of these were "police actions" in which there wasn't even an opposing force, just civilian victims. That's not war. Also, although every one of these actions served the someone's interests, not one accomplished a military objective that benefited the average American. That's not winning.

>>not one accomplished a military objective that benefited the average American.

That, again is ignorance.

I agree that no one is talking about "winning wars" in those instances. Because that is most certainly NOT the point.

The point is to contain authoritarianism. Yes, it is sometimes done badly and mistakenly.

But, overall, it has been somewhat successful. The major authoritarian governments have been somewhat constrained, and we have not seen any foreign power doing on US soil what is happening in Ukraine right this minute.

Without those consistent actions throughout the decades, it most likely would be happening, and being able to live without being shelled is a most definite benefit to every average American.

Another related item is that it is the US Navy that protects shipping lanes globally (and not the Russian or Chinese navies). This brings massive benefits to world trade, and massively lowers costs and prices for every American. Another benefit, every day, for the average American, and they literally don't even notice, it just 'happens'. You don't want to see what happens if these US actions stop, but you can look to East African waters a decade ago to get a hint. And then remember that that carp stopped when the USN got involved.

When you call me ignorant, and then do so again, is it projection or a desperate attempt to distract from the movement of goalposts? The way to refute a simple statement like "not one accomplished a military objective that benefited the average American" would be to provide a single example of such an accomplished military objective. Try harder!

TFA claims explicitly, in the title, to be about "winning". I observe that the Pentagon doesn't have a recent track record of doing that. ITT that observation has been answered by novel definitions, references to WWII, appeals to sovereignty, and now you have appealed to anti-authoritarianism. Hold on to your history book, because our record in USA doesn't look too good on that either.

Here is a short list of authoritarian dictators whom USA supported for years: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Saddam Hussein, Mohammed bin Salman, Ibn Saud and the half-dozen other Saudi "kings", Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Hosni Mubarak, Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan, Mobutu Sese Seko, Sarit Thanarat, Suharto, Augusto Pinochet, Juan José Estrada, Manuel Noriega, Anastasio Somoza García, Luis Somoza Debayle, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Carlos Castillo Armas, Fulgencio Batista, Phoumi Nosavan, Hugo Banzer, Jorge Rafael Videla, Hissène Habré, Ferdinand Marcos, etc, etc, etc. As before, I have left out many. Tens of millions of innocent people died due to USA support for these authoritarian dictators, not to mention the hundreds of millions more who lived in fear and penury.

There is not a chance in hell that support for any of those awful men contributed in the least to USA not being shelled over any period of history. That has been guaranteed by our two giant oceans and two fairly large vassal neighbors. The more straws you attempt to grasp, the clearer the picture of USA militarism becomes.

I stipulate that USA navy defends shipping, except of course in those fairly frequent events in which battleships mistakenly run into shipping vessels while tooling around in the dark.

None of the above.

Yes, I fully understand that the US supported a long list of tinpot dictators in the pursuit of larger geopolitical goals, AND that life was not good under those dictators, AND that in some cases, nominally democratic leaders were undermined in favor of those tinpot dictators.

I'm making no "appeal to anti-authoritarianism", I'm simply restating the explicit goals of US policy, right up to this week.

Supporting those tinpot dictators was specifically to prevent expansion / pursue containment of larger and even more murderous dictators.

While the rhetoric was anti-communism, the reality, especially now, is that the "--isms" were irrelevant. It is literally the Free World vs Authoritarianism.

Geopolitics is extremely ugly. People get hurt and killed, in large numbers. At least those trying to defend and expand the areas under self-determination try to minimize it.

The case you need to make is not that people suffered under the US-propped dictators, but that they would have suffered LESS under Soviet or CCP-supported dictators. Compare Mubarak supported by the US in Egypt vs Assad supported by Russia in Syria. Without some specific situation, no sane and informed person would choose to live under Assad over Mubarak. Same for Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan in Korea who you mention supported, vs Pol Pot supported by China. Rising prosperity and protection from NK, vs abject poverty and killings of millions.

To say that decades of strong (and often extremely unsavory) containment policy had "not a chance in hell" of preventing attacks on US soil is to ignore that the US won the Cuban missile crisis, preventing nuclear missiles from being stationed minutes from our shores.

It is also to ignore what is happening in Ukraine this minute. Russian govt officials have in the past months clearly stated that not only do they think Ukraine has no right to exist, but neither do any of the previous Soviet sphere-of-influence states, out at least to Berlin. They will NOT stop unless they are stopped, and we are the only nation on the planet who can organize stopping it.

All of it was one flavor or another of bad. But a lot LESS bad than if it had not been done.

It is pretty clear that you are so focused on your litany of bad trees, that you are unwilling or unable to see the forest.

And back to TFA and the topic of "winning":

The fact of the matter is that if any person wants to live a self-determined life, and under a self-determined government, they must be better armed, prepared, and allied than the bullies or authoritarians who would otherwise take their lunch or their territory.

This basic fact was for decades ignored under what I call The Great Experiment, which was the idea that open trade & information flow would bring free markets and open democracy to the unfree world.

It failed. Completely and miserably. It only empowered the dictators.

Under that illusion, and as a result of lessons learned from press coverage of the Vietnam war, political will to fight wars as anything more than holding actions has been almost nonexistent. So, most actions did nothing more than hold, neither proving nor disproving the ability to "win".

Even in Gulf War #1, where the 5th largest military was wiped out in weeks, the US held back for a number of reasons.

But we must distinguish between political will and military capability. Just because a military hasn't been given permission to go all-out, doesn't mean it cannot.

You may not have noticed the confrontation in Syria last year when Russian-backed Wagner (iirc) did something stupid that called for a US response. The result was they had a lot of body bags and dead equipment, and zero US/coalition casualties. No the US Mil isn't perfect, and as with any huge organization, a myriad flaws can be found.

but looking more broadly, I'd notice that there are many of those types of incidents, and considering that every other military does whatever it can to avoid a direct confrontation with the US, I'd have to put my bet on the US Mil still being the most lethal - and able to "win" any confrontation.

What evidence is there where the US Mil has been actually outclassed by any other mil?

> Supporting those tinpot dictators was specifically to prevent expansion / pursue containment of larger and even more murderous dictators.

Conjecture and domino theory at best.

Many of the post WWII proto democratic governments in their infancy overthrown by CIA machinations had candidates that were no more socialist than, say, Australia.

Many wanted to throw off the yoke of pre WWII colonial rule by the French, the English, the Dutch, et. and establish their own governments for their own people without any obligation to the traditional order.

This was anthemic to both the US and post WWII UK governments who wanted Western hegonomy and in some cases stranglehold control over strategic Cold War resources.

The theory touted about was that if we (the US) don't stomp these independant governments before they grow, they'll end up freely and democratically trading with (say) Russia and China.

Ergo, we stage coup's and install monsters that take a cut from our resource companies.

Yes, there was some of that, but the overarching issue was NOT that they might trade with China or Russia, but would become effective outposts of them. See Cuba, which was not only literally happy to host Russian nuclear arms, but Castro even said that they should nuke us anyway.

Or, more recently, Venezuela. Hugo Chavez was (ostensibly) democratically elected, as was Maduro. The result is anything but democratic rule or prosperity for its people. Same for Orban in Hungary, or Putin, or literally even Hitler. Democracies often convert to autocracies. There's a well-worn playbook for it.

We should also look at the results. Zero of these tinpot dictators supported by the US were annexed by the US or any of the 'Free World' powers. The people under those regimes inevitably advanced towards self-governance and prosperity.

Would South Koreans really have been better off under the rule of the Un family vs Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan? North Koreans are literally dying in the streets of starvation, while just south of the DMZ, here is plenty.

Were the Iranians, especially women, better off under the Ayotollahs than under the Shah?

Are the Cubans really better off under the Castro regime than before?

Of course we can compare the world to some ideal and say "everything is sh#t". We must compare it to the real alternatives available.

I'm NOT saying everything was good, and some was very bad, but that does not make the US the worst of all possible worlds. That's reserved for the megadeath leaders like Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pot, Un, etc... If they are not fought at every turn, they WILL take over. As we can see in Ukraine, as well as Tibet, the Uhguirs (sp?), and China's explicit claims on Taiwan. They'll always fabricate some excuse for their next claim.

And, in how many of those places in which actions took place in the modern era (I totally agree with harshest of assessments of the treatment of the Native Americans) did the US, or any other democratic country, ANNEX the place and take it for their own territory?

ZERO. Yes, autocratic rulers were deposed, and in some cases, 'democratically elected' rulers who were openly working with autocrats (USSR, CCP).

Was any of it done perfectly? No.

But fighting authoritarianism, and in some cases using our authoritarian to fight a worse one was done. I don't necessarily agree with it or disagree, in any particular circumstance, and we'd have to review each one case-by-case.

But none of the incidents you cite as "whataboutism" changes the facts of the one being discussed.

You even correctly pointed out that it was not for the oil. It was to uphold that principle. The same goes for Ukraine. And many of the others.

Geopolitics is an ugly game. But without pushing back, hard, on authoritarians, and building a world order based on forbidding violent taking of territory as Russia is doing in Ukraine (completely consistent with its history since the 1400s). There was a lot done badly, but that is no reason to not attempt to do it better. And leaving it to the Putins, Xis, and Uns of the world will damn sure make it worse in a hurry.

> in how many of those places in which actions took place in the modern era ... did the US, or any other democratic country, ANNEX the place and take it for their own territory?

That seems like an odd condition to add, but I still think the answer would be non-zero if we were more successful in our invasions of sovereign countries. Hard to annex a country that you eventually give up even pacifying.

We are notably invading neither Russia nor the Ukraine.

>And, in how many of those places in which actions took place in the modern era (I totally agree with harshest of assessments of the treatment of the Native Americans) did the US, or any other democratic country, ANNEX the place and take it for their own territory?

Hawaii.

Hawaii, annexed in 1898... not exactly modern era.

The point is that there was an age of empire, where it was accepted to take territory by force. It was pretty much that way since Alexander, Ghengis Kahn, through all of European history since the middle ages.

The point is that the era of empire by violent imperialist conquest is over.

While authoritarians want to continue acting like might-is-right empires, the democratic nations of the free world reject that concept

The free world understanding that it is unsustainable. The lands of previous empires are largely returned, India, most of Africa, Carribbean, etc.

Just because governments since the age of empire still retain continuity and the same name, that does not mean they are the same.

England, France, Germany, US, have rejected authoritarianism and empire, while Russia, and China still want to continue it.

Treating something that has the same name but is different is a falsehood.

(A caveat here is that there are authoritarian movements in all of the democratic countries, in no small part aided and fomented by the authoritarian govts as part of hybrid warfare, so it is possible for them to flip back.)

Congratulations on producing yet another specious half-assed defense of USA militarism! Wouldn't it be nice if its record spoke for itself?

We still occupy Hawai'i, as well as the entirety of continental USA. We still occupy the eastern third of Syria, as Trump said and Biden hasn't contradicted "to steal their oil". The various nations we occupy in Africa invite similar explanation. We occupied Philippines for decades, as colonial masters, until Japan kicked us out, after which we reoccupied it. As observed above, that wasn't a different thing from the colonization of North America, because it was done in the same racist way by the exact same racist army officers. We maintain military bases all over, every one a direct threat to the host nation should they stray from our political line. For example, how successful can Korean reunification efforts be while our sword hangs above their heads? This isn't winning wars. This is terrorizing populations.

Over the decades we spent in Philippines we pioneered the sort of financial colonialism we codified at Bretton Woods. This has been extensively documented by economist Michael Hudson. After we trick a nation (i.e. pay off whichever corrupt locals we can maneuver into power) into signing up for this program, we oppress working people, extract resources, privatize public assets, and financialize the whole mess. Most of the surplus in the economy is exported to e.g. NYC and London. This is the real explanation for USA capitalism's "century of success". Our system can no more support itself without victimizing other nations than the Roman Empire could have thrived without slavery. As developing nations throw off our yoke (witness the "Россия" t-shirts worn in every nation in Africa), we'll have to organize very differently, or else the American 99% will suffer the same predations from the American 1% that were previously focused overseas.

In four thousand years, China has never fought a war on the other side of the world with a nation (or with a ragtag bunch of goat enthusiasts) that could never threaten the territory of China.

Right, congratulations on spouting straight-down-the-line CCP/Soviet anti-American tropes, while simultaneously conflating pre- and post-20th century / WWII world orders.

Oh, and revealing yourself as a complete fool citing anythign Trump says as if it were fact. Yikes.

And trying to claim that China is not expansionist despite it's post WW-II history? Yikes againb. Just look at the ACTUAL history in Korea, Tibet Uhigurs, "9-dash-line", Hong Kong, "Belt and Road Initiative" trying to take Africa, claims on Taiwan, and more. Again mistaking lacking the capability to project global power for the will.

I never disputed that the pre-WWII order was the Age of Empire, going back to times of Alexander, and that the Americas were basically stolen from the native populations, going back to Columbus.

That does not mean that things are the same, or that the Free World is not different from the Authoritarian regimes. I note that while you seem to love all these authoritarian regimes, you don't live there. I hope you're paid well for your trolling. Have a good day.

Yikes! Did someone other than USA commander-in-chief decide which neutral overseas territory USA military would occupy? (That seems problematic! and also probably true...) Has anyone in public office ever offered another explanation? You're full of inexplicable confidence, so maybe we should ask you why USA military occupies the eastern third (that's the part with agriculture and oil) of Syria right now... [0]

China discouraged Kim from invading RoK, and didn't come in on DPRK side until dumb-ass insubordinate MacArthur told them he was going to keep rolling across the Yalu. Well that went over about as well as NATO missiles in Donbass! Or Soviet missiles in Cuba! Belt and Road is simply a less abusive foreign investment regime than IMF/World Bank. Little wonder that it appeals more than what USA has on offer.

If you actually agree that American Indians have been robbed and genocided, why be so quick to designate a convenient time before which we shouldn't worry about robbery and genocide? If you don't actually agree about the American Indians, on which side of the line does our strikingly similar subjugation of Philippines fall? Maybe we shouldn't care about that either, even though it was in the 20th century? Maybe you want to move the cutoff line? That seems a common maneuver when discussing the conflict in Ukraine. We're definitely not supposed to remember e.g. 2019 discussions of Ukrainian Nazis. [1]

Recall we started talking about Pentagon's abysmal record of losing every war, then we moved to supporting sovereignty, then we moved to opposing authoritarianism, while you stipulated 'no one is talking about "winning wars"'. There was something about China empowering Pol Pot, which seems rather beside the point when it was USA that bankrolled him for years. [2] I forgot about him in my long lists upthread!

There is some bad news about your final goalpost relocation. The bitter end must be the idea that our current participation in the Ukraine theater of WWIII is in opposition to "authoritarianism". Unfortunately, our puppet in that region is every bit the authoritarian as previous ones in other regions. He is banning political parties, closing down TV channels, disappearing residents [3], and feeding battalion after poorly trained battalion into the meat grinder of Bakhmut. For current Ukraine leadership, it's more important to pretend that Russia even cares about holding this minor town than it is to attempt to preserve military strength. When politics trumps security and respect for life, that is authoritarian.

The late Barry Crimmins was occasionally asked the same cretinous question you pose: “Why don’t you go live somewhere else then?” Barry would reply, “Because I don’t want to be a victim of US foreign policy.”

I support your material analysis, even while rejecting its rude implication. Most opinions about war are motivated by money. Unfortunately, in USA popular media, war is very profitable.

[0] https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-us-military-proud-o...

[1] https://fair.org/home/action-alert-nyt-celebrates-neo-nazi-a...

[2] https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/polpotmontclarion049...

[3] https://jacobin.com/2023/02/ukraine-censorship-authoritarian...

>>USA hasn't "won" a war since 1945. That result was mostly determined by USSR.

You seem to have missed the fact that the USSR no longer exists; the cold war was most certainly "won" by the US, primarily by outspending, outdeveloping, and outmaneuvering the Soviets in the 'peace'.

All the other wars since 1945 that you cite the US as "losing" were fought under extreme Rules of Engagement restrictions for political reasons, nothing like the terms of any more all-out war. The Taliban didn't beat us, we got bored and left, and they quickly defeated the Afghan govt which had failed to stand up (and much of which was bought out ahead of time).

You also omit engagements like the Iraq war, where the fifth largest army in the world was taken out in a few weeks, with fewer than 150 US troops KIA. Someone I worked with who'd flown helicopters in-theater, told me in no uncertain terms that the main reason that the US didn't 'finish' and take Baghdad was that they didn't want the world's news to see the Iraqi carnage - literally hundreds of miles of nothing but burned out vehicles and bodies. Not exactly the US 'getting stomped'.

For a current example, just look to Ukraine, where a relatively small force is decimating what was considered to be the 2nd-best military on the planet, using only 3rd-shelf inventory from other democracies. Every time the Russians get behind-the-scenes warned by the US, both on nuclear sabre-rattling and Biden's visit to Kyiv, they back down. Because they know that the half-life of their Mil in Ukr & Black Sea would be measured in double-digit minutes if the US Mil got involved.

If China thought the way you did, and thought they could undermine the US or NATO, they'd have already given serious arms to Russia. They haven't even begun to do so.

The principle here is that if a person or country wants to live a self-determined life with a self-determined government, they need to be better armed, prepared, and allied than any bully or adversary.

The west thought for decades that appeasement would work, but Russia ended that era on 24-Feb-2022. The US mil is still the most lethal fighting force in history, and US and NATO are now rapidly ramping up. You want to challenge that head on? Good luck; you'll need it. Both Putin and Xi already know better.

> Because they know that the half-life of their Mil in Ukr & Black Sea would be measured in double-digit minutes if the US Mil got involved.

Yup, if them pesky Rooskies use a nuke, the US can let rip with a mass of conventionally-armed cruise missiles and other stuff that could probably shred their battlefield C3.

I strongly suspect the Black sea fleet would be the principle target of interest for the Allies if Russia used a nuke in Ukraine.

The Kerch bridge might also get a good kicking too.

Then any targets of interest in Crimea, and a no-fly policy enforced over Ukraine.

Byeloruss might also get the internal coup they so badly need as well.

> Byeloruss might also get the internal coup they so badly need as well.

This is devoutly to be wished for.

Remove the mask, and reveal motivations other than "democracy".

Sure. But democracy would be a fine start there, don't you think ?

> USA hasn't "won" a war since 1945

That depends a lot on what you classify as a war, and how you determine the win. I don't necessarily agree with all of what Wikipedia has classified as wars, but it's certainly not zero wins in their list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

The Pentagon was completed in 1943. There may be some relation between your "farmboys and factory works" and the organization that occupies it now.

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