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> The military and national security state, plus the sheer amount of personal firearms, pretty much guarantees IMO that the US is basically impregnable from outside military interventions.

I find that a bit naive.

First, as for the point about firearms, I honestly don't think this is very relevant for the ability of a state to defend itself. Lots of firearms in civil possession might make life harder for domestic police - because they have (at least in theory) some obligation to protect the state's citizens and their property, even those citizens with firearms. So they cannot arbitrarily overpower those people.

An invading army has no such qualms. Just have a look at the wars that are currently going on, or the US' own invasions in the past. They have rockets, drones, airstrikes, artillery, tanks and all the other goodies at their disposal and will generally avoid getting anywhere near where your firearm could hit them. They won't try to arrest you, they'll simply blow up your house.

The second point has merit: The US not only has the most powerful national military in the world, it's also the leader of the most powerful international military alliance. Not to mention it is still at the center of the global trading and financial system, as well as the internet. Because of those factors, a chance of invasion is nil.

But that's nothing uniquely American, it just reflects the amount of power America currently has. Britain was in a similar position two centuries ago and Spain before that. It might change again.

> An invading army has no such qualms.

> They won't try to arrest you, they'll simply blow up your house.

The point is, they'd have to blow up so many houses it's not viable.

> How the unique aspects of America basically make it impossible for the the country to be in the position China was in during the 19th and early 20th centuries, which is to say, a total disaster, beset by civil wars, colonial acquisitions, invasions, on and on. No matter how much China outcompetes America, I don't think it will ever be in that sort of situation.

Generals are always preparing to fight the previous war.. Look at China's actions (or the West's, for that matter). Rarely is it an invasion with guns and bombs (with the notable exception of the US Middle East policy). Mostly it's slow economic takeover. What good will guns do you, when to sell your wares, you need permission from a Chinese market owner [1], or when the only jobs are in Chinese-owned chains and conglomerates?

It won't be as bad, but it could be differently bad - for all the invasions China suffered, they are still today 91% ethnically Han-Chinese [2], in stark contrast to the dramatic demographic transformation of the US since 1965.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/chinas-jdco...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#Ethnic_g...

It's hard to imagine what could even constitute a modern Sputnik moment, but it's an interesting thought experiment. I just don't think that Americans care enough, and both countries are way more dependent on each other than the US and USSR ever were.

Caveat I've been wrong on pretty much every political prognostication I've ever made, so buy some defense industry stocks.

Maybe US gets really good at maglev trains and in reprisal China goes full throttle on inventing teleportation/hyperdrive tech?

Full AGI is a pretty trivial example

A fully functional moon base? Mars colony?

Before the Meiji Restoration or the unification of Mongolia, the economy and population of China dwarfed Japan and Mongolia far more than the economy and population of the US dwarfs Mexico.

It seems impossible to think that Mexico could conquer the US, but far more implausible things have happened in past history.

Strange tangent, but Mexico doesn't even have a top 30 military strength. The U.S. can project power to every corner of the globe. It not only outnumbers Mexico but it has a number of technological, geographical, financial, logistical advantages that Mexico is nowhere near competing with. In the distant past nations didn't even necessarily understand the full capacity of their competition. In modern warfare, we know our enemies capabilities and they know our capabilities, satellites leave little to the imagination.

Japan leapfrogged China by industrializing quicker than they did. Industrialization is an obvious force multiplier for an economy and military.

That's the situation now, but what's the situation going to be like 50 or 100 years from now? If Mexico experiences its own Meiji Restoration type experience and the US experiences a civil war over the next few decades...

A civil war wouldn't even necessarily be a reason for the U.S. to go into decline, it certainly wasn't the case in the 19th century. U.S. handily beat Mexico then went to war with itself then had some of the strongest economic growth in world history, as it rolled out telegraph, telephones, electricity and light bulbs, tons of rail line, invented powered flight and mass produced automobiles.

At any rate Mexico/U.S. situation is completely different than Japan/China.

Mexico is growing rapidly and America wants Mexico to succeed. It eases the burden on U.S. from excessive immigration if Mexico is able to develop its economy to a comparable level.

Mexico still has tons of problems though not least of which is the insane violence and heinous crimes committed by their cartels. It's far more likely Mexico cracks up from the cartel activity than the U.S. at this juncture.

And if America has another civil war, it'll be very different from its first one. Syria is a much better example of what happens during a typical modern civil war.

> America wants Mexico to succeed.

The America that signed NAFTA rationally wanted that. The America that ripped up NAFTA? Not so much. That America is stuck in destructive zero-sum thinking.

You're right that it's unfathomable to think that Mexico could conquer America 50 to 100 years from now. It's highly unlikely to happen.

But my point is that it was even more unfathomable that a few dozen horse archers could snowball effect their way into conquering China, or that the desperately poor and backwards Japan could reform themselves into a position to conquer China. History is full of stories that you would dismiss as unbelievable if they were written down as fiction.

Personal firearms do absolutely nothing against foreign invation. They can amount to small scale terrorism and that is it

There are 18 million veterans and 400 million firearms in the US today, in a peaceful situation.

> They can amount to small scale terrorism and that is it

Or a large scale insurgency. Something millions of military veterans have (unfortunately) witnessed first hand.

And? You don't need to win big set piece battles to win a war. Insurgencies have won over and over again because without the support of the local people, the occupying forces must continuously expend massive amounts of capital along with some of their own lives to maintain control. The people are what makes an area either valuable or expensive.

>> beset by civil wars

One of us has not been watching the news lately.

Not even remotely similar to the chaos that was China circa 1800-1950.

Please wait

> How the unique aspects of America basically make it impossible for the the country to be in the position China was in during the 19th and early 20th centuries, which is to say, a total disaster, beset by civil wars, colonial acquisitions, invasions, on and on.

The US literally had a civil war in the 19th century. And judging by the current polarized political sentiments, I wouldn't be surprised if another one happened in my lifetime. But yes, I don't think anyone will be invading the US any time soon.

> More broadly, how the cultural dynamics of the West led to the Reformation, Wars of Religion, Renaissance, and Industrial Revolution and to the West being the dominant power in the first place.

Prior to the Renaissance, the West languished for centuries in the dark ages and middle ages whereas China prospered during the Tang and Song Dynasty. So it clearly isn't something that's uniquely about, say, Christianity or chivalrous knights, that allowed the West to develop so well. Cycles of dominance like the Islamic Golden Age and stuff seem to be mostly driven by institutions and luck rather than fixed cultural traits. Probably what got the West to become the dominant power and industrialize was the development of scientific thinking, which translated to advantages in every respect such as ship navigation and making cannons, which then led to colonialism and extracting resources from every part of the world. But now everyone has scientific thinking, and if anything, China is embracing science a lot more while America is regressing back into superstitions (for example, the current United States Secretary of Health and Human Services is a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist).

Also, you allude to Japan's stagnation after the 1980s, but I think that's largely due to policy, demographics, and external factors.

The American Civil War was nothing like the Chinese civil wars of the 19th and 20th centuries. America industrialized almost directly as a consequence of the war, and in some sense it was an economic war of the industrial north conquering the agrarian south. Really not comparable to the chaotic situation that happened in China, with warlords, foreign interventions, etc.

And scientific thinking is very much a consequence of cultural trends in Europe, many of which were explicitly religious in nature.

Having been to both China and the American midwest (and living in a red state) China is WAY more superstitious. The US stuff is purely reactionary, not the bubbling up of some strong longly held cultural beliefs.

> Also, you allude to Japan's stagnation after the 1980s, but I think that's largely due to policy, demographics, and external factors.

China has the same demographic problem that Japan has. It has a declining population and a lopsided population pyramid, made particularly stark by the implementation of one child policy many decades ago.

Yes, it is quite possible that China will stagnate due to those reasons, plus I'm not super happy with Xi Jinping's reverting to more authoritarian principles too, but that would not have been because of some fundamental cultural reason that dooms Asian countries to be worse off than Western ones.