The American Missile Crisis
research.contrary.com
research.contrary.com
https://walton.uark.edu/clc/posts/when-supply-chain-is-the-b...
but there's really no winning when the enemy can put more planes, tanks, guns, boats and troops than you by a large factor, if they are even somewhat competent at using them.
Would Russia/China/US not use their nukes if in risk of being overrun by conventional forces of another superpower?
Just for context Allied tank production was 276k to the axis 67k. Most other production categories show similar ratios. Your tanks can be perfectly reliable, and superior in every way, but it will be hard to win a fight when you are outnumbered 4:1.
Even now, the emerging doctrine from Ukraine, and now Iran, is to fight using asymmetric production advantages. Ukraine is taking out multimillion dollar facilities and ships with five figure UAVs. Iran has depleted US air defense stocks costing billions with a few million dollars worth of drones powered by motorcycle engines.
Russia also build some tanks while being invaded, ~90k at the end of the war outcompeting german output at 3:1 (I suppose they are included in your allied 276k number?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrclztGCg6M is a decent watch, though really only tells the "US out produced everyone" part of the WWII story.
I recall seeing a better article that talked about WWII tank production but I can't find it right now.
The whole point of the war for the Nazis was to conquer new land in the east (and destroy the bolshewists). They initially did not wanted to have war with UK or France or US. They wanted to fight with them against the inferiors. It was a racist war - the aryans against the slavs - to establish the right place for the aryans as rulers (it was also not so much about "german", it was about race).
Also it was not just the US fighting and winning against them - I believe there was another power to first capture Berlin (that also was good at mass producing).
And technically it was mixed. Some german designs were quite good, reliable and mass producible, others overcomplicated and too heavy. I doubt the war can be reduced to this question, nazi germany had enough weapons and its war industry was working full power, it was just so stupid to get itself into a war on all fronts (and for example declare war on the US in solidarity with Japan, but did not demand Japan to declare war on soviet untion in return).
The western front was a choice, not something they did not wanted to do.
Not so simple, they also divided the german population by aryan and non aryan tried to "improve" by breeding programms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn) and well hunting down all "inferior jews" and less so other people like sinti and roma.
And it is pretty established that Hitler wanted the UK as ally (who have been pretty racist at the time as well).
See also the flight of Rudolf Heß, which he did to make a favor to Hitler. (pretty interesting story, showing the delusion of the whole thing)
Hitler wanted UK as ally, just like he wanted Russians as allies as step 1. The plan was not to treat them as equals in step 2. UK jist was not dumb to fall into that trap.
Rudolf Heß was his initiative and attempt to avoid war, he was very much in minority.
I think the honest plan was to accept UK as sea power and germany as the mainland power. Later .. open how things developed.
See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_von_Ribbentrop
"I mean sure, it was about race, not about passport. "
But we agree it seems. I was just arguing against the common missconception of trying to understand the Nazis as Ultra-nationalists, while they were mainly thinking in racial terms. Not germany should have ruled the world, but the Aryans. (With germany at it's heart, but that was more a side point)
US sent tons of war material to the USSR as well as experts to help them get their manufacturing up and running. The success on the eastern front was partially due to US support. I just saw a video claiming something like 2/3 of vehicles the Russians used were made in the US.
also as far as who was first to capture Berlin... pretty sure the western front commanders decided/were ordered to slow down and let the USSR get some parts of Germany for themselves.
Considering that 90 000 tanks were produced in russia alone, I really doubt those numbers, as it would mean Russia would have had 270 000 tanks on their own.
Roughly 50-65% of Red Army's transport pool was US-made.
If I'm not mistaken, one of the factors behind their Eastern Front collapsing was how their tanks suffered major design flaws, from failing to start in cold weather and their electrical components being vulnerable to rodents.
Also, their inability to mass produce their tanks is a critical design flaw.
Note I'm saying Nazis and not Germany: there were plenty of Finnish, Polish and Ukrainian Nazi battalions as well. It would be amusing to watch the same forces lining up to take on the Russians yet again, save for the orange lunatic with nukes, currently installing a UFC cage on the White House lawns, making the world an even more dangerous place for the rest of us.
The UFC cage fight is itself is a sign that the US is already in rapid decline. Every empire collapse has been preceded by arrogant excess. The comparisons with the Roman stadiums and Caligula write themselves.
The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine. They just haven't realised it yet.
Iran is beating the US strategically. Here I think some of the inner circle have realised it, but the real powers behind the throne just won't give up.
> The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine.
What are you on about here. NATO never owned it, but member countries helped it. Except USA big NATO countries are still helping it.
It is fascinating that EU countries became "vassals" when they went against USA wish in a major way. No one called them vassals when they were allies, the word is thrown around when they visibly diverge. Trying to stir emotions?
The EU was created so that the US would have one entity to control instead of many.
NATO was created as a captive marketplace for US weapons.
Coming back to the Ukraine issue, Russia is facing off 50 plus countries supplying materiel and intelligence using the Ukrainian proxy regime.
I could not care less about your emotions. I'm not a romcom writer.
No one used that word until Trump got pissed they did not invaded Iran.
> Coming back to the Ukraine issue, Russia is facing off 50 plus countries supplying materiel and intelligence using the Ukrainian proxy regime.
Russia is facing Ukraine that it invaded who is getting help from countries who find invasion disgusting or simply think Russia will invade them next.
Funny, USA moved to Russia side but the vassals did not.
Funny how oil rich countries can be invaded with impunity.
If Ukraine is a US proxy then how come when Trump told them to surrender and cut all funding they said yeah right and fought on?
And if they are losing why is Russia blowing up and losing 1400 soldiers/day?
I guess you're in a NATO vassal state or the US and are reading NATO propaganda influenced sources?
The Ukraine (use the correct term) is NATO proxy. One of the master manipulators are the British. Trump is nobody in this game. Read Gleason's book and get back to me.
As for the Russian losses, even the BBC sponsored mediazona propaganda NGO can't justify those numbers.
While the ukronazis publish video after video of their massive graveyards, ever expanding.
I'm a Brit and I wouldn't call it Russophobia but we do have a long history of opposing Russia like fighting Hitler when Stalin partnered with him to invade Poland and start WW2 and now when the slaughter civilians, set up torture chamber and abduct children of their peaceful neighbours in the name of some BS covering for their imperial expansion.
If opposing mass murdering dictators is a phobia though I'm all for it.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are so afraid they won't even allow families of people like Mojtaba Vaisi and Meysam Vaisi, two brothers and well-known cultural activists in Kermanshah who were killed by security forces, to hold funerals. To recruit people to their pro-regime nightly vigils they are having 'temporary weddings' as incentives.
In addition with the restoration of internet more and more videos are coming out of the murders the Shia Islamic theocracy conducted on their own people who no longer want to live under Islamic rule, be forced to wear hats under threat of beating/death/rape, and those videos will undermine the lame lego propaganda attempts shortly. https://eyesofiran.com/event/59879
Such as..?
> Iran has been attacking military targets
Maybe a few, but the vast majority of their strikes illegally targeted civilian infrastructure. Off the top of my head, there was Dubai airport (struck at least 4x), Kuwait airport, various residential neighborhoods of Tel Aviv (with high-altitude cluster munitions that couldn't possibly target military assets), civilian energy infrastructure in several neighboring Gulf states, an MSC container ship, etc. etc.
Iraq. Yugoslavia. You name it.
Use the same standards and the Iranians have been very circumspect.
Let's just talk about ONE school: was it 160 school girls or more?
Iran - unfortunately- is winning. The Straits were open and thanks to your genius of a president, they are closed now AND have shown the Iranian regime that they can control it and monetise it.
Perhaps there's an alternative history where Germany was less incompetent with their production and had less stupid leadership. But even in those, as long as the US got into the war and the war continued until one side or the other was fully conquered - I think it would've been Nazi Germany being conquered. The US started at a huge disadvantage of not having much of a military, weapons or ammunition ready, but we got to ramp up production for a good ~4 years before going over to Europe to kick ass and ran circles around the Axis powers with our production.
Both on the eastern front and the western front the soviets were responsible for the ultimate defeat of the Axis.
Note: I'm not pro russia or pro America... Unlike the current team putin / Trump / Zelinsky / Taylor Swift and they can't do anything wrong we should always strive to discuss events > people.
We'll never know for sure.
It's certainly plausible that Moscow could have fallen if Hitler hadn't diverted Army Group Center to Kiev etc., which would have been a major political/logistical setback, but I still doubt it would have changed the ultimate outcome (especially if it had left the units of the Red Army intact that were encircled and destroyed in that diversion).
We were one poorly chosen voluntary conflict away from being shown to be a paper tiger. Now we've proved it, thanks to the fool in the White House and everyone who supports him.
Focusing our efforts away from mass produced drones is a huge mistake in my opinion. We need to produce drones by the million.
We also need both .50 caliber and shotgun sized proximity rounds by the billions to enable local defense against them.
The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid, and I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
Solid-fueled rockets should not be the backbone of our missile forces anymore. That doesn’t mean we get rid of them. But we should be adding mass-produced liquid-fueled missiles to the mix. And our entire rocket force shouldn’t be able to be nerfed by hitting one plant in Utah.
More like putting their mouth where their money is.
Aren't they selling their product?
There are safety issues too. I once heard a story from a missileer about a wrench being dropped into a silo, which caused a leak. When the fuel leaks out, the structural integrity of the missile is lost. Two (low ranked) men were sent in, and they both died.
Solid fuel solves a lot of problems, and is really the best way to go.
Lastly, articles like this are irresponsible because they disclose facts that may not be known to the enemy, and the enemy can adjust their tactics to take advantage -- which is exactly what we've been seeing in Iran over the past month. Half of the US population is against anything that our president does, to the point of actually hoping that he fails in Iran, and supporting the opposition party's efforts to stop him. If that occurs, and the Iranians detonate a nuke, they will have helped create another holocaust.
A more relevant comparison (- the baiting) would be another Hiroshima or Nagasaki given that those are the only nukes that have been used against civilian targets...
Also: despite nethanyahu saying for the last 30yrs that they have nukes (look up the compilation it's quite funny) the only one party in the middle east that we are 100% sure of has nukes is Israel...
If Iran were to use a nuke it could easily start a chain reaction. Iran CURRENTLY has a billboard with a date for the erasure of Israel. They have a countdown clock. This is nothing like Hiroshima or Nagaski. Iran is targeting a country with over half the population of one ethnicity in the entire world. The 4.6million in greater Tel Aviv make up over 25% of all Jewish people in the entire world.
Iran's moderates in government pushed students off roofs to their deaths. That is the moderate Islamic Republic position and are not people that should have access to nuclear weapons.
If any nation used a nuke it would easily start a chain reaction.
Israeli politicians, statesmen etc have often talked about greater israel and dehumanizing about Palestine... So yeah countless videos/ interviews / written scenarios but a billboard omg !!! The nerve... It's not like a current and still minister saying during an interview that all palestinians are animals... Definitely not in the democracy that is Israel, a person like that would be immediately thrown out right ?
Who cares about ethinicity? You apparently do. 1 human civilian = 1 human civilian I don't care about ethnicity. Guess who cared about ethnicity and is responsible for one of the worst slaughters in the world... Seems like it would be a bad thing to focus too much on that...
Israeli soldiers have killed people in ambulances, children, elderly etc.
Why should israel have nuclear weapons ?
But don't you see? Information wants to be free!
There's noting frail about it. It's just unable to support the insatiable appetite that every administration seems to have for dropping them on people.
Perhaps we need a "second source" for rationale, diplomacy, and the rule of law.
which they are hoping to make into a Patriot alternative https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/a-ukrainian-patriot...
It would be that rocket with German or similar guidance components. They are in a bit of a hurry, hoping to start intercepting incoming ballistic missiles this year.
They currently use solid fuel motors cast in Ukraine but are opening a plant in Denmark https://militarnyi.com/en/news/fire-point-to-launch-rocket-f...
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.
> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents
Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.
The article cites permitting and procurement snafus for why it's so hard to stand up new AP plants, but the same procurement process would apply for new liquid engine designs with all their moving parts, no?
Why? We are currently scaling rocket-engine production for the launch industry. We aren’t doing the same for anything like AP. I don’t think anyone would blink at a well-resourced effort to build a new small-satellite launch vehicle in a couple years, for instance.
Sure. But the hard part of SAM/ABM doesn’t need to be in the propulsion for many use cases, e.g. those where heightened readiness states are predictable. We’re using storable missiles for use cases where that storability isn’t adding any value.
The only real cases a non-storable SAM/ABM is viable are where the target being protected is so small and so known that (1) all missile infrastructure on/near the target is vulnerable and (2) sufficient advance warning is available to handle liquid fuels as needed. There is really only one case of this: Guam. I think there is a case that a dedicated unique-to-Guam liquid-fueled SAM/ABM farm would go a long way to addressing stockpile and magazine depth concerns.
Every U.S. base has this need. Stored munitions take out the first wave. That buys time to fuel the plentiful replacements.
Admittedly, it allows you to sidestep the regulatory hassles with handling those chemicals in the US, we can order troops to do all sorts of non-OSHA bad ideas, but wouldn't it be easier to just do the dangerous chemical handling on US soil, on a 9-5 in factory?
Fueling and oxidizing is automated now. The only risk would be the oxidizer being struck. But that isn’t super different from storing any ammunition.
> wouldn't it be easier to just do the dangerous chemical handling on US soil, on a 9-5 in factory?
No, it’s not. Particularly when you factor into the risk calculation the inevitability of exhausting those stockpiles in a conflict.
Are we talking HTP+Kerosene or UDMH+N2O4 here? The article said HTP in which case you have 1% breakdown to water per year which will be an ongoing problem for stockpiles. N2O4 is nastier but more stable when contained.
Either way, you're going from "dangerous chemistry in the plant" to "dangerous chemistry in the plant, through a global logistics network, and in operations". The solid rocket fuel is pretty stable after it's built, just don't light it on fire or drop it too hard. Room temperature oxidizers are terrifying.
To be clear, I know a good amount about rockets and less about missiles. I’m standing on this hill. I won’t die on it.
> Are we talking HTP+Kerosene or UDMH+N2O4 here?
I’m thinking kerosene or even methane. UDMH is a toxic mess.
> you have 1% breakdown to water per year which will be an ongoing problem for stockpiles
Sort of? It’s a nuisance. Not a dealbreaker. Certainly not an issue compared to running out of munitions.
> to "dangerous chemistry in the plant, through a global logistics network, and in operations"
The dangerousness of an energetics plant is not comparable to that of managing HTP. (And at a certain point, LOX becomes economically competitive for base protection.)
> solid rocket fuel is pretty stable after it's built, just don't light it on fire or drop it too hard
It’s great while you have them. Then you run out. That’s the current situation. Lots of perfect for a while, and then rationing while the enemy gets free hits.
Put two militaries against each other, one which can mass produce and fuel liquid rockets against one with fewer solid ones, and the former has an attrition advantage while the latter has a readiness one. If one only has solid-fueled rockets being made at a tiny clip, where the AP all comes from one plant, they become an easy adversary to defeat.
> I’m thinking kerosene or even methane. UDMH is a toxic mess.
Methane is absolutely out because of pressures/temperatures involved in keeping it liquid for any useful length of time. It would require both significant on-site gas storage as well as a gas compression plant to produce liquid methane on demand, both considerable additional targets (and very fragile ones at that). Kerosene + additives (e.g. RP-1 and JP-8) is the only really viable storable "friendly" hydrocarbon.
In practice, Hydrazine/UDMH + N2O4 is going to be much easier to handle safely than you think (Hydrazine itself is probably safer to handle than Ammonia, and there's a lot of Ammonia handled out there). You fill and seal the tanks at assembly, and outside of rare leaks the handling is fairly benign. Most notably, basically every major military has, as some point in the 20th century, done so - including aboard USN carriers, famously a very skeptical customer from a handling standpoint. Even today, every single F-16 (about 2000 in active service with about 25 operators around the globe) carries Hydrazine in the onboard EPU, and those operators are prepared to service (and handle leaks) safely.
While they aren't pleasant chemicals by any stretch, Hydrazine/UDMH + N2O4, by virtue of its immediate hypergolic behavior, is actually quite well-behaved from a fire/explosion safety standpoint, which is practically a larger concern than toxic fumes (consider how many other things in and around a combat environment can produce toxic gasses). Hydrazine/UDMH + N2O4 ignite promptly on mixing, and thus don't accumulate in an explosive mixture to be ignited later like alternative fuels and oxidizers.
What liquid situation changes that? What liquid would be more economical? My instinct is towards minimizing operations outside of the US, keep it simple stupid and just go solid, but could it actually be reasonable to have, say, sealed containers of fuel/oxidizer of whatever type inside the missile and you "pull the pin" to uncap them and start mixing in the ignition chamber?
No. The economics really shine if you can mass produce dry engines and then fuel them on site, ideally with locally sourced or even on-based manufactured oxidizer (if you’re going LOX).
Barring that, though, not being limited by AP would make the last comment’s hydrazine path acceptable.
> It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online
Oh boy, have you seen how long SAM/ABM development takes? The critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6. Not yet-another-cruise-missile which is already liquid-fueled.
Correct. If we design it now we can build it at massive scale within a decade. If we stick to the current, broken model we might be able to 4x in the same timeline.
https://newtotse.com/oldtotse/en/bad_ideas/ka_fucking_boom/c...
More missiles do not make the world safe, and due to human fallacy it almost always make us less safe.
This article isn’t about nuclear-tipped missiles outside a historical context.
Iran got invaded. North Korea didn't and won't. Cuba might.
Guess what those 2 countries that are part of the world don't have that the 3rd does...
Lol what?! No, binary fuels have two components that are both neccesary for operation.
Also like commented elsewhere, peroxide fuels are... an adventurous choice
What these basic errors mean for the perception of the rest of the article is left as an exercise for the reader.
“Printed Engines Propel the Next Industrial Revolution“
>X-Bow is an emerging player in the solid rocket motor market, using 3D printing technology to produce motors and propellants
What's clear here is that the US has a military designed for the Cold War, or possibly the first Gulf War, and Iran in particular has a military completely designed for this conflict. Strategic Air Doctrine has shown itself to be an expensive failure incapable of regime change or even suppressing the force projection of a vastly inferior military in a regional conflict.
Key evidence of all of this is that the US has depleted so many "stand off" munitions and, even now, carrier groups are deployed far from the Strait of Hormuz. Stand off munitions are more expensive, harder to replace, less plentiful and less capable (since a certain amount of the vehicle has to be devoted to propulsion). These are also the same munitions previously earmarked for a potential future conflict with China. It's also the exact ones talked about in this article.
The other are missile interceptors (also mentioned). In the 12 day war, interceptions by the Iron Dome and carrier groups (including THAAD) in the area were very high. By the end of Israel being attacked, interceptions had dropped to as low as 50%. This is more evidence that the IRGC were using more advanced missles, had learned from previous encounters and/or munitions for missile defence were running low. As further evidence of this, the US informed Switzerland that Patriot deliveries would be delayed indefinitely [4].
This is a war that was lost ovver 3 months ago at this point. We just seem to be pretending that's not the case and hoping it magically solves itself. The energy shock for all this hasn't even begun yet.
There are so many problems here that inform just why there's this missile crisis. That's barely scratching the surface, honestly. The entire military-industrial complex is designed to extract wealth from the government with the most expensive weapons programs possible. And if you ever hear any servicemen talk, none of it actually works. Even things like the vehicles break down constantly. Gone are the days of relatively cheap and famously reliable Jeeps, for example. The AK-47 was a workhorse of the Red Army too for a reason. We're incapable of building ships. We keep building deep water navies that nobody needs. Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf. It is a trillion dollar a year scam at this point.
Oh and speaking of capability, knowing something about this allows one to avoid silly theoreticals that could never happen. Most relevant here is there was a period when the media was asking "woudl the US invade?" The answer was always "no" because we can't. We don't have that military anymore.
As for other parts of the article, things like Titan II probably aren't such an issue because (luckily) we don't tend to expend ICBMs and MRBMs, nor do we need to expand our capacity and if we started using them, well we'd have much bigger problems. Tomahawks however are a huge problem.
I read once that every Congressional district, all 435 of them, are part of the military-industrial complex. It's designed this way so Congress will never vote to cut funding.
And what's humbled this entire thing are mass-produced $10,000 drones and relatively cheap (~$1M estimated) ballistic missiles in untouchable underground facilities that can be cheaply fired and those launchers are easily fixed.
I'd say the biggest missile crisis is cost asymmetry. We're using $4m interceptors to shoot down $10-20k drones and $1M missiles, sometimes multiple of them for a single target. When your opponent can produce thousands of those per month that becomes impossible to counter and economically prohibitive to do so if you could.
[1]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/depleting-missile-defense-inte...
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2l2yl7r8r2o
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/30/us-military-equipme...
[4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/united-states-informs-switzerl...
> Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf.
Nearly every type of ship in the USN has spent considerable deployment time in the Persian Gulf. They are absolutely "designed" for deployment there. What "prevents" their deployment there is that it does not make tactical or strategic sense to put highly capable warships during a war in a tiny waterway when said warship is capable and effective at operating from outside said tiny waterway. Put a CBG in the Persian Gulf and it becomes just about as expensive to defend as an air base on land (much more so, given the logistics involved). That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
> Rising ocean temperatures will change operating environments in every theater. But planning for specific effects requires first understanding the fundamental dynamics of warming seas. Two key indicators are the average sea surface temperature and the number of extreme-temperature sea surface events called marine heat waves.1 (See sidebar.)
> These conditions will affect four major aspects of Navy operations at sea: crew, equipment operability, ship maintenance, and environmental intelligence.
and (emphasis added)
> Carrier strike groups have reported environmental challenges while operating in the Arabian Gulf, Persian Gulf, and Gulf of Oman. Firsthand accounts from sailors describe crew members unable to stop sweating on the flight deck or in engineering spaces.
and
> As sea surface temperatures climb, ships will require more maintenance. Higher temperatures accelerate corrosion of ship hulls and ballast tanks and can lead to increased biofouling along the hull and in heat exchangers.
As for:
> That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
That's just another way of saying what I said: they can't operate at close range and must instead use stand off weapons instead of, say, gravity bombs. [1]: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2026/january/navy...
> That's just another way of saying what I said: they can't operate at close range and must instead use stand off weapons instead of, say, gravity bombs.
It really isn't. Outside of rare cases where mid-air refueling is unavailable, standoff weapons are used to reduce exposure to enemy air defense, not to increase range. Your airwing uses exactly the same gravity bombs to strike a target 10 miles from the carrier as they do at 50 miles or 100 miles or 200 miles.
Not entirely sure what the THAAD successor is though. F-22 successor is already flying, albeit not publicly.
[1]: https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2026-05-21-New-Lockheed-Mart...
[2]: https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/next-generation-in...
[3]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/rebuilding-us-missile-inventor...
Nobody is going to attack us unless we go out into the world creating enemies.
Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
Even in the 19th century the US was sucked into Europe's wars - the war of 1812 was essentially the American theater of the Napoleanic war - US merchants were attacked trying to trade with France/Europe, the US Navy tried to protect them saying "we're neutral let us trade" and Britain said "there's no such thing as neutral" and sent armies. Over time foreign powers got more wary of fighting the US but we still got dragged into European and Pacific wars (WWI, WWII), in large part because we kept trading with our European and Asian partners.
They all manage to get by without the leverage of 11 carrier fleet groups. You know, trade between equals, and not subjects.
WW2 was largely driven by the personalities involved. Roosevelt really, really, really hated fascism, and was doing everything in his power to stick it in their wheel spokes. Had the industrialist coup succeeded, or had Hoover or Landon won, it's quite likely that neither would have done much to oppose either Japan or Germany.
WW1 was also driven by principles, as opposed to pragmatism. Wilson found more alignment with the anglosphere than he did with the central powers - and after watching the most destructive war in history go on for four years, was keen on embarking on his League of Nations project. Practically, there was no reason for the US to not maintain neutrality in it.
I don't entirely buy your personalities argument - it certainly mattered, but in an alternate universe where Hitler still rose to power but e.g. FDR didn't get a 3rd term - a European war would've still caused problems for America and US/Europe trade would've likely come under fire dragging the US towards fighting in the war; in 1939 US GDP was $93.4 billion with $3.2 billion in exports and $2.3 billion in imports... far less important than today (where imports/exports are more than 10% of GDP) but still fairly substantial.
But it's hard to say how things would've turned out. With different leaders the politics of it would've mattered a lot; without US support WWII could've still easily been raging in 1944, an election year, and so an anti-war president could've been replaced. Or maybe Britain would've had a hard time holding out against constant assault without American supplies purchased with US government money, the USSR wouldn't have been able to bear the full brunt of Nazis who were less tied up on the western front, and by the time America considered joining the war under a different leader, it would've looked like a go-it-alone job. Still it's hard to imagine a world in which the Axis didn't bite off a bit more than it could chew.
You need to take a moment and think about your "vassal states" argument. May I remind you that at the peak of the cold war the US had a hostile country plant their nukes right at the doorstop of the US in one of those neighbors who not so long before was a vassal state?
See 9/11 for an example of "nobody is going to attack us" being false.
Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe.
But that would take a while (generations) without any guarantee and is kind of the opposite of what has happened recently.
This is basically what the UK did after WWII. We’d have to be honest that a fall in relative living standards would probably accompany such a move. (Counterpoint: the Nordic countries.)
Anyways I'm sure the Ukrainian citizens enjoy being used as props to justify inhumane actions.
Can you elaborate on what you believe to have been this "peace process" you speak of?
Even today, when the Kremlin is begging for the Ukraine war to go away, they are bombing civilians and Kiev and threatening Armenia with a war of invasion.
Can you elaborate as to why you seem to think this was impossible?
...NATO?
Also, NATO accession talks for Ukraine were dead for years when Russia invaded Crimea. The notion that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine holds up about as much as the claim that America was forced to bomb Iran.
Russia started invading Ukraine in 2014. Who do you think you are fooling?
Also, are you conveniently forgetting that Russia invaded Ukraine? Meaning, Russia started this whole mess?