Military might is always relative. It is always relative to whatever threats a country faces.Josh wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 10:51 pm Ken’s confidence in American military preparedness shows a kind of naïveté of someone who still thinks we have the greatness of the nation in 1969 or 1990 or whenever; in reality, we are a country right now missing its military recruitment goals by a rather long shot, whose military active and reserves are missing their PT targets, who just burned up most of their strategic energy stockpile, who can’t even empower an ally like Ukraine to actually win against Russia, and where a country occupied for decades like Afghanistan is now enthusiastically forging ties with China.
This is the same country which issues press releases about shipping Javelins to Ukraine but is mysteriously mute about its lack of capacity to ramp up production. (For reference, Ukraine is going through 500 a day and America produces a few thousand a year.) Before you tell me we can ramp up production, no, we can’t - we have a serious supply chain crisis which is getting worse, not better.
Wars run on energy, food, and credit. America has destroyed its energy production infrastructure, exports 25% of its oil gas (up from 5% a few years ago); food is more expensive than ever; and America is ruining its ability to raise cheap debt in global credit markets. In short, you don’t want to be depending on America to win a war right now.
The US should not be engaging in ridiculous nation-building imperialist projects around the world. That was a mistake in Vietnam. It was a mistake in Iraq. It was a mistake in Somalia. It was a mistake in Afghanistan. And it will be a mistake the next time US troops are deployed to intervene in some international conflict.
That doesn't mean the US isn't supremely defended militarily. In addition to two oceans, it has enormous military resources. There are simply no other countries in the world that have anything close to the ability to invade and defeat the US in any sort of conventional war. Sure, China and Russia could blow up the world with their nuclear arsenals. But conduct a conventional invasion of the US mainland? Russia has no meaningful sealift and amphibious capacity. Their navy isn't designed for that and Russia has never fought a sea war and never conducted amphibious operations in any war. They barely know how to cross a river. Every war they have fought in the past century was basically a railroad war. China is more or less the same but presumably with more competence and resources. They are a massive continental power. But they don't have the infrastructure to project massive force across oceans. Which requires both naval and air superiority. By contrast, every war the US has fought in the past century was entirely amphibious. Virtually every bit of equipment used in WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. made at least part of its journey to the battlefield by sea or air. And they have been doing it more or less constantly for the past 80 years because we have more or less been in constant war somewhere in the world for the past 80 years. So the US navy does know what it is doing. The only countries with comparable naval traditions are the UK and Japan and they are both allies.
So yes, I don't think we are going to need to depend on a bunch of rednecks with their ARs to defend the American homeland any time soon.
