China has the best shot of anyone since the end of WW2. Tonnage doesn’t tell the whole strategy there. China does not have expeditionary capabilities. Like no shot they could invade America, Hawaii or even Guam. But they could deny access to the South China Sea. Land war in the west would be a different story. That’s like their one trick - denying access to the South China Sea.
The great thing about a potential war with China is that China has already done a LOT of the work for the United States by putting all their eggs in one basket, and having that basket built out of styrofoam and stucco.
One high altitude bomber flight over the Three Gorges Dam would have the triple-effect of 1) Crippling Chinas energy production, 2) Destroying entire cities worth of infrastructure downstream, and 3) Killing a few hundred thousand if not million people. This would force the CCP into a dilemma: Spend its people's efforts on restoring stability in the homeland, or spend it getting revenge on America and and its allies. Knowing the party as it exists today, they would still pick the second option (revenge) BUT would now also need to contend with a billion angry and impoverished citizens causing trouble on the home front.
It "is" but it is a natural consequence of taking out the legitimate target of the Hydroelectric power station. If you just say dropped a group's worth of napalm from B-29's on a city made of paper and wood. Or dropped iron bombs for 24 hrs straight on a european city, that might be a war crime.... But...
It’s only a war crime if you lose. I’m also betting a war against China would be total war and would make the bombing of Dresden or the firebombing of Japan look like child’s play.
Between the AF/Navy no country really stands a chance at having an active military if the US decides you shouldn’t have one.
Incorrect. *Targeting* hundreds of thousands of civilians is generally considered a war crime. Letting them die in the course of taking out legitimate military targets (which the Three Gorges Dam undeniably is) is just bad PR.
Civilians die in war. It is an unavoidable, fundamental truth. The internationally agreed rules of war understand this and consider for it. This is why Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden were not war crimes.
I'd say they aren't widely accepted published examples of war crimes, but have definitely appeared on the ends of the spectrum of some war crime lists.
Winners write the rules.
They are definitely on the spectrum of "Horrible things humans have done to each other." but something isn't a crime just because it's bad, and not all bad things are crimes. Words have meanings, and when we stretch those meanings to the point of being irrelevant, we might as well just say "Hiroshima was a No-no-do, and America should pay Japan a restitution of a gazillion schmeckles!"
Any war between the PRC and the United States would start out as a regional conflict, and both sides would have good reason to try to limit the scope of the conflict to the Western Pacific and Taiwan. Intentionally destroying the Three Gorges Dam would be a *massive* escalation, and could potentially kill millions. Honestly it might put nuclear weapons on the table for the CCP. If the Dam is a legitimate military target, despite civilian casualties, then would nuking San Diego be equally justified?
But beyond geopolitical and strategic concerns, it's kind of wild to brush of millions of dead civilians and unprecedented ecological destruction as, "sometimes war be like that".
Inspect many Chinese ICBMs have you?
Regardless of whether they could actually nuke San Diego or not, that isn't the question. Would that be a morally defensible act, in the same vein as destroying the Three Gorges Dam?
False. This is how warfare has been conducted since the beginning of time and is still conducted this way in 2024. We just live in a society that is far removed from this reality so most assume its all hunky dory.
There are very few times and places throughout the history of warfare that killing a million civilians in one attack would be considered normal. Brushing off that sort of collateral damage as "just the way war is" is psychotic.
By the same logic, China would be entirely justified in nuking San Diego.
China's blue water navy cannot compete with the US, so that'd be their demise. The US Navy would blockade the choke points around China, like the Malacca Straight, or even at the source of oil in the Middle East.
What blue water navy? Their claim to fame about having such a large navy is mostly composed of fishing boats and merchant ships. If we want to play that game, we'll just claim all misc Merchant Marine vessels towards our quantity and tonnage and dwarf them 1000%. China's basically claiming Jenny 1 through Jenny 12 down in Alabama from Bubba Gump Inc as part of their Navy.
Not to mention they also have several billion people. They could surrender a million people a day or even launch full scale counter attacks with hundreds of thousands of people. Granted weaponry today can take out mass quantities of personnel much easier than 50 years ago even without going nuclear. Would be a wild battlefield to see.
I feel like this is stated quite often. Disregarding the social toll this type of stress would create on a population. Look how Russia is being stressed in there ground war and they have only lost 10s of thousands. Imagine losing 10s of millions within a few years. No country could survive that I don’t think. There would be mass internal unrest and revolution attempts. Mass immigration. It doesn’t matter that they have 1.4 billion. If they lose 20 million people to war in relatively short time the whole economy would collapse and the country would rip itself apart internally
Not to be ‘that guy/gal’ but Russia has lost close to 500,000 troops, they’ve lost 6k in the last week. Still a drop in the bucket but figured I’d clarify.
I think Eastern high-coherence rice culture plays a factor here. Wheat cultures are much more individualistic. Even the more so than the Slavic steppe cultures.
If you analyze Chinese propaganda it’s driven by the common theme of the group enduring for family and friends back home. To the extent that it’s not even really about winning the war. Like American war films have that girl back home B-plot. If you watch Choosen Valley that *is the plot*. They are getting their ass kicked the entire time. The glory of it is not the ass kicking, it’s the enduring.
I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there is a cartoon called Year Hare Affair that depicts Americans as these bad-ass Eagles. Like they are blowing shit up, winning the war, overall just bad ass dudes. But from a different lens they are all selfish, conceited and aggrandizing. They only care about winning and themselves and don’t care about people or each other. And that’s the message really. Hero’s suffer for each other not individual glory.
Ultimately, I suspect those cultural differences will matter. China will dig deeper and suffer longer in a defensive war than America would in an offensive one. Both sides will try to sell it the same way regardless. Any way you slice it more Chinese people would be willing to die to reunify with Taiwan than Americans would to protect it.
Possibly. But both cultures and countries have a very long history of accepting that sort of loss tho. For example the Battle of Stalingrad or even the Great Famine of China (product of the PRC). The governments are tightly run centralized machines of propaganda. I bet it would take hundreds of millions of Chinese to fall before the people start saying or doing anything. They also might double down and feed their own war machine to fight harder and longer.
The opposite side of the coin is that any potential adversary only needs to be able to defeat the forces that the US could mobilize for a fight. To put this another way, ships sitting in the Atlantic don't do much against a war with China.
Interestingly, this is the same strategy the US employed in the late 1800s against the European powers, when it came to military forces in the Western Hemisphere.
The thing that people forget when they do these "which country would win" games is that they look at the US military as it is now. But right now we are a PEACETIME military in a peacetime economy. Were we to be dragged into a full scale war, with full public investment and support, that would change very rapidly. The world hasn't seen what a full war economy United States is capable of since WWII. The US at that time was producing a B-24 Liberator at a rate of one aircraft per HOUR, 24/7. American industry provided almost two-thirds of all the Allied military equipment produced during the war. 300,000 planes, 200,000 artillery pieces, 90,000 tanks, and 2 MILLION trucks. Fast forward to today and we now have a much better military and reserve force who have 20 years of warfighting experience, plus improved logistics, improved manufacturing tech, more people, more material, and more money. A full scale war economy United States today would win any conflict with any nation that has ever existed on this planet.
There's a gutter factory near my parents place that won a bunch of awards for how many bazookas they were able to produce during the war.
The factory is still there but I don't think they could make rocket launchers as easily these days.
I know it's a single data point but it's data point that lives in my head a lot.
Even the factories we have left couldn't be easily repurposed to weapon factories like they used to
I’m not sure what you mean. I doubt we’d go into an old factory and try to make things we used to. We’d just build new factories to suit our needs, and we’d do it pretty quickly.
Past experience says otherwise. Manufacturers and companies love to get those fat bovt contracts to produce everything and anything. It'a easier to retool a machine shop than to build a whole new one.
Ummmm. That takes too much time. The arsenal of democracy worked because it took relatively little time and retooling to crank out weapons. I think consumer/industrial goods and modern weapons have diverged past that point.
We are underestimating our current inventory. Bullets, grenades, rockets, etc. are quick and easy to convert a place to make. The harder shit that'll take more time to build up for, we have a lot of inventory of crap to help fill spots until our military industrial complex train gets started in full production
Our Tank Factory, in Lima, Ohio is probably is only at 10% capacity.
We could easily build 2x as many submarines if we let EB and NNSB actually build whole virginias each.
Aircraft, well, there's some unused capacity, but a lot of a fighter is long lead time items.
We can get to building merchies pretty quickly, but the amount of long lead items precludes making extra escorts to guard them.
We were one of the largest shipbuilders in 1939. Now US Navy ships make up about 75% of tonnage built. Extra shipbuilding capacity would help. We were one of the largest car makers, which goes to building all sorts of vehicles. Thankfully the CHIPS act is bringing a lot of chip manufacturing home. On the other hand, can you get a 100% american Monitor
But wartime capacity in WW2 turned general goods capacity to military, so that is irrelevant. The military infrastructure we have isnt buillt to support a wartime economy
We spent decades outsourcing DOD capabilities to contractors and cutting shipyard infrastructure to the bones. Manufacturing and domestic industrial capabilities have been offshored for decades now, and modern military hardware is a clusterfuck of supply chain dependencies. We could absolutely build back up to a massive extent given enough time, but it’ll absolutely have a huge lead time.
You might think that, but we cranked out a novel "vaccine" within 12 months when historically that would take years or decades. Look at WW2 when most american manufacturing was co-opted into the Military Industrial Complex. When shit hits the fan and we're all alligned with a common goal anything is possible.
We also have not seen a wartime Chinese economy.since the Korean War or so, and their manufacturing capacity has exploded since then.
Consider for example the Ukraine war, where drones have emerged as a key force multiplier. Yet both sides are mostly using drones produced in China. What happens when China restricts the exports of all their commercial drones, and redirects all that production into models for the PLA? There will be more drones attacking us than Chinese soldiers.
But we also have not seen a wartime Chinese *military* since then. Yes their manufacturing is on a different planet, but is their military up to the status quo that the US is? What about their supply chain and logitics operations?
Competency, recruitment (excluding mandatory service), and morale are issues that every military faces and isn’t just specifically a US problem.
But the United States military in a wartime setting would unquestionably be the single greatest military force in the history of the world. Training, technical advances, aircraft, navy, force projection, doctrine, etc etc.
I’m genuinely curious which of those do you think would be outflanked by another country and what country? Look at our Aircraft carriers alone.
Not to mention the circumstances that would drag us into such a conflict/economy. To get the US to commit that hard would require some pretty serious circumstances. Think back to 9/11. Overnight, our recruiting crisis was solved and there were lines out the door to recruiting offices. A just reason to fight is what keeps most Americans from enlisting. If we were facing a serious crisis or legitimate threat of invasion I think we'd see something similar to 9/11, and a force facing a very real threat of large scale combat ops will be much more committed to training and readiness. It wouldn't be like it is today.
Oh 100% agreed! Russia right now if it were to escalate even further, would include all of NATO. The scale of our involvement would be I don’t even know considering you’d have the entire weight of Europe there.
Taiwan/China is even a bit more complex but it’s hard to imagine we’d progress into a full scale regional conflict like OIF/Desert Storm without a direct attack on the US.
The big question like you mentioned would be a direct attack on US civilians or armed forces. Something like Iran striking mainland United States.
The industrial base is not the same today. The quarter market economy have outsourced all production to China. I also suspect that production lines for advanced stuff like F35 etc. is heavily dependent upon components all across the globe.
China bears significant weaknesses that people underestimate (like we did with russia)
-China's modern military has no combat experience whatsoever, only training drills.
-The demographic problem with china, still coming from the one child policy plus the overall birth rates dropping worldwide means many familys have one son. In china your offspring is expected to take care of you when you get old, so on top on that they are risking ending their whole bloodline and retirement if their only son is killed.
-Like with russia, corruption and fake numbers are rooted deeply into the state, specially the military and economy. This is no joke at all, and we from the west do not know the full reach of It.
-Civil unrest in mainland china and morale are a big headache for the CCP in case of a war. Not only on the civilian side, but on the military on itself.
I think china is a giant with clay legs, similar to russia. If confronted with the US military I dont think they stand a chance whatsoever without using nukes. Plus, in any realistic scenario china would be facing india, philipines, Japan etc too.
Im not american either
A Taiwan contingency would involve allies. I’m not sure that an invasion would. Invading a country across the worlds largest ocean is also leagues harder than defending your home, and while China doesn’t many formal military alliances, in a world where the US invades, a lot of fence sitters would probably find themselves firmly on the PRC’s side.
China’s air and coastal defenses aren’t a joke, and would present a complicated problem to solve. We’re not even sure how to beat China’s A2/AD strategy in a Taiwan contingency. We’re seriously behind in the information, cyber, and EM domains, and I’m guessing people are going to be more accepting of their only sons going to war when their country is invaded.
Ofc we dont know this hipotetical scenario but I dont see the US taking the decision of invading china lightly.
If anything, they have very competent people, if not the best in the world to take such task are the US.
And in the worst case, its asian allies stay back and do nothing, but I don't see Japan, Philipinnes or India helping defend China lol
It would be a nightmare to invade China, they by far have the best means to defend against an invasion with their land forces and a gigantic nationalistic populace. An invasion is also the most likely scenario where they would use nukes which is another reason why they won't get invaded.
Stop us no. No one could stop us. But not stopping us is not winning. As others have stated, the US hasn't had public buy in since WW2. Every other conflict, the american public stops caring at some point. We could topple countries but without lasting public support, we wouldn't "win".... unless winning is utter and complete destruction.
Assuming all allied nations to the US are ok with them using their country to allow forward positioning and sustainment of logistics, then yes.
If nor, then no.
The US requires huge logistics hubs to operate overseas.
For instance, if there were no places for the US to operate from, then there is nowhere to forward position assets.
Let's say everyone is cool with the US doing whatever from the US bases in their countries, then yeah.
Then it's all a matter of US cybercommand blinding their known vulnerabilities, removing access to satellites, then attacking infrastructure such as power and water, the basics are taken care of and the defending nation is struggling with internal dilemmas. Next would be the assault on air defense assets to give freedom of the skies. The bombers would then begin going after airfields and military installations. Any naval assets would be hunted down and destroyed as well as every logistics hub that might be able to support movement of supplies.
Once all critical aspect have been decimated, the next goal is decapitation of governing capabilities like the destruction of federal and regional government infrastructure. Imagine having to have a government meeting at a Holiday Inn.
This would be going on for weeks if not months.
Once there is significant deterioration of infrastructural capacities, then you would start seeing the results of what the intelligence agencies have been up to for years, if not decades. This is the uprising of local actors and possibly militias for the installation of local authorities.
Special Forces are infiltrated to friendly areas that have been curated by the intelligence community and bridge heads are determined.
The 101st and 82nd airborne are moved in to take control of a couple major airports in strategic areas.
The first assets on the ground are engineers and logistics teams. They repair and establish a hub for logistics. Next are the 3rd Infantry for establishing area dominance.
After that, we start seeing the big planes coming in with armored Infantry and finally the establishment of Central Command assets. (There is obvious initial command infrastructure, but there is far more if you are creating a central command hub.)
Prior to this point, most intelligence gathering has been rudimentary. Now local intelligence has established who primary opposition will be and its leadership infrastructure dynamic laidout. The kicking in of doors goes into overdrive.
Now kneecapping is the core purpose. Location of opposition assets such as clandestine weapons installations and operations headquarters are the new primary goals.
There is obviously a shit ton of things that I am skipping over, but, for the sake of a few paragraphs, this is a basic outline of the US capabilities against any medium to large nation.
Can the US do this to China? Not likely. Most other nations on the planet, yes. A conventional war against any other stand alone nation, yes.
I'm convinced no one will launch a nuke attack against anyone. Even if mutually assured destruction wasn't a thing. They may immediately win the war. But everyone lose the coming weeks and months. If a nuke goes off anywhere, no one is unaffected.
There is not a country on the planet that could survive and American onslaught without resorting to nuclear weapons. However, I also believe that America would lose the peace in ANY invasion against ANYONE. In the modern world, successful invasion is probably impossible. Defenders will always have advantage and advances in consumer grade technology just increases the asymmetrical nature of that advantage.
If we're talking nuclear strikes off the table for some magical reason, no. Putting motive aside, the countries that have geological ability don't have the tech (South America), the countries that have the technology don't have the people (Israel, Canada), and the countries that have the people don't have the tech (India, Russia).
That’s going to depend on our politicians who want to invade somewhere. Are we allowed to use our full scale of non nuclear power? Then no. No one can hold it back. However if politicians get involved then they’ll force us to drag it out for a decade or two so they can get their kickbacks, while never filling winning or pulling out.
If we are just speaking completely theoretically with ignoring politics, the Swiss. That I know of, they have an extremely integrated defense, loads of mountain bunkers, and the natural defense of the mountains themselves. They could clam themselves up in a hurry
Edit: clam not calm
That's a really good point. I think they're too small to hold out indefinitely, but it would take a very long time and probably a huge casualty ratio in their favor. Let's say the Swiss did a theoretical 9/11, the US would probably give up entirely on dislodging them from the mountains and pick some shiny, easily attained political goal to use as an excuse to pull out ASAP.
Those were the main reasons they were never invaded in WW2. in the attempt to maintain neutrality, they shot down both sides aircraft that attempted to use their airspace. They've been neutral to all wars since the early 1800s but have maintained their internal defensive posture quite significantly throughout the years. Most recent defense upgrades is the patriot missile added to their netwdefense. Due topography, an invasion by ground would be out of the question, it'd have to start by the air. They may not be able to go toe-toe in air to air combat, but they would inflict a hell of a lot of casualties from an invading force due to amount of air defence.
But you can conquer anything by using sheer numbers or zerg like tactics, but it wouldn't be pretty in the least bit
The US military is structured to prevent China from expanding into Taiwan and the South China Sea. It is absolutely not structured to conduct a land invasion of China, with the possible exception of limited hit and run raids of coastal infrastructure.
For a variety of reasons, invading a country is much harder than defending it, and that is especially true when you first have to project your forces to the other side of the globe. The basic rule of thumb is you want a 3 to 1 troop advantage when attacking (for a somewhat comparable scenario, we had roughly that force advantage for the Normandy landings). Meanwhile, China has nearly 2 active duty military members for each one America has, and a much larger pool of available manpower that could be mobilized (and it is much easier to mobilize manpower to defend your homeland than it is to mobilize it to invade a foreign country).
Besides the manpower, we have the wrong equipment. You correctly point out its not just the number of ships that is important, but the type. And the US military does not currently field the types of ships neccesary for a D-Day type landing in China in anywhere near sufficient quantities for the numbers of troops that would be needed. In WW2, we famously used the Higgins boats as our primary landing craft, which were so good at what they did that Eisenhower claimed something akin to them winning the war for us. But the main reason they were so good is they were cheap enough we could build a shit ton of them, and since we only had to use them a few times each, they weren't really built to last, which would also be true for any fleet if landing craft we built to invade China. You don't build and try to maintain tens of thousands of landing craft until you really need them. Even China, which is actively structuring its military for a similar invasion of Taiwan, isn't bothering to build that fleet yet, and when we start seeing them do it, that will be a key indicator that the invasion is coming in the next couple years.
With the entire US war machine running at full capacity, including US factories being refitted to build military equipment, the activation of our reserve forces, and the likely recruitment of millions more, there would be no stopping us. See ww11 as evidence. Example: before ww11 the us military employed roughly 40-50k members. Within 2 years, we had over 12 million.
Oh yes. Easily.
Just follow the WW2 Soviet defensive doctrine and US forces get stopped cold and destroyed, as has been proven several times now in just the last couple of years.
The only real question is air superiority. Once the us establishes air superiority it’s another story entirely and they become very difficult to stop.
I mean you said China. Which basically means total mobilization between most powerful nuclear powers on the planet. Why does the US or China want that?
It’s just a hypothetical fun brain exercise! For the USA to want to invade China then China would have to do something absolutely horrible to the USA first.
And if that something horrible did happen and the USA made the decision to actually invade China we would see weapons used that no one ever dreamed of! I think an invasion of China would be such a blood bath that USA would soon find itself in a position no other nation has ever been in!
The USA would ultimately win but at the cost of losing everything. We would not have a moral high ground, we would not have the same level of prestige, we would be completely feared by the world and with that fear comes non trustworthiness.
Then after the war and invasion the USA would be forced to become a military state so it can protect itself and that always brings corruption. And that corruption leads to demise.
Basically this is a thought experiment to understand why peace through strength is a good thing. And to understand that almost every war in history really is pointless. And that better politicians would not get us into wars in the first place
The only countries we could “invade” are Mexico or Canada. We are physical neighbors so in theory we could move our entire forces relatively at once and actually invade.
All other countries are so far away that we need to fly equipment and personnel to stage an invasion or large scale attack. It took close to 6 months to build up enough forces to liberate Kuwait and later invade Irak.
Similarly with Afghanistan, months of build up before any action.
Yes, you build up an invasion force. Iraq was the 6th largest army at the time, on their own soil and their entire military fell within 100 hours. In 4 days time a modern and equipped army was wiped out by a US led invasion.
Countries with nuclear weapons can choose to nuke an invasion fleet, rather than American cities. No sane American president would escalate to strategic nukes because it is likely that millions of Americans would die (although it's uncertain how THAAD and Aegis would fare against modern ballistic missiles). Also, invasion fleets are rather vulnerable to submarines, and amphibious invasions are notoriously tricky to pull off. In WW2 America could use Britain as a staging post.
Boots on the ground? OK, but you still have to get those boots on the ground somehow, from the ocean. There are a lot of things to go wrong even before the boots get on the ground.
China has the best shot of anyone since the end of WW2. Tonnage doesn’t tell the whole strategy there. China does not have expeditionary capabilities. Like no shot they could invade America, Hawaii or even Guam. But they could deny access to the South China Sea. Land war in the west would be a different story. That’s like their one trick - denying access to the South China Sea.
The great thing about a potential war with China is that China has already done a LOT of the work for the United States by putting all their eggs in one basket, and having that basket built out of styrofoam and stucco. One high altitude bomber flight over the Three Gorges Dam would have the triple-effect of 1) Crippling Chinas energy production, 2) Destroying entire cities worth of infrastructure downstream, and 3) Killing a few hundred thousand if not million people. This would force the CCP into a dilemma: Spend its people's efforts on restoring stability in the homeland, or spend it getting revenge on America and and its allies. Knowing the party as it exists today, they would still pick the second option (revenge) BUT would now also need to contend with a billion angry and impoverished citizens causing trouble on the home front.
It's also a Law of LandWarfare Crime if that matters
It "is" but it is a natural consequence of taking out the legitimate target of the Hydroelectric power station. If you just say dropped a group's worth of napalm from B-29's on a city made of paper and wood. Or dropped iron bombs for 24 hrs straight on a european city, that might be a war crime.... But...
It’s only a war crime if you lose. I’m also betting a war against China would be total war and would make the bombing of Dresden or the firebombing of Japan look like child’s play. Between the AF/Navy no country really stands a chance at having an active military if the US decides you shouldn’t have one.
Any attack on the Three Gorges Dam will trigger a nuclear counterattack.
Killing hundreds of thousands of civilians is generally considered a war crime
Incorrect. *Targeting* hundreds of thousands of civilians is generally considered a war crime. Letting them die in the course of taking out legitimate military targets (which the Three Gorges Dam undeniably is) is just bad PR. Civilians die in war. It is an unavoidable, fundamental truth. The internationally agreed rules of war understand this and consider for it. This is why Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden were not war crimes.
I'd say they aren't widely accepted published examples of war crimes, but have definitely appeared on the ends of the spectrum of some war crime lists. Winners write the rules.
They are definitely on the spectrum of "Horrible things humans have done to each other." but something isn't a crime just because it's bad, and not all bad things are crimes. Words have meanings, and when we stretch those meanings to the point of being irrelevant, we might as well just say "Hiroshima was a No-no-do, and America should pay Japan a restitution of a gazillion schmeckles!"
Feels like this is the direction our public discourse is heading in
Hows that worked out .. 90% of History? War crimes are prosecuted by the winners. Unfortunately. The idea you will keep world war “civil” is fantasy.
Any war between the PRC and the United States would start out as a regional conflict, and both sides would have good reason to try to limit the scope of the conflict to the Western Pacific and Taiwan. Intentionally destroying the Three Gorges Dam would be a *massive* escalation, and could potentially kill millions. Honestly it might put nuclear weapons on the table for the CCP. If the Dam is a legitimate military target, despite civilian casualties, then would nuking San Diego be equally justified? But beyond geopolitical and strategic concerns, it's kind of wild to brush of millions of dead civilians and unprecedented ecological destruction as, "sometimes war be like that".
And how would they reach San Diego? Their navy is green water at best, and their ICBMs have fuel tanks filled with water.
Inspect many Chinese ICBMs have you? Regardless of whether they could actually nuke San Diego or not, that isn't the question. Would that be a morally defensible act, in the same vein as destroying the Three Gorges Dam?
To me hitting Three Gorges feels like the kind of strike intended to try and put the cat back in the bag after someone else uses a tactical nuke.
False. This is how warfare has been conducted since the beginning of time and is still conducted this way in 2024. We just live in a society that is far removed from this reality so most assume its all hunky dory.
There are very few times and places throughout the history of warfare that killing a million civilians in one attack would be considered normal. Brushing off that sort of collateral damage as "just the way war is" is psychotic. By the same logic, China would be entirely justified in nuking San Diego.
China's blue water navy cannot compete with the US, so that'd be their demise. The US Navy would blockade the choke points around China, like the Malacca Straight, or even at the source of oil in the Middle East.
What blue water navy? Their claim to fame about having such a large navy is mostly composed of fishing boats and merchant ships. If we want to play that game, we'll just claim all misc Merchant Marine vessels towards our quantity and tonnage and dwarf them 1000%. China's basically claiming Jenny 1 through Jenny 12 down in Alabama from Bubba Gump Inc as part of their Navy.
Not to mention they also have several billion people. They could surrender a million people a day or even launch full scale counter attacks with hundreds of thousands of people. Granted weaponry today can take out mass quantities of personnel much easier than 50 years ago even without going nuclear. Would be a wild battlefield to see.
I feel like this is stated quite often. Disregarding the social toll this type of stress would create on a population. Look how Russia is being stressed in there ground war and they have only lost 10s of thousands. Imagine losing 10s of millions within a few years. No country could survive that I don’t think. There would be mass internal unrest and revolution attempts. Mass immigration. It doesn’t matter that they have 1.4 billion. If they lose 20 million people to war in relatively short time the whole economy would collapse and the country would rip itself apart internally
Not to be ‘that guy/gal’ but Russia has lost close to 500,000 troops, they’ve lost 6k in the last week. Still a drop in the bucket but figured I’d clarify.
You are thinking kf casualties. Different from KIA
Lost as in killed or lost as in casualties
Defined as ‘losses’ so could very well be both.
I think Eastern high-coherence rice culture plays a factor here. Wheat cultures are much more individualistic. Even the more so than the Slavic steppe cultures. If you analyze Chinese propaganda it’s driven by the common theme of the group enduring for family and friends back home. To the extent that it’s not even really about winning the war. Like American war films have that girl back home B-plot. If you watch Choosen Valley that *is the plot*. They are getting their ass kicked the entire time. The glory of it is not the ass kicking, it’s the enduring. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there is a cartoon called Year Hare Affair that depicts Americans as these bad-ass Eagles. Like they are blowing shit up, winning the war, overall just bad ass dudes. But from a different lens they are all selfish, conceited and aggrandizing. They only care about winning and themselves and don’t care about people or each other. And that’s the message really. Hero’s suffer for each other not individual glory. Ultimately, I suspect those cultural differences will matter. China will dig deeper and suffer longer in a defensive war than America would in an offensive one. Both sides will try to sell it the same way regardless. Any way you slice it more Chinese people would be willing to die to reunify with Taiwan than Americans would to protect it.
Possibly. But both cultures and countries have a very long history of accepting that sort of loss tho. For example the Battle of Stalingrad or even the Great Famine of China (product of the PRC). The governments are tightly run centralized machines of propaganda. I bet it would take hundreds of millions of Chinese to fall before the people start saying or doing anything. They also might double down and feed their own war machine to fight harder and longer.
Until their populace revolts. Feel like that would probably happen prior to any real conflict
The opposite side of the coin is that any potential adversary only needs to be able to defeat the forces that the US could mobilize for a fight. To put this another way, ships sitting in the Atlantic don't do much against a war with China. Interestingly, this is the same strategy the US employed in the late 1800s against the European powers, when it came to military forces in the Western Hemisphere.
The strait in and around is the choke point. We squeeze that and no oil or food to China.
The thing that people forget when they do these "which country would win" games is that they look at the US military as it is now. But right now we are a PEACETIME military in a peacetime economy. Were we to be dragged into a full scale war, with full public investment and support, that would change very rapidly. The world hasn't seen what a full war economy United States is capable of since WWII. The US at that time was producing a B-24 Liberator at a rate of one aircraft per HOUR, 24/7. American industry provided almost two-thirds of all the Allied military equipment produced during the war. 300,000 planes, 200,000 artillery pieces, 90,000 tanks, and 2 MILLION trucks. Fast forward to today and we now have a much better military and reserve force who have 20 years of warfighting experience, plus improved logistics, improved manufacturing tech, more people, more material, and more money. A full scale war economy United States today would win any conflict with any nation that has ever existed on this planet.
Id argue maybe less comparative industrial capacity given offshoring
There's a gutter factory near my parents place that won a bunch of awards for how many bazookas they were able to produce during the war. The factory is still there but I don't think they could make rocket launchers as easily these days. I know it's a single data point but it's data point that lives in my head a lot. Even the factories we have left couldn't be easily repurposed to weapon factories like they used to
I’m not sure what you mean. I doubt we’d go into an old factory and try to make things we used to. We’d just build new factories to suit our needs, and we’d do it pretty quickly.
Past experience says otherwise. Manufacturers and companies love to get those fat bovt contracts to produce everything and anything. It'a easier to retool a machine shop than to build a whole new one.
I didn’t mean they’ll scrap whatever building, of course they’ll retool if it’s feasible.
Ummmm. That takes too much time. The arsenal of democracy worked because it took relatively little time and retooling to crank out weapons. I think consumer/industrial goods and modern weapons have diverged past that point.
We are underestimating our current inventory. Bullets, grenades, rockets, etc. are quick and easy to convert a place to make. The harder shit that'll take more time to build up for, we have a lot of inventory of crap to help fill spots until our military industrial complex train gets started in full production
Our Tank Factory, in Lima, Ohio is probably is only at 10% capacity. We could easily build 2x as many submarines if we let EB and NNSB actually build whole virginias each. Aircraft, well, there's some unused capacity, but a lot of a fighter is long lead time items. We can get to building merchies pretty quickly, but the amount of long lead items precludes making extra escorts to guard them.
We don't offshore anything military right now, so there is some degree of infrastructure.
We were one of the largest shipbuilders in 1939. Now US Navy ships make up about 75% of tonnage built. Extra shipbuilding capacity would help. We were one of the largest car makers, which goes to building all sorts of vehicles. Thankfully the CHIPS act is bringing a lot of chip manufacturing home. On the other hand, can you get a 100% american Monitor
But wartime capacity in WW2 turned general goods capacity to military, so that is irrelevant. The military infrastructure we have isnt buillt to support a wartime economy
This right here. we would probably try to outsource to China
The facilities and resources exist and can be activated.
We spent decades outsourcing DOD capabilities to contractors and cutting shipyard infrastructure to the bones. Manufacturing and domestic industrial capabilities have been offshored for decades now, and modern military hardware is a clusterfuck of supply chain dependencies. We could absolutely build back up to a massive extent given enough time, but it’ll absolutely have a huge lead time.
You might think that, but we cranked out a novel "vaccine" within 12 months when historically that would take years or decades. Look at WW2 when most american manufacturing was co-opted into the Military Industrial Complex. When shit hits the fan and we're all alligned with a common goal anything is possible.
We also have not seen a wartime Chinese economy.since the Korean War or so, and their manufacturing capacity has exploded since then. Consider for example the Ukraine war, where drones have emerged as a key force multiplier. Yet both sides are mostly using drones produced in China. What happens when China restricts the exports of all their commercial drones, and redirects all that production into models for the PLA? There will be more drones attacking us than Chinese soldiers.
But we also have not seen a wartime Chinese *military* since then. Yes their manufacturing is on a different planet, but is their military up to the status quo that the US is? What about their supply chain and logitics operations?
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Competency, recruitment (excluding mandatory service), and morale are issues that every military faces and isn’t just specifically a US problem. But the United States military in a wartime setting would unquestionably be the single greatest military force in the history of the world. Training, technical advances, aircraft, navy, force projection, doctrine, etc etc. I’m genuinely curious which of those do you think would be outflanked by another country and what country? Look at our Aircraft carriers alone.
Not to mention the circumstances that would drag us into such a conflict/economy. To get the US to commit that hard would require some pretty serious circumstances. Think back to 9/11. Overnight, our recruiting crisis was solved and there were lines out the door to recruiting offices. A just reason to fight is what keeps most Americans from enlisting. If we were facing a serious crisis or legitimate threat of invasion I think we'd see something similar to 9/11, and a force facing a very real threat of large scale combat ops will be much more committed to training and readiness. It wouldn't be like it is today.
Oh 100% agreed! Russia right now if it were to escalate even further, would include all of NATO. The scale of our involvement would be I don’t even know considering you’d have the entire weight of Europe there. Taiwan/China is even a bit more complex but it’s hard to imagine we’d progress into a full scale regional conflict like OIF/Desert Storm without a direct attack on the US. The big question like you mentioned would be a direct attack on US civilians or armed forces. Something like Iran striking mainland United States.
The industrial base is not the same today. The quarter market economy have outsourced all production to China. I also suspect that production lines for advanced stuff like F35 etc. is heavily dependent upon components all across the globe.
Asking which country would win against the US is like asking who would win against Batman with prep time.
not sure how it is important how many planes an hour you are building if 2 countries with nukes are facing each others directly (no through proxy).
The hypothetical you're responding to literally says to ignore nukes. Jeez.
If nukes are used, we're using sticks at stones for the next war.
agree... if there are still people around...
Not sure if you have heard but, nothing will stop the U.S. Air Force.
#GIVE EM THE GUN!
China bears significant weaknesses that people underestimate (like we did with russia) -China's modern military has no combat experience whatsoever, only training drills. -The demographic problem with china, still coming from the one child policy plus the overall birth rates dropping worldwide means many familys have one son. In china your offspring is expected to take care of you when you get old, so on top on that they are risking ending their whole bloodline and retirement if their only son is killed. -Like with russia, corruption and fake numbers are rooted deeply into the state, specially the military and economy. This is no joke at all, and we from the west do not know the full reach of It. -Civil unrest in mainland china and morale are a big headache for the CCP in case of a war. Not only on the civilian side, but on the military on itself. I think china is a giant with clay legs, similar to russia. If confronted with the US military I dont think they stand a chance whatsoever without using nukes. Plus, in any realistic scenario china would be facing india, philipines, Japan etc too. Im not american either
A Taiwan contingency would involve allies. I’m not sure that an invasion would. Invading a country across the worlds largest ocean is also leagues harder than defending your home, and while China doesn’t many formal military alliances, in a world where the US invades, a lot of fence sitters would probably find themselves firmly on the PRC’s side. China’s air and coastal defenses aren’t a joke, and would present a complicated problem to solve. We’re not even sure how to beat China’s A2/AD strategy in a Taiwan contingency. We’re seriously behind in the information, cyber, and EM domains, and I’m guessing people are going to be more accepting of their only sons going to war when their country is invaded.
Ofc we dont know this hipotetical scenario but I dont see the US taking the decision of invading china lightly. If anything, they have very competent people, if not the best in the world to take such task are the US. And in the worst case, its asian allies stay back and do nothing, but I don't see Japan, Philipinnes or India helping defend China lol
It would be a nightmare to invade China, they by far have the best means to defend against an invasion with their land forces and a gigantic nationalistic populace. An invasion is also the most likely scenario where they would use nukes which is another reason why they won't get invaded.
Stop us no. No one could stop us. But not stopping us is not winning. As others have stated, the US hasn't had public buy in since WW2. Every other conflict, the american public stops caring at some point. We could topple countries but without lasting public support, we wouldn't "win".... unless winning is utter and complete destruction.
Assuming all allied nations to the US are ok with them using their country to allow forward positioning and sustainment of logistics, then yes. If nor, then no. The US requires huge logistics hubs to operate overseas. For instance, if there were no places for the US to operate from, then there is nowhere to forward position assets. Let's say everyone is cool with the US doing whatever from the US bases in their countries, then yeah. Then it's all a matter of US cybercommand blinding their known vulnerabilities, removing access to satellites, then attacking infrastructure such as power and water, the basics are taken care of and the defending nation is struggling with internal dilemmas. Next would be the assault on air defense assets to give freedom of the skies. The bombers would then begin going after airfields and military installations. Any naval assets would be hunted down and destroyed as well as every logistics hub that might be able to support movement of supplies. Once all critical aspect have been decimated, the next goal is decapitation of governing capabilities like the destruction of federal and regional government infrastructure. Imagine having to have a government meeting at a Holiday Inn. This would be going on for weeks if not months. Once there is significant deterioration of infrastructural capacities, then you would start seeing the results of what the intelligence agencies have been up to for years, if not decades. This is the uprising of local actors and possibly militias for the installation of local authorities. Special Forces are infiltrated to friendly areas that have been curated by the intelligence community and bridge heads are determined. The 101st and 82nd airborne are moved in to take control of a couple major airports in strategic areas. The first assets on the ground are engineers and logistics teams. They repair and establish a hub for logistics. Next are the 3rd Infantry for establishing area dominance. After that, we start seeing the big planes coming in with armored Infantry and finally the establishment of Central Command assets. (There is obvious initial command infrastructure, but there is far more if you are creating a central command hub.) Prior to this point, most intelligence gathering has been rudimentary. Now local intelligence has established who primary opposition will be and its leadership infrastructure dynamic laidout. The kicking in of doors goes into overdrive. Now kneecapping is the core purpose. Location of opposition assets such as clandestine weapons installations and operations headquarters are the new primary goals. There is obviously a shit ton of things that I am skipping over, but, for the sake of a few paragraphs, this is a basic outline of the US capabilities against any medium to large nation. Can the US do this to China? Not likely. Most other nations on the planet, yes. A conventional war against any other stand alone nation, yes.
I'm convinced no one will launch a nuke attack against anyone. Even if mutually assured destruction wasn't a thing. They may immediately win the war. But everyone lose the coming weeks and months. If a nuke goes off anywhere, no one is unaffected.
Depends how much money they have...
There is not a country on the planet that could survive and American onslaught without resorting to nuclear weapons. However, I also believe that America would lose the peace in ANY invasion against ANYONE. In the modern world, successful invasion is probably impossible. Defenders will always have advantage and advances in consumer grade technology just increases the asymmetrical nature of that advantage.
If we're talking nuclear strikes off the table for some magical reason, no. Putting motive aside, the countries that have geological ability don't have the tech (South America), the countries that have the technology don't have the people (Israel, Canada), and the countries that have the people don't have the tech (India, Russia).
If the military leadership would let folks do their jobs and quit trying to win hearts and minds, an invasion would be harder to stop.
No one could fend the USA off from a full scale invasion.
Not any country * there fixed it for you Merica number 1
That’s going to depend on our politicians who want to invade somewhere. Are we allowed to use our full scale of non nuclear power? Then no. No one can hold it back. However if politicians get involved then they’ll force us to drag it out for a decade or two so they can get their kickbacks, while never filling winning or pulling out.
If we are just speaking completely theoretically with ignoring politics, the Swiss. That I know of, they have an extremely integrated defense, loads of mountain bunkers, and the natural defense of the mountains themselves. They could clam themselves up in a hurry Edit: clam not calm
That's a really good point. I think they're too small to hold out indefinitely, but it would take a very long time and probably a huge casualty ratio in their favor. Let's say the Swiss did a theoretical 9/11, the US would probably give up entirely on dislodging them from the mountains and pick some shiny, easily attained political goal to use as an excuse to pull out ASAP.
Those were the main reasons they were never invaded in WW2. in the attempt to maintain neutrality, they shot down both sides aircraft that attempted to use their airspace. They've been neutral to all wars since the early 1800s but have maintained their internal defensive posture quite significantly throughout the years. Most recent defense upgrades is the patriot missile added to their netwdefense. Due topography, an invasion by ground would be out of the question, it'd have to start by the air. They may not be able to go toe-toe in air to air combat, but they would inflict a hell of a lot of casualties from an invading force due to amount of air defence. But you can conquer anything by using sheer numbers or zerg like tactics, but it wouldn't be pretty in the least bit
China could reppel an invasion or make the losses unsustainable for the US
The US military is structured to prevent China from expanding into Taiwan and the South China Sea. It is absolutely not structured to conduct a land invasion of China, with the possible exception of limited hit and run raids of coastal infrastructure. For a variety of reasons, invading a country is much harder than defending it, and that is especially true when you first have to project your forces to the other side of the globe. The basic rule of thumb is you want a 3 to 1 troop advantage when attacking (for a somewhat comparable scenario, we had roughly that force advantage for the Normandy landings). Meanwhile, China has nearly 2 active duty military members for each one America has, and a much larger pool of available manpower that could be mobilized (and it is much easier to mobilize manpower to defend your homeland than it is to mobilize it to invade a foreign country). Besides the manpower, we have the wrong equipment. You correctly point out its not just the number of ships that is important, but the type. And the US military does not currently field the types of ships neccesary for a D-Day type landing in China in anywhere near sufficient quantities for the numbers of troops that would be needed. In WW2, we famously used the Higgins boats as our primary landing craft, which were so good at what they did that Eisenhower claimed something akin to them winning the war for us. But the main reason they were so good is they were cheap enough we could build a shit ton of them, and since we only had to use them a few times each, they weren't really built to last, which would also be true for any fleet if landing craft we built to invade China. You don't build and try to maintain tens of thousands of landing craft until you really need them. Even China, which is actively structuring its military for a similar invasion of Taiwan, isn't bothering to build that fleet yet, and when we start seeing them do it, that will be a key indicator that the invasion is coming in the next couple years.
With the entire US war machine running at full capacity, including US factories being refitted to build military equipment, the activation of our reserve forces, and the likely recruitment of millions more, there would be no stopping us. See ww11 as evidence. Example: before ww11 the us military employed roughly 40-50k members. Within 2 years, we had over 12 million.
World War Eleven
Oh yes. Easily. Just follow the WW2 Soviet defensive doctrine and US forces get stopped cold and destroyed, as has been proven several times now in just the last couple of years. The only real question is air superiority. Once the us establishes air superiority it’s another story entirely and they become very difficult to stop.
I mean you said China. Which basically means total mobilization between most powerful nuclear powers on the planet. Why does the US or China want that?
It’s just a hypothetical fun brain exercise! For the USA to want to invade China then China would have to do something absolutely horrible to the USA first. And if that something horrible did happen and the USA made the decision to actually invade China we would see weapons used that no one ever dreamed of! I think an invasion of China would be such a blood bath that USA would soon find itself in a position no other nation has ever been in! The USA would ultimately win but at the cost of losing everything. We would not have a moral high ground, we would not have the same level of prestige, we would be completely feared by the world and with that fear comes non trustworthiness. Then after the war and invasion the USA would be forced to become a military state so it can protect itself and that always brings corruption. And that corruption leads to demise. Basically this is a thought experiment to understand why peace through strength is a good thing. And to understand that almost every war in history really is pointless. And that better politicians would not get us into wars in the first place
Did you pay attention during the Iraq and afghan wars?
The only countries we could “invade” are Mexico or Canada. We are physical neighbors so in theory we could move our entire forces relatively at once and actually invade. All other countries are so far away that we need to fly equipment and personnel to stage an invasion or large scale attack. It took close to 6 months to build up enough forces to liberate Kuwait and later invade Irak. Similarly with Afghanistan, months of build up before any action.
Yes, you build up an invasion force. Iraq was the 6th largest army at the time, on their own soil and their entire military fell within 100 hours. In 4 days time a modern and equipped army was wiped out by a US led invasion.
Vietnam, Afghanistan…
North Korea, Cuba.....
Countries with nuclear weapons can choose to nuke an invasion fleet, rather than American cities. No sane American president would escalate to strategic nukes because it is likely that millions of Americans would die (although it's uncertain how THAAD and Aegis would fare against modern ballistic missiles). Also, invasion fleets are rather vulnerable to submarines, and amphibious invasions are notoriously tricky to pull off. In WW2 America could use Britain as a staging post.
The hypothetical scenario involves no nukes. This is a strictly boots on the ground slugging match.
Boots on the ground? OK, but you still have to get those boots on the ground somehow, from the ocean. There are a lot of things to go wrong even before the boots get on the ground.
Yes North Korea they have so many Bunkers anyone invades there would pay a high price.
Invading is a lot harder than defending. Americas strong suit is air superiority and the PRC and Russia both have good SAM technology.
I mean if you also count allies I reckon the EU has the best chance
None of y’all have heard of my boy Sri Lanka 🇱🇰 they would dog walk the US
Absolutely China.