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Reply With QuoteUntil the people you are apathetic about for a hundred years start throwing spears at you.Originally Posted by Naras
-dale
Ultimately, I think that a single nation no longer has the ability to be a decisive instigator in a world war. There is more fear about 'politically correct' conduct than ever, especially in the united states. However, a terrorist group, middle-eastern or otherwise, or an unstable, nuclear-backed dictator (i.e. Kim Jong Il) could very well launch a major strike on any other nation, and the resulting polarization could very easily lead to a global conflict. The only thing that can prevent such a scenario is a bit of unselfconscious isolationism. Polarization over other nation's problems led to world wars one and two. It seems like apathy is the real path to survival
Until the people you are apathetic about for a hundred years start throwing spears at you.
-dale
As a president, you really get to make policy when it comes to national security during wartime. Would you really wish to sacrifice the population of the United States because of a policy enacted by your predecessors?
Personally, I would respond nuke for nuke against a Soviet first strike, but I would not initiate a first strike for any reason other than a biological/chemical attack on American cities. "Saving" western Europe by destroying them, the Soviets, and America does not strike me as an acceptable solution to a temporary defeat.
Thank you. I appreciate it, and will begin reading them ASAP.
You are absolutely correct that industrial power and numbers do not guarantee victory (just look at Germany's position at the beginning of 1918). But they most certainly help. Russia was able to hold out against Germany because it's superior industry gave Zhukov the tools he needed to win. During the battle of Kursk, the Soviets lost a lot more men and equipment than the Wehrmacht, but it was a disaster for the German Army precisely because replacing the men and equipment was not difficult for the Soviets. That is the kind of edge that superior industry gives, and why in a drawn out conflict, it is of paramount importance.
How does airpower make isolation work? What do you mean that airpower makes the entire formation irrelevant?
Could you explain it in further details?
As for Zhukov, please keep in mind that the Soviet system was designed to suited Zhukov. If it was another general, I am sure the Soviet system would be quite different.
I am curious how the Soviet system came to be that way. What factors cause that Soviet design?
Any incoming president has to weigh the cost/benefit of altering national defense policies like that. There is inertia and momentum behind these policies - some good, and some bad. If you start making those kinds of changes then you telegraph uncertainty to the enemy, and that is NEVER a good thing.
I don't know how old you are lwarmonger, but none of this was merely theoretical: The Sovs STATED they were going to expand their sphere of influence, by force if necessary. They had already demonstrated their willingness to keep where they had ended WWII and take more of what they wanted (see any history of the Cold War for details) and there was every reason to believe they meant more of it. Once we decided that keeping Western Europe free was worth doing, we said we would do that. When the conventional balance looked like it had swung the Sov's way, we said we'd nuke their forces if they came over to play.
They said they were coming, we said we'd stop them, and eventually we said we'd use nukes. We HAD to be serious about that, and because we were, the Sovs took us seriously. So a whole lot of prestige and everything else was locked into us standing firm. For a President to come onstage and say "we will not nuke your tanks" would have been like waving red meat in front of a starving dog.
-dale
Stalin killed everyone.
That's it in a nutshell.
-dale
Let's get some reality back into this. It was EXTREMELY difficult for the Soviets to replace their losses, just like everybody else. They relied HEAVILY on North American industries and the Lend-Lease program, especially for their trucks. While they made 80% of their own war materials, the other 20% from North America was certainly needed and used. Canadian made VALATINE tanks were recently unburied at Kursk.
By the end of WWII, the only fresh combat capable divisions the Soviets had left were those 40 divisions in Siberia.
It would not be hard to imagine how those could be used up real fast the way the Red Army burns men and machine.
Yes, the Soviets won because partly of superior numbers and industrial capacity but they were exhausted by the end of the war and their industrial output no longer were able to match losses and most certainly they were running out of men.
Chimo
Airpower is used to cut the LoCs, denying strategic manouvering room for any ground formation.
Chimo
I love how everyone seems to ignore the original question and beat down the original poster without answering his original question. It ask for speculation. Most of the replies simply beat up China or Russia and pretend nuclear weapons were never invented.
A World War would by definition be a war that extends across the world. At this point in time America would have to be involved as all other war scenarios would be pure Asian or Middle-Eastern affairs.
What power could wage a war against America in the foreseeable future? The only nations to even consider the possibility of taking on America and surviving in some form without facing American occupation would be Russia and China. Russia still has more than enough nuclear weapons to be able to force America to a state where it may be incapable of continuing further offensive operations. China is vast enough and populated enough that at some point in the future it could come out of a total nuclear exchange with America in such a state that when no more nuclear weapons were available they could actual contemplate continuing the war until America's ultimate defeat.
How could such a war happen? The way all stupid wars happen, by miscalculation. China wants to retake Taiwan at some point in time. They view America as their primary enemy. China continues to proliferate nuclear weapons and seed conflict throughout the world in order to tie down American forces across the Earth and harm the U.S. economy as the cost of conflict eat away the American economy. Once the U.S. is sufficiently overextended militarily and economically the Chinese may launch an invasion of Taiwan assuming America won't intervene.
The U.S. may send a carrier battle group to the region to either intervene or threaten to intervene. A decision may be made in China to destroy the carrier battle group. This happens in a nuclear strike. The U.S. retaliates on a Chinese base in mainland China. China launches an all out nuclear war and the U.S. launches an all out retaliation.
Seeing America hobbled America's enemies throughout the world take their opportunity. Arab states and Iran attack Israel. North Korea attacks South Korea.
If America appears defenseless, Russia fires nuclear weapons into America to help finish off any major infrastructure and population targets that survived the Chinese exchange.
Japan and Europe watched stunned on television but do nothing.
If a world war happens it will be stumbled into just like World War I. It will go nuclear because no great power with nuclear weapons can be defeated without using the nuclear weapons. The winner will be some country that either failed to participate but has nuclear weapons when its all over or whichever participating great power still has the means to produce more nuclear weapons after the initial part of the conflict ends.
The days of non-nuclear clashes of the true world great powers ended the day the Soviet Union exploded their first atom bomb. The Cold War was not world war three. It was a series of foreign revolutions and civil wars where the great powers supported one side or another. The Soviet Union collapsed because in the end communism was a failed economic system that couldn't maintain an empire in the modern world long term. America did not defeat the Soviet Union, we did however manage to deter a war with the Soviet Union so we could live to see the day the Soviet Empire fell from within.
Most military thinkers live in the past, especially today because the Western population likes to pretend the bomb wasn't invented and won't be used. We are like the knights of old going into battle with our fine armor. As long as we go into battle against other knights or peasants all is fine. It's good to pretend that the gun was not invented. Once the enemy however has a gun we will put our kinghts armor away in the museum, forget about our chivalry and realize its all about who has the most guns and fires the gun first.
I loved this part. The Chinese could tripple their population and would not emerge victorious in any nuclear exchange.
Chimo
So if Operation Overlord failed, would Germany have withstood the Soviet onslaught like Britain did against Germany in the Battle of Britain?
By the way, you haven't explained why the Soviet system came to be that way unless Dalem's answer is really the correct one.
Before Stalin purges, was the Soviet military system drastically different from WWII system?
I don't think so. The Atlantic Wall was not manned by any of the good divisions. Those were on the Russian Front. Pitted against those Siberian divisions would have been a sorry state of affairs. The Soviets would have still won but Stalin was going to kill (and was willing) the USSR in doing it.
A large part of the answer is Stalin, not so much as he killed off everyone but that he was a micro manager. He had final approval in all plans and thus, you would have to present a most detailed plan in order to get approval. The likes of Rommel and Patton would never have risen in Stalin's General Staff.
As was with every military on earth. The technology had not evolved where the leader of a country can directly interfere in local battlefield conditions. That is there was not enough time to ship plans back to the capital to get approval.
Chimo
And America would? Or Russia?
I've studied nuclear targeting plans and have seen its fairly easy to wipe out half the population base of America, China, or Russia but it gets extremely hard to do much more than that simply because of population densities and land size.
You appear to be a very knowledgeable person how about speculating as the original poster asked instead of simply riding down what little speculation is in this thread.
I never said China could or would defeat America nor did I pick how far into the future this would occur.
How about telling us IF a world war was to occur in the future who would be the players, how would it happen, and what could be the result and please something more than the tired clash of conventional forces before the real war kicks into gear.
All I see in this thread is a lot of people who want to pretend China is not an emerging power and who want to tell me about a conventional land clash in Siberia that is never going to happen.
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