China treating Uighur Muslims like Tibetans?

[Minimalist]

That whole concept of "military superiority" needs some study. It didn't help much in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are "superior" when it comes to fighting the types of wars that don't happen any more.

It leads to mistakes like this

[The Grand Nudger]

For sure, but we could always force an engagement we are good at. It's not like we couldn't have annihilated Iraq and Afghanistan ala Dresden and Berlin (or Nagasaki and Hiroshima). We just didn't have the stomach for it. That's actually one of the things I'm proud about,m with regards to the US. We have wonderful weapons that we just don;t feel like using anymore. Meanwhile, we satiate or urges by throwing money down an endless hole of needless and mostly non-functional toys.

[Anomalocaris]

No, we can't. The reason why we don't force an engagement we are good at is such engagements in most situations would not produce the results we want. Annilating Baghdad would hardly dissuade jihadists, nor would they reduce jihadists' scope and freedom of action. Most people dumb enough to get hard ons from watching A-10 strafing the grounds with uranium slugs can not imagine how war could possibly not be the thing that can be molded to best show off the efficacy of their pet toys. They have even harder time in conceiving how tool have to fit the war to be of any value.

But fortunately, the American military that is so miscast as a tool of winning wars against nationalists and joihadists on their home soil is actually better at defeating Chinese ability to project conventional, indistrialized technological military power outside Chinese territory.

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That whole concept of "military superiority" needs some study. It didn't help much in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are "superior" when it comes to fighting the types of wars that don't happen any more.

It leads to mistakes like this

They key isn't superiority. The key is whether we can thwart their objectives more economically than they can thwart ours. In Iraq and Afghanistan we can't. In fact the nature of our self-styled superiority itself is very seed for our inability to do so.

Use a cruise missile to take out each tent, and we will go bankrupt long before the Taliban.

[The Grand Nudger]

I wasn't under the impression that we went to war to dissuade jihadists. That said, A10's aren't very good at dissuading jihadists, agreed. The A10 is one of those congressional district projects though, a weapon that no longer has much in the way of valid targets.

If the cruise missile had a nuclear warhead attached, I doubt we'd go bankrupt before before the Taliban went dead.

[Minimalist]

Use a cruise missile to take out each tent, and we will go bankrupt long before the Taliban.

Absolutely, Chuck.

Here's the problem with that. The motherfuckers who make the cruise missiles and the politicians they own don't give a rats ass.

[Anomalocaris]

If the cruise missile had a nuclear warhead attached, I doubt we'd go bankrupt before before the Taliban went dead.

The political reprecussion of using nuclear warheads against foes who have no nuclear weapons would likely far outweigh the benefit of killing some taliban. For one thing, every country that could equip itself with nuclear weapon but who hasn't chosen to do so would likely now do so. Each of these country would now want in its back pocket the ability to stay a nuclear strike from the US with an ability to retaliate with a nuclear weapon.

Within a decade the world would be fully nuclearized, uncertainty in political and diplomatic alignment would skyrocket. America's comparity advantages in threat of technological terror would plummet.

The world would eliminate the niche for any nuclear superpower. We would be by far the biggest loser.

[The Grand Nudger]

Point probably ought to be made that it isn't as though the balance with regards to tents and cruise missiles actually eludes military strategists or planners - those bought politicians both within the armed forces and the civilian sector are part of the reason that we launch those missiles at tents. They're creating a market for their product. At some point, as a weapons manufacturer...you need people to actually use your weapons, or else they won't have much of an incentive to buy more of them.

The political impact of using nuclear warheads against foes who have no nuclear weapons would likely be such we would still go bankrupt not long after the Taliban, as each nation without a nuclear weapon, but with economic and geopolitical interdependency with the US now redouble their efforts to protect themselves by acquiring the ability to respond to any American nuclear strike with ability to cause America more pain than a nuclear weapon's worth.

Is that what happened last time? Who did they buy those weapons from? I know, I know, it's unthinkable and shitty.......but it's there, and people might talk a big game about what they would do (if we went nuke happy)...but we have all evidence to the contrary. Which is also shitty, yes.

[Anomalocaris]

Is that what happened last time? Who did they buy those weapons from? I know, I know, it's unthinkable and shitty.......but it's there, and people might talk a big game about what they would do (if we went nuke happy)...but we have all evidence to the contrary. Which is also shitty, yes.

Yes, to the best of everyone's ability, witness Soviet Union, Britain, then France. Don't forget Italy, west Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Japan all had serious nuclear weapon programs up until early 1960s. But last time the US had 60% of the world's economy.

This time 20%. With China soon to have a larger share. China has the indistrual and technological capacity to match us in nuclear arsenal if they feel that to be required. Right now they have a negligible strategic nuclear arsenal. They feel they are in no danger of nuclear strike from the US, even in a war, because they themselves poses a minimum of nuclear threat to the US. If the US launch a nuclear strike out of the blue against taliban, very likely the Chinese would now see it as mandatory to have the ability to deal as much nuclear destruction on the US as the US could on China just to forestall a comparable treatment by the US on china.

Is that what we want?

[The Grand Nudger]

We didn't have that economy when we started out down that road though (and a huge part of the reason that we had an economy whereas others did not is that we'd been busily destroying their infrastructure for a few years). Again history offers us a shitty glimpse of the difference between our ideals and our reality. What you're talking about would be a bit like a new cold war, eh? That didn't go well for the soviets, and I have to say, in some way we didn't exactly let their system work out, did we? Subversion is part of our arsenal, after all. Granted, the boot could always find itself on the other foot.

I hope you don't think that anything regarding a nuclear strike has anything to do with what I want, I'm just reminding you that it's something that we can do. If we found ourselves in a position where we were trying to force an engagement on our own terms some future state of world affairs would likely be back boiler stuff. Just like last time. If we're trying to engineer that situation - we're already in trouble.

I've always wondered if the strategists of other nations actually think that our nukes aren't a threat, or if that's just us projecting our (as in you and I) own best intentions where they don't belong. If China thought it was in their best interests to match us, they would have by now. They went another route. I don't think that anyone has such a high opinion of our brass and politicians that they've ruled out the possibility of a repeat performance. Every time someone we don't like tries to build a nuke we go schizoid on their ass. I think that the world at large knows that we hold that particular item as a bargaining/bullying piece. The threat is implied, at all times, as it was to the soviets during the cold war. How do you think the US would respond if China started upping their arsenal this very minute?

[Anomalocaris]

There is not a lot the US can do to forestall China reaching close strategic nuclear parity in 10-20 years with the US if they are so determined to do. When compared against the economy of the US, Chinese economy is about 4 times as large as those of the USSR at the height of nuclear arms race. Chinese industrial output is also 2-3 times larger compared those of the USSR when measured against the output of the US. US would redouble our nuclear arsenal, but since we start with a 100 to 1 advantage, they only need to achieve a fraction of our build up rate to improve their relative position compared to us. If they build one missile for each 100 we build, they would still keep pace, and if they built 50 missiles for every 100 we build, their position would rapidly improve beyond the 1:100 they have now, to something ever closer to 2:1.

In reality, they can probably match us 1 for 1 in rate of buildup within just a few years of determining to do so.

We stand to lose our overwhelming nuclear advantage very easily. We can not protect our overwhelming nuclear superiority, without a preemtive strike, if they really think it is necessary to diminish our advantage. It is only a certain confidence we won't use our overwhelming nuclear superiority even in a war against them that keeps them from building up a Soviet style arsenal of amageddon. I think we are better off and safer from extinction by making them believe that our overwhelming nuclear superiority would play no part in any war, then to convince them otherwise with a boneheaded nuclear strike in Afghanistan, or Iraq.