What if the US did nothing?

[Rum]

I don't know where people got the idea that I support communism, or that I thought Stalin was a great guy. I never have.
There are some serious straw men being demolished there.

I just argued that the American policy didn't have much input into the change of the USSR. It was internal.

It was internal only because the United States kept the USSR in check during the Cold War, which prevented it from taking over all of Europe, and which, due to Soviet pretensions of dominating the world caused the Central Committee to spend all its treasure trying to build a mighty military force that could challenge the US. Reagan killed the USSR with the Star Wars ballistic missile defense program that was never even started because the mere threat of being able to destroy Soviet nuclear missiles threatened to shift the balance of power so much that the Soviets became increasingly paranoid about a US first strike and bankrupted the nation trying to respond militarily.

The internal change occurred because the people of the USSR finally got fed up with the Central Committee's profligacy and waste that was destroying the Soviet economy. It began on the fringes, in places like Poland, and spread to other satellite states that began agitating for political and economic freedom from the burden of supporting the Central Committee's paranoia.

But the direct cause was the crumbling economy, and the crumbling economy was directly caused by Reagan's brilliant chess game of brinksmanship and political savvy that in essence drove the Soviet leaders into catatonia.

Just as it has been in China. Nobody can claim that pressure from the West made any difference to China.

Baloney. You misunderstand the "pressure" on China. There we use ECONOMIC pressure to erode away the foundations of Maoism. And the "pressure" is that China had to become a capitalist society in order to get the business it has from the west. Yes, China has a lot of power right now, but if they get out of line all the US has to do is repudiate its debt to China and ban import of Chinese goods and it will fall apart.

Except the pressure of watching successful economies grow and living standards rise, while you own stagnate.
The Russians and the Chinese weren't blind. They could see what was working, and what was failing. That's where change came from.

Exactly. Marxism wasn't working so they are shifting to Capitalism. QED

If the US had done nothing except defend itself, it wouldn't have fought the disastrous Vietnam war.

Wasn't really a disaster. We only lost 54,000 odd soldiers and the good news is that it served to stimulate the public into changing (to some extent) how we go about military intervention. As a result we have an all-volunteer professional army that is the best military the planet has ever seen. When allowed to actually do it's job as it's supposed to, our military dominates any battlefield and does so with incredibly small casualties. Unprecedented in fact. No soldiers on earth are safer and more likely to survive combat that US soldiers. No soldiers on earth are more likely to die on the battlefield facing US soldiers than every other military on the planet.

We kept the Soviets at bay during the Cold War. If we hadn't, the Soviets would have rolled right over West Germany and all the rest and made all of Europe into satellite Communist states because none of the countries of Europe have EVER been prepared to take on the military might of the Soviet Union.

The cold war would not have been so cold.
If they hadn't backed Israel to the Hilt, it wouldn't exist now. And a good thing too. The US is hated round the world, because of Vietnam, and Israel. It's international position today would be unrecogniseably better, if it had just done nothing on those two fronts.
If they hadn't supported Israel, Iran might still be ruled by a Shah. It was hate for the US because of Israel that tipped the balance there.
If they had done nothing about Afghanistan, the Russians would have been in there for many more years, but with the same result. The appetite in Russia for foreign adventure would be even less now.
And the Taliban wouldn't have grown to the movement that it is today.

Good God you're ignorant of history.

Something we agree on at last.

[Seth]

Why put the cutoff at WWII. Why not ask where would Europe and the rest of the planet be if the US had stayed out of WWI and WWII? The US likely would have been just fine. The rest of you would have been fucked though.

You've excelled your previous heights, for dumb posts there.

The US did stay out of WW2, until the Japanese attacked them, and Hitler declared war on them.

I'm not going to suggest that they should have surrendered.

Heh. The Japanese attacked a bunch of islands out in the middle of the pacific. They had absolutely no chance whatsoever of successfully invading the continental United States and they knew it. Their pathetic attempts to get footholds on the Aleutian Islands ended in their mass suicide.

Bombing Pearl Harbor was the greatest mistake Japan made in WWII. Of course in the end it turned out to be the BEST thing Japan ever did because of the incredible forgiveness of Americans who rebuilt Japan and allowed it to become the economic powerhouse it is today. Anybody else, like the Roman Empire, would have put it's boot on the neck of Japan for a thousand years and it would still be a culture of peasant farmers sans the elite warrior class. It would be nothing but a rice and fish bowl for somebody else.

Nor did Hitler have any real chance at invading the US. His "success" in Russia and eastern Europe was only possible because of the proximity of his base of operations and the fact that he could send armies over land. He never would have succeeded in transporting enough military assets across the Atlantic to get a foothold in the US. He might have taken South America, but it's unlikely he would have been able to penetrate Mexico, particularly after the US developed the nuclear bomb.

If Hitler had held Germany much longer we would have nuked the Reichstag, Berchtesgaden and the Wolf's Lair too.

[Rum]

Hitler had no more than contingency plans for the invasion of America (north or south). He may have been bonkers but he wasn't that bonkers.

[laklak]

I think he was counting on his terror weapons. If he'd managed to produce the Ju 390 or Me 264 transoceanic bombers and nukes it may have played out differently. Invading Russia was, in hindsight, a really stupid decision.

[Blind groper]

In conflict, the modern USA is able to keep its casualties to a minimum. The main reason is a very powerful air force. If you have total dominance in the air, you can do enormous damage without losing too many soldiers.

The other side of that coin, of course, is that the 'enemy' loses enormous numbers of people. So, if you want to get into a war, you better be damn sure that you are doing the right thing, because thousands, or even millions of innocents will pay the price otherwise. The USA won against Japan because of dominance in the air.

On te other hand, dominance in the air does not translate into successful dominance on the ground. In Viet Nam, air dominance was total. But America still had its ass kicked, and kicked very soundly. The damage done, though, by the misguided American effort, was unbelievable. American soldiers lost a little over 50,000. Vietnamese casualties, over 2 million.

The nations that the USA invades today have learned the lesson. Avoid direct combat, where the air dominance give the USA victory. Fight guerilla wars or the run and hide nature. Since Viet Nam, the USA has not had a decisive victory over anyone other than minnows in the world pool. Even in Iraq, guerilla soldiers were killing Americans up to the day they left.

The situation today is that military intervention by the USA never helps. It just makes situations worse.

[Seth]

In conflict, the modern USA is able to keep its casualties to a minimum. The main reason is a very powerful air force. If you have total dominance in the air, you can do enormous damage without losing too many soldiers.

Yup. Stand-off weapons are the way to fight a war, that's for sure.

The other side of that coin, of course, is that the 'enemy' loses enormous numbers of people.

Indeed.

So, if you want to get into a war, you better be damn sure that you are doing the right thing, because thousands, or even millions of innocents will pay the price otherwise.

Actually, somebody else better be damned sure of what they want if they decide to get into a war with us. That's rather the point of having a superior military. Peace through superior firepower.

The USA won against Japan because of dominance in the air.

Not really. Sans Fat Man and Little Boy we would have invaded Japan and conquered it, but it would have cost us somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 Allied lives to do it. There was little question that we were going to eventually prevail over Japan.

On te other hand, dominance in the air does not translate into successful dominance on the ground. In Viet Nam, air dominance was total. But America still had its ass kicked, and kicked very soundly.

Hm. No, America got it's ass kicked because the quislings and cowards in Washington wouldn't allow the military to do its job. The ROE were so restrictive and complex (as they are in Iraq and Afghanistan right now) that victory is all but impossible.

If one is going to go to war, one must wage total war. No rules, no quarter, no prisoners. Kill them all, destroy the infrastructure, demoralize the civilian population, obliterate industry and then get the hell out...and LEAVE THEM that way, and every time they stick their heads out of their holes you bomb them flat again until they learn to be civilized or vanish from the face of the earth.

There is no such thing as "civilized" warfare. The notion of "civilized" warfare is what causes the most casualties because the "rules of engagement" serve only to perpetuate the conflict. The ONLY moral thing to do if one is going to war against the enemy is to obliterate the military and crush all resistance as quickly as possible. Even Hitler knew that.

That's the only humane way to wage war because it gets it over with as quickly as humanly possible.

The invasion of Iraq the first time was a perfect example of blitzkrieg...right up until Bush poked the pooch by stopping short of taking Baghdad and deposing Saddam right then, when he had the chance to do so relatively bloodlessly. It was POLITICAL cowardice that is the direct cause of the ongoing killing in Iraq.

The damage done, though, by the misguided American effort, was unbelievable. American soldiers lost a little over 50,000. Vietnamese casualties, over 2 million.

Most of whom were killed by the Viet Cong and Communist Chinese.

The nations that the USA invades today have learned the lesson. Avoid direct combat, where the air dominance give the USA victory.

You'd think...

Fight guerilla wars or the run and hide nature.

Right. Asymmetrical warfare is a tough nut to crack, but then again it's the cowards and terrorists who do most of the killing and almost ALL of the murder of civilians.

Since Viet Nam, the USA has not had a decisive victory over anyone other than minnows in the world pool. Even in Iraq, guerilla soldiers were killing Americans up to the day they left.

They still are.

But less than 5000 of them in the whole fucking thing. The kill ratio is highly asymmetrical and skewed towards the US.

The situation today is that military intervention by the USA never helps. It just makes situations worse.

The Kuwaitis don't seem to think so. Nor do the Iraqis who WEREN'T murdered by other Iraqis because the US suppressed terrorist attacks.

France seems pretty happy that the US intervened on their behalf...along with Belgium, Italy, Sweden, etc.

Even the non-Taliban, non-Al Quaeda citizens of Afghanistan appreciate our assistance.

[Warren Dew]

I just argued that the American policy didn't have much input into the change of the USSR. It was internal.
Just as it has been in China. Nobody can claim that pressure from the West made any difference to China.

Pressure, perhaps not, but U.S. influence certainly had an effect. Without Nixon's visit showing that relationships with the U.S. were in fact possible, it's quite likely that the Gang of Four would have remained in power on Mao's death, and China would have gone the way of North Korea.

[Warren Dew]

Why put the cutoff at WWII. Why not ask where would Europe and the rest of the planet be if the US had stayed out of WWI and WWII? The US likely would have been just fine. The rest of you would have been fucked though.

You've excelled your previous heights, for dumb posts there.

The US did stay out of WW2, until the Japanese attacked them, and Hitler declared war on them.

We were supporting the Brits with lend lease well before Pearl Harbor.

[piscator]

Rum's killin' it in this thread. Bravo!

I think it's easy to gloss over how badass the Red Army was. They broke the Blitzkrieg by laying low until the tanks passed over, then belt-grabbing the Wehrmacht and pitfighting man on man like cornered rats. This not only took the German tanks, and planes, and guns out of play for fear of slaughtering too many of their own, but it relied on the strengths of a pissed off peasant army to do their worst.
Both Josef and Little Nicky were total stone killers who personally blew the heads off of more people than we'll probably ever know, and Europe represented a shitload of money just sitting for the taking to them. The only thing that stopped them from doing the obvious was the Allied armies in their way and their fears of a reverse Napoleon's retreat.
That, and there was that 4-year gap before they got the Bomb that took their inertia...so they chose a more roundabout approach to Universal Socialism. Hence the Cold War.

By the end of the war, weren't the Red Army regarded as having the toughest and best infantry in the world?

No. That would be the American Army and Marines. Superior training, superior equipment, superior tactics. Don't be frightened by silly snake eating and snow rubbing - to this day, the last infantry anyone (including Russia and China) wants to fuck with is the US's. By any standard, the US military kicks ass with it's hands voluntarily tied behind its back. The Russians in WWII were just more prolific rapists and prisoner killers.

[Blind groper]

Of course, Seth, you probably think that the 1 to 3 million Iraqis who died as a result of the US intervention really appreciate what the American military did. Riiiiiight.

Your conclusion that all out war is the way to go is deeply flawed. The proper conclusion is that no war is the way to go. There are so many alternatives to war that I could not begin to number them. War should be an absolute last resort, and then only if physically attacked yourself. Roosevelt knew this, and in WWII entered the war after Pearl Harbour.

By this standard, American participation in wars since 1945 have all been unjustified. If America had stayed at home, millions of people would not have had their lives shortened, many more millions would not have been maimed for life, and the world would be a much better place. War is the best way to destroy resources that could otherwise be used to improve the human condition.

Let me illustrate this by what happened with the Afghanistan war. This followed the 9/11 massacre in which 3,000 Americans died. Dubya had to do something dramatic to avoid being voted out of office as president, and he chose to go to war to save his own political bacon. In that war, over 2,000 American soldiers have died, and 18,000 have been wounded. In addition, 20,000 Afghanis have died as a result of that war (although this is a US military number and the reality is probably much higher). At the end of it all, the Taliban still rule in most of Afghanistan, with the government put in place by the USA holding power only in the cities. When US military leaves, things will only get worse.

There was always a better alternative. It was instigated in parallel with the war and has been successful. That is to insert agents into Al Qaeda and use their information for more targeted action. This has been done and the results have stopped Al Qaeda in its tracks.

Dirty politics, though, required something more dramatic, and the military action has done major harm.

[Cormac]

Rum's killin' it in this thread. Bravo!

I think it's easy to gloss over how badass the Red Army was. They broke the Blitzkrieg by laying low until the tanks passed over, then belt-grabbing the Wehrmacht and pitfighting man on man like cornered rats. This not only took the German tanks, and planes, and guns out of play for fear of slaughtering too many of their own, but it relied on the strengths of a pissed off peasant army to do their worst.
Both Josef and Little Nicky were total stone killers who personally blew the heads off of more people than we'll probably ever know, and Europe represented a shitload of money just sitting for the taking to them. The only thing that stopped them from doing the obvious was the Allied armies in their way and their fears of a reverse Napoleon's retreat.
That, and there was that 4-year gap before they got the Bomb that took their inertia...so they chose a more roundabout approach to Universal Socialism. Hence the Cold War.

By the end of the war, weren't the Red Army regarded as having the toughest and best infantry in the world?

No. That would be the American Army and Marines. Superior training, superior equipment, superior tactics. Don't be frightened by silly snake eating and snow rubbing - to this day, the last infantry anyone (including Russia and China) wants to fuck with is the US's. By any standard, the US military kicks ass with it's hands voluntarily tied behind its back. The Russians in WWII were just more prolific rapists and prisoner killers.

Who is frightened? Did you mean "impressed"?

In the context of an overwhelming machine, you may be correct. Mind you, your enemeies in the field don't seem all that intimidated today.

And, if you were to have put the average GI against the average Russian grunt back then in WW2, I'd put my money on the Russian.

Not convinced it is any different today.

[piscator]

Rum's killin' it in this thread. Bravo!

I think it's easy to gloss over how badass the Red Army was. They broke the Blitzkrieg by laying low until the tanks passed over, then belt-grabbing the Wehrmacht and pitfighting man on man like cornered rats. This not only took the German tanks, and planes, and guns out of play for fear of slaughtering too many of their own, but it relied on the strengths of a pissed off peasant army to do their worst.
Both Josef and Little Nicky were total stone killers who personally blew the heads off of more people than we'll probably ever know, and Europe represented a shitload of money just sitting for the taking to them. The only thing that stopped them from doing the obvious was the Allied armies in their way and their fears of a reverse Napoleon's retreat.
That, and there was that 4-year gap before they got the Bomb that took their inertia...so they chose a more roundabout approach to Universal Socialism. Hence the Cold War.

By the end of the war, weren't the Red Army regarded as having the toughest and best infantry in the world?

No. That would be the American Army and Marines. Superior training, superior equipment, superior tactics. Don't be frightened by silly snake eating and snow rubbing - to this day, the last infantry anyone (including Russia and China) wants to fuck with is the US's. By any standard, the US military kicks ass with it's hands voluntarily tied behind its back. The Russians in WWII were just more prolific rapists and prisoner killers.

Who is frightened? Did you mean "impressed"?

In the context of an overwhelming machine, you may be correct. Mind you, your enemeies in the field don't seem all that intimidated today.

And, if you were to have put the average GI against the average Russian grunt back then in WW2, I'd put my money on the Russian.

Not convinced it is any different today.

So?
Armies fight as teams. American Marines individually slow roasted fanatical dug-in Japanese samauri everywhere they went.
US Army infantry slashed from Normandy to Berlin in 10 months through the same German Army that threw "...The whole root and core and brain of the British Army" into the sea. Americans shot better, moved better, carried more shit faster, inflicted hellacious casualties, took the Mother of all WWII counteroffensives square in the nose and came back with a vicious right hook to the Ardennes that turned the German lights out. They weren't malnourished half-equipped scavenging Russians, they were big proud brave and brutal Wehrmacht veterans who'd never lost a battle, well armed and fighting for their homes. The American Army fucking crushed them. Even Stalin knew better than to throw his armies away trying to fight the US.

As for today, it takes 500 Taliban to assault 48 American Infantrymen and kill 9 while losing 150 in the Korengal.
The Russians never made it to the Korengal. They got smoked every time they tried.

[mistermack]

No. That would be the American Army and Marines. Superior training, superior equipment, superior tactics. Don't be frightened by silly snake eating and snow rubbing - to this day, the last infantry anyone (including Russia and China) wants to fuck with is the US's. By any standard, the US military kicks ass with it's hands voluntarily tied behind its back. The Russians in WWII were just more prolific rapists and prisoner killers.

Wrong on all counts. The us army's superior tactic is to call in an air strike. Without that, they are pretty inept.
And always have been. Even in WW2, it was the quality and quantity of the american planes that made the difference.
And they could afford them. They kept out of the fighting for four years, in the most cowardly fashion.
America had been getting richer and richer, keeping out and selling arms at inflated prices, while Britain struggled to wear down Germany. It's hardly surprising that by then, the US had more and better planes.

How stupid, to not understand the difference, when the evidence is right there before your eyes.
In the battle of the bulge, in the Ardennes, the weather got foggy, and the US planes couldn't fly. The US army was immediately blitzed by the Germans, and the American GIs were surrendering in their thousands
Then the weather cleared, and the Germans were stopped in their tracks by the planes.

Without superior air power, the US army was rubbish.

As to the Russians being rapists, they were. But that was in response to what the Germans had done. They were taking revenge, and I can hardly blame them.
But Americans don't have that excuse, but we all saw the pictures from Abu Grabe.
And GIs commit plenty of rapes around their bases, even in peace time. It's a serious problem, that gets hushed up.

And as for killers, we've all seen the US machine-gunning unarmed civilians from their helicopters. That's how americans ''fight''. And without one of their own spilling the beans, nobody would know what kind of murders the US has been carrying out.

[Ian]

[Hermit]

US Army infantry slashed from Normandy to Berlin in 10 months through the same German Army that threw "...The whole root and core and brain of the British Army" into the sea. Americans shot better, moved better, carried more shit faster, inflicted hellacious casualties, took the Mother of all WWII counteroffensives square in the nose and came back with a vicious right hook to the Ardennes that turned the German lights out. They weren't malnourished half-equipped scavenging Russians, they were big proud brave and brutal Wehrmacht veterans who'd never lost a battle, well armed and fighting for their homes.

Not by the time the Ardennes bulge took place, they weren't. And they had lost the biggest battle of the war two years earlier. The Soviets won that one.

I have personal connections with all of that. One of my grandfathers spent seven years in Siberia after being bailed up during a nighttime recce in Stalingrad. My father escaped the Russian encirclement of East Prussia and Pommerania after he was wounded. He was a Lieutenant at 20. Straight after he finished school he was trained in the army. Six weeks later he was at the front. He said he was not particularly good at being a soldier - that he was made an officer because the veterans above him kept getting killed. One of my uncles was killed on the western front at the time of the Ardennes counteroffensive. He was 16 years old, ffs, and he was not a volunteer. So much for "big proud brave and brutal Wehrmacht veterans who'd never lost a battle". They were all but snuffed out before the Normandy landing, sometimes even by their own superiors. Rommel was not the only victim of official "disapproval" from above.


As for the question of what would have happened if the US did nothing - at least in regard to WWII - the Soviets would have kept marching on, but as was the case with Alexander the great, Napoleon, Hitler and all other individuals who thought they could conquer the world, Stalin would have come agutser before long. In so far as world domination is concerned, nobody has succeeded by sheer force in the past, and I don't see how any individual or regime will be able to do so in the future.