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The US is trying to sustain a global empire in which its share of GDP has gone from 50+% after WWII to 17% and falling. The US is overstretched and in a situation in which the US is running from one crisis to another. US military recruitment is way down. The age of equipment is higher than ever and the manufacturing base in a poor state.
The US is now sustaining a force the size of the force in Vietnam at the war's peak for a multi year war far more intense than Vietnam. Ukraine is consuming SAMs and SAM systems at a much higher rate than they are produced. The US army trains 60k recruits a year. Japan trains 10k. Ukraine is going to have to train many tens of thousands per year for the next decade or two, both for this war and for the next. Germany about 200 tanks, Ukraine has lost around a thousand. Comparing the size of the Ukrainian army to NATO militaries shows how Ukraine absolutely dwarfs the UK or Germany. Sustaining, training arming and then reconstituting this massive military is going to be an endless black hole for resources for several decades.
Meanwhile the US is stuck with a bunch of conflicts in the middle east and is trying to outcompete the world's manufacturing super power in an arms race.
Russia doesn't have to defeat the US, they just need to make it impossible for the US to handle all the problems at the same time.
The US wanted to pull out of Afghanistan, regime change Russia and focus on China. Now they are stuck in a massive war against a Russia that is ramping up arms production by several hundred percent, they are sustaining a large force in the middle east and the pivot to Asia isn't really happening.
The USA is able to maintain this level of investment in Ukraine while keeping a large force on station in the Middle East. Russia is throwing everything it has at that one theater.
No doubt the USA is stretched fairly thin, but it has the ability to maintain a much bigger force on multiple stations compared to the competition.
Even the thinness of the US is questionable. What, specifically, is being thinned out here? The naval power that would go to the Pacific in a China war? The armies not swarming into the middle east's latest conflagration, and with minimal use in a China conflict?
There are absolutely limits to what the US military can do... but in a very real sense, the Ukraine War is freeing up large parts of the US military, because one of the main missions of the US Army and Airforce is to fight the Russians in Europe. That's, uh, not necessary as long as the Russians are committed to Ukraine. And depending on how much longer it continues, quite possibly not necessary for several years afterwards, even as the military-industrial expansion justified on grounds of helping Ukraine can be utilized in other ways.
In military-economic terms, Ukraine is a very cost-effective fixing action- something that is the antithesis of an overextension.
Strongly agree.
America is not more overextended by the Ukraine war than Russia is, and “War against Russian-led forces in Eastern Europe specifically” was the stated design purpose of decades of generations of American equipment development, military organization, and even internal (and external) propaganda.
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On an even longer timeline, it's unclear that a pivot to Asia was ever going to be effective. Simply look at the demographics of South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, the key first island chain in America's Pacific strategy. It's unclear that all three, or even any three will exist as we know them within the next 30-50 years. That's not to say that China doesn't have its own demographic problems to solve, but starting with 1 billion people means that China has a much longer timeline than Japan, Korea, Taiwan, or the US combined. Take Japan, for example. Notably, Japan has been opening up its historically xenophobic immigration policy in a desperate attempt to stop the demographic collapse they are in the midst of (Daimyo Abe sheds a single tear). By definition, this allows more Chinese influence within the country. This is pure conjecture, but it seems that in 30-50 years, we will see a Japan that not only doesn't see a point in helping contain Chinese power, but will be a main arm in China's power projection.
Ironically, America's cultural exports, which was a large part of what won them the Cold War, sowed the seeds for its eventual destruction.
In 30 years, specifically in the 2050s, the world will look with envy on Japan for their plummeting population coinciding so perfectly with the Age of Simulacra. The foreigners they bring in for their current economic-demographic concerns will be kicked out and they'll begin their cruise toward post-scarcity civilization. A few western nations will adopt mass use of automata, the ones most affected by the wars in Europe might be forced to, the others will argue over the legality of automata and where allowed flourish, and where prohibited languish and fade away. China meanwhile will be working on their population problem, as they'll need to shrink their population by >1 billion, in <100 years, without total collapse. I think it'll be easy for the CCP, but I think the reality of that problem will put a halt to everything else. At least unless western hegemony finally and totally collapses, in which case China will just take Africa.
Yes it’s quite sad really, importing hundreds of millions into the west less than twenty years before the end of wage labor.
Not 20 years, but simulacra will be in their spread to ubiquity in the 2040s. The largest western nations need too much downsizing and too much conditioning for a rapid shift. While by the 2050s we certainly could automate something like 80% of labor, with population projections putting the US over 400 million by then we're not socially equipped for more than 300 million people becoming suddenly permanently unemployable. With controls implemented by 2060, projections assuming a minimum halving effect means by the mid-2100s the US will reach a stable population, this despite post-scarcity conditions being probably common in western nations including the US by 2110.
Any economist who doesn't account for >90% of human labor becoming obsolete by 2100 is either hopelessly ignorant or using economics as a cover for politicking. Because of automation, there is no economic argument behind any effort to increase the population of any country. We need to already be shrinking, the faster (peacefully!) the better.
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Okay, I laughed. And if this were Reddit, I'd do a RemindMe 30 years.
Instead, I'll politely disagree that a region with the better part of a millennia of ethno-cultural bad blood and resistance to Chinese ethno-chauvinism is going to see a conversion to being the arms of Chinese power projection on the basis of... a rather unique reading on demographic endurance.
30 years later, you mind find bot reminding you on deleted post in deleted subreddit on reddit being gone at all.
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