This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I've been reading a couple books about the sad state of Canadian military procurement. I think procurement for the sort of country Canada is is a legitimately difficult problem, but one that's eminently solvable with better informed voters and if party leadership had some more integrity.
There are three or four principle problems with Canadian defense procurement, that date back to debacles like the Ross rifle which constantly jammed in WW1 and the Avro Arrow which was an overengineered interceptor, and are still issues with more modern boondoggles like the F-35 and the Seahawk replacement acquisitions.
The first is just that Canada is an expensive country to properly defend. We've got an enormous, sparsely populated country, so ships and planes need to be able to travel far distances and need to be able to do it with infrequent refueling. Plus they need to be able to withstand the extreme cold and the ice in the arctic. This is part of what killed the Avro Arrow; no other country wanted to buy it and help Canada recoup the costs because no other country needed the (expensive) capabilities it offered. This is just something Canada needs to accept, that sometimes it will have to pay more to get the job done in Canadian conditions.
The second is a desire to build in Canada, to provide jobs to Canadians and build up a Canadian defense manufacturing industry. I'm sympathetic to this idea- it seems like a great deal to pay just a bit more and keep all the jobs and capital within your own country right? But in practice it's not just a bit more, it's multiple times more. There was an Iltis Jeep procurement order that, if bought from Volkswagen, would've cost $26 000 per jeep. Because the government wanted it to be built in Canada, it cost $84 000 per jeep. At that point you're paying more to build in Canada than you are paying for the actual thing you want. It'd make sense if the alternative was buying military equipment from China or even a neutral country like South Africa, but not from a NATO ally. And if Canada does want to build up its industry, I'm of the opinion it should be done in the style of South Korea- only subsidize Canadian manufacturers if they can actually export internationally and produce stuff other countries want. That's the only test that can't be faked to confirm Canadian manufacturers are really producing good stuff worthy of subsidy. In general I think among allies, there should be more cooperation and specialization for military production. Let the USA build the planes, South Korea and Netherlands build the ships, Germany build the jeeps, and so on. Not to assign official responsibilities to countries, but to let them compete in a freer market, so whoever's actually best at making the goods can get the contracts. And if your country isn't actually competent enough to build anything anyone wants, you should just suck it up instead of spending tons of taxpayer money propping up an incompetent industry.
The third problem is that procurements become very political. In the Avro Arrow case, the liberal government stalled cancelling it even after they knew it was doomed to avoid the bad press for it; then the conservatives taking over after the next election also stalled cancelling it to avoid the bad press. Then with the Seahawks replacement, Chretien attacked the conservative government over the EH101 replacement for being too expensive. Then when he took over as Prime Minister, he wasted 500 million and years of delays trying to find a different replacement after realizing the EH101 was just the right choice for a replacement by any fair measure. Then Justin Trudeau did basically the exact same thing when he called the F-35s too expensive only to realize they were the only plane that offered what Canada needed, but only after he delayed their procurement for years and wasted tons of money in the process.
The fourth problem I honestly think is basically unavoidable, and that's that procurement has to go through a ton of bureaucracy. The Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of Defense, the ministry of industry, and Public Service and Procurement Canada are all involved in any big ticket procurement order. And if you try to bypass one, once it finds out it'll stall things up for a couple years insisting on doing its own analysis. One of the books I read recommended making a dedicated new ministry just for military procurement, like what the UK and Australia apparently have, to streamline things. Personally I doubt that'd make things significantly better. It sounds like the Yes, Minister sketch that goes "We've completed the study of which bureaucrats we can cut." "What'd you find?" "That we're short of 8000 bureaucrats". I think large bureaucracy in modern governments is basically inevitable, and trying to cut it down or reform it is basically a waste of energy until you've first fixed some larger scale problems like public sector unions.
Concurring with you, I think military spending serves three roles: a) Buying stuff to win a war b) Fostering industries which produce such stuff long term c) Economic stimulus / gravy train
For (a), it does not matter where you buy, as long as they are not your likely enemy.
For (b), you want a reliable long term partner country.
For (c), there are likely key areas and companies where you want to spend money to win the next election. Basically, military spending is a money hose which you can redirect to wherever you see the biggest political advantage.
How important these various considerations are depends on the situation your country finds itself in: if Ukraine had money to spend, they would likely buy whatever gets them the most bang for their buck, while Canada is not expecting to fight an existential war where the raw number of jeeps matter any time soon.
Regarding (c), it should also be pointed out that big military projects are almost never developed in a healthy market situation. A healthy market would be that a NATO country company which wants to develop a new fighter jet will do so based on venture capital. If a decade later, it turns out that their jet is competitive, they then sell it to NATO countries, making a profit for their investors.
Instead, the typical process seems to be to first convince your government to pay for the development. If they are lucky and your project does not fail ten years in, it will be likely arrive delayed, over budget and possibly under specs. In a (c)-heavy world, this does not matter: your government will mostly buy from you even if an ally offers a superior product, because why would they subsidize the economy of an ally instead of their own?
It should surprise nobody that this socialist model of weapon development is not very efficient, especially as companies evolve to latch onto the government apparatus, extracting that sweet sweet revenue stream as their tentacles drill deeper into the administrations as decades pass by.
On the other hand, not everything can be reasonably developed in a competitive market. If Roosevelt had in 1941 simply announced the US intend to buy nukes and let venture capital fund competing Manhattan Projects, the result would likely not been that in 1945 the US could just pay 1% of its GDP for Little Boy and Fat Man.
More options
Context Copy link
Which Anglo country (I’d say which western country but I know the pedants would pull out some obscure example) handles defense procurement well?
Bare minimum competent execution without real threats: Norway, Sweden, Czechia
Decent execution to counter real threats: France (special case: bites off more than they should chew) Poland, Finland, Turkey
Competent execution to counter real threat: Japan, Korea, Israel
Criteria for procurement success generally falls into the following categories:
When broken down in this manner, competing incentive mechanisms become immediately obvious, but also indirectly exploitable. Excepting definitional abuses of the above conditions, procurement failures for even basic systems are the statistical norm. Supporting indigenous capability development is the usual means governments and defense service sellers drain the public purse for no benefit, but ego stoking by censuring or advancing defense adjacent causes is also a common cause for mission failures.
It must be noted that a fundamental cause for procurement failures is economic incapability. Even if procurement practices are perfect, some states just have a shitty threat environment and cannot actually react to any practical threat which manifests. For the most part, the post Cold War peace dividend has resulted in objective 2 flailing about, letting defense budgets wither and focus shifting to counterterrorism and intelligence capabilities. In this anemic budget environment, inventories and capabilities have withered, with institutional knowledge rotting away and unable to redevelop even at a glacial pace.
The main defense many countries have is the incapability of their proximate threats. Nations are rolling the dice and hoping their neighbours are both too weak to actually do something and too smart to want to do something to begin with A military action is ruinous to both aggressor and defender regardless of kinetic success, and for many procurement agencies their mandates service internal political requirements when no external threat is manifest.
Czechia?
The system is hopelessly corrupt.
What's not said is he asked for $20 million which were to fund a major political party (ODS). I highly doubt he wasn't working for them.
To be fair, I don't think you can name a single nation that has a military procurement system free of bribery. It's basically impossible to even operate at those scales without it. Even in total war people still seem to skim off the top.
The question is whether the corruption actively stymies proper ressource allocation or not. Czechia seems to at least be able to operate a somewhat competitive arms industry, so it's not exactly comparable to the people that are buying entirely fictitious fortifications.
It's criminal waste of money.
Example 1
https://www.novinky.cz/clanek/domaci-cena-dronu-z-izraele-nebude-15-ale-27-miliardy-korun-40407332
Heron 1 drone. Utterly, totally useless against the supposed enemy - Russians, who'd shoot it out of the sky without blinking an eye. 100 million$ cost, per 3. That's an utterly absurd price for an unmanned plane with a speed of 200 kph. If it were completely stealthy and low IR observable, maybe it'd be worth considering. It's not.
People ought to be shot for this.
EDIT:
Oh, it got changed to loitering munitions which will be useful for a short while.
https://www.idnes.cz/zpravy/domaci/sebevrazedny-dron-vyckavaci-munice-armada-acr-nakup-vojaci.A240321_080714_domaci_ivos
At an absurdly inflated cost though.
that's 350k€ per one battery driven loitering munition! (the Hungarian deal, but I'll expect Czechs won't have a much better one).
More options
Context Copy link
Exactly this. Yes, the Czechs probably have money traded under the table even now, and employees in the French DGA treats Thales as their eventual employer, but in the end what matters is the force getting something they need.
Some charity can be extended to procurement agencies who have to react when vendors shit the bed, but bad procurement practices treat a procurement exercise as a shitshow to begin with. German procurement leaves their ground and air capabilities a decade behind their intented readiness posture because of insane litigiousness, Italians keep using shitty refurbished Arietes or Mangustas, Spaniards have no money at all, and did well developing assets jointly but shit the bed entirely with their domestic submarine program.
In the end what matters for military procurement is whether the stuff they have is fit for purpose, and if not why is it so. Much of military procurement failures like the OP example of the Arrow are a combination of vendors bullshitting the client about the expected capabilities of their equipment, and parallel evolutions in technology leapfrogging an in-development project, rendering the initial project entirely useless. Some capabilities are due to client interference, like the issue with the M16 powder in Vietnam causing fouling after the initial vendor failed to deliver on the scaled up contracts.
And of course sometimes clients and vendors both grab the idiot ball together and decide to hail mary, usually to failure but sometimes to success. The US littoral combat ship is a case of that idiot ball exploding in their hands, while the F35 needed time to cook, and cook it did.
And of course you have simple insane corruption for contracts in governments with no real threat forcing a reckoning. Headline assets like submarines or jets or ships or tanks or even the guns make the news, but I've seen an invoice where a shipment of chicken was 5x the supermarket rate. Thats where the real money is for corruption, and given the quality of the meal I would argue it fits my definition of 'failure to deliver'. A military is ultimately a transportation service for bad things to go into someone else, but my transformation into a walking biohazard is definitely not part of their food procurement specifications.
No, they aren't. If you've only got 10% of the air defense missile you need because your procurement is buying $1 million dollar gold plated bullshit with seeker heads that integrate radar, IR and god knows what else, and China and Russia are simply using command guided shit hooked to a powerful radar that cost 5% per unit, you're going to lose.
Because they won't have any problems with replenishment and you're out after a few battles.
This is what happened with the Houthis - they were firing milion dollar missiles at $2000 drones.
Replenishment dollar value is a metric accessible and understandable to the public. It is also fundamentally wrong.
Gold plated seeker heads filled with Raytheon pension entitlements aren't slugging one to one against Chinese slaved missiles, they're part of a warfare system operating according to the presumed threat environment based on battlefield realities. Taliban and Vietnam crow about beating back the USA, with the cheap cost of thousands of their fighters and population for the tradeoff where they melt away immediately in any setpiece engagement. Yes the dollar value per Afghan is minimal, and they expend bullets in exchange for a 1m GBU, but a colonel calling in a package doesn't think about some schoolnin Virginia that doesn't get built because of the money he spends, he fulfills the mission and keeps his guys alive. Afghans thinking their own lives are worth less than a thousand US dollars is their calculus and consequence.
China and Russia crow about their cheap shit, but even without factoring in PPP calculations their headline assets are still expensive. A S400 is a billion fucking dollars, and we've seen multiple S400s get destroyed by less than 50m worth of ordinance each. Russias cheap and 'effective' aircraft have to do long distance lobbing because they are too afraid to operate in a battlespace with uncertain air superiority. Cheap doesn't mean cost effective, it means cheap.
Cheap houthi skimmers are striking civilian ships, not warships. Warships are launching SSM interceptors to strike threats 20 to 40NM away, not 1-5NM. At closer ranges EW nukes all command guidance, and systems rely on terminal guidance for final strike, which is where your fancy gold plated shit becomes necessary and why Russia keeps jerking off about hypersonic manueverability weapons. EW against command guided weapons has been in effect since the 70s, and the west lost the first round with their shitty doctrine of launcher guided missiles... exactly as OP of this thread castigates.
Cost effective mass generation is warfare for the early 20th century. Modern militaries are making a risky calculation that deepstacking intelligence and precision striking allows for decisive victory at individual engagements. That is their decision to make and their requirements to communicate. We as observers are free to call them stupid money wasters who just need some cheap integrated shit, but unless you are willing to violate OPSEC then all we can do is shove our scenarios into warthunder for gaijin to prove doctrinal superiority.
Thinking any plane is safe today in an environment where $3000 thermal cameras are routinely used to blow up $5000 boomer-vintage frontline supply trucks is truly astonishing. What do you think would happen in a war ? You can't hide plane acoustics, even if you had a perfectly invisible plane Chinese are liable to have an acoustic network too. Coupled to their own air traffic control, it's going to know exactly where jet engines are operating, which means it can launch IR seeker missiles and those will find that plane given they have 2.5x speed. You're reduced to thoughts such as 'maybe NSA can take down Chinese military networks' despite those being run by Chinese, on Chinese domestic hardware, with no physical access whatsoever.
So no, you're not going to have battlespace superiority because of stealth aircraft, unless the US secretly borrowed cryo-arithmetic engines from god knows whom alone, ones capable of hiding a few megawatts of heat in the sky, cool the entire plane to sky temperature.
You're back to lobbing missiles and hoping GPS isn't jammed too hard.
Which can be something as simple as a thermal camera, which costs $5k today according to people sticking them on drones in the Donbass. Not $300k. Yet RIM-116 costs a million $.
The cheap command guided missiles used in for example, the Pantsir have a range of 15 km, mostly limited by missile size. Same with Crotale.. Your country's navy is dead set on engaging the Chinese mainland, which means a large quantity of middling class missiles can destroy the entire strategy by forcing a retreat. If Houthis managed that against the US navy, what would the result be with China ? Odds are the war devolves to a cringe standoff with both sides blockading trade and US hoping Chinese give in first. Seeing as they're the ones obsessed with building large stockpiles, not that likely.
Having gold-plated nonsense that might win a theoretical purely naval engagement if Chinese decided to treat warfare as a sport is quite the idea.
So why then is everyone using it ? You're surely aware multiple European countries are using evolved versions of the 1960s Crotale ? Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, disrupting a laser beam or a highly focused very powerful radar is ..actually pretty hard ?
EW against command guided missiles worked in the past when the signals weren't really powerful and focused. Today you're pretty much talking out of your ass because there's no way you can outjam a highly directional radar. To say nothing about laser-beam riding missiles.
You are taking propaganda at face value. 'Muh one-two atacms hits S400'. In reality it was probably quite different, seeing as ATACMS is a very bad missile with no evasion and no one will tell you what happened because it's likely secret and in any case involves some complex mission profile, probably EW or god knows what else. Even just to get GMLRS to hit a protected target required launching a MLRS salvo to saturate air defense.
Needless to say, US systems have entirely the same problem and are much more scarce.. One more example from Kiev..
Afghans won because US was totally and utterly clueless as to what they were doing there.
Yeah, and it's bullshit because as we have just recently seen, something as simple as a saturation attack by gently maneuvering ballistic missiles overwhelmed Israeli defenses and hit their air bases. And this was Iran, a relatively small, low IQ country with a shoestring economy, vs Israel, which has all the shiny US toys taxpayer money can buy.
What do you think would happen in the case of a war with China ? That was cca 200 missiles, something just the People's Liberation Army's Navy Air Force could launch daily.. Forget the actual Chinese air force which has about 3x that launch ability, forget the coastal defence missile batteries, forget the intercontinental range anti-ship ballistic missiles, just the land based naval air assets could send 200 mach 4 anti-ship missiles. The stated US tactic to deal with such is destroy the launch aircraft before that happens, which requires having air superiority at 500 km away from the carrier group.
Seeing how 'Prosperity Guardian' has fared, and how many drones US has lost over Yemen, it's clear you are talking total and utter nonsense. Were US in the possession of a sufficient number of stealth drones, they'd have not kept losing those defenceless drones over Yemen.
In reality your 'deepstacked' system of intel and PGMs cannot deal with a bunch of inbred half starved goat-herders launching harassment strikes on shipping using a small amount of thoroughly obsolete Iranian weaponry.
You'd think the strongest navy in the history of the planet would be able to convoy ships through and protect them from strikes, but apparently not, so shipping is down to 50% of last year.
More options
Context Copy link
They’ll happily launch million dollar ESSMs, RAMs, and Nulkas at closer ranges, see the USS Mason. The US Navy is pretty far behind the Air Force in operational EW, I suspect it will be a long while before any captain entrusts EW with incoming threats over lobbing $10M in physical ordnance.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's stretching the definition of Anglo probably well past its breaking point, but Singapore's defense procurement is widely held in good regard. And I think the British influence plays a role here: both Taiwan and the PRC are comparatively worse.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know any country I'd point to as an examplar to follow for defense procurement. I still think there are some very obvious improvements we can take as a country.
Though say Germany and Canada are clearly on "really avoid" side.
While say France and USA is far from ideal but they at least achieve something.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'd have gone with Switzerland but they are not Anglos and they are literally in the opposite situation to Canada with easily defensible borders, a culture of service, competitive local industry and accountable government.
Though even they have bad picks (like the Mirage IIIC back in the day) or the recent budgetary issues with the general ramp up in Europe.
Anglo countries with a non trivial defense budget is a short list though. Canada and Australia are famous for their boondoggles, the US just buys anything with infinite money and the UK has the strangest of allocations of its budget.
Does South Africa do military procurement well?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The Australian military is in a similar position. We only field a very small force, so there are few economies of scale, little learning by doing. There aren't usually any serious threats that we can handle, so we can afford to bungle submarine procurement catastrophically. We've been trying to replace the dodgy Collins-class submarines (Swedish-designed but locally built) since 2007. First we were going with Japan. Then France. Now the UK and America. All of this indecision cost us enormous amounts of time and money.
The new plan is to buy Virginias from the US (America can't even produce enough for their own needs, let alone ours) and then acquire a joint Anglo-American sub that hasn't even been designed yet sometime in the 2030s, hopefully fielded by 2040.
Our defence procurement is addicted to buying only the most expensive technologies in tiny numbers and then modifying or changing requirements to cause even longer delays before they enter service. For instance, we buy US Switchblade drones. They're expensive and ineffectual compared to refitted commercial drones used on the battlefield in Ukraine but I'm sure they meet all the gilded requirements written up by some Canberra official.
Everything moves at an absolutely glacial pace since everyone knows the US will be doing all the heavy lifting in any serious war and that our own capabilities have basically nothing to do with outcomes. About the only thing we've done tangibly on the submarine front is funded US submarine construction to speed up Virginia production. We're buying massively underarmed frigates at ridiculous prices (though the US isn't doing very well with frigates either).
I suspect Canada is in the same boat, the Armed Forces have no incentive to be capable. Imagine if the Canadian military was a really top-notch force, superbly efficient. So what, the Chinese could sweep them aside because of the massive difference in scale. We have 7 frigates and 3 destroyers (each maybe half as capable as a US Arleigh Burke), Canada has 12 frigates. China has 50 destroyers and 47 frigates, many much more modern and capable than anything in our fleets.
Yeah, though I would argue subs is the one asset where it makes sense to put a lot into a few examples of expensive technology, especially if we're talking nuclear submarines. This is because once a nuclear submarine leaves port, it could be almost anywhere. Its potential is felt by your enemies even in its absence, because they cannot confirm its absence. So one nuclear submarine on patrol has the psychological and deterrent impact of many submarines.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Isn't the real issue that Canada simply lacks incentives to do "military" well? In the extremely weird world where Canada is attacked, the military’s role would be to offer a token defense while the 800-pound gorilla - not lumbers - comes screaming in the form the west and the south.
Canada was in the Afghanistan war, we had soldiers peacekeeping during the breakup of Yugoslavia. We've had soldiers die because their equipment was inadequate. It's entirely plausible one day there'll be another 9/11-esque attack, but on Canadian soil, and we'll need to carry our fair share of the response. We need a navy that can patrol the arctic to assert our sovereignty on it over Russia.
Yes, Canada doesn't need to be as militarized as say Israel or South Korea. But at the very least I think it's totally reasonable for Canada to try to avoid some needless waste due to stuff like politicians pandering or avoiding responsibility.
Good points. I would also add that Canada needs to have a functioning military in case the United States ever Balkanizes or falls into political instability.
Yeah, that scenario or any other sort of black swan scenario we can't place numbers on like societal collapse post-super volcano or the invention of like a Chinese super weapon that leads to a WW3 would also benefit from a better military
More options
Context Copy link
The main hotspot for spillover violence Canada would have to worry about in a second US civil war scenario is in the far west, with eastern Oregon/Washington. This doesn’t take an enormous military.
Other than that, it’s mostly refugees to deal with- the crises which will cook off with a collapsing federal government are mostly well away from the Canadian border.
If it's gorilla war, I'd say all bets are off.
Planet of the apes reboot: Caeser is named Harambe instead, zoomers flock to his banner and cosplay as monke. Opponents retreat due to sheer cringe, the new Ape Together Stronk nation immediately descends into civil war as the Pepes of Tendietopia demand dakimakura of 9000 year old loli dragons.
This comment gave me a stroke
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My understanding is that BC is a continuation of the dynamic found along the west coast, where an urbanized coast politically dominates a mostly rural interior in broadly progressive ways, to the very great displeasure of the interior, and that the dividing line is a mountain range. So BC spinning into a crisis/drawing inter mountain west violence northwards is totally plausible.
Of course that doesn’t account for Alberta secession/prairexit or any number of Canada doomsday scenarios which seem to get more likely and not less with increasing US chaos. The Canadian prairies have inescapable economic interests in a continent dominated by oil interests and not the laurentian elite.
In terms of an actual invasion of Canada, a fragmenting US is unlikely to have a power center near that part of the border. Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas are all backwaters and the west coast states will have their hands full. In a U.S. as failed state the power centers are northeast, west coast, and Texas. While Alberta can perfectly rationally prefer one of these as continental hegemon(hint: oil), it’s just too far for this to be a near term issue.
I think the economic interests are one piece of that puzzle, but the other one is infrastructure.
A good chunk of US power centers are wholly dependent on the surrounding rural areas for power and water (especially out West) and so the strategic circumstances there disproportionately favor the rural areas for reasons that are shaped like rivers, natural gas pipelines, and electrical transmission towers.
This is a strategic nightmare for urban areas that most depend on that power for their survival, and I really don't see them solving that one. The Northeast, Southeast, Texas, Upper Canada/Ontario, Lower Canada/Quebec, and California might be self-sufficient and individually productive enough to pull that off, but I think the map of the US in case of Federal collapse would most likely end up looking more or less like this (extend Texas, or at least its sphere of influence, all the way up to the Arctic Ocean, leave Quebec as-is, truncate Ontario's territory at Thunder Bay, and add Vancouver Island and Vancouver to California).
And yes, this also means that only Texas would have custody of the former US' nuclear arsenal.
The history of this gamble is one where, in situations where the balance of political power is as lopsided as it is in the far west, that the metropole just cracks skulls in the hinterlands until the lights stay on and the water flows. California probably doesn't have the resources or sympathetic manpower to truly control the interior but it doesn't need to; failed state conditions for people who are de facto disenfranchised anyways is fine as long as you can control the truly important bits, or bribe/threaten the people who do.
Now this is different in places like Texas or modern Russia, where governments rely on extensive rural support to counteract a disadvantage in the cities. But even in places like this urban interests generally come first.
Specifically in the west, urban areas need to obtain water from rural areas, regardless of what those rural areas have to say about it, and there's not really another option, so California can't just leave the hinterlands alone but probably can't afford to control them outright(you can extend this further inland). That makes a conflict hot spot through most of the intermountain west.
Texas's geography militates for a hyperinterventionist/expansionist foreign policy, true, but the northeast's geography militates for sea power and federalism, so I think you're leaving out at least that.
I also doubt Texan expansionism crosses the Mississippi before the Rio Grande post federal government collapse; land powers tend to expand in the general direction of trouble spots, of which northern Mexico is the largest.
As an aside, when the USSR broke up most of it experienced falling fertility, but the Islamic regions saw their fertility rise fast. It's interesting to think what regions might see this if the US federal government falls- maybe certain Indian tribes, to start with, possibly parts of Appalachia.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The kind of military Canada would need in that situation is such a difference from the kind it would have any use for in the current situation that it's impractical to prepare for that or view the current military as preparation for it.
It can be done, you could be like the Swiss, who not only draft everyone, but have rigged their bridges and tunnels with explosives, and issue every man a weapon they have to take home just in case, and still build bomb shelters under new buildings, even though Switzerland is surrounded by the EU and has been for a while, just in case. But if the Canadians were like that, they'd already be doing it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link