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Short term you appear to be correct, to my great surprise. I honestly don't understand how we got here, except that somehow our enemies were even more grossly incompetent than ourselves. I guess that is often how war goes. it still makes me profoundly nervous. I'm also not sure how sustainable it is.
We've severely depleted our reserves of strategic resources in an effort by buy the Ukrainians time? What happens if/when China calls our bluff and finally invades Taiwan? Will we have blown our load too early?
The success of Ukraine against Russia on the field looks good for Ukraine, and great for the profound levels of financial and arms support we've given them. But what if it doesn't last with this Russian mobilization? What happens when the US is forced to partially mobilize it's economy in order to keep the aid up? It could be good for jobs and the economy. It could also be another corrupt clusterfuck that sends most of the money to our other strategic rivals overseas, China.
In order to best capitalize on Europe's great power demands, the US needs to be stepping up it's energy production. But decades of neoliberal policy treating energy companies as The Great Satan have made them too nervous. They think the football is going to be pulled away from them again, and so are content to make up for the losses they previously endured thanks to previous administrations lawfare against them. Ultimately we will fail to solidify this opportunity, and probably will allow it to slip away to the benefit of our strategic rivals.
In terms of US culture "successfully" fusing neoliberalism and leftism in a way that "works", I don't even know where to start. Whatever successes we've enjoyed on the world stage can hardly be attributed to that, and will likely be undermined by the schizophrenic priorities is forces on us. Like the above example of us squandering our opportunity to take a huge share of the world's energy market.
The deep state apparently still has enough institutional competence to fuck up the world, and leave the US as king shit of turd mountain. But our culture is too dysfunctional to actually build anything back up from there.
Just when I thought I was getting a handle on what people mean when they say "neoliberal" I get pitched this screwball.
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Basically. All of the imperial hubris without two things that made it somewhat work for the US:
A legitimately first rank military and logistics system. For all the talk of it being imperialist Ukraine made me appreciate the US more because, as bad as the War on Terror was, you can at least count on them to win the war before they lose it. Putin tried his push to Baghdad and corruption and incapacity undid him.
More importantly perhaps: the US has no comparable rival, so even a US president who fumbled as badly as Putin would simply have vastly more room to maneuver. Putin clearly miscalculated, but a US miscalculation in the same spot wouldn't be nearly as damaging cause the US isn't going to be sanctioned to hell and see a peer competitor flooding Iraq or, more comparably, Mexico with weapons.
I think the second point explains why this whole thing has been such a shock. America has been a superpower for 80 years. Uncontested for around 30. Most of the world population - and Americans specifically- have gotten desensitized to how brazen the US can be and assume it's true for other alleged rivals.
I do wonder how the U.S. would have fared in its last few invasions if Russia was providing targeting intelligence and advanced weaponry to our enemies the way we are in Ukraine. Maybe better than the Russians, but I expect much higher casualties than we actually experienced.
Syria?
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It would be much worse (Ukraine is better armed than 2003 Saddam) but:
I don't think Russia can be as generous to the hypothetical rogue Mexico/Canada as the US and NATO can be
There's a lot of criticism of Russia's performance in and of itself.
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Remember the controversy over the bogus story that the Russians were offering Taliban-aligned islamists bounties for dead American soldiers? False accusations are always projections of one's own desires; as we turn Ukrainian drone operators into twitter celebrities.
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What load? The deniable, old stuff we're sending poor Ukrainian dirt farmers to fight a trench war on the black-soil steppe is different from the material we've already sold and cross-trained the Taiwanese on. Remember a few months ago that big controversy over whether we would assist the Poles in transferring old ex-Soviet MiG and/or Sukhoi fighters to the Ukrainians? Yeah, we already sell the Taiwanese F-16s, which we most assuredly have not depleted our stocks of over the Ukrainians. Etc., etc.
That's even assuming the Chinese have the capacity to load a couple million people on boats and drop them off in Taiwan without having them starve 12 hours later, which I doubt.
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A lot of short-termism here. While we depleted some weapons they are older models. And we weren’t building more because we didn’t need more. No reason we can’t build more.
And while esg has hit oil production it’s still near record highs and in the 15 year period we went from an importer to an exporter.
And at this point there’s no evidence that Russias mobilization will work. It potentially might end Russia. And at this point there’s no evidence or even reason to expect troops with 2 weeks of military training to be able to project any force versus be easy cannon fodder. There are stories of them driving stupidly into Ukranian lines where they can be killed with cheap bullets.
Though I do agree that the fusion of leftism and neoliberalism doesn’t seem to be working that well. Neoliberalism is working reasonably well for places like Japan that get relatively free trade but internally due to language differences etc can blunt leftism.
But Russia can't.
That alone justifies throwing a lot of resources at Ukraine. This is a disaster for Russia: this was their big shot and - as of now- they've messed it up. Their demographics are not going to get better, their stockpiles will never be as large.
It's an opportunity to basically castrate Russia in the long-term.
(I would argue that this is strategically worse than integrating them as another ally against China but that ship seems to have sailed).
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A lot can happen in 12-24 months, as the last 6 months shows. And generally, it's much harder to retake territory than to defend it in the first place. Recent successes for Ukraine not withstanding. I believe taking islands, such as Taiwan, present even greater challenges.
Re. strategic resource: No, absolutely not.
Everything we have sent to Ukraine represents either outmoded equipment designed to fight an army from the 70's that is only still relevant because the Russian army IS from the 70's, or equipment the fulfils secondary capability requirements.
EG, HIMARS, manpads, and Javelin are all secondary, because what the US REALLY focuses on is air superiority; where we maintain a level of absolute crushing dominance unseen at any point in military history.
Want to destroy an ammo depot? Airstrike.
Want to blow up a tank? Airstrike.
Want to shoot down a plane? MOTHER FUKIN STRIKE FROM THE AIR BAAAAAABEEEEEEEEE
China and India are of course trying to match us here, but India is at least 10-20 years from fielding home grown engines that are competitive (not having btw, their engine program has been ongoing for a while and seems to be performaing well. I mean feiling home grown home made 4.5gen+ planes en mass), and china is likewise at the most pessimistic doomer almost definitely false estimates (from the US perspective) 10 years behind in BVR a to a shit, stealth, engines, and avionics.
Even without NGAD and the Raider, if we stood still china would take years to catch up, and we running boys!
And it turns out that Russia drank a fifth of ethanol based radar array coolant and passed out in a ditch instead of working on their gen 5 shit.
Air strikes are great, but they are not always available, especially over prolonged, low-intensity conflicts. Javelins were extremely valuable for destroying bunkers, emplacements, and other enemy positions in absence of air power in Iraq and Afghanistan. US infantry simply have no other way of fighting at standoff distances (nor any way to ward off air strikes than stingers for that matter, but in that case the scenario you suggest is a lot more likely to work out). The US having a disproportionately strong air force doesn't necessarily mean much in that kind of war. I'm not saying arming Ukraine is a bad idea, but there are very real readiness concerns that come from giving them so many ground weapons, regardless of what we have in the way of aircraft.
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Can you cite a single source to show that China is at least 10 years behind the US in these fields?
I can cite sources where US defence officials argue China is acquiring high-tech weapons faster and considerably more cost-effectively than the US:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/china-acquiring-new-weapons-five-times-faster-than-u-s-warns-top-official
The US has gotten pretty worried about Chinese BVR capabilities such as the PL-15 and PL-21, which probably outrange existing US AAMs. The US is still developing its AIM-260 to counter. This doesn't scream 'USA is >10 years ahead in BVR' to me. It indicates the US is 4-5 years behind, since these Chinese weapons are about 5 years old. Even if this is just a Mig-25 moment where the US got worked up about nothing, let's at least wait until that's confirmed before crowing for victory.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28636/meet-the-aim-260-the-air-force-and-navys-future-long-range-air-to-air-missile
I know that the Chinese and Russians are ahead in hypersonic missiles (cruise and glide vehicles) because they've actually deployed them. The article admits as such, claiming that the US is more interested in the next sprint than the last one, which they've already lost.
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/the-groundbreaking-hypersonic-missiles-america-has-in-the-works/
And is the US not behind China in the fundamental category of shipbuilding? The US navy has been scrapping its recently completed Littoral combat ships because they're not useful and is actually shrinking. The Chinese have been and are continuing to build ships en masse. The US has only just started construction of its new class of Constellation frigates. The US is still building Arleigh Burke's, an updated design originating from the 1980s. This is because the Zumwalt was a dud.
Considering that the US has a much smaller overall shipbuilding industry than China, can it ever catch up? What good is airpower if your airbases get hammered by missiles on day 1 and you can't get carriers close to the front because there's a gigantic surface fleet supported by hundreds of shorebased aircraft and ballistic missiles in your way?
The US has certain advantages in submarines and the size of its airforce but it's not overwhelmingly superior once you account for geography, which favours China.
Nah, your gonna have to take my word for it.
Any source I post would be bullshit anyway.
It all boils down to:
Chinas missiles had sea trials, and testing was returned to land trials. We don't know why, but the most likely reason is they failed to hit a moving target. They are probably ahead of us, but that is at least partially because we are investing into the raider instead; and lockheed is working on the US hypersonic at a reasonable rate. Russia's missile is fake, it's an air launched missile that will hit mach five but it doesn't maneuver and it doesn't use scram jets or anything post 1980's. If we count that as a hypersonic missle, we've had them for 40 years.
The J-20 uses rip off russian engines from like, the su-30. No bueno. They are developing indigenous engines, but they aren't ready for service yet, apparently . Their stealth is ass, and their radars are atleast 1/2 of an ass, as seen by the fat nose on the j-20. Sexy plane though. Canarads for days. Thus, china's BVR missle: It has range on an aim (theoretically), but it doesn't mean anything if they are using avionics and stealth tech from the 80's.
Re. ship building: yeah that one is true. You can't beat having a civilian shipbuilding industry for having a military ship building capacity. We'll see their fleet get to local parity/dominance within a couple years, probably.
The new WS-10C engines are in service as of last year.
https://twitter.com/rupprechtdeino/status/1405777441252020229
The Russians have Kinzhal but also Avangard, which is a truer hypersonic missile. They're even working on that nuclear cruise missile that was irradiating parts of Northern Russia during the development process. That's pretty new stuff, even if it's an old idea.
I don't even think the US has any fielded air launched ballistic missiles, unless you count the Minuteman coming off the back of that C-5 in the 70s. They're making Prompt Conventional Strike but it's not finished yet.
The US is making the B-21 but the Chinese are also making a flying wing stealth bomber. And we know the Chinese are making their own NGAD. US NGAD isn't exactly a secret.
Furthermore, I can prove that the Chinese aren't using stealth tech from the 1980s, just from the fact that we know they were stealing stealth tech from the F-35! Claiming that China is 40 years behind the US in avionics and stealth is just ridiculous, it doesn't map to the facts. The fact that they decided they wanted less stealth and more range/payload/other features for the J-20 is reasonable. They plan to be fighting in the Pacific after all. The F-35 and F-22 seem to be designed for the Fulda Gap, for high-end air superiority over a short range. Not quite sure what they were thinking for the former case, hopefully it was Lockheed Martin bribery over a stroke of insanity.
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