bouzane said:
Tispower1 said:
Retrasado said:
ummmm what?
first of all, the US did all that in Iraq without even using a minute fraction of its military power. (ie. no nukes, no carpet bombing) Second, in a conventional war between the US and China, China wouldn't evn have a chance; not even a ghost of a chance. If you think they would, try reading about this little toy, which the US has nine of. (each one of those bad boys has more fighters than all but 20 or so countries' entire air force does) and this, which the US will have ~2500 of by 2020. Third. China's economy is better than the US? wth? Just for a reference here, in just the last 12 years, the US GDP has grown more than the entire size of China's GDP. Think about that for a while......
And then we come to the clincher in the current US vs China military power argument: nukes. The US has more than 6000 operational nuclear warheads available and probably at least that (if not more) in storage if they are needed and we have more than enough rockets and planes (and who knows what else) to deliver them. China can barely muster 800 total nukes and it's not likely that more than 500-600 can be delivered to US targets in a reasonable amount of time. (which is enough to cause plenty of damage, but when you look at the devastating and incredibly one-sided response that the US could easily muster, it would completely insane for China to attempt a nuclear strike against the US)
As for Russia, sure they have tons of nukes (12000-18000 by most estimates) but only a tiny fraction (maybe 2000-3000) are "operational" and there's been a lot of question as to whether a significant amount of those would even work. (they have been pretty much completely neglected since the mid-1980s, so who knows what the hell would happen if they fired them up?) I'm not even going to touch on other issues such as Russia's natural resources as other than oil (which the US has enough of to survive for a few months if they have to) the US has far, far more than enough raw materials for military production.
I don't think a lot of people realize how truely collossal the US economy (and by extension, military production capacity) really is. For example, the projected US defense budget for fiscal 2009 is $711000000000 (that's right, 700 billion dollars; larger than all but the top 16 entire nations' economies Edit: it's also five times as much as your home country's GDP) which accounts for between 45 and 55% (depending on the estimate) of worldwide military spending. Despite this, the US's defense budget when measured as a percentage of the GDP doesn't even make the top ten list. Heck, it doesn't even make the top twenty, which means if they have too/feel threatened, the US government has a hell of a lot of breathing room to amp up the military even more than its' already insane levels.
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Some more pretty awesome US weapons include this and the most expensive fighter. Heck even America's NATO allies have some pretty decent weaponry, such as the Eurofighter (2nd only to the Raptor), Leopard 2 and this -of which none have been destroyed by enemy action! The Russians have little decent equipment and same with China, compared to NATO forces.
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Impressive military hardware alone does not win a war. Korea, Vietnam and Iraq drive this point home. Manpower and resolve count for a lot and if nations of 20-30 million people can resist America's military power, than I'd expect a nation of over a billion to have more than a fighting chance.
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Compare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%93present)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Front_(WWI)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_I)
Also look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_day_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_war
Having the proper equipment and training does make a huge difference. I mean the Russians had 1 rifle for every 5 soldiers in WWI! Also, US and their Allies losses in the Vietnam war were a 5th of those on the other side, and though the difference is less with the Iraq War. However, the reason behind these defeats to inferior equipment is less because of numbers, but more because of people's resolve, and if the people don't support you you're pretty much screwed.
