USA vs the World

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mrstickball said:

The problem is that even if you take out the US satellite systems, the US still has a very dominant force of AWACS arrays that few nations can effectively counter.

Any other nation that your going to compare against the USA has either inferior weaponry in most senses (sans EU), lower troop levels, or lacks the infrastructure to support a war. In the case of Finland, the reason the Finnish held the Russians off was logistical (Russians weren't prepared for Finnish partisan attacks) and due to training.

The problem is asking how the war would be fought: Are we asking if America could effectively attack and occupy country Y? If country Y was China, that would be nearly impossible due to the population, and how large the country is. If we're talking both countries fielding their ORBATs in neutral territory and duking it out, it would be an absolute slaughter by the Americans.

Oh, and for your Soviet Union-Finnish example: You may want to compare the results of the Winter War of 1939-1940 and the Continuation War of 1941-1944, and the disasterous outcome for the Finns during the Soviet offensive of 1944....The Fins lost. Hard. There are 2 great contrasts between a countries' capability for offense and defense. Finnland was incredible during the winter war, but lacked the tactics, training, and armament for an offensive conflict with the Soviets (all their gains early in the war were due to Germans neutering Soviet positions).

In modern warfare, it still comes down to logisitics, economy, tactics used by both armies, and what the battle is over. I'd really like to hear you give a pitch for why country X could beat America in a fight. Satellites are hardly a deciding factor in America winning against another country...We still have AWACS, Wild Weasles, B2's, and a lot of other nasty weaponry that would inhibit any countries capability for war. Just because we're going the unmanned route doesn't mean we don't have a strong army that towers over any other countries' ORBATs.

I'm wasn't giving here the the answer on who would win, only pointing out that it's hard to judge who would win, if the comparision is made only on paper, the military strength doesn't have huge differences and the strengths and focus of different armies are on different weapons and strategy.

As for comparing the same tactical weapons systems of different countries, is like comparing who has the biggest dick, even more so when we don't know what the latest strategic weapons are (this is what they want to keep as secret as possible).
The idea of a satellite system is to make better AEW with removing the vulnerability of an AEW plane, and this is where the US seems to be focusing. The panicshitting after China shot its own old satellite was due to them hitting the biggest (future) strength of US military. Boeing for example is doing lots of R&D considering the satellite tech.

Without a doubt, USA has enough weaponry to take 1:1 any other country, but what it is lacking is the manpower. Iraq and Afghanistan are good examples of this. It was going well while they still could make strategic strikes from carriers and attack with ground troops when the enemy is still messed up, but when they'd need manpower to fight, it's suddenly stale for not being able to address the required amount of men.
This is why things like nuclear bombs and warheads excist. If you don't have enough men, you have to have weapons with enough destructive power to get the enemy to same level with you.

I was talking about the winter war, 1939-40. Before Germany joined in 1941.
Soviet Union attacked with multiple times the manpower and superior weaponry. 10% of finnish ground was lost to soviets, but considering 90% of what they had in mind to invade was kept, only proves my point.
What Finland lacked the most, was supplies (and manpower).
A mistake Stalin did (among others) was to think that the soviets would face an army that lacks the training, which infact was the opposite.
1941-44 was completely different type of warfare, where the purpose was to hold positions, unlike 1939-1940, where the idea was to break up the attackers lines and supply route.
For the 1944 battles in Karelia, there was another allied battle going on with similar power relations, that happened in Normandy.
Indeed, there's huge difference in ability to defend and ability to attack, but if your strategy to attack is "ignore losses", as it was in both cases above, you'll lose a big chunck of your ability to attack. The strategy worked in Normandy, because germans weren't allowed to retrieve, and it didn't work in Karelia, since finns retrieved, while slowing down the red army as much as they could, to positions they could defend.

The whole idea of "conventional warfare" between the superpowers is somehow twisted, since not any of them rely on non-nuclear weapons (and conventional warfare would be nuking the enemy). Let's take France for example, in 1930:s they had large and powerful army, but as of today, all they have is nukes. What the thread is asking, is leaving out a big part of different nations strategic weapons, making the question in OP sound as stupid as "who would win: Norway or USA if Norway had modern weapons in use and USA was only with sticks and stones".

@PDF: If Canada and Mexico can't reach american soil, why they are american countries.

As for the discussion of carriers, the idea of them is to be a strategic mobile base. They're not some weapon like nukes. What they are for, is to be able to get an aircraft base anywhere in the world relatively fast (and move it when necessary).