It’s pretty wild to see people on R*ddit who ostensibly lived through an era that featured both outrageous lies and propaganda to convince the public to support an invasion of Iraq as well as embarrassing military defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan still believing the same process of lying in the media and being supremely confident the US could win land wars in Asia and Eastern Europe like it’d be a fucking cakewalk.
It’s genuinely impressive how people think nuclear brinksmanship with both Russia and China simultaneously is a winning strategy even though during the actual Cold War US policy makers were savvy enough to play them against each other. Truly an astonishing reflection of both mass historical ignorance and the imperial decline in American elite circles.
EDIT: It’s also pretty awesome that we’ve known how vulnerable surface fleets are to air power since World War II but people still think picking fights with countries with large air forces and advanced ballistic missile technology in tight waterways like the Taiwan Strait and the Persian Gulf are REALLY GOOD IDEAS. Yeah aircraft carriers are really fantastic for gunboat diplomacy and power projection when you’re bullying much weaker targets but the whole point of a fleet-in-being evaporates when it gets annihilated in a decisive battle. Take some lessons from the Kaiserreich maybe.
These same countries are also investing massively in drone swarms, the recent Armenia and Ukraine conflicts shows us how useful they are. Not just for strikes but to spot indirect fire. And they’re cheap as hell compared to manned aircraft or US/Western made drones (which somehow manage to cost in the neighborhood of 10s of millions per drone). And the west has not really invested in defence against ballistic missiles, either. Kinda feels like 20 to 30 years of asymmetric warfare against poorly armed insurgents has really fucked up the western imperialist machines ability to plan and execute a war against a near peer. Like, I think they’re somehow still planning for a big Soviet tank push crossing the Rhine from the 70s and 80s.
