NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[Gallia-]

There is no such things as "friends"

You'd think that since you probably don't have any? Only way I can see it being plausible. Since you probably have friends, though, it's probably a "lie".

or "good guys" in the real world.

Yeah I'm sure a 1950s-60s Hitler was vastly better an alternative than Khrushchev's or Brezhnev's USSR.

If you want to be edgelord pseudo-Hobbesian about it you should support "my group" over "their group" which is how you'd define "good" and "bad" in this case. It means the same thing. The PRC is ethnonationalist and America isn't, which is an important distinction, but ethnonationalism is literally a core framework of Australian policy so maybe it should just build a huge wall around the entire continent IDK. Keeps the brown boat people out and keeps the bleeding heart Americans and British with their "civic nationalism" out too.

Then Australia can become something like a white PRC: makes stuff, has lots of minerals, and is policy oriented towards racialism. It fits the pseudo-Hobbesian viewpoint that "no one is good" by being "just as bad" but it still loses the "everyone is equally awful" edgelordism because of "in-group bias" on account of "most Australians are white folks". Anyone who is white would still prefer Australia as the "good guys" over the PRC "bad guys" because Australia welcomes them and PRC doesn't, because they're both ethnonationalist. It's not terribly ideal but the idea that people have some sort of "impartial humanity" ingrained into them is wrong and highly counter-intuitive. It results in a lot of cognitive dissonance when you have to try to tell yourself that you care about "some people five thousand miles away" as much as "people who live next to me" because it is literally not true at all.

The PRC is just not ashamed to admit that unlike the West. The impartial beneficence of utilitarianism misses that part of basic human brainwork. Given that JSM was born in 1906 and "in-group favoritism" (a winner of the IgNobel Prize if ever) wasn't coined until 1906, it's not hard to see why a simplistic idea as "everyone should be given worth" is wrong. It's hard to accept the notion that you might be part of the group of the who is "ignored for being dumb/wrong/whatever" I guess. So "impartiality" was invented to cover people's asses because accepting a moral system where they're objectively worse off for the benefit of superior people is actually really hard for most everyone.

Unfortunately we must suffer for impartiality now. Until philosophy can reconcile "egalitarianism" with "humans can be objectively rated as superior/inferior in particular areas" anyway. Which may never happen.

What you really mean to say is "good guys" and "bad guys" are subjective viewpoints. Which is a completely meaningless thing to say. A bit like saying "the sky is blue" or something and expecting it to carry some practical worth.

>He thinks being anti-PRC is pro-US

You think you have any other choice. The reality is "which guy I tag along with on weird foreign adventures" mb. But Americans speak English and Chinese will make you speak Mandarin. Or simply take your land from you in an ironic twist.

(Image)

Your KGB sympathies are showing!

But really the West needs to just launch a sneak attack on Russia and PRC and destroy despotism's nuclear arsenal. Take a few hits maybe but it will survive. Then establish UN trust Territories over the former lands of the PRC and Russia. Use the United Nations like God intended (as an economic and military apparatus towards federating the Democratic World for its coming war with Despotism) and plant the Four Freedoms in the irradiated soil of Yangtze Delta and the Duchy of Muscovy.

tl;dr But really America needs to double its defense spending at least and double its armed forces size. And NATO needs to stick to 2-2.5% commitment. It's the only way we can fight a two front war against the Chinese and Russians tbh. Or rather a one and a half front war, since Europe is held by Poland who can bloody the nose of the Russians anyway and America can barely fight two small wars at the same time god forbid an actual war with a really big country like France or something.

[Zhouran]

Yes. That's sort of implied by "in-kind nuclear warfare" in the infobox.

What's wrong with nuclear war though? It's perfect survivable. If you think otherwise you've been successfully duped by the KGB to believe that.

Our enemies believe otherwise, because they aren't idiots, and the CIA never had a highly developed propaganda apparatus capable of appropriating things like nuclear disarmament movements in the West.

"Nuclear war = end of world" is literally the earliest active measure deployed by the KGB. It's older than "WW1 = bad" even, since it's from the 1950s. It was literally designed to use the West's political vulnerabilities (democracy and public perception are key weak links) against it to get them to reduce armaments spending. It worked in the UK, Canada, and maybe a couple other countries. Not in Germany, not in the United States, not in France, not in Australia, though. Last time I checked, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not smouldering uninhabitable craters. For that matter, neither are Tokyo, Dresden, or Berlin, which were also attacked with nuclear levels of firepower.

Russia saw two things after the atomic bomb, very rational and clear headed things:

1) Atomic bombs are just thousand bomber raids.
2) Thousand bomber raids are perfectly survivable.

It's not hard to extend this extremely clear logic to "atomic bombs are survivable". There's nothing magical about a nuclear bomb that kills you. It has rules and if you understand those rules you win. So Russians understand the rules, they win? Maybe Westerners, along with IQ drops since the late 19th century, had began to lose the concept of "rules-based reality" so they couldn't grok this concept? Possibly. Or perhaps Westerners, in their pursuit of "independence" and distrust of "elites" and other demagogue tactics have begun to dismiss "scientists" and "career military officers" as "legitimate" because "a gravelly voiced robo-man told me a 100 megaton bomb at the bottom of the Marianas Trench would create a new continent" in a Youtube video.

I'm not sure if there is a difference, though. "Distrust of elites" isn't intrinsically low IQ, especially when it really is true like in North Korea, but it leads Ordinaries towards the conclusions of low IQs when the Elites are right.

Which is true in the case of the Western world aside from surrenderist civilizations like Canada.

Lol how much did the glow-in-the-dark CIA agent pay you. I guess the deaths of millions of people are fine if the battle is thousands of km away from your homeland.

Go back to Russia. If you think a war, even nuclear war, is unwinnable, then you are just a dead weight plunging Western civilization into the abyss. Anyone who would actually throw down their rifle and flee rather than stand and fight in the next war is literally an enemy agent TBH. Clinton literally reflected the views of the U.S. defense apparatus in confronting America's two major enemies: Russia and China. If you think the U.S. military is bad for being "hawkish" or "interventionist" then you are either being paid in CNY or you're regurgitating KGB/FSB active measures. Which is to say you're either actively engaged in conspiracy with foreign agents or you're simply repeating their ideas as if they have any legitimacy.

They don't. Stop repeating KGB memes LoL.

"Hahaha lol stop making fun of muh politicians you KGB shill"

She did win. She won the popular vote, for all it matters, which shows that most Americans did agree with her or at least believed her to be speaking more sense than Trump. Trump, OTOH, won the electoral vote, which got him the office position, and doesn't really prove all that much. The same thing happened with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. It leads me to believe that most Americans distrust Russia and believe it to be an enemy, while most populous/high EC vote states are full of KGB huffing Ordinaries who vote for the guy who wants to push the big "Reset" button on "Russia" because they watch RT unironically? Maybe they're just terrified of a woman in power who is actually good at her job, though. Perhaps it's a bit of both.

Her foreign policy was spot on about America's enemies, much like Romney's, and she honestly was the president America needed.

It's not clear if America will be able to elect Romney or Clinton in 2020 and save it from another 4 years of retreat, though. Which would mark a good 30 years of retreat from the real enemy of Western civilization.

Didn't know you were on Clinton's payroll. Damn Russians hacked the election, didn't they?

The "waking up" part will be when the world finds itself in another major war. ATM it's the West that will lose it, though, since that war is inevitable unless both Russia and the PRC collapse overnight and become liberal democracies. Since the West seems perfectly content to position itself to be ass destroyed by both the PRC and Russia the waking up will be under a Chinese flag or something I guess. But that's what Trump wants, so that's what Trump will get?

The West is losing mainly due to demographics displacement. Rather than fighting with guns, the battle is being fought with demographics, as the West is in a terrible position. With China and Russia, both are also experiencing bad demographics, though for different reasons than the West. The idea of the West being dominated by the PRC is far-fetch and even they somehow did manage, it wouldn't last long as China's demographics is essentially a ticking time bomb.

You'd think that since you probably don't have any? Only way I can see it being plausible.

Again, no such thing as friends, just "colleagues" or more-accurately "proxies".

Yeah I'm sure a 1950s-60s Hitler was vastly better an alternative than Khrushchev's or Brezhnev's USSR.

Nope.

If you want to be edgelord pseudo-Hobbesian about it you should support "my group" over "their group" which is how you'd define "good" and "bad" in this case. It means the same thing. The PRC is ethnonationalist and America isn't.

America isn't ethnonationalist anymore because of conditioning and indoctrination over the decades. Ironically the Americans during the 1940s were actually ethnonationalists that opposed race-mixing, but since they fought the nazis, everyone calls them the "good guys" instead.

You think you have any other choice. The reality is "which guy I tag along with on weird foreign adventures" mb. But Americans speak English and Chinese will make you speak Mandarin. Or simply take your land from you in an ironic twist.

Mandarin isn't gonna be some lingua franca in the future since China wouldn't really be a superpower again due to their demographics situation. It's just too unsustainable.

Your KGB sympathies are showing!

Well duh, I'm a KGB commissar who gets paid by Putin (Слава его имени) to shitpost pro-Russian propaganda on the Internet.

[Gallia-]

Lol how much did the glow-in-the-dark CIA agent pay you.

I dunno he seems pretty reasonable to me.

That said my soul and spirit are bound to the metaphorical tendons and muscle fibers of the United States of America as surely as my ancestors' bones have occupied her soil for the past ~360 years.

I guess the deaths of millions of people are fine if the battle is thousands of km away from your homeland.

It's very likely that I, living next to an American military base, would either be incinerated in an atomic blast or die of radiation poisoning. Failing that, I would probably die of radiation poisoning perhaps trying to help someone out of rubble or die of thirst or starvation in the aftermath because of a breakdown of transportation and a general regression of life without proper or adequate stockpiles, preparation, or planning needed to assess, prepare for, and execute post-attack damage control. And no, the deaths of millions of people doesn't particularly bother me. It's a general nuclear war. That's to be expected, TBH. It is, in fact, completely incomprehensible to me. I doubt you feel any real fear or remorse for such an act, either. It's entirely outside of the scope of human imagination, and that's to be expected, because it's difficult to imagine 5,000 or 50,000 people being wiped out in an instant, let alone "millions". Which is probably why it's relatively simple to plan for offensive nuclear warfare as the U.S. Air Force did in the past, but much more difficult to get "down in the weeds" and plan for post-attack reorganization and rebuilding to finish the war after the bombs fall.

In one version you only need to drop a bomb or a dozen on a city. In another version you need to prepare food stockpiles for every man, woman, and child like it's WW2, but with the infrastructure of Germany or Japan in 1945.

Of course, the lack of a plan is not really an argument against the possibility of something occurring, nor is it an argument against the usefulness of planning in general. More to the point, we know it's entirely possible to supply food in that situation, since both the Germans and Japanese were able to ration and supply food in relatively good quantities, although Japan was limited by the fact that it is a net importer. The United States is not a net importer by need, merely choice, so it is entirely possible for America to feed itself on its own domestic food sources, given adequate output. Which is the most important thing you need to do after rebuilding concrete and iron industries to rebuild rail and road infrastructure to move food from farms to silos to stockpile, and ores to foundries to produce steel, to produce railcars, to also move things. And within the time limit of a year or so before winter sets in and you starve. But starvation will be a true reality anyway.

Which is why the USA needs to plan and prepare for a general nuclear war. Not because it's likely but because it's the only plan that makes sense when all else fails. If America starts to get pushed off Eurasia you need to "escalate to de-escalate" which might mean a total nuclear exchange with the Russians and Chinese. o:

Gotta keep that street cred:

(...)
Where e'er Columbia spreads her swelling Sails:
To every Realm shall Peace her Charms display,
And Heavenly Freedom spread her golden Ray.

It has to happen now, America. No backing out. This is a sign.

UGM-191 "Charm I" when. Carries the W93 "Heavenly Freedom" 40-400 KT electronic-dial-a-yield warhead in 12x Mark 6 MaRVs or 4x Mark 7 hyperglides.

"Hahaha lol stop making fun of muh politicians you KGB shill"

"Nuclear war is perfectly survivable just ask our enemies"
"war bad go away"
"Yes I'm sure Putin will spill all the beans about nuclear war being a dreadful holocaust and delude his own people into believing it were survivable...because he's suicidal?"
"haha you say stop making fun of my politicians"

You miss the point yet again. Remarkable. Let's try with less than three lines:

Nuclear war is survivable. War is not good or bad, it is a tool in a toolbox that polities use, like trade policy and investment subsidies. America is at war with Russia and China as we speak. Not all wars involve shooting people (Russia is shooting people, though). If America loses the war, bad things happen to billions of people kept in slavery in Russia and China, and people who are America's current allies. Like "continuing being enslaved".

Didn't know you were on Clinton's payroll. Damn Russians hacked the election, didn't they?

Amazing. Besides "Russians hacked the election" literally being true, it has less to do with Clinton losing than "she was a woman". 2016 wasn't a landslide like 1980. It was a coin toss like Obama-Romney. We just lost, again. Although we lost harder in 2008 when Obama did a "reset" with Russia like it some kind of real deal. A simpler time? Hardly. Obama was just a more eloquent Trump: naive and easily pulled around. Clinton, McCain, and Romney were and remain the leaders America needs to win its wars.

The West is losing mainly due to

Cannibalization of resources and elevation of morals to supreme importance.

as the West is in a terrible position.

The PRC is approximately as bad as the West (worse actually, its people make less money, its people are more concerned for their elders, and it has a greater absolute quantity of Alz patients in the future) in terms of demographic outlook and "Russian" as an ethnicity will be a mostly historical term in the vein of "Swabian" or "Alemanni" in the next 100 years or so. It's safe to say you're just wrong here.

The idea of the West being dominated by the PRC is far-fetch

"Do what we say"
"No"
"Starve"
>you starve

Clearly far-fetched? Think again! The PRC is not America. It does not believe in the White Man's Burden of lifting poor people (or for that matter, sustaining enemies) out of poverty or whatever. It uses its economic might as a bludgeon to extract political concession. This something the West used to do in its imperial phase too, but has seemingly forgotten how to do, or is just awakening to the possibility that it might be waged on it. Or maybe Silicon Valley has pulled the wool over the eyes of Congress.

Which is why the USA needs to assert an autarky over at least the Americas and enforce the Monroe Doctrine. When all else fails we can glass Eurasia with the Minuteman force, Trident, and B-21, and just eat the losses because we have a broadly stable trade network with the suddenly relevant Organization of American States.

Ideally the autarky extends over the EU and West Pacific U.S. allies though. Which is what Clinton was building towards with TTIP and TPP. A great plan to build a giant wall from Romania to Estonia and along the entire Ring of Fire to contain the Russians and Chinese like it's 1959. Or 1861. Then Trump ruins it I guess because he is the actual Siberian Candidate. It would only be more obvious if Trump signed a deal where the Congress tells Amazon it's getting bought by Alibaba. ):

Again, no such thing as friends, just "colleagues" or more-accurately "proxies".

A perfectly "stagnant" mindset.

America isn't ethnonationalist anymore

"America" isn't anything. You are speaking of a monolith where none exists. It's so discordant and disparate it can't even think of a coherent foreign policy to last more than 8 years. The Communist Party OTOH has deliberately pushed ethnonationalism and actively suppressed everything else that competes with it. The "PRC" isn't a monolith, but the CCP is doing its damnedest to make it become one, through political repression and active investment into advanced technologies intended to automate the political repression. You won't see something as beautiful as "Social Credit System" in America. Instead you get "Facebook" I guess.

The difference is that the PRC understands that people are prone to believing things besides "the party line". America either doesn't understand that or can't move around it.

because of conditioning and indoctrination over the decades.

Speaking from your years of experience and understanding in America, of course. Not as a funny foreigner who coincidentally speaks English. The only funny foreigners who can really grok Americans are Canadians, and that's because Canadians are right next door and can look over their fence and into America's house and see what America is really doing. Even then it's really only the ones who are paying attention, since America and Canada are geographically close, this tends to be often. What is Canada's problem is often America's problem, and Canadians border hop all the time, and we even share a common settler heritage of conquering the plains, although Canada did it with Primitive Technology tier mud huts and America did it with railroads and paddle ships.

Ironically the Americans during the 1940s were actually ethnonationalists

No they weren't. They were just slightly more racist than today. Most Americans acknowledged the concept of "civic nationalism" and jus soli. Both incompatible with ethnonationalism, which is jus sanguinis in its most extreme.

Australia is vastly more ethnonationalist than America. Both America in the 1940s and America today.

that opposed race-mixing,

This isn't ethno-nationalism. White Americans just hate/hated people who aren't their skin color.

Believe it or not, "you can't marry my daughter," and "I will now slaughter sixty million Slavs," are not the same thing. America fought a war to end slavery. Europe fought a war to bring it back.

but since they fought the nazis,

Naziism is ethno-nationalism, yes.

everyone calls them the "good guys" instead.

A historical and current-day fact. The only people who disagree with this are closet Nazis or moral absolutists. Both are absurd positions dismissed by people not bereft of grounding in reality.

So you should really stop with the moral absolutism. It makes you sound very silly when you hold something like "moral values" over "not wanting to starve to death". Which you are doing right now.

Mandarin isn't gonna be some lingua franca in the future

It'll be the one that you need to trade with Chinese. Commoners like yourself will just work in mines digging out uranium or something possibly for rehabilitation of transgressions against the Australian government. It'll happen because Australia will have no one to trade to besides China and without that trade Australia's economy will collapse or it will need to go on food rationing or something. Perhaps both kowtowing to the Chinese and rationing will happen anyway though.

since China wouldn't really be a superpower again due to their demographics situation.

It's already happening. Where have you been since about "the collapse of Bretton Woods" and "end of Western economic hegemony"?

due to their demographics situation.

If demographics made you a superpower then why hasn't the Congo taken over the world. Or for that matter, Niger?

It's just too unsustainable.

The PRC will be perfectly fine in the next 20 years. Which is when it will become the leading global power. It'll be doing adequate in 40 years. It might collapse in 60-80 years, but so will the Western world at a possibly earlier date? Australia is approximately in the same position as the United States, except it's worse off, because it has an actual market to export to: China. So it will be a target for Chinese political-economic warfare. America is probably too powerful and too economically diverse to be threatened by such underhandedness, as is Japan, but Japan will the first of the mighty Western democracies to collapse to demographic failure too. Since Japan is the lynchpin of the new Free World free trade agreement in the Pacific, this is not good for anyone else attached to it, but it will protect them from Chinese economic imperialism for a couple of decades. cf. "Short sighted capitalists" earlier.

This is basic Leninism 101 BTW get with the program jeez.

China isn't just selling capitalism the rope. It's mining the phosphorus, growing the hemp, processing the fibers, twisting the strands, mining the iron ores, making the steels needed for naval construction, building the ships to carry the rope to the West, printing the paper the manifest is listed on, making the GPS transceivers that tell you where your shipment of rope is in the world, building the cranes and containers the rope is shipped on with (at both ends of the journey), supplying the concrete used to make the foundation of the home you live in, making the spark plugs and electrical wires that power the engine of the truck that brings you your rope, making the doorknob that you open to accept the length of rope, making the clipboard, pen, and paper that you sign for to receive your rope, the stool that you stand on to hang yourself, and the computer tablet that you use to look up how to tie a knot to hang yourself with.

The only thing China doesn't get to make is the road the truck drives on (because roads are old) and the air you breathe in before its cut off by the rope. Even then that might not always be the case. It is the most perfect execution of Lenin's dank as all hell war strategy of "sell the capitalists the rope they hang themselves with" I have ever had the glory to behold. I can only say if I had to be something besides American, I would rather be Chinese, because the PRC is excellent at waging war and destroying its enemies without firing a single shot. So far. Even when it does shoot bullets it still beats its enemies, too.

It is magnificent because I understand entirely what they are doing. It is depressing because no Westerner takes it seriously besides maybe "Viyk" or "Kester" or someone. But Viyk has an understanding of Marxism and Kester himself is a fellow Redvolutionary so that's to be expected I guess.

The PRC is more or less at the point of Leninist development where the USSR went down the path of dekulakization and the PRC went down the path of NEPmenization. The NEPmen are a good asset for strangling the West to death while dekulakization is a stepping stone to economic collapse and ruin about 60 years later due to poor industrialization choices. It's not clear what the complete long term disadvantages of NEPmen are, though. ATM they appear to be the antidote to "Western/European-descended civilization" but they might end up in a similar spot of trouble when someone else comes along with NEPmen due to capitalism's inability to perform long-term planning or formulate coherent policy.

Well duh, I'm a KGB commissar who gets paid by Putin

You are this, actually. Someone actively harmful in the political-moral sphere of war but is too ignorant of history to realize why it's happening. Fifth column is usually only used in the original meaning of the phrase to mean subversive elements or collaborators who open the gates to the castle, but it applies to people who are simply ignorant too. Lenin had a term for them and it was apt. Its paraphrased version is not very nice, though. Alternatively you are saying "swastikas really aren't racist" while waving around a Nazi armband or something.

It's fine if it's a one-off, that can be believable, but that you are actually defending it in spite of truth is very silly.

to shitpost pro-Russian propaganda on the Internet.

>when he doesn't understand im posting a screen cap of the follow-on scene to that gif which is surprisingly relevant

The context of the .gif is that the snickering anime girl goes unnoticed by the real observer. Which is a bit relevant here because you're ignoring something obvious that is slapping you in the face since you're off in the woods somewhere. So if you are Chitose buried in her pamphlet then I am Yui making all the mental connections. I mention the truth off hand to you and you ignore it because you're reading about a hotel instead of paying attention to what's around you. Which is to say your apparent Great Fantasy is happening as we speak around you. Naturally HOW MANY TIMES WILL YOU MAKE ME SAY IT is also exceedingly relevant.

Just a highly relevant show for the modern age.

[Theodosiya]

While ya'll bantering about US vs PRC sometime in the future, what could few Southeast Asian countries did? Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand? (AFAIK, Philippines, Cambodia and Laos[?] is in PRC pocket). I'm not exactly pro-US, given history of Indonesia, but I'll rather have a semi annoying superpower in America than a very threatening one in one same continent.

[Gallia-]

While ya'll bantering about US vs PRC sometime in the future, what could few Southeast Asian countries did?

Kowtow to Chinese dominance.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Should a thassalocracy disband its entire land army for a professional navy and marine corps?

[Gallia-]

Shades of :2012 Galla:

When it spoke a Romance conlang, catted F-15Ns off Kitty Hawks, and had only the Navy and Royal Marines.

You need to search "Galla-" posts though.

And it still cats F-15N off of Kitty Hawks I guess.

[Theodosiya]

While ya'll bantering about US vs PRC sometime in the future, what could few Southeast Asian countries did?

Kowtow to Chinese dominance.

Why? Why not do something more meaningful or useful? Why kow towing to Beijing?

[Gallia-]

Because the Communist Party will starve you if you don't? Indonesia imports like all its food.

[Austrasien]

Why? Why not do something more meaningful or useful? Why kow towing to Beijing?

States have gravity. Like planets, the little ones either orbit the big ones or make way for them. It is no more possible for South East Asian states to resist China than for South America states to resist America.

[Theodosiya]

Rather let many die than kowtow to PRC

[North Arkana]

Rather let many die than kowtow to PRC

Sure sure. Then all the survivors get to live out the rest of their days as servants of glorious middle kingdom, freed from the decadence of things like "not being a Chinese owned slave worker".

[Kampala-]

Rather let many die than kowtow to PRC

Luckily for the millions of people in Indonesia, this is a massive minority opinion.

Indonesia will probably be one of the ones that "gets out of the way" though. Meekly protests Chinese Navy ships in Singapore or transiting the Malacca strait but cannot do anything and stays off the Chinese radar, both literally and figuratively, lest it be starved to death by naval blockade or something.

Rather let many die than kowtow to PRC

Sure sure. Then all the survivors get to live out the rest of their days as servants of glorious middle kingdom, freed from the decadence of things like "not being a Chinese owned slave worker".

Do you consider working for an American company that is part of the "knowledge economy" to be "Chinese owned slave worker"?

It's effectively true but there isn't much stock in it outside of PRC. Chinese slavery is more a problem if you actually live there and since you know no alternative it probably isn't the worst thing in the world. After all, as long as you don't rock the boat you don't get sent to gaol or lose funding for your science project. America is so poor it cannot invest in anything beyond basic necessities I guess. Japan is a ghost town full of advanced cyber technology. Siberia is home to people who rocked the boat and got caught?

The real problem is what happens when the United States and PRC go to war and the USA loses, TBH. It won't matter much for Belgium I guess. It'll matter for the United States which will suffer containment similar to what was done to the Soviet Union, perhaps a Paperclip-esque evacuation of scientists, and a general economic decline comparable to post-Soviet Russia. i.e. apocalyptic.

Except the American apocalypse is sustained by the PRC's economic maneuvering as it chokes America off from Eurasian exports. The USA, being vitally dependent on Eurasia's tangible goods and natural resources, would collapse soon enough. The only thing that keeps the commerce flowing, after all, is the U.S. Navy.

If the USA would be able to concoct a counter-strategy of a pan-Free World free trade area/ideological autarky, then it might be able to sustain itself despite Chinese economic hegemony. But Europeans would be too flaky to be trusted to maintain a hegemony with the Americas and probably turn turncoat for the Chinese. Except they already have. Just witness the British/Canadian/Australian/Everyone's investment in AIIB.

Red Dawn but instead of paratroopers they drop food aid packets. America stands alone (with Japan?).

[Reorganized Soviet Union]

So a friend thinks guided missiles will somehow replace tanks in asymmetrical warfare. Because "tanks are slow and firefights are very short conflicts now, at least in the current wars we've seen lately, tanks are usually not on-scene when they are needed".

I personally find it silly but hey maybe it's good discussion fuel.

[Kazarogkai]

Why? Why not do something more meaningful or useful? Why kow towing to Beijing?

States have gravity. Like planets, the little ones either orbit the big ones or make way for them. It is no more possible for South East Asian states to resist China than for South America states to resist America.

Nuclear weapons are the greatest invention in the history of mankind for they are truly the bringers of equality. It makes it so that the small no longer must kow tow to the large and allows them to hold their own if said states demand as such. That is so long as the fear of said weapons(aka MAD) is sustained which admittedly is not a guarantee. It is for this reason that nuclear proliferation is a thing for the large view their power over others as precious like gold and refuse to let it go as such using the bullshit argument of "world peace" and "morality" they seek to restrict these great tools from the hands of those who need it the most, the small, so that they may continue to maintain their dominance. The reality is is that nuclear non proliferation brings about war as human history shows for as so long as the large exist they will have an incentive and will attempt to dominate those around them while simultaneously so long as the small resist they will have an incentive and will continue to fight back against the aforementioned. Instead in order to achieve true peace nuclear proliferation must not only not be restricted but promoted to as great a degree as possible. Doing will destroy the incentive of the large to dominate, as is natural, for they know they will suffer grievously while simultaneously it will get rid of the incentive for the small to resists since their would be no need. Nuclear weapons create a deterant and a fear of inititating aggression with any and all turning every attempt at aggression into a potential hazard too great to bare. The result is peace in are time so long as mad is maintained. As the old saying goes "true freedom comes from the end of a barrel of a gun" such is a similar case "True equality from a global sense comes from MAD".



Nukes are love, Nukes are life.

[Kampala-]

It makes it so that the small no longer

North Korea's half dozen missiles might be able to damage like...one large American city. The U.S. Air Force alone could wipe the entire Korean peninsula free of human life, let alone North Korea. The entire U.S. nuclear arsenal could dismantle the majority economic-population centers of Russia, PRC, and North Korea with room left over. Granted it's no longer the gigaton hyper force of the Cold War, but the U.S. Navy alone has something like 300 megatons of firepower in the Ohios. The USAF packs another 100-ish megatons.

And more importantly, the USA could rebuild its nuclear arsenal in about as much time as it'll take North Korea to just acquire one. If the USA were committed to massive retaliation or even attempting to counter its enemies it would have double its current investments and placing missile interceptors in Hawaii or something to shoot down DPRK missiles, enlarging the missile force, and procuring more Peacekeepers with a dozen warheads a pop, along with re-arming the Trident with W88 and the Mark 5 RV.

What nukes actually do is restore North Korea's ability to hold the South hostage to its whims, which it hasn't had since the mid-1990s famine.

[Austrasien]

Nuclear weapons are the greatest invention in the history of mankind for they are truly the bringers of equality. It makes it so that the small no longer must kow tow to the large and allows them to hold their own if said states demand as such. That is so long as the fear of said weapons(aka MAD) is sustained which admittedly is not a guarantee. It is for this reason that nuclear proliferation is a thing for the large view their power over others as precious like gold and refuse to let it go as such using the bullshit argument of "world peace" and "morality" they seek to restrict these great tools from the hands of those who need it the most, the small, so that they may continue to maintain their dominance. The reality is is that nuclear non proliferation brings about war as human history shows for as so long as the large exist they will have an incentive and will attempt to dominate those around them while simultaneously so long as the small resist they will have an incentive and will continue to fight back against the aforementioned. Instead in order to achieve true peace nuclear proliferation must not only not be restricted but promoted to as great a degree as possible. Doing will destroy the incentive of the large to dominate, as is natural, for they know they will suffer grievously while simultaneously it will get rid of the incentive for the small to resists since their would be no need. Nuclear weapons create a deterant and a fear of inititating aggression with any and all turning every attempt at aggression into a potential hazard too great to bare. The result is peace in are time so long as mad is maintained. As the old saying goes "true freedom comes from the end of a barrel of a gun" such is a similar case "True equality from a global sense comes from MAD".

Nah. If anything they tilt things towards the big powers even more. Historically, armed conflict was something of a leveller as occasionally small states would hit all the right notes and steamroll much larger opponents on the battlefield. And in the longer run, the acquisition of territory in war was the main source of state growth. But with nuclear weapons that is no longer really a concern. Armed conflicts are no longer existential threats to nuclear powers and state borders have very nearly frozen in place. The nuclear age has for now closed off conquest as an avenue for growth and as a result states who conquered much in the past and consolidated very large territories and populations now have a nearly unassailable lead.

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

What's wrong with nuclear war though? It's perfect survivable. If you think otherwise you've been successfully duped by the KGB to believe that.

Well.... I think most would agree no, nuclear war is not realistically surviveable, at least if Superpower X wants to maintain the same kind of economy and military influence they did before the war. Maybe one warhead is like a thousand bomber raid, but most important targets would be hit by multiple warheads and the US/USSR each have thousands of warheads ready.

[Kampala-]

What's wrong with nuclear war though? It's perfect survivable. If you think otherwise you've been successfully duped by the KGB to believe that.

Well.... I think most would agree no, nuclear war is not realistically surviveable,

Clearly. Japan and Germany are just craters after LeMay and Bomber Harris got through with them.

[Theodosiya]

Huh...

Could only bitterly watch as PLAN ships pass, nothing could be done...

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

Well.... I think most would agree no, nuclear war is not realistically surviveable,

Clearly. Japan and Germany are just craters after LeMay and Bomber Harris got through with them.

But it's not the same. The allied bombing campaign of Germany did a number on that nation, but even the greatest industrial power of WWII couldn't produce enough bombers to pound into dust all of Germany's major cities and industrial centers, not to mention the fact that the Germans got very good at dispersing their industry to ensure its surviveability. With a first strike of ICBMs and a follow-up with SLBMs and nuclear-armed bombers, a large percentage of any country's warmaking capability can be neutralized in a day, and the follow-up damage from the side-effects would dog a country for decades.

I'm interested to hear Gallia's explanation for why the KGB duped people into believing a nuclear war is not survivable, because everything I've read points to it being on the level of a large natural disaster, like a Yellowstone supervolcano eruption or a good-sized asteroid impact.

[Spirit of Hope]

It depends on what level of nuclear exchange you are talking about, and what you mean by survivable.
If the US and Russia fully launched both of their arsenals at one their would be wide spread devastation, but something resembling their governments would still remain. The nations would be able to rebuild, and something new would emerge. It would be rather different from what went into the war, and could take decades of work.

Highest level of nuclear weapons possessed by both sides? Much worse, individuals might survive, but the system probably wouldn't.

[Zhouran]

I dunno he seems pretty reasonable to me.

Well he's Air Force, so his IQ should be high.

That said my soul and spirit are bound to the metaphorical tendons and muscle fibers of the United States of America as surely as my ancestors' bones have occupied her soil for the past ~360 years.

At this point anyone could slap a "I'm an American" sticker and call themselves American.

It's very likely that I, living next to an American military base, would either be incinerated in an atomic blast or die of radiation poisoning

At least with being incinerated it's faster than radiation poisoning. The town I live in has an airbase and an army base, but since this is Australia, the chance of me getting nuked is less (except of course the Chinese wanted to nuke their real estate in Oz for whatever reasons).

Nuclear war is survivable. War is not good or bad, it is a tool in a toolbox that polities use, like trade policy and investment subsidies. America is at war with Russia and China as we speak. Not all wars involve shooting people (Russia is shooting people, though). If America loses the war, bad things happen to billions of people kept in slavery in Russia and China, and people who are America's current allies. Like "continuing being enslaved".

If America loses in a nuclear war, Russia and China would follow suit, except of course Putin and Xi can still lead a nation of irradiated survivors in their underground bunkers. And as for allies, they're just proxies used for sacrifices in the great game of politics.

Amazing. Besides "Russians hacked the election" literally being true, it has less to do with Clinton losing than "she was a woman". 2016 wasn't a landslide like 1980. It was a coin toss like Obama-Romney. We just lost, again. Although we lost harder in 2008 when Obama did a "reset" with Russia like it some kind of real deal. A simpler time? Hardly. Obama was just a more eloquent Trump: naive and easily pulled around. Clinton, McCain, and Romney were and remain the leaders America needs to win its wars.

>Clinton

>McCain

>Romney

Romney is fine, but the first two, lol nope

Cannibalization of resources and elevation of morals to supreme importance.

And demographics. Diversity ain't cheap, but then again as they say: "diversity is strength".

The PRC is approximately as bad as the West (worse actually, its people make less money, its people are more concerned for their elders, and it has a greater absolute quantity of Alz patients in the future) in terms of demographic outlook and "Russian" as an ethnicity will be a mostly historical term in the vein of "Swabian" or "Alemanni" in the next 100 years or so. It's safe to say you're just wrong here.

Lol didn't say PRC and Russia were in a better position than the West

A perfectly "stagnant" mindset.

K, keep me posted

"America" isn't anything. You are speaking of a monolith where none exists. It's so discordant and disparate it can't even think of a coherent foreign policy to last more than 8 years. The Communist Party OTOH has deliberately pushed ethnonationalism and actively suppressed everything else that competes with it. The "PRC" isn't a monolith, but the CCP is doing its damnedest to make it become one, through political repression and active investment into advanced technologies intended to automate the political repression. You won't see something as beautiful as "Social Credit System" in America. Instead you get "Facebook" I guess.

The difference is that the PRC understands that people are prone to believing things besides "the party line". America either doesn't understand that or can't move around it.

because of conditioning and indoctrination over the decades.

Speaking from your years of experience and understanding in America, of course. Not as a funny foreigner who coincidentally speaks English. The only funny foreigners who can really grok Americans are Canadians, and that's because Canadians are right next door and can look over their fence and into America's house and see what America is really doing. Even then it's really only the ones who are paying attention, since America and Canada are geographically close, this tends to be often. What is Canada's problem is often America's problem, and Canadians border hop all the time, and we even share a common settler heritage of conquering the plains, although Canada did it with Primitive Technology tier mud huts and America did it with railroads and paddle ships.

Ironically the Americans during the 1940s were actually ethnonationalists

No they weren't. They were just slightly more racist than today. Most Americans acknowledged the concept of "civic nationalism" and jus soli. Both incompatible with ethnonationalism, which is jus sanguinis in its most extreme.

Australia is vastly more ethnonationalist than America. Both America in the 1940s and America today.

that opposed race-mixing,

This isn't ethno-nationalism. White Americans just hate/hated people who aren't their skin color.

Believe it or not, "you can't marry my daughter," and "I will now slaughter sixty million Slavs," are not the same thing. America fought a war to end slavery. Europe fought a war to bring it back.

but since they fought the nazis,

Naziism is ethno-nationalism, yes.

Those same anti-nazis that fought the nazis would technically be considered "nazis" in political-correctness mindset of today. Hitler literally allied with non-whites, even called the Japanese "honorary aryans". Of course he wanted to slaughter millions of slavs, it's why it's so pathetic to hail Hitler as some sort of "Savior of the White Race" when he literally massacred millions of people who were white.

And as for whites in 1940s America being "slightly more racist", that's actually normal with every single race and ethnic group 'cos in the end us humans are tribalistic and strongly believe in group belonging. Demographics is not America's friend, especially when most non-white conservatives vote blue than red.

It'll be the one that you need to trade with Chinese. Commoners like yourself will just work in mines digging out uranium or something possibly for rehabilitation of transgressions against the Australian government. It'll happen because Australia will have no one to trade to besides China and without that trade Australia's economy will collapse or it will need to go on food rationing or something. Perhaps both kowtowing to the Chinese and rationing will happen anyway though.

since China wouldn't really be a superpower again due to their demographics situation.

It's already happening. Where have you been since about "the collapse of Bretton Woods" and "end of Western economic hegemony"?

due to their demographics situation.

If demographics made you a superpower then why hasn't the Congo taken over the world. Or for that matter, Niger?

China and its fragile economy isn't even gonna last long. Just a meme garbage. If anything, they'll just implode instead.

Also, Congo being a superpower? Lol African countries are even poorer than they were under colonization. Africa's population is sharply rising which makes it unsustainable for African countries to even function.

The PRC will be perfectly fine in the next 20 years. Which is when it will become the leading global power. It'll be doing adequate in 40 years. It might collapse in 60-80 years, but so will the Western world at a possibly earlier date? Australia is approximately in the same position as the United States, except it's worse off, because it has an actual market to export to: China. So it will be a target for Chinese political-economic warfare. America is probably too powerful and too economically diverse to be threatened by such underhandedness, as is Japan, but Japan will the first of the mighty Western democracies to collapse to demographic failure too. Since Japan is the lynchpin of the new Free World free trade agreement in the Pacific, this is not good for anyone else attached to it, but it will protect them from Chinese economic imperialism for a couple of decades. cf. "Short sighted capitalists" earlier.

This is basic Leninism 101 BTW get with the program jeez.

China isn't just selling capitalism the rope. It's mining the phosphorus, growing the hemp, processing the fibers, twisting the strands, mining the iron ores, making the steels needed for naval construction, building the ships to carry the rope to the West, printing the paper the manifest is listed on, making the GPS transceivers that tell you where your shipment of rope is in the world, building the cranes and containers the rope is shipped on with (at both ends of the journey), supplying the concrete used to make the foundation of the home you live in, making the spark plugs and electrical wires that power the engine of the truck that brings you your rope, making the doorknob that you open to accept the length of rope, making the clipboard, pen, and paper that you sign for to receive your rope, the stool that you stand on to hang yourself, and the computer tablet that you use to look up how to tie a knot to hang yourself with.

The only thing China doesn't get to make is the road the truck drives on (because roads are old) and the air you breathe in before its cut off by the rope. Even then that might not always be the case. It is the most perfect execution of Lenin's dank as all hell war strategy of "sell the capitalists the rope they hang themselves with" I have ever had the glory to behold. I can only say if I had to be something besides American, I would rather be Chinese, because the PRC is excellent at waging war and destroying its enemies without firing a single shot. So far. Even when it does shoot bullets it still beats its enemies, too.

It is magnificent because I understand entirely what they are doing. It is depressing because no Westerner takes it seriously besides maybe "Viyk" or "Kester" or someone. But Viyk has an understanding of Marxism and Kester himself is a fellow Redvolutionary so that's to be expected I guess.

The PRC is more or less at the point of Leninist development where the USSR went down the path of dekulakization and the PRC went down the path of NEPmenization. The NEPmen are a good asset for strangling the West to death while dekulakization is a stepping stone to economic collapse and ruin about 60 years later due to poor industrialization choices. It's not clear what the complete long term disadvantages of NEPmen are, though. ATM they appear to be the antidote to "Western/European-descended civilization" but they might end up in a similar spot of trouble when someone else comes along with NEPmen due to capitalism's inability to perform long-term planning or formulate coherent policy.

China's economy won't be fine by 30 years time. China itself is fragile with a fractured society, the majority of the country is second-world poor, and Xi Jinping makes himself limitless leader, which would affect the political stability of China. If America collapses, then China is on the same path too.

and the computer tablet that you use to look up how to tie a knot to hang yourself with.

Lol careful with the edge, you might cut yourself

You are this, actually. Someone actively harmful in the political-moral sphere of war but is too ignorant of history to realize why it's happening. Fifth column is usually only used in the original meaning of the phrase to mean subversive elements or collaborators who open the gates to the castle, but it applies to people who are simply ignorant too. Lenin had a term for them and it was apt. Its paraphrased version is not very nice, though. Alternatively you are saying "swastikas really aren't racist" while waving around a Nazi armband or something.

It's fine if it's a one-off, that can be believable, but that you are actually defending it in spite of truth is very silly.

Looks more like a group of LARPers, like atomwaffen. But hey, looks like am a nazi now, sorry comrade putin

weebshit and other garbage

Here's a burger for you:

[Taihei Tengoku]

sure is NSG in here

[Gallia-]

sure is NSG in here

TBF burgers are America's 3rd greatest war invention. After the atomic bomb and Hershey's chocolate.

Clearly. Japan and Germany are just craters after LeMay and Bomber Harris got through with them.

But it's not the same.

...yes it is.

The allied bombing campaign of Germany did a number on that nation, but even the greatest industrial power of WWII couldn't produce enough bombers to pound into dust all of Germany's major cities and industrial centers,

They. Literally. Did.

And it doesn't matter since you can make all the steel in the world but if you have no way of moving it it's useless. Which is what actually happens in strategic bombing: vital transportation hubs are destroyed and spokes choke to death.

not to mention the fact that the Germans got very good at dispersing their industry to ensure its surviveability.

It didn't help. An all out atomic attack wouldn't destroy all of America's industry either. It would be approximately in the same position as 1945 Germany or Japan in 30 minutes instead of 30 months. Perfectly survivable if you can shake off the psychological shock, conduct BDA, and

With a first strike

So what. The action needed is the same: assess the damage, distribute stored goods, and rebuild. The Soviet Army was spot on in believing it could survive an atomic first strike by the U.S. and continue to fight.

Whether it could beat the United States in the post-attack armed conflict is another question entirely.

and the follow-up damage from the side-effects would dog a country for decades.

Actually it would probably be somewhat beneficial.

I'm interested to hear Gallia's explanation for why the KGB duped people into believing a nuclear war is not survivable,

Amazing. If you aren't aware the KGB literally funded nuclear peace campaigns for the purpose of restoring the USSR's conventional balance of power in Europe you need to educate yourself on the most basic facts of the Cold War TBH. This isn't some deep, dank secret pulled out of a hat. It's almost common knowledge. It's rather well documented since the majority of active measures funding went to nuclear peace groups. It didn't hurt the KGB because it was sort of expected for anti-war groups to be funded by the communists, and it had a huge potential payoff in that if the peace groups succeeded in killing Trident in UK or better yet, completely disarming the West, it would make a conventional invasion of Europe much easier for the Soviet Army.

It was most active during the 1940s and 1950s. As time went on it became clear to the Soviet leadership that funding peace movements was a false start to attacking Western democracies, but it gained traction as a means of swaying the fifth column to and fro. The other major "peace offensive" period was the 1980s when the United States deployed the Pershing II and GLCM to Europe.

Looks like we need to bring back GLCM too, perhaps in Aegis Ashore canisters or something. Instead of mobility the nuclear missile it defends itself with a magazine of RV interceptors and carries six dozen Nagasakis.

Anyway you really need to realize that the Soviet Union doesn't want "peace" because they're already at "war". It's a bit like saying Adolf Hitler wanted peace with the United States in November 1941 when he'd been fighting a war against FDR for the past two years or so. The same was true for the USSR 1917-1991. It was in a state of political-economic-moral warfare with the United States and Western civilization as a whole. If you forget this key historical context your entire ability to judge the "Cold War" is severely compromised.

because everything I've read points to it being on the level of a large natural disaster,

What have you been reading? "Some dude on the Internet" isn't a real source. Carl Sagan's marijuana fueled 1960s "models" of climatology? The same TTAPS that was heavily predicated on pushing a political viewpoint than doing real, true, proper scientific inquiry? The TTAPS study that predicted mass "nuclear winter-esque" conditions in the Persian Gulf War that subsequently led to...wait for it...a bit of haze and the clouds washing out over the Persian Gulf because the fuel densities imagined were radically high and the plumes never reached (nor perhaps, ever produced enough smoke in the first place to matter if they did) the stratosphere needed to spread across the region. It wasn't just wrong, it was so completely off the target that it's a bit like CNN's coverage of EBOV in America. Hysterical to a fault and absolutely silly. Which is entirely missing the point for an allegedly "scientific" anything.

Here's a real source, the United States Department of Homeland Security: http://hpschapters.org/sections/homelan ... _FINAL.pdf

Better than the Hitler Channel's and other popular science regurgitation of 50 years out-of-date climatology things like TTAPS which were pure propaganda from the start. Since firestorms are pretty unlikely in modern cities in the first place, the entire mechanism of "nuclear winter" (i.e. any and every city over 100,000 people turns into a firestorm in July, among dubious/questionable properties of smoke) falls apart. There won't be a major lofting of smoke into the stratosphere to lower winter temperatures to the point of major frost, choking off agriculture, and starving millions. It didn't happen in Europe in 1944 or 1945 either. The real reason people haven't swatted it down is because it appeals to public consciousness and it is difficult to remove something that is so heavily entrenched in the public mind. It's wrong, but so is "The Wehrmacht were really innocent angels duped by Hitler," and "Reagan won the Cold War," TBH.

It's just blatantly wrong and TBH I'm not sure how to explain it to you except to tell you that smoke is literally a cloud I guess?

What like a Yellowstone supervolcano eruption or a good-sized asteroid impact.

Literally no one has ever said this. Well except maybe Carl Sagan, who did actually say that a single 100 MT bomb is equivalent to a dinosaur killer (last I checked the USSR was not cloaked in eternal darkness by the Tsar Bomba lmao). But Carl Sagan is about as credible re: nuclear winter as Pierre Sprey is re: F-35 air force being worse than all A-10 and OV-10 air force. The man was an astronomer not a climatologist. And he was a better TV presenter than he was a climatologist. Alarmist publications are generally subjected to greater scrutiny, especially when they involve something actually dramatic like nuclear war, and TTAPS and "nuclear winter" is not really any different. It's nonsense based on a 1950s understanding of climate science.

So good job you don't bother researching your knowledge I guess?

Here's what happens:

1) Stuff in cities gets exploded by atomic bombs.
2) Ashes of dead orphans goes really high into sky.
3) Ashes of dead orphans rains out because of accumulated water vapor of said orphans.
4) Literally raining men because water vapor comes from atomized human beings.
5) A week later everything is mostly fine re: growing stuff and not at all covered in an inch of frost in August.

Basically it. Thanks Dr. Emanuel. The real danger is that the rainout occurs over farmland or fields which are downwind of atomic targets, but it cannot cover all the farmland, and the vast majority will probably rain out over worthless unsued fields or something. If it occurs over a growing field you need to evacuate the first few inches of topsoil (which is to say, the topsoil) because it's contaminated by radioactive particles and will make growing plants look funny/stunted and not produce much useful crop yield.

That's a very remote threat but it will probably happen in some places and some people will starve in winter. Starvation occurred in Europe too when their rail and road infrastructure was captured by Hitler or bombed by the Eighth Air Force.

The Strategic Rocket Troops or 2nd Artillery Corps would be able to cut off transportation for a large area of the United States, if not all of it, by destroying key rail hubs and transportation links. Since large cities tend to coalesce around transportation infrastructure and good hubs of movement (not the other way around!) then it would probably be pretty scummy for survivors since people would be living in shanties and "improvised housing" for a few years without running water or whatever. This is to be expected. And TBH it will probably happen without nuclear war.

A robust civil defense network would be able to counteract it, but planning by itself would be needed after the attack due to the relative randomness of attack distribution. But training to the population for what to do before, during, and immediately after an attack (mostly: don't panic, duck and cover, and stay put) and a civil defense force that can reinforce the probably dead or dying emergency services crews who are trapped under rubble or something is a must. Without that you're left dying but that has nothing to do with bombs and everything to do with an inability to plan for and properly react in a massive attack scenario.