the us would win hands down, we'd fuck up some motherfuckers

12/1/2005 9:17:49 PM

well, if nukes were involved, well, everybody would be fucked. but with conventional weapons, i'd give us a pretty good chance. it'd be hard to beat everyone, but we could do it.

12/1/2005 9:27:34 PM

yes, but what about the world vs. flying saucers vs. the us?

12/1/2005 9:28:02 PM

o snap didnt think of that

12/1/2005 9:31:29 PM

haha chinese put a man into space like 2 years ago

WE DID THAT SHIT WHEN MY MOM WAS A KID

12/1/2005 9:42:10 PM

Does this include world occupation, or just defeating gov'ts?

12/1/2005 9:51:43 PM

saying all our troops and technology versues all theres, fight to the death

12/1/2005 9:54:28 PM

so...

roughly 350 million people vs. 6 billion

yeah, we got that shit

GOOD CALL!

12/1/2005 9:56:42 PM

Quote :

"roughly 350 million people vs. 6 billion"

About 2 billion of the latter are starving to death and most can't afford to hitch a ride out of their country to get to the fight.

12/1/2005 10:01:05 PM

when i was in 10th grade i saw a newsweek article about our navy versus like russias which was the second best, and i think we had almost like double everything that they had only better

[Edited on December 1, 2005 at 10:04 PM. Reason : maybe not double, but atleast 50 percent i believe]

12/1/2005 10:04:18 PM

Now all those boats (Russia) probably belong to 50 different countries

12/1/2005 10:08:19 PM

This doesn't make too much sense if you think about the inevitable complete economic collapse of the US after this happens...

... that is assuming that everyone who didn't die in the nuclear counter-attacks don't die during the nuclear winter or radiation poisoning ...

12/1/2005 10:10:40 PM

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY

THE EPIC BATTLE OF THE HEMISPHERES

THE STRUGGLE OF ONE HARDHITTING, TERROR STOMPING SUPERPOWER VERSUS THE WHOLE WORLD

DONT MISS THIS INCREDIBLE ACTION AS WE BRING CAGE FIGHTING TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL

ITS GOLIATH VERSUS GOLIATH


ONLY ON PAYPERVIEW

COME AND GET SUM

12/1/2005 10:21:54 PM

What about US vs DITKA vs Hurricane DITKA

12/1/2005 11:01:28 PM

please never name a hurricane "ditka"

that's just asking for a world of hurt

12/1/2005 11:02:19 PM

the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret!

12/1/2005 11:04:01 PM

in ec302, the teacher told us how the us relies a lot on china, and if chinas economy flourishes which makes the us not buy their products as much it would fuck them up cause like we buy 30 percent of the shit they make or something

12/1/2005 11:21:52 PM

drunknloaded : America's foreign policy architect.

12/1/2005 11:30:29 PM

(militaryily)

12/1/2005 11:40:32 PM

preciseily

12/1/2005 11:45:25 PM

ok i'll give you the story

so i was watching cnn, and dude was talking about how spain is experiencing what the us will see in 10 years, and that we wont be the number one power in like 20 years or some shit close to that and then me and eraser were debating and stuff, and he said in 20 years the us wouldnt be the number one power and i was like haha you are crazy dude

so then we got on economics and then we got on to military

honestly i dont see the us ever not being number one world power, and i dont think thats my american arrogance, thats just kinda common sense

[Edited on December 1, 2005 at 11:49 PM. Reason : world power as in military, but also economic kinda stuff, influence in culture...shit like that]

[Edited on December 1, 2005 at 11:49 PM. Reason : if our economy goes down so does everyone elses in my opinion, so we still ahead of shitty nations]

12/1/2005 11:48:45 PM

What the hell goes on in your head... I hope your not serious. If domestic consumpution were to pick up worldwide, we are not nearly as vital as you think. we are an engine of growth but with replacements growing more and more powerful each year. we are witnessing the fall or at least peak of our power, if we continue 20 years down the road, forgoeing any major disaster, there will be a sharing of world power among 3 to even 4 nations. I talk of either india, china, japan, EU, or US. pick your 2-4.

12/1/2005 11:54:34 PM

First of all, European countries could cause us quite a bit of trouble. Combine that with the Russians and the numbers of everyone else, and you have a fight. However, the US would just collapse before it could finish anything. There would be total war mobilization at home, people would get weary if living like paupers, they would revolt.

Furthermore, there is no way we could hold any land. We can't even hold on in Iraq, let alone many countries.

12/1/2005 11:55:42 PM

We've had this conversation before, at least twice.

Anyway, assuming a purely conventional war...

To say that the US could conquer the rest of the world is simply ludicrous, but I don't think that's what you're shooting for. What we almost certainly could do, however, is keep the rest of the world out.

The United States has more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined, and these are generally considered to be the means by which you measure the strength of navies. Ergo, we have a navy more powerful than that of the rest of the world. Meaning that the rest of the world could not reasonably invade us.

All we'd have to worry about would be our neighbors in the Americas, against whom I am confident we could win a defensive war, even seizing territory in carefully selected places.

Of course, if we assume that it's a fight-to-the-death, the remainder of the planet could simply outlast and outproduce us. If memory serves we have the capacity to feed ourselves just fine, but oil would run short quickly, causing massive rations that would cripple our productivity and leave us unable to supply our troops.

How long would that take? I don't know. But as long as supplies held out, we would, simply because even if the rest of the world armed every man, woman, and child, they couldn't get them over here in the first place.

Of course, other countries would probably be almost as difficult. Russia's big. China's big, and it's full. The terrain in both blows for combat against a defensive enemy.

Quote :

"honestly i dont see the us ever not being number one world power"

This is probably silly. There is no real reason to believe that we will not be surpassed economically, either by an increasingly united Europe, a liberalizing China, or a rapidly improving India. Not today or tomorrow, obviously, but in a century or two?

To quote Jon Stewart, we're just not fucking at a rate commensurate with the rest of the world

[Edited on December 2, 2005 at 12:43 AM. Reason : ]

12/2/2005 12:40:27 AM

^pretty much it

our DOD budget is bigger than the next 11 (i think it's 11, at least) next biggest military budgets COMBINED.

we have insane power projection capabilities that nobody else can even come close to

we couldn't occupy the rest of the world, but we could put a big hurt on a big portion of it, and i think that we could definitely resist occupation by the rest of the world (until we ran out of some resource and basically effectively became sieged)

12/2/2005 12:48:18 AM

i think if it came to war for long periods of time, we would drill canada/alaska at extreme levels, enviroment be damned, to make up for the lack from the middle east. Canada wouldnt fight us as we give them a nuclear blanket. We could put a gun in every texan's hands and they could keep out mexico.

12/2/2005 2:13:22 AM

Quote :

"our DOD budget is bigger than the next 11 (i think it's 11, at least) next biggest military budgets COMBINED."

China is catching up fast and who knows if they report it all.

Quote :

"honestly i dont see the us ever not being number one world power, and i dont think thats my american arrogance, thats just kinda common sense"

common sense would tell you to look at history. what super power has historically lasted forever?

Romans?

England (colonial)?

Ottomans?

and that's just in europe/middle east/north africa. Nothing lasts forever. If you think it will, history will teach you a very hard lesson.

12/2/2005 2:20:59 AM

i think the US will be the superpower for about another 100 years

12/2/2005 2:23:57 AM

A hundred seems reasonable.

12/2/2005 3:00:20 AM

All of this talk about the US military being strained and stretched by trying to fight in Iraq while holding on to rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan, and you're talking about us winning hands down against the whole rest of the world? If the rest of the world threw down, we'd be in dire straits before we could even institute a draft and get draftees trained. Sure we've got superior technology, but I don't think we could hold up under force of numbers.

12/2/2005 5:19:11 AM

Quote :

"i think the US will be the superpower for about another 100 years"

I think about this alot. Every empire has its day to lay down. We've had a good run, but I think you're right about this. There's nothing particularily sacred to America's power, and there's no reason to think that it will last forever.

12/2/2005 7:08:29 AM

^^we're not talking about occupying anybody. we're talking mostly about defending our own country.

furthermore, that would be total war--no holds barred--and you would see us fuck some people up in a big way without putting 350,000 troops in any other country for years at a time.

also, we're strained due to fighting in iraq and afghanistan because it's a shitty op tempo, and it would really make things shitty if we had to go to war in significant capacity somewhere else. it's not like we're having trouble with what we're doing in manpower terms (or any other terms except strategically, and that certainly isn't because we couldn't whoop the dog shit out of iraq and afghanistan militarily)


______________________________________________________________

one thing i'll throw out there for everyone, in regards to defending the homeland against invasion...

it's considered in operational planning that being the defender offers about a 3x advantage over your opponent when all other things are equal. throw in the fact that half of our country is bordered by oceans (and our navy would fuck up anyone who got near us in a huge way), then our technological, training, and tactics/strategy advantages, and it would be a real bastard to try to invade the U.S.

iraq had what, the world's 4th largest military or something in 1991? look at how hard we kicked hte shit out of them...totally decimated within a few weeks, with casualty ratios at several hundred to one, and that's with us fighting with restraint.

AND with them in a prepared defense.
[Edited on December 2, 2005 at 8:00 AM. Reason : asfasdfsd]

[Edited on December 2, 2005 at 8:06 AM. Reason : nobody's saying that we could take over the world. that's ridiculous.]

12/2/2005 7:57:17 AM

I went a bit off topic. I'm thinking more economics than anything.

12/2/2005 8:14:44 AM

If the US had extended manifest destiny into Canada and Central America, we'd only have to defend the width of Panama and the frozen section of the Bearing Strait against invasion.

12/2/2005 8:32:03 AM

Quote :

"i think the US will be the superpower for about another 100 years"

thats about my estimate

either way i'll be dead before we are not

12/2/2005 8:41:53 AM

dammit, too late to add this stuff to my last post...

basically, "strained" is a relative term. are we more strained than we like to be? sure. are we strained all that much? not compared to, say, Russia when they were fighting off the Germans. I mean, the public at home barely knows a war is going on...much less two.
_______________________________________________________________________________

also, how are all of our enemies gonna get to us? by air? yeah right. by sea? no way. they'd have to invade through canada and mexico. if we don't have plans in place to defend both borders against a MASSIVE invasion, i guarantee we at least have one for canada (we planned for shit a lot more crazy than that back during the cold war).

we'd be able to mass almost the entire Army and USMC at those borders, minus whatever we diverted for taking control of parts of Canada to drill for oil. we'd have that shit so heavily mined it wouldn't even be funny.

i don't think our Navy would have no trouble at all totally blocking off both coasts, and they'd probably have enough in reserve to to inflict some heavy losses a little further out, before anyone got to South America or Canada to start trying to get across the borders.

I'm telling you, it would be one helluva undertaking to try and invade the U.S.

12/2/2005 8:42:38 AM

^i love that last line, i agree wholeheartedly

12/2/2005 8:44:37 AM

if dick cheney and donald rumsfeld could see this thread

they'd have boners the size of texas

"you mean, we could fight EVERYONE? EVERYWHERE? call the cabal..."

12/2/2005 8:53:47 AM

Quote :

"Of course, if we assume that it's a fight-to-the-death, the remainder of the planet could simply outlast and outproduce us. If memory serves we have the capacity to feed ourselves just fine, but oil would run short quickly, causing massive rations that would cripple our productivity and leave us unable to supply our troops."

As I understand it, every other world power (Europe, Japan, China) with the exception of Russia are huge oil importers from the middle east. That oil must be moved by sea and while the fight would be long and hard I suspect our navy could at least destroy the shipping of everyone else, effectively creating a blockade of Europe and Asia.

If necessary, we could probably exert enough force to conquer the uninhabited parts of saudi arabia and forcibly extract the oil, but I don't believe this would be necessary. With enough economic hardship the US can be self sufficient in oil (we only lack 50%), especially when you compare that to Europe and Japan (which lack 90+%) If the world-wide blockade failed, it might be in our best interest to cruise missile the oil terminals to prevent our enemies from accessing it.

Not to mention, I think people are ignoring the capabilities of our Air Force. Our homeland would largely remain free from harrasment, while whatever locations worldwide that our military planners consider the greatest threat would be subject to routine bombardment from cruise missile attack or, even, a full out aerial assault from stealth bombers and the like to take out to air-defense network to allow our other aircraft to release their payloads with impunity

12/2/2005 10:05:02 AM

hard to say, i dont think we would win in the long run but we could do some damage

12/2/2005 4:21:13 PM

Quote :

"There's nothing particularily sacred to America's power"

While I wouldn't call it sacred, there is the plain and simple nuclear factor. Mutually assured destruction has its drawbacks, but it has helped to keep things in line in the past. Our military prowess will extend for quite a while after our economy and whatnot starts to decline. The Roman military was massive, the British empire, vast, but neither of them could obliterate all life on the planet.

Quote :

"That oil must be moved by sea and while the fight would be long and hard I suspect our navy could at least destroy the shipping of everyone else, effectively creating a blockade of Europe and Asia."

1) Pipelines. There's already quite a few, and they could build more.
2) Our navy is sufficient to completely defend our homeland, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that in a US vs. World scenario it would allow the kind of power projection you're talking about.

The opponent would know our weak point (supplies we need from outside), and would squeeze those instead of attacking head on. Unless they let the Russians be in charge.

12/2/2005 5:27:25 PM

Quote :

"^^we're not talking about occupying anybody. we're talking mostly about defending our own country. furthermore, that would be total war--no holds barred--and you would see us fuck some people up in a big way without putting 350,000 troops in any other country for years at a time. also, we're strained due to fighting in iraq and afghanistan because it's a shitty op tempo, and it would really make things shitty if we had to go to war in significant capacity somewhere else. it's not like we're having trouble with what we're doing in manpower terms (or any other terms except strategically, and that certainly isn't because we couldn't whoop the dog shit out of iraq and afghanistan militarily) "

i was only thinking about the scenario in the midst of the current state of the world, ie. if the world came after us tomorrow. i agree with you, if we had our entire force at home waiting to defend against invasion, we could dig our heels in and hold pretty much anyone off indefinitely.

12/2/2005 5:39:12 PM

Conventional Weapons:

If the world wanted to conquer the United States they could do it within a short span and without invading. Cut supplies of raw goods coming into the country as well as manufactured goods. Seize all American property overseas, and simply employ strict economic sanctions. They wouldn't even have to invade. I'm pretty sure States would break away from the Union themsleves. The country would collapse.

Nuclear:

Earth turns into a smoltering wasteland.

[Edited on December 2, 2005 at 8:14 PM. Reason : Seriously, stop and consider where all our manufactured goods come from.]

12/2/2005 8:13:37 PM

^In that scenario the US would just invade another country to get the shit it needs.

I mean its not like we haven't done that before


PS our economy is not all that reliant on manufactured goods. 80% of our GDP comes from services.

[Edited on December 2, 2005 at 8:47 PM. Reason : 1]

12/2/2005 8:46:01 PM

We could easily ramp up manufacturing. Most of the natural resources and raw materials are still here, they're just cheaper elsewhere.

12/2/2005 8:53:40 PM

I think the size of the insurgency would mean we would have to put forth a timetable to withdraw to Mars

12/2/2005 9:03:25 PM

We cant even "win" in Iraq, what makes you think we could take down "everyone"?

12/2/2005 9:50:53 PM

you terrorist

12/2/2005 10:02:42 PM

Quote :

"1) Pipelines. There's already quite a few, and they could build more."

One problem we are finding with Pipelines in Iraq is that they are hard to conceil, impossible to move, and easy to destroy.

A dozen or so well placed cruise missiles and no oil flows from the middle east via a pipeline.

With Air Superiority, only needed for a short period of time, no export facilities in the middle east would remain. They will need to move the stuff in barrels loaded up on trucks. I have no doubt that this technique is sufficient to supply the military needs of both Europe and Asia, but it will take awhile to get up and running. Until then they are running exclusively on reserves.

12/2/2005 10:22:20 PM

^^^Iraq's military capability is obliterated. The war is long since won from a military standpoint. The problem with the insurgency is that it's too difficult to know friend from foe, and with the media watching every move, tactics which would be unquestioned in total war are not an option.

12/2/2005 10:34:46 PM