Hang in there, Breadloaf! You're being awesome!
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?A completely different potential flaw in your argument, bread, is that weapons and tactics that are defensive on the battlefield can be used to support strategically offensive operations. Both BH Liddle Hart and Sun Tzu discuss this. The best recent example was the "Island Hopping" strategy used by the US against Japan in the Pacific during WWII. We would attack islands with few defenses behind the ones with strong defenses, thus cutting off the Japanese supply lines. But we didnt have to do much tactical attacking, just sit there and defend an island deep in enemy territory. You can do that with the mix of weapons and infantry you describe as "defensive".
It works the other way around too: the strategic defensive can be served by weapons and personnel intended for tactical offense. The Falklands War, described by a previous troper, is a good example of this (i.e., from the British side. From the Argentine side it was more like the island hopping strategy, except used unprovoked).
My point is that the difference between "offense" and "defense" is not in the weapons or types of tactics used. It's in the intent of the fighting party, and that's just not something you can easily codify.
edited 12th Jan '11 9:33:44 AM by DeMarquis
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Vietnam was the perfect example of why a defensive war loses. We were not permitted to counterattack into North Vietnam despite the fact it would have won the war by 1970 or sooner. Once the Congress betrayed the military and we left, the South Vietnamese were on a defensive war, and since they lacked the ability to counterattack they lost.
True there was the rumor that the Soviet Union would intervene over a counterattack into N. Vietnam but I really don't think they would have done so. Especially since a few short years before Vietnam flared up big-wise they learned the hard way we wouldn't take their shit lightly and if they wanted to do something they better be serious about defending it. They weren't serious about defending themselves over Cuba, they wouldn't likely be serious about defending themselves over N. Vietnam.
You have been made aware in other threads that your narrative here is not the consensus on the matter. Please stop acting like it is.
I have heard much of what Tom cites over the years.
But anyway.
The key to having an effective defensive force, which is what I think China has every right to have (since they have nuclear-armed Russia and India to their north, west and south, is that you have enough capability to give a potential attacker pause.
That is to say, have enough troops, material, equipment and weapon systems, all of which is deployed in depth (fancy way of saying to have layers in your defense), and despite the fact that you can't project power outside of your own borders, you make it a foolish proposition for someone to attack you.
I think every nation in the world has a right to have a defensive military. If everyone had adequate troop levels and stuff, there would be no one too weak in a military sense to become an easy target. If you have no military to speak of (for whatever reasons) in comparison to your agressive naighbor and he decides that he wants yoru stuff, you are at the mercy of your friends to help defend you.
But that's more a line of thought for justifying a standing army - not on wether a war is justified or not. Speaking of war, I think some conflict is unavoidable. Yes, your options in avoiding a street scuffle isn't just limited to beating the other guy up or getting beat up - you have avoidance of the scuffle altogether, having a calm demeanor to talk the other guy down, stuff like that. Diplomacy is always the preferred option to resolve disputes about borders, trade mixups, stuff like that. But given enough diplomatic incidents and human nature in general, the probability of a conflict breaking out is pretty much a given, eventually.
Take Generica, our hypothetical nation for an example. Do I feel the need to have a fighting force that can exert military control outside our own borders? No. Our budget will thank us if we limit it to only a defensive force - one that is highly trained and professional, just in case diplomacy breaks down. We can parcel out a batallion or two of troops to some UN peacekeeping missions, but that's about the limits of our force projection.
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.Mostly true but I think what i was trying to state was that war requires certain types of military hardware to allow you to project your power beyond your borders. Heavy lift for armoured units, such as large C130 hercules planes or chinnooks. Large number of trucks, refuelling units and logistic units for extending your army out further. The less area you have to defend (ie. just your country) the less logistics you need to support your army. Those are expensive.
For Tom,
Overall, war is expensive and largely unnecessary. I have no idea why you bring up Vietnam as how defensive measures don't work. Does US geography count Vietnam as American soil?
For everyone,
I am basically stating what Pvtnum is saying. Every country can have a military but the difference is how they use it and thus this affects what they purchase with it as well. Defensive measures are the only logical method of dealing with conflict. If someone else is incompetent and starts a war, you can defend yourself. If they are not, why would you start one (unless you are run by incompetent leaders)?
Less war, more profit, economy does better, you get better standard of living and hopefully with effective domestic policy, it translates into better quality of life.
edited 12th Jan '11 10:54:07 AM by breadloaf
^ Overall strategic scenario. We went in to Vietnam to defend South Vietnam (that's the simplest answer, the reality is a wee bit more complicated) thus it was a defensive war.
It works because in the time before and after major US intervention S. Vietnam was basically on its own in a defensive war. Thus a realistic evaluation of a defensive war can be made and applied to most scenarios. (Remember, the Soviet Union had the same scenario, the muhjahideen had a lot of bases in Pakistan (gee sound familiar?) and Pakistani support from their intelligence agency. Had the Soviet Union invaded Pakistan they would have averted the loss of a defensive war.)
Secondly, war is expensive, but its "unnecessary" stature depends purely on the person and the particular war. There are such things as genuinely unnecessary wars even to the most warlike people.
I never thought I'd hear you say that. So, would you say Irak II was unnecessary?
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?No. Unavoidable yes, perfectly executed no, unnecessary hell no.
There were a thousand reasons to resume hostilities with Saddam since 1991, we just chose a few to stick with and were in error or misinformed on at least one. Since leaving a job unfinished in a broken region would cause something much worse than us sticking around...
Well see, Vietnam is an example of an unnecessary war. The conflict can be described by you as "defensive", which can be as defensive as the Soviets invading Afghanistan; that is to say, not defensive whatsoever. You projected power beyond your borders into a foreign country in the middle of a civil war in order to prop up a regime you thought was better than the North Vietnamese communists. How do you think the Communists describe the conflict? The gleeful invasion of their own country? You're American, that's not America. No matter how you want to spin it, geography beats you at your own game.
And just look at the resources you wasted in that conflict. What do you think you could have done even with more offensive tactics, like say, using nuclear missiles? Then you would have occupied Vietnam for 30 years? That war was pointless. You gained nothing, lost ten of thousands of lives, killed millions of vietnamese, destroyed billions in property, caused massive environmental damage for decades to come, used chemical weapons, destroyed your own moral high standing, lost international relations (like Canada) with other countries by going on this offensive all to support what? French colonialism?
That is a great example of how war is not helpful.
On that note, fighting just causes is important too because if you look at the number of draft dodgers that came to Canada during the conflict, that is a huge blow to not just your economic standing but cultural as well. How many great artists, painters, musicians etc instead became great Canadian ones? You can't even measure that damage in dollars.
"Every country can have a military but the difference is how they use it and thus this affects what they purchase with it as well. Defensive measures are the only logical method of dealing with conflict. If someone else is incompetent and starts a war, you can defend yourself. If they are not, why would you start one (unless you are run by incompetent leaders)?"
This only works if every country in the world has an equal capacity to defend itself. This obviously isn't true. Some countries are bigger than others, some have capacities that neighboring countries cant match. Poland isn't about to take on Russia. The only remedy for that is for less aggressive countries to agree to defend each other. But since we cant lend troops to every country in the world that might one day be invaded (and if we did, this would have costs of it's own) nations that want to participate in such a cooperative community ("alliance" is too strong a word, since there may not be a formal treaty in place) must reserve at least some capacity to project power beyond their own borders, which inherently involves tactically aggressive equipment and tactics (meanwhile, as I pointed out, the strategic aggressor could have been investing heavily in what you identified as tactically defensive equipment).
We may have heavy lift, but that alone doesn't make us a strategic aggressor, it may make us a strategic protector. It depends on how we use it.
edited 12th Jan '11 11:16:23 AM by DeMarquis
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.If such a community existed they would not need to spend money on defending from each other, and all the defense could be concentrated on the external borders of it.
ALL wars during the Cold War were of that nature. It was in both countries' best interest, not to fight each other, but to FUCK UP EVERYONE ELSE.
edited 12th Jan '11 11:24:16 AM by RawPower
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?How about a common, transnational army?
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?We already have a transnational army, it's NATO.
But Vietnam goes to show why you don't need to have overwhelming capabilities to defend yourself to win. The only purpose of an effective defensive army is to make it cost-ineffective for any nation to invade you and take your resources by force. You can't just take a bajillion losses and hold a country forever when nationalism ends you financially. You just can't support a campaign like that for any length of time that allows you to plunder a country, unless the country was just simply faltering in the first place.
We didn't have major transport capacity back in WW 1 or WW 2 but we were able to help out European allies anyway. In fact, back in the First World War, Canada was simply shipping all its young men, some without even any equipment, off there as fast as possible. For a population of basically nothing, consisting almost entirely of farmers, Canada shipped 600 000 troops into that god awful war. That was an allied defensive conflict if you want to describe it, in that, Germany invaded France and we assisted them. Ramping up for war is easy. Ramping down is not.
And what did we even get out of First World War? Over 60 000 dead. Over 130 000 crippled people. An entire workforce completely annihilated. Our GDP didn't recover for 20 years.
edited 12th Jan '11 11:37:18 AM by breadloaf
Your history is a little off. We didnt have major transport capacity at the beginning of those conflicts, but we ramped up very quickly. Canada didnt ship those men in rubber dingys.
Whether or not the US can be said to have won or lost Vietnam, I wouldn't use that conflict as an example of the excellence of a defense only strategy. Yes, eventually they made us go away, but only at a really tremendous cost in lives and property. The purpose of having a powerful ally with the ability to project force in your defense is so that you don't have to worry about being occupied in the first place (or if you are, it doesn't last so long). Had the US possessed the transport capacity then that we routinely keep now, WWI and WWII might never have happened.
edited 12th Jan '11 11:42:18 AM by DeMarquis
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Err, that's why I said ramping up is easy. You don't need heavy lift capacity maintained in order to have the defensive ability to help out allies. You only need it if the world has gone to hell.
My point of Vietnam was to counter the idea that countries, with differing defensive capabilities, are incapable of warding off invaders simply because their economy is vastly smaller. Vietnam is clearly much weaker than the United States but it doesn't change the fact that you can never occupy them because it would ruin you financially. It's not like they had a choice about whether foreign American forces would bomb their country to oblivion, they only had a choice about how to defend themselves.
EDIT: I just saw the comment on heavy lift with relation to the world wars and I don't think that would have worked. What difference would it have made? The whole conflagration that was the First World War was the idiotic idea that having more weapons than the other guy would ward off invasion and it did not. All it did was get twenty million people killed.
EDIT 2: Check out the inventor of the machinegun. He thought the weapon was so powerful it would kill so many people, nobody would ever want to fight wars.
The underlying concept of "greater military power" equating to "lowered global conflict" is simply not demonstrated in the real world because of human psychology. It's mere inflation. If everyone now has machineguns and people are getting mowed down on all sides by the thousands, it becomes normal and an accepted fact of life. The more you fight war, or arm up for it, the more it becomes prevalent. The less you do so, the less global conflict.
edited 12th Jan '11 11:47:57 AM by breadloaf
Ramping up is not easy. You cant just take a commercial merchant vessel and stick a bunch of tanks on it. The ship has to be deliberately designed for that, which makes it less cost-effective as a commercial vessel. The point I was making was that if everyone knew ahead of time that the US was going to intervene against the aggressors, then the likelihood of aggression would have been reduced. Granted, back before WWI the technology for this had not yet been invented. The main problem with the arms race in those days was that mobilizing your forces was extremely expensive and no nation would do this unless they were ready to actually attack someone. When Austria-Hungary sent their troops to the borders, Russia and Germany had to do likewise or be caught off guard. Currently, the US isn't in this position because we keep ourselves in a state of high mobilization all the time, even when we arnt ready to attack someone. Thus, no one attacks us just because we send a carrier task force somewhere, we always do that, it's routine, it doesn't mean anyone is going to get it, and everyone can relax. But if there is trouble somewhere, for relatively little extra cost, we are ready to deploy.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Nobody attacks you because your forces are in high-mobility at all times? WHO is there to attack you? That might have made sense when the USSR was still around but not anymore. Terrorists don't care about national armies, they're taken down by special forces or intelligence agencies.
I'm not seeing what conflicts have been beneficial in a way that shows war is somehow good or necessary. If the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire didn't meddle in the balkans for control, they wouldn't have gone to war, their imperialism brought them down. War did not benefit anyone.
Then you move ahead a few decades to Nazi Germany invading Poland, as well as Imperial Japan invading f-ing everyone in East Asia. What did that gain them? Nothing.
Then later, the North Koreans invaded South Korea. Any gain there? Nope.
US forces enter Vietnam, any gain? No.
Chinese forces attack Vietnam, any gain? No.
Soviets invade Afghanistan, any gain? Nope.
That giant war in DR Congo? The Sudan civil war? The Ethiopia/Eritrea conflict? The Iran-Iraq war? The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait?
I'm not arguing against defending yourself against an invasion, but you don't really need to do much. You pump a minimal amount of cash into some weapons, and then you fight against invaders. The instantaneous "short-term" cost-ineffectiveness of turning a merchant vessel into a heavy lift vehicle may seem militarily poor but after a war is done, the ship goes back to transporting goods for trade. Your C130 Hercules sits on a tarmac gathering dust and rust.
Some of the root causes of World War I can be traced back to on-upmanship in the realm of military spending. Look at the size and scope of the navies that the european nations were fielding at the time prior to the war - ever-larger, more numbers, bigger guns, and the fact that the industrialized world had just... well, industrialized, and you have a game of "my toys are bigger than yours!"
Plus, a lot of diplomatic games on who had who's back if/when conflict broke out, and all of a sudden, after Prince Ferdinand gets shot, the world explodes into a hideously-destructive conflict.
Other conflicts have other root causes which must be looked at case by case. We have the benefit of hindsight for previous conflicts, but prior experience may not help us out in a future potential conflict.
Let's take Generica again. We have a small navy for patrolling our island nation for the prupose of ensuring our local control over our ports and trade routes. We dont' patrol the entire trade routes, as that means we'd have to have a much larger navy, so we kind of leave the international waters thing up to Europe and America, where we sit inbetween (Atlantis, basically).
For the sake of discussion, we'll say that we've been having trouble with Algeria about our trade with their neighbors, Morocco and Tunisia. Their gripe is that we're undercutting their exports, and their economy is beginning to take a hit as a result. Could also be some history of conflict between us and them, maybe. Diplomacy isn't resolving the situation, and tensions are growing steadily worse, with them deciding to illegally blockade our ships trying to reach Tunisian ports.
What do we do?
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold."Nobody attacks you because your forces are in high-mobility at all times? WHO is there to attack you? That might have made sense when the USSR was still around but not anymore."
Why do you think mainland China has not yet occupied Taiwan? Because the cost of occupation would be too high?
"I'm not seeing what conflicts have been beneficial in a way that shows war is somehow good or necessary."
Not the argument I am trying to make. I am actually arguing that having the capacity to project force at a distance makes war less likely.
As for what aggressor nations think they gain from initiating war, I couldn't answer that, I don't believe in initiating war. But I think it has more to do with correcting a perceived social injustice than any economic or material benefit.
"You pump a minimal amount of cash into some weapons, and then you fight against invaders."
Again, this wont help small nations like Poland, or Taiwan.
"The instantaneous "short-term" cost-ineffectiveness of turning a merchant vessel into a heavy lift vehicle may seem militarily poor but after a war is done, the ship goes back to transporting goods for trade."
Actually no, because it will most likely be sunk. By a pre-built, special purpose, tactically aggressive military submarine. Meanwhile the C130 helped ensure that none of your friends got invaded in the first place (which many think a worthwhile investment).
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Well last time Taiwan broke from the mainland Chinese government, it took like a hundred years to reunite, so I'm not expecting much any time soon. Invading Taiwan isn't exactly easy. You need major force projection power, which China does not have and doesn't appear to be investing in, so they can't even invade it if they felt like it right now. They could however, bomb it a lot.
But I think, the argument that greater force projection power is that it is much too easy to just switch its purpose around to the much more easily utilised invasion purposes. Historically speaking, since the Second World War, when you began to build bases across the world and maintain this mobility, when did you ever actually need to use the threat of it to ward off conflict? You see, it's difficult to argue because you largely had no enemies. USSR and USA benefited far greater from fighting proxy wars than anything directly, considering all you both wanted was global domination. USA won without having to directly engage the Soviets.
So then, okay, no more Soviets, then rationally speaking, from your line of thought, we should have decreased military spending in relation to the threats at hand. But we didn't. USA has continued to increase military spending, as a proportion of the federal budget since 1991, the breakup (and i hope i didnt get the year wrong). It doesn't make sense and one of my arguments is that by spending into the military, you feed into a system that encourages it more, for no other reason than you've created an economic framework which benefits those in power by spending into the military. It's one of the side effects and negative consequences of supremely high military spending. I realise, you don't argue for this but I am saying that by following your method, this is what you get anyway.
As for pvtnum's example I have several non-war solutions:
- It was illegal, then we can place sanctions on the offending nation via WTO or UN.
- We could provide armed escort for those ships, or ask the nation which has been blockaded to provide armed escort for our trade ships. If the Algerians attack, then they start a war in which they lose massively against allied militaries and they'll never again trade with those guys.
- We could ask some organisation we are friends with, such as EU, to intervene in the trade dispute and provide a diplomatic solution

Indeed, places like Vietnam lost. China lost WW 2. Let's see what else... Iran lost the Iran-Iraq war.
You learn a different history than me?
EDIT: There's a substantial difference between maintaining an army so that if you are invaded you can inflict heavy losses on the aggressor and then beat them back and having an offensive military to project onto others. In the long-run, offensive empires collapse due to the high cost of maintaining such policy. It's simply not cost-effective. Every single historical example shows this to be true. Yet, ironically, people use the wars they fought as examples of "war solving problems" rather than the fact those wars collapsed the empires economically.
edited 12th Jan '11 9:27:59 AM by breadloaf