Have you ever wondered how long the US military would last in a war against the rest of the world? Let’s ask a a delusional military fantasist!
What would happen if the U.S. found itself facing off against the rest of the world? Not just its traditional rivals, but what if it had to fight off its allies like the United Kingdom, France, and South Korea as well?
In short, America would stomp them. Especially if it pulled back to the continental U.S. and made its stand there.
I guess we’re going to pretend Vietnam never happened by imagining that we bunker down behind our borders with a wall of steel facing outwards. The author then laughs triumphantly about all our aircraft carriers, our F-22s (What? Not the F-35?), our Patriot missiles that will shoot down their missiles, our wonderful tanks and our superior infantry. It’s kind of disgusting. What he’s proposing is the North Korea strategy: us against the world! Close our borders! Everyone is our enemy, we must destroy them, and we can!
He imagines our forces as they are, except all conveniently concentrated right here at home, and the rest of the world as it is, only generaled by idiots who decide to throw everything they’ve now got right at us, all at once. That’s not how it would happen.
I can believe the first part happening, now that our government has wrecked itself. I can picture an increasingly paranoid, isolationist America bottling itself up and wallowing in propaganda, treating the rest of the world as useless and unimportant. Yeah, we could get that far. Of course, our triumphalist author who is busy counting tanks isn’t bothering to consider economics and the importance of world-wide communication to advancements in science and technology. He doesn’t care that we don’t have the industry to support his military machine without external cooperation and trade.
He also doesn’t consider a realistic response by the rest of the world. They would treat the US like we now treat North Korea, a pariah nation that is going to be confined and allowed to rot within the ruins of its own economy, while keeping a wary eye out for outburst of externally directed violence. If we are a real military threat rather than a bunch of mad-eyed fanatics hunkered down behind our Border Walls™, they’re not going to just throw their currently smaller forces at us. They’re going to build with the resources of a world economy. They’re going to wait for ingrown, decaying nation to spend itself on corruption and waste and stupid decision-making, like the kind that would have put us into this situation in the first place.
Like the kind that allows military day dreamers like that author to play victorious war games in their head. Our security does not rest in more and bigger guns, it resides in greater cooperation and trust. We can’t stand alone, and what I find scary is that there are people who think a bunch of M1 Abrams tanks is all we need to be safe and happy, and that military porn is reassuring.