Yes the US tries to make soldiers the operators of weaponry, not the weapons themselves as in earlier times. Treasure spent on weaponry stokes the military industrial complex. Benefits to dead veterans families, not so much. Also civilian deaths undermine public support for whatever bullshit they are doing.

The war in Ukraine is a drafted/conscripted army versus a drafted/conscripted army. They are (to varying degrees) led and bolstered by volunteer career soldiers, but the vast majority of the boots on the ground have little to no experience.

In times of “peace”, drafts and compulsory service are largely pointless. You are mostly just increasing churn and ensuring that accumulated knowledge is lost. And your “peaceful operations” likely have a small enough footprint that you can make do with volunteers.

Against a near-peer or even just a conscript army with sheer numbers? You need to increase the amount of cannon fodder. And just the number of guns that can do the “easy” stuff while you rely on the highly trained soldiers to do the “hard” stuff.

When World War 3 finally kicks off (… and assuming it isn’t over in the time it takes an ICBM to fly halfway around the planet): I don’t know if “civilized” nations will actually activate a draft because it will lead to mass unrest. But I am also not sure if they’ll have a choice.

And just as a counter argument to weapons being increasingly high tech with a focus on skilled use: The US Military’s M5 is a good yellow flag. It is specifically designed with multiple ammunition types with the higher power round significantly degrading the life of the weapon and expected to only be issued for near peer conflicts. But that also speaks to the lessons learned from Ukraine and similar conflicts where… when the war really kicks off, you don’t have to worry about your weapons or soldiers lasting years. They will be damaged and killed in battles and need to be replaced.

When ww3 starts I hope I’m on the ice cream boat

I think that’s just called a Cold War. We didn’t invade Vietnam because we actually give a shit about Vietnamese people, it was a proxy war with the USSR

Yes, like Yemen or Palestine or Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan? They have interests and influence outside their own country, to varying degrees.

China cannot simply invade Taiwan in a moment whenever opportunity strikes, it would need significant and obvious preparation and buildup, because they would be contemplating a naval invasion on an almost unprecedented scale.

Russia probably will mobilize however far it’s government feels it safely can regardless of China; NATO isn’t going to directly invade Russia itself because of it’s nuclear arsenal, and isn’t terribly likely to actually send a serious number of troops to Ukraine for the same reason, so what it primarily has to worry about is western sanctions and military equipment, and of course the efforts of the Ukrainians themselves, which it already has to deal with regardless of what China is doing.

Israel for it’s part is also a nuclear armed state, so actual full scale war being declared upon it by it’s neighbors is unlikely. Support for terrorist or resistance groups, sure, maybe some sanctions, and definitely a lot strongly worded condemnation, but I’d very much doubt that the leadership of those countries cares enough about the Palestinians to declare a possibility suicidal war over it, the kind of politicians that lead these countries aren’t exactly famous for their empathy.

This is a very large logic train and you can’t demonstrate A->B let alone A->Z. Basically confirmation bias.

I don’t think turkey will enter Israel at all. Maybe Egypt if US insisted on moving Gazaians to Sinai.

Also why Russia will mobilize? They have no incentive to face NATO now. Maybe weakening the west in the long run.

Lol okay loser.

Dosen’t the US need Taiwan for silicon manufacturing?

Hasn’t their economy already shrunk by 5% since the war began?

Their gdp is production of weapons right now. After they lose no one is going to want these weapons and they have been produced for the trash.

My point is it’s not real growth.

Europe could stand against Russia without American support. probably not China though. china couldn’t attack any American aligned state without facing humiliation though

Same deal. They’ve suffered an unjust embargo, sure, but are under no real threat of invasion.

I probably should have said Cuba in my main comment. Doesn’t look like it helped people understand, though!

it’s just a poor analogy, not worth taking seriously.

I understand the PRC’s position just fine because they’ve been explicit about it for decades: They believe that Taiwan, an island they’ve never controlled, is theirs by imperial right based on the Qing dynasty’s rule over it for ~200 years prior to 1900.

We don’t need to “empathize” with a desire for imperial conquest, we just need to stand in the way of it.

The US wouldn’t be arming Taiwan if China wasn’t making the claim that it is part of China. Taiwan poses literally zero threat to china. There is no US comparison here.

It’s the same shit with Ukraine and Russia, and China is watching closely. It’s probably easier politically for Republicans to fund a nation not in conflict, because the deterrence doesn’t look like as big a win for Biden, so this is why they intelligently to along with it.

I’ll piss on the CCP any day of the week, thank you very much. I’m a communist, by the way.

Nobody needs to understand chinas positions. They are irrelevant.

But really, it’s Mali. But they could have set it up that way for the Marxist Left thing

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ml#:~:text=ml is the Internet country,domain (ccTLD) for Mali.

Do you speak on behalf the population of South Korea?

Funny you should ask

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/04/30/vietnamese-see-u-s-as-key-ally/

Yet four decades after the controversial war, the Vietnamese public sees the United States as a helpful ally and even embraces some of the core tenets of capitalism.

Today, the Vietnamese view the U.S. in a positive light. About three-quarters of Vietnamese (76%) expressed a favorable opinion of the U.S. in a 2014 Pew Research Center survey. More highly educated people (89%) gave the U.S. especially high marks. Young people ages 18-29 were particularly affirmative (89%), but the U.S. is seen positively even by those who are old enough to have lived through the Vietnam War. Among those ages 50 and older, more than six-in-ten rated the U.S. favorably.

Greetings from Hanoi. The Vietnamese in general view the USA quite favorably. Much more so than they feel about China which is regularly killing their fishermen and destroying VN oil and mineral development facilities. The 1000 years of Chinese occupation seems to have also left a bit of a bad taste.

Past atrocities does not justify today’s actions by another at the present time. US hasn’t been meddling Latin America since the cold war. In Asia Pacific, US isn’t the one who is bullying Japan, South Korea and SE Asia. And funny you mentioned Vietnam, as someone already said that Vietnam view US favourably in spite of history, the former actually dislike China more than the US. Vietnam has a much longer historical animosity with China than the with the US. At present, US and Vietnam have mutual interests in containing China.

Thanks for the article. I’ll have to read this later. It looks like it answers all my questions on that topic.

Iran is more of a man-on-the-side proxy for Russia imo.