We Asked a Military Expert if All the World's Armies Could Shut Down the US

http://www.vice.com/read/we-asked-a-military-expert-if-the-whole-world-could-conquer-the-united-states

by ptwobrussell • 13 years ago

44 72 13 years ago

Whitespace• 13 years ago

Very interesting. I wonder what the numbers are when the analyst from Jane's says:

  And this is where you meet the second primary problem, which is technology. There are not enough aircraft carriers and amphibious warfare ships in the combined navies of the world to force an entry past the US Navy. There are not enough attack fighters to gain air superiority against the US Air Force.  This is how amazingly out of balance the military might of the world is today. "

taspeotis• 13 years ago

I found a pretty reasonable table of the count of various military bits and pieces by country on Wikipedia [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_level_of_m...

antihero• 13 years ago

It does amaze me that a colossal nation such as China, with all the manufacturing resources at its disposal, has only one carrier. It almost feels like they haven't even bothered.

Perhaps building such ships would actually harm their international relations because it could be seen as a precursor to aggression.

polemic• 13 years ago

Less explicit, but perhaps more telling:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...

sliverstorm7• 13 years ago

There's always this ever-popular graphic of all the active aircraft carriers in the world:

http://www.floatingpath.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/All-T...

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

It wouldn't require an army, it would only require that Millenials go into public service and vote. That is one of the cool things about our institutions, they are designed that way.

JumpCrisscross• 13 years ago

John Mearsheimer called it the "stopping power of water," i.e. that "large bodies of water limit the power projection abilities of militaries and thus naturally divide up powers in the globe" [1]. It is a centre-point of his theory of great power politics, which I see more and more explicitly driving foreign and military policy in the U.S., NATO, and China.

As an interesting side point, a defence analyst in D.C. once quipped that until very recently (and perhaps even now) China lacked the naval transport capacity to invade Taiwan. The Taiwanese army, standing on the beaches, would always vastly outnumber the number of Chinese infantry the P.R.C. could simultaneously land. Thus Taiwan's strategic imperatives of building anti-shelling and counter-subterfuge capabilities.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_Great_Power_Poli...

zmjones• 13 years ago

Mearsheimer is an embarrassment to social science.

salient• 13 years ago

Maybe not shut down, but I imagine if the US did something truly bad (nuking an innocent country?), and there would be strong worldwide outrage to the point that everyone would boycott - or even riot - against American companies abroad, that would be pretty bad for US, and I assume/hope something they're not willing to risk.

That being said, the US is becoming quite a scary country, with how far it has expanded its military power all over the world, and the technological advancements (mass surveillance, drone attacks, future autonomous combat robots, etc), are only going to make this a bigger problem for the world.

The thing is it probably wouldn't be as scary, if everyone else could be assured that the US public has quite a good grip on its own government, and that we can expect them to act pretty rationally and reasonably. Unfortunately, that doesn't really seem to be the case, which amplifies the fear about US becoming too strong. For all we know we're just one president/government away from US starting to act truly evil (although many would say they are already doing that).

Zigurd3• 13 years ago

What really keeps this from happening on a small scale is that the rest of the planet really is under US control.

If your spy agency and military leadership has a "cooperative" relationship with the US that your government isn't willing to end based on Snowden's revelations, then the freedom you have is all the freedom the US is comfortable with you having.

Unless you live under US economic sanctions in a government run by a dictator, your government is a vassal of the US.

With the possible exception of Iceland. So there are 200,000 people total who are not governed by a US vassal or a maligned and sanctioned dictator.

eru• 13 years ago

What about China?

downandout• 13 years ago

Right now, somewhere in Washington, DC, there are a bunch of rich men with white hair, white skin, and black hearts screaming and stomping around in their suits because they don't want poor people to have affordable healthcare.

I stopped reading after that sentence. This article may have a linkbait headline, but its only intention is to get its Republican hating, ultra-liberal agenda across to anyone unlucky enough to see its somewhat intriguing title and click on it. Too much of this stuff has found its way onto Hacker News recently.

EpicEng3• 13 years ago

You shouldn't have stopped. I can't blame you, I almost did the same, but if you continue to read it is obvious satire. I don't know about the site in general, but that stuff was intended to be comedic and go along with the silly questions that develop the story. The author is playing the role of a satirized liberal.

sliverstorm7• 13 years ago

In the absence of good tech news, HN usually starts to veer political. Politics is the HN "slow news Tuesday".

diminoten5• 13 years ago

This article isn't political, the part he is referencing is satire at best, or irrelevant at worst.

Read the article.

glomph• 13 years ago

That part is quite obviously satire.

middleclick• 13 years ago

Article aside, this concept of automatically playing videos on page load is really really annoying.

nickff4• 13 years ago

The first paragraph of this article makes this author's political tendencies eminently clear:

somewhere in Washington, DC, there are a bunch of rich men with white hair, white skin, and black hearts screaming and stomping around in their suits because they don't want poor people to have affordable healthcare

Leaving aside the fact that the author assumes that Republicans harbor the most sinister motives possible, while Democrats are purely altruistic; income is not a good predictor of party affiliation, (and vice-versa,) and the same is true for race.[1]

This tirade makes me doubt the value of the article as a whole, though I largely agree with the conclusion.

[1] http://www.people-press.org/2009/05/21/section-1-party-affil...

EpicEng3• 13 years ago

The intro is intended to be comedic and set the stage for the questions, but it's not necessarily obvious at first.

lsc3• 13 years ago

income is not a good predictor of party affiliation, (and vice-versa,) and the same is true for race.[1]

Huh. Your referenced link[1] seems to disagree with you; it seems to support the assessment that the Republicans are both richer and whiter than the Democrats, by a fairly large margin.

See the section under:

"GOP Continues to Lag in Racial & Ethnic Diversity"

and on income, it says:

"Party identification is strongly linked to family income levels – people in the highest income households are roughly twice-as-likely as those in the lowest income households to say they are Republicans."

[1]http://www.people-press.org/2009/05/21/section-1-party-affil...

nickff4• 13 years ago

In the highest income quintile, 35% of respondents are independent, 32% republican, and 30% democratic. I said that high income is not a good predictor of party affiliation. If you are in the top income quintile, you are almost equally likely to be independent, republican or democratic; how is income predictive of party affiliation?

peterashford• 13 years ago

Seems like a pretty accurate description of Republicans to me. I say this someone with no affiliations to US politics at all.

thaumasiotes2• 13 years ago

income is not a good predictor of party affiliation, (and vice-versa,) and the same is true for race.[1]

From the link you provide:

Blacks remain overwhelmingly Democratic in party identification

Did you read it?

nickff4• 13 years ago

African americans are the most politically homogeneous ethnic group; to say that one race (~14% of the population) can be a reliable predictor of affiliation, does not imply that all races are equally correlated to parties. If a measure accurately predicts less than 20% of outcomes, I would not declare it to be 'good'.

Section 9 of this paper addresses race and party affiliation best.[1] If you look at the graph of white (non-hispanic) affiliation, you can see that 38% are independent, 32% republican, and 26% are democratic.

You may have also read the table which exposits the racial composition of the various partisan groups, but this does not address race a as a predictor of political stance or vice versa.

[1] http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/section-9-trends-in-p...

ptwobrussell• 13 years ago

I thought it was disappointing that no mention of a distributed denial of service attack or a cyber warfare angle was really developed in the story.

mpyne4• 13 years ago

FTA: "The solution for the invading world armies would be to negate the importance of geography and technology. This means not relying on armies and navies and air forces but instead targeting the US in the space and cyber domains."

DevX101• 13 years ago

Conquering the U.S. today would require an unconventional & asymmetric approach.

One possibility could be intentionally dragging the U.S. into multiple seemingly unrelated wars along several fronts (Iran moves to blockade the Straight of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia bans export of oil to the U.S. and 'dares' them to come take it back, and China shuts off all exports of goods to the U.S., while on their campaign to 'liberate' South Korea). Each of these actions are designed to seriously wound the U.S. economically thus inviting a military response.

While the U.S takes the bait to engage in these 3 conflicts and overextends herself (the U.S. military is built to fight just 1.5-2 wars), a group of sleeper agents who have risen to positions of considerable power in the House and the Senate begin the next phase by obstructing the war effort (denying funding to the troops), and generating significant domestic dissent (raising taxes considerably, while simultaneously cutting spending to subsistence levels (no more food stamps, delay social security checks to make grandma go hungry).

By this point, the country has no access to oil beyond our strategic reserves, the economy is in shambles, rich people are pissed by the 80% war tax, and poor people are pissed because they're not getting anything from it.

Now we enact phase 3 and send in the Canadian Mounties. They'll be greeted with open arms by all Americans.

protomyth• 13 years ago

Small point, the US has plenty of oil at home and will very soon be in the surplus. Also, you should probably check the actual manufacturing figures for the US.

saryant• 13 years ago

There's a reason so much of our oil comes from Canada, Mexico and increasingly our own domestic resources. Energy policy has been intertwined with security policy since World War I, both for America and, well, every country in the world. Look up Churchill's decision to switch the Royal Navy from safe Welsh coal to foreign oil.

This has, at times, lead to some hilarious legal loopholes like the Mexican Merry-Go-Round.

bane2• 13 years ago

the U.S. military is built to fight just 1.5-2 wars

While technically true, I think WWII showed that the U.S. economy can ramp up very quickly to military sizes that far outpace the current military composition and makeup. If you count the European and Pacific theaters of WWII as "2 wars" then compare the numbers involved to say, the Iraq and Afghan wars...I think the comparison will explain itself.

gte910h• 13 years ago

We have no steel industry anymore.

I'm not sure this is still true of the US, perhaps china could do this now

nostromo• 13 years ago

I'd recommend skipping the intro and skip right to the Q&A.

It's an interesting article with a needlessly polemic intro.

Cardeck1• 13 years ago

A nuclear war would end us all. There are no winners in this scenario. If you think a country would stand a chance, you clearly do not know the nuclear capabilities of today. One thing I hate though is the "we are invincible, nr.1 etc" attitude of some americans on vice.com. I don't understand why they keep going with that mentality. It's ridiculous...

EpicEng3• 13 years ago

Idiots exist in every culture and creed, US citizens are no exception.

memracom• 13 years ago

No, a nuclear war would only eliminate the world's major cities, and make a big dent in technological civilization. But the impact on various regions would depend on how much they are dependent on technological civilization. In the USA one could easily imagine that food production would stop without gasoline/diesel and electricity. Agriculture is too mechanized and there are no longer very many family farmers and precious few peasants.

But in Russia, things are different. Hundreds of thousands of people still live a subsistence lifestyle with minimal access to technology. There are many people who have gone off into the woods somewhere actively escaping civilization, and most of these people are still peasants, in other words they still have the skills and capabilities to survive on their own even in the harsh climate of Russia.

China is too dependent on large river valleys where the big cities are located, but at least some of the agricultural land is far enough away from cities that people would survive, and they too are close to peasant levels of subsistence lifestyle.

So a nuclear war would destroy the United States, but Russia as a state would be back within one generation. Similarly China would be back. Both of them would be smaller and less powerful measured by today's standards, but they are better positioned to survive a nuclear war than the USA.

The key factor that makes a difference is that the USA has destroyed its indigenous peoples, but in Russia and China, the indigenous peoples are in charge.

viraptor2• 13 years ago

This started with an interesting idea "We need boots on the ground on the White House lawns." but for some reason moved to analysing the foreign military forces. I understand that there are quite a few people in the US at the moment who love their right to own/carry a gun exactly so that they can oppose the government. (I assume there's at least one book/movie with this plot, but don't know any) Isn't the best course of action for anyone outside to pretty much start a civil war? Instant deployment of armed men across the whole country with no need for oversea transport, perfect knowledge of local area, spread too thin to act against in a centralised way. Then convince the neighbouring countries that they'll either support the upraising or they'll have a tyranny based military policed country that will have to closely control their whole population for the next decades to make sure there's no more anti-government action.

Ok... now I really want to read that book if it exists.

moocowduckquack2• 13 years ago

Isn't the best course of action for anyone outside to pretty much start a civil war?

Or just wait around a while, by the looks of things.

viraptor2• 13 years ago

Do you really believe it could happen? I mean a real upraising and a civil war? The way it's going now I think the US is past the time when it was possible to trigger. I mean they can do terrible things one at the time forever and most people won't care. (They don't at the moment) Noting major and sudden will be allowed to happen.

diminoten5• 13 years ago

Since realistically this conversation never gets off the ground due to the nuclear threat, are there any other countries in the world which have a similarly redundant and "unbeatable" nuclear arsenal?

arbuge• 13 years ago

Russia maybe?

mpyne4• 13 years ago

The U.K. and France both have SSBNs. Russia did, and are at least building more, but I'm not sure if their SSBN fleet continued operating after the Cold War ended. China is developing an SSBN fleet if they haven't already (and they do have other nukes).

I think ICBM capability is the big question. Russia undoubtedly has it, and it's fair to say China probably does to. I'm not sure if the U.K. or France ever bothered to develop ballistic missiles to mate with their warheads but France at least could rather easily do it with their existing spacelift infrastructure.

chancephelps11• 13 years ago

Russia's Dead Hand system comes to mind.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_dea...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_%28nuclear_war%29

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

I think it'd be easy if you could spend around 15 years (or less if you have plenty of rockets lying around): Just tow a few dozen asteroids into orbit and threaten to drop them on San Francisco or DC if the US does not bow down.

The best that could happen is that they're nuked during descent causing the whole country to be covered in fallout asteroid dust.

stormcrowsx• 13 years ago

Bad idea, US could shoot up their own rocket and that rock your threatening with is now falling on you instead.

mpyne4• 13 years ago

The mission statement of CYBERCOM in a nutshell is contained in this article: "By defeating US satellites and attacking US networks, one bypasses geography and eliminates technology, both that of the military and within the industrial base that is at the core of that military might. "

bcx• 13 years ago

I wonder if the author's point would hold, if biological weapons were used by the attacker.

Smallpox made the first European invasion of North and South America a lot easier.

A few well targeted weaponized viruses with a reasonably long incubation period could greatly reduce our ability to defend ourselves. (The trick would be making sure they didn't spread beyond US borders in an increasingly globalized society)

We Asked a Military Expert if All the World's Armies Could Shut Down the US

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