>Without the ability to quickly tool up, you'll end up defeated in any war of attrition.
Why is this a risk? The biggest tool makers in the world are Germany and Japan which are in the US sphere of influence whether they want to or not and are therefore incentivized to sell to the US as many machines it would need to fight a war.
The risk for Japan or Germany not wanting to sell tools to the US feels insignificant, as they aren't in a position of power to refuse to play ball.
Japan and Germany are entirely metric. Pretty much the entire US manufacturing industry, or rather the zombie the pentagon keeps on life support, is in US standard.
That means everything needs to be adjusted or replaced. That's not viable in peace times, it's even less so in times of war.
Obviously this applies primarily to tanks and ships, not planes nor guns.
Part of the beauty of eg. CNC mills is they don't necessarily care what the units are.
Especially when inch is now defined as being exactly 25.4 mm and you can manufacture to 0.01mm with commodity-level hardware.
Japan and Germany are vulnerable to Chinese aggression. The primary reason why a declining company like Micron was gifted a new fab in Syracuse NY is that their Boise fab is within range of a larger portion of the Chinese arsenal.
That's why (well, one reason why) the U.S. keeps Japan and Germany in its sphere of influence. Same for Saudi Arabia (major oil producer) and Taiwan (major chip producer). Notice that U.S. / Saudi relations soured a fair bit after the U.S. became the largest global oil producer again (thanks to fracking and shale oil). We're a bit less willing to overlook an authoritarian dictatorship when we don't need them.
The challenge with all international relationships is that they're not stable. Germany almost didn't back us on Ukraine, for example, because Russia threatened to cut off the supply of natural gas and make its citizens freeze in the winter of 2022/2023. Only because the NordStream pipeline blew up anyway (an act of sabotage that American journalists have attributed to the U.S.) and the U.S. secured alternate sources of heating for Germany did they back us on Ukraine. Had it been a different regime in power in either the U.S. or Germany, that could've turned out very differently.
But the lack of cheap gas fucked up a small but important part of the german industry: chemical commons. That cripples the economic competitiveness and together with other negative developments, e.g. the change to EVs, will result in very hard times for the Germans.
In consequence the right party is rising, in eastern Germany to an already serious level.
You will see where this way goes.
It appears the western public's understanding of geopolitical realities is always a decade behind. _Right now_, all of NATO combined can't even outproduce Russia alone. We don't need to be talking hypotheticals, it is literally happening in real time.
plus if a conflict like that occurs then clearly the US has lost significant power. so why would it be a given that American neo-colonies stay on its side?
>_Right now_, all of NATO combined can't even outproduce Russia alone.
What? Don't know where you're getting your sources but NATO combined definitely can outproduce Russia. Why it isn't, is that Russia is in war mobilization mode with all their industry running 3 shifts for the war effort, while NATO's industry is still in peace-time mode because they're not under attack.
NATO countries can overproduce Russia in a future, but right now they don't.
> with all their industry running 3 shifts for the war effort
Lol? Where are you getting your sources?
Perun
Putin and Chemezov themselves?
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/01/02/russian-defense-ch...
Military != 'all their industry'