The USA has never been defeated. It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities.
It's their relentless deindustrialization that will eventually do them in. The USA's industrial output back in WWII was staggering, its enemies had little hope of victory given the sheer number of materiel that would eventually get deployed. Since then they've been voluntarily giving up much of that industrial advantage out of greed.
> The USA has never been defeated.
Did the entity now known as the USA defeat the British in the mid-1770s or did it just get a little too expensive and more of a headache than it was worth for the British to hold on to them?
> The USA has never been defeated. It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities.
It feels like semantics here. The US empire hasn't been defeated but its specific invasions have been.
But just knowing the US military is too weak to accomplish its objectives doesn't help much, because the US leadership is so mercurial it might decide to attack anyway. The deterrent effect only helps if you have rational leadership who is capable of evaluating the chance of failure.
Repelling such an invasion, while possible, is still a pyrrhic victory for whoever the US is attacking, because so much of their population will suffer in the invasion regardless.
> The US empire hasn't been defeated but its specific invasions have been.
> a pyrrhic victory for whoever the US is attacking
That's what I'm trying to say.
If you set out to achieve an objective, but the enemy prevents you from achieving that objective, you lost.
I wouldn't say they lost. They failed their strategic objectives, but they're still out there, intact and combat capable.
Losing is what happened to Germany after both World Wars.
If you start a war in someone else's country and they push you out...they won the war which means the US lost it. Your definition that the country has to be taken over to lose is a very different situation. If you can't accept we started a war, lost thousands of US lives and left without achieving any objective we set out as a loss you might need to reflect on the propaganda you've been fed and how it's affected you.
For some definition of "push you out".
The US inflicted an order of magnitude more casualties than the ~60k deaths they suffered in Vietnam. The US has proven its willingness to withstand much greater losses: ~300k deaths in WWII, ~200k deaths in its civil war.
They did a staggering amount of damage but were unable to secure a decisive military victory. So the war started to drag on, the casualties started to mount, costs started to pile up and the unpopularity of the war applied political pressure.
Writing this off as a simple "loss" doesn't seem to accurately describe what happened. I think they could have won, but the cost was too high so they pulled out. Engagement must not have been important enough to warrant another 200k-300k deaths.
Doesn't feel like the same loss you suffer when you fully commit to the task only to end up getting routed.
So your argument is that they could have won in an alternative reality where it was worth paying a much higher cost for victory, therefore they didn't lose?
I think you found a great way to never "lose" anything with this definition.
Going back to Clausewitz, war is a continuation of politics through other means. Moreover, victory is achieved by using force to compel one's opponent to carry out one's will.
> intact and combat capable
On its own, this claim is likely true. Nevertheless, this does not mean one's opponent is going to carry out one's will. Hence, one cannot declare victory. It follows that anything short of achieving one's goal is a loss. A loss doesn't have to be complete and utter destruction. It's fair to say that Argentina did not achieve its strategic objectives during the Falklands War, no?
> Losing is what happened to Germany after both World Wars.
Yes, but Germany is not as good of an example in this case as Japan during WWII. Japan would have likely accepted something short of unconditional surrender much sooner than August 1945, but the U.S. insisted on unconditional surrender. As such, the U.S. did not win until Japan agreed to unconditional surrender.
America simply "failed their strategic objectives" in Vietnam?
It's laughable to use such a silly euphemism to imply America was not defeated! The North Vietnamese won. Get over it.
How do you learn to cope so well? Did you attend the Dugin College of psychotic delusion or something?
> failed their strategic objective
copium
> It's their relentless deindustrialization that will eventually do them in
Agree, China has already won, at this point a lot of the world sees them as a more sane option than USA as well which is a nuts timeline
> China has already won, at this point a lot of the world sees them as a more sane option than USA
The rest of the world is finding China a more predictable and stable trading partner than the USA.
>The USA has never been defeated. It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities.
Except for the capability to prevail in those conflicts.
On the other hand the US did prevail in Iraq, and often prevails in smaller interventions such as Kosovo, or various strikes on particular targets.
>Since then they've been voluntarily giving up much of that industrial advantage out of greed.
American workers just don't want to do those jobs any more, at least not enough of them, and the country won't tolerate enough immigration to make up the shortfall domestically. There just aren't tens of millions of Americans sitting around waiting to take up manufacturing jobs. If citizens prefer to do other jobs, then non citizens have to do them, whether that's in the USA or outside it.
> Except for the capability to prevail in those conflicts.
Doubt. The US suffered around 60k deaths in Vietnam before it pulled out, yet it has proven a willingness to withstand at least 5x more losses than that. WWII cost the US around 300k deaths, its civil war cost around 200k deaths.
I think they just didn't want to commit more american lives to whatever objectives it is that they had. They definitely had and still have the capability to do so, but they chose not to.
Civil War casualties were over 700K...
Are you pretending that political losses are not losses? Getting into a war you cannot fund, fuel, or staff and having to retreat is called "losing".
the modern USA territory was never taken over, but the US military had to pack and leave quickly in a few occasions. Just because Vietnamese couldn't fight back in the US, nor the Talibans, doesn't mean that the US wasn't defeated.
But even that, let's remember that the British invaded and occupied Washington, burned down White House and Capitol, etc etc.
Sorry, but this is a comic book understanding of victory and defeat. Not your fault, many people think this way post-WWII as they have come to see this conflict as a template for what “real” war looks like.
Tactical defeat is when you are prevented from meeting your objectives for a particular operation, such as securing a target area or destroying/degrading a target enemy force. Strategic defeat is when the enemy prevents you from achieving your broader objectives (typically political, as war is politics by other means). The US has experienced both of these in the last century.
Most active militaries have experienced both types of defeat at one time or another. It’s practically impossible to avoid losing sometimes if you overuse war as a tool of diplomacy.
> Not your fault, many people think this way post-WWII as they have come to see this conflict as a template for what “real” war looks like.
Yeah I certainly see it that way. I think saying the US got "defeated" by Vietnam drops some nuance.
WWII proves the US is perfectly willing to suffer at least 5x the casualties of Vietnam in order to achieve their objectives. They probably just didn't want to commit to that sort of cost and pulled out instead. Feels like a different failure mode compared to going all out and getting routed.
“They didn’t want to” is hiding some of the complexity behind it. Vietnam had turned into a political crisis at home; there were widespread protests and lots of people openly dodging the draft. Grunts would sometimes “frag” commanders who pushed them into overly risky missions. Running up the casualties would have created a real risk of a violent revolt at home and mutiny among the soldiers. The US as a society was likely incapable of winning the war, so it turned into a defeat.
There may have been a window earlier on when greater commitment could have won the war or frozen the conflict, via invasion of North Vietnam, but not once the public turned against it. But this came with a big risk of direct intervention from China or the Soviet Union, as happened in Korea. In Korea, Chinese intervention led to a stalemate.
Additionally, early success doesn't mean long term success. The US won in Afghanistan initially, then they got dragged in a conflict for 20 years and ultimately Taliban came back.
Exactly, perfect example of tactical victories followed by strategic defeat.
> WWII proves the US is perfectly willing to suffer at least 5x the casualties of Vietnam in order to achieve their objectives.
The US today isn't the US on the dawn of WWII, and this war is unlike WWII as a whole.
Domestic political support for the war is so low due to the huge costs (of the war itself and on the American pocketbook). Furthermore, due to the open and blatant corruption in the current administration, and the passing of economic policies that increase the struggle of everyday people while enriching the billionaire class, there has been a huge loss of trust in the US federal government in general.
Contrast this with the establishment of the Social Security act and WPA before WWII, which greatly increased the public's trust/confidence in the federal government to secure their welfare in the wake of the Great Depression, and made them willing to sacrifice for their country.
Finally, unlike WWII, this war didn't start with any attack by Iran on US territory, or attacks on closely allied countries. To the extent that allies have been attacked, it has been in response to US aggression, further undermining the public's will to commit American lives to further conflict.
Invading armies burnt the White House down twice, then just left and said “stop being so stupid”.
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