"US defeated" Topic

Can the USA ever being purely militarily defeated? When I said "militarily" I mean on the battlefield. Is there any nations capable of inflicting a serious defeat on US?

Yes, but you'd be talking about the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction to do it, for the most part.

A couple of battles have gone seriously sour in the Global War on Terror, so if we were facing someone with more support weapons than the local Taliban/AQ folks…

can of worms methinks…

"Ever"?

You mean, until the end of time?

Ummm…. yes?

Do you mean a battlefield or a war?

Pearl Harbour in ww2 not "Modern" but The US does tend to get overconfident and view technological superiority as the battle in the bag

As long as we continue to fight wars with 3rd rate powers that lack decent air cover, lack motivation and do a poor job of training and/or maintaining their equipment, no.

That said, we can win every 'battle' and still lose wars.

Fighting anywhere but SEA helps also.

Dan

Only Russia has the capability to do so, and I imagine it would result in mutual destruction, if you are talking about a defeat in the context of a war.

There have been a number of battles that have been lost, due to ill-preparedness, or the willingness to do what was needed at the time, e.g. the current situation with the North Korea and Iranian nuclear programs (not currently a hot battle now, but may lead up to one in the future, or a surprise nuclear attack on one of our cities down the road, if they sell warheads to terrorists/others, or use them, themselves). Those two nations are certainly "winning" by frustrating and delaying US and Western Nations' actions to halt them.

Of course, the political will of US civilians and politicians can have a significant impact too, as we saw in: Vietnam, the escape of terrorists out of Afghanistan into Pakistan, and are now seeing on the issue of the battle in Afghanistan.

I think you could argue that the engagement in Mogadishu portrayed in "Black Hawk Down" was a tactical (failed to attain objective) and strategic defeat (US forces withdrawn from area) resulting from over confident military leadership (repeating the same mission template over and over again) and weak willed political leadership (pulling out rather than reinforcing with overwhelming strength to shut the enemy down and get the prisoners back).

Short answer: No.

Reasoning, no one else can project power the way we can. No one can move forces strategic distances in the speed and quantities we can. As a result, we choose where and/or when the big fights occur. Part of that is prepping the battlefield before we commit to the engagements.

Think of the build up to Desert Storm. At the time Iraq had the fourth largest army on earth, would be fighting at the end of a much shorter logistical trail, had a chance to prepare defenses and 'knew' the terrain. Had a military with some decent combat expereince from the Iran-Iraq wars where as most of our troopers were untested. Yet we built the conditions to trounce them.

Could the Russians or Chinese do that any place on the globe they do not share a land border with?

Jake

Actually the engagement portrayed in Blackhawk Down was a tactical success, they DID capture the targeted guys or 'attain' their objective. They also capped several hundred bad guys for the loss of less than twenty. Hard to call that a tactical defeat…

Didn't you have some help with Desert Storm, like from Britain and other allies?

The iran Iraq war was more like the first world war, both sides lost lots of manpower so on the later Desert Storm invasion the paper strength didn't reflect the large amount of conscripts that only stayed at the front because of the officer with the gun at their back.
Don't forget the weapons of mass destruction in you list ;)

Militarily- non militarily- Semantics.
Two slo mo train wrecks happening as we speak…

"I think you could argue that the engagement in Mogadishu portrayed in "Black Hawk Down" was a tactical (failed to attain objective) and strategic defeat (US forces withdrawn from area) resulting from over confident military leadership (repeating the same mission template over and over again) and weak willed political leadership (pulling out rather than reinforcing with overwhelming strength to shut the enemy down and get the prisoners back)".

I agree on the tactical defeat comment. Even an operational level defeat, if you like, since we did pull our forces out of the region, and abandon the mission.

Strategic defeat = no, since it had no real affect on the USA, other than in that country.

I concur with the "weak willed political leadership" comment.

I seem to recall they were going after the warlord Aidid (not sure I spelled his name right), and we failed to get him, so I don't see that as a victory.

We could be very easily defeated, both militarily and in the national will. I'm not about to publish the play book, though.

Allen

Allen, I am afraid some people in flip flaps and fan belts for headgear already got the play book and read it too.
As for "no real effect on USA"- oh boy…
Regs, Sergei

I think overall it would come down to how we the people would support and handle the war. Something like 2% of our population serves the U.S Millitary (I think), could you imagine if we adopted a recruitment plan like that of Isreal. Everyone is a soldier and serves, I imagine that against 1 nation we could win on grounds that did not involve WOMD.

Ever? Yes.
Any time soon? Not very likely.

Yes.Zombies.

Yes, NZ defeated the US Navy with a very simple question!

"Got any nukes ao?!"

We have kept the US Navy out of our waters for over 20 years!

Stop reading Tom Clancy novels. They warp your thinking.

Enemies of the US know that the primary strengths are stealth, observation platforms and space based networks. Of those the most fragile right now is space and the rest don't work without that. So if you were China or Russia or the Taliban you'd be really keen on any weapons that can defeat the US in space. Manage that and then you've reduced it to a fair fight.

How long the US will remain fragile in space remains to be seen. I'm confident The Powers That Be are pretty aware of this and are looking to shore that one up.

No country in their right mind would take on the US of A on the battlefield because we have such an overwhelming technological edge that it wouldn't be a fair fight. We can see and touch the enemy before he even knows we're there, and now we can even send unmanned drones to shoot missiles or drop bombs to kill bad guys in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The answer is: No way.

BTW – Mogadishu was the most one sided ass kicking in history. How can anyone view that as a defeat? We got the target we went after. The US had 100 killed and wounded and they had 1-2,000+ killed or wounded. There is always the chance that you are going to get your hair mussed when you go outside the wire. I just don't see how it is a defeat, tactical or otherwise. The real defeat was for Somalia, not the US because President Clinton and the rest of the West was trying to help alleviate the problems of famine (which was being used as a "weapon" against the people by the warlords.)

OK – you critics are right. Thermopylae was probably a bigger ass kicking.

Heh. I remember that in 1939, everybody in the know thought the French army was the best in the world, too. You're only invincible as long as someone else lets you believe you are.

Anyway, no one needs to confront the US militarily (that's so 20th century!) to defeat us. We're rapidly self-destroying our ability to function at a superpower level, economically and socially. The clever ones will sweep up the pieces and take what assets they want in another 50 years or so.

How long the US will remain fragile in space remains to be seen. I'm confident The Powers That Be are pretty aware of this and are looking to shore that one up.

Not any time soon. It takes a long, long time to get anything done WRT space. Currently they have two stealth satellites, possibly more (The MISTY's and the forthcoming CRYSTAL's). But comsats etc, that remains an issue. But also much, much harder to hit.

It depends who is fighting who and where. If this discussion is aimed at now (as obviously historically there have been some fairly major US defeats), then it is hard to see that e.g. a US invasion of China would be crowned with success, however equally it is hard to envisage conventional warfare scensrios where China could successfully invade and conquer the US.

Introduce nukes into the equation and all bets are off.

Really though, all this invasion stuff is so old fashioned, economic power and cyber warfare is were it is all that currently. Remind me what brought down the USSR again?

Hi All,

Best way to view this question is remarkably addressed in in David Kilcullen, "The Accidental Guerrilla", 2009, Chapter 1. In short, in traditional terms the US is overpowering conventionally yet this is exactly the problem. Other states (and subnational groups) won't fight this way anymore.

So the answer is: absolutely not (in theory), absolutely (in reality).

Trends and practices suggest the days of 'pure military' are over. At least for now.

One on one, ofcourse you could, but so could Germany in 1939.

"At the time Iraq had the fourth largest army on earth".

Well thats what was said- I reackon Vietnam's and Turkey's armies where bigger, it depends how you count forces I guess.

I read -about one year ago- an article that reasoned that US would have a hard time, even up to the point of being defeated, in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. I can't remember the title -lot of things happened in my family short after, and I lost track of the article- but the rationale looked sound. For what I remember the US Fleet in the Pacific, even with the bases in Japan, Korea and Taiwan itself, have not enough airplanes to defeat the Chinese Air Force in the air battle. Thereafter the Fleet would be forced to retreat, leaving the Chinese a free way to land troops in Taiwan.

A.

[q]Hi All,

Best way to view this question is remarkably addressed in in David Kilcullen, "The Accidental Guerrilla", 2009, Chapter 1. In short, in traditional terms the US is overpowering conventionally yet this is exactly the problem. Other states (and subnational groups) won't fight this way anymore.

So the answer is: absolutely not (in theory), absolutely (in reality).

Trends and practices suggest the days of 'pure military' are over. At least for now.[/q]

I think that might be spot on,
besides the chinese and russians maybe, why even try to fight conventionally if you're still going to lose..

I'd recommend the Chinese (PLA) paper 'Unrestricted Warfare' from 1999. In many ways, it was visionary. An English language version can be found at: PDF link

Thanks, saved and on the todolist for tomorrow :)

Well the Russians lost in Afghanistan.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see some point when the US and or UK withdraw.

The problem with measuring body count comes when your enemy largely don't care about how many they lose.

In Mogadishu for example, the vast majority of mog losses were not those under the warlords control.
Mow down a bunch of civvies and the rest then support the warlords.

Unconvinced?

What was the purpose of the meeting raided?
What had high level talks already agreed?
Read the background and the more you understand the more the raid looks like a terrible idea from well before it started.

This is way too political for me to comment

The only good I see coming from this discussion is the Qiao document. Thanks, Conn1835 – very interesting reading that I'd altogether missed somehow. I will take this tasty bone and depart before the dog catcher arrives!

100 foot tall robots.

I think that while the US has no rival for the term 'superpower' there are limits to what military force can do, so I'd say 'YES' the US can be defeated militarily. You can't separate military from political defeat – as many seem to try.

If your armed forces can't further your politics 'by other means' in an acceptable manner and reasonable time – then you have failed and have been defeated.

I personally, don't blame the US for trying. They do seem to want to do the right thing and it's sad that things have not always been as easy and clear cut as WW2. Not that WW2 was all that clear cut at the time. We needed an army of film makers to make it so – with the latest wave being Messers Spielberg et al.

Conn1835 has offered the best response.

Yes, we are overwhelmingly powerful in a conventional, set-piece battle.

No, that kind of war isn't going to happen anymore, so we'd best readjust our thinking and evolve.

Gothic Serpent was not a tactical defeat. You can build it a strategic defeat, but not tactical. Aidid miliatia was on the wane after that beacuse he lost too many "troops" especially in allied clans.

The problem was that Gothic serpent was an operation with goals not fully understood by the white house and in a campaign wthat I doubt has any backer outside Btrous Butrous Ghali.

Also the Soviets were not defeated in Afghanistan, they pulled out beacuse soviet union was on the rope. The importance of the afghanistan adventure in the collpase of the Soviet Empire is a bit overstated. USAEUR and USN have much more to do with it than the mujaeddin.

Also I do not think that the US Can be defeated in a significant military engagement except maybe by another western power. Tha didn't mean that the us will win all the times…

one other thing… China will end as the loser in any nuclear exchange… I respectufully point out that thei ICBM capability stand at 20 missiles… assuming the USAF warning of a dud ratio around 50-70% in ICBM launch is real (and more for SSLBM) the chinese nuclear option is practically nihil. And before jumping from your chair think at the failure ration for satellite and space vectors (big ICBM after all) and consider that those launched are made un perfect ocndition and with XXX-checked components. Think of a massed launch in combat conditions of ICBM… and consider that differently from other weapons system who are continually tested we have never tried a massed ICBM launch even with dummy warheads…

The question you ask isn't very specific – depending on how you clarify it changes the answer:

1. Can the US ever be defeated in a battle?

Yes, absolutely. Even this is very hard to do though and generally involves significant strategic or tactical mistakes on our part -- for instance as we've recently seen in Afghanistan. Small outposts of troops in hostile territory invites defeat in detail – no matter how good the troops are.

2. Could the U.S. lose a war?

Qualified yes. In the world as it exists today, we can't lose a war in that we no longer have the capability of fighting – but we can lose it in the context of no longer having the political will or public support to continue to fight.

Furthermore – generally wars lost due to lack of political will reach that stage because political considerations drove the planning and execution of the war, rather than military ones. However, it is worth saying that as soft as we have become as a people – a war perfectly planned and executed from a military standpoint would likely result in significant loss of public support.

3. Could anybody conquer and occupy U.S. territory?

No.

Something like that would be an affront to the American people. The full force and power of the U.S. military would be brought to bear, and anybody trying to hold onto our turf would be crushed – taking only as long as it took us to get the troops there – which wouldn't be very long.

There would of course be some anti-war folks no matter the situation. . . but in a case like this they would be marginalized and politicians who didn't wholeheartedly support the war effort would be recalled and removed from office.

Witness 9/11. In that case we were simply attacked on American soil. For the next two years the U.S. people were pretty much wholeheartedly behind the war effort. (The anti-war types were actively complaining that nobody seemed to be interested in what they had to say! lol) It was only when we invaded Iraq that the support began to fray. Even so, two years of solid support in today's political climate was amazing.

Imagine how much more severe the reaction would have been if somebody had invaded New York, or any American city. In that case the question would be who kicks the enemy out first. . . the military or hordes of armed private citizens.

4. Could any other nation or coalition of nations defeat the U.S. in a protracted global war ala WWII.

No.

The U.S. industrial might outstrips everything the rest of the world can muster. By the end of WWII we were out producing not only the entire axis combined, but the axis plus all the rest of the allies as well.

It is true that our industry and manufacturing is nowhere near what it once was. But our economy hasn't been on a wartime footing in 65 years. Given another global war type scenario – we could be outproducing any handful of countries in the world combined inside a year. We could be outproducing the rest of the world combined inside two.

. . . but it will probably never happen. Nobody will ever engage the U.S. in a war of production again, short of some pan-Euro-Asian alliance in the future. . . but that's not really the world as it exists today.

5. Could the U.S. be defeated in a nuclear war?

In a limited nuclear exchange, depending on what got nuked, we might not retaliate as we should given the political considerations.

But if some country nuked a city inside the continental united states. . . that country is gone.

If another major nuclear power launched a full scale strike against the U.S., pretty much everybody loses. Coming out "better or worse" in that exchange is essentially meaningless since you'd be talking about societal collapse for all the involved parties – plus probably a whole bunch of collateral countries.