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Will we ever fight a "traditional" war again?

Will we ever fight a "traditional" war again?

  • Yes

    Votes: 10 45.5%
  • No

    Votes: 8 36.4%
  • Maybe

    Votes: 4 18.2%

  • Total voters
    22
Wow!!

I am utterly shocked that some people would even consider answering "no."

How naive can people possibly get? Of course we will fight a traditional war again. It's only a matter of time.
 
No.
There is no value in fighting a traditional war for our own military. Not when we can devastate their assets from afar.
And if a situation ever occurred in which a war started to unfold this way, it would quickly be settled with nuclear weapons.

Also, if America ever started to lose a war on its own territory, there is no doubt what so ever that our leaders would unleash the entirety of our nuclear arsenal.
This is why America will never be conquered unless it is from within, by America itself.
It is sad but it is also true that most of us Americans view ourselves as the only people who matter. That being the case, we (as a Nation) would have no qualm what so ever at destroying all of mankind in the event that we were going down.
I, personally, do not agree with this mentality. But it is what it is.


Ahhh, the old mutually assured destruction paradigm. That old chestnut.

Look, all it takes for the scales to tip is for some country to develop an anti-ICBM network. Reagan wanted to develop one back in the 80's with the "Star Wars" program, but the democrats (and the Russians) threw the brakes on it.

Nonetheless, it will be developed. Not if, but when. Either by us, or the Chinese, or the Russians, or someone else.... but it will be built. And at that point, the MAD concept no longer applies.

Second point - nobody has ever proven that nuclear weapons are powerful enough to "wipe out humanity." Frankly, I doubt they are. Sure, you were told this as a kid but that's because in order for MAD to work as a deterrent, people need to believe that nuclear war would lead to the end of the world.

While I think nuclear war would be utterly devastating, I think the effectiveness of nukes is overstated for obvious political reasons.
 
I answered no, for the US. The short answer is that the killing technology has reached a level of effectiveness that if we can identify a traditional large body of combatants, we can kill them all with technology from far enough away that any possible objective would be too expensive to try and take. Now there are some pretty dumb leaders out there, I'm sure somewhere there is a village that is currently missing its idiot, so you can't always bet of people being smart enough to see the obvious, but the big nations are usually led by an intelligent person. Historically wars were much smaller affairs than WW II, so the cost was much lower. With the Greeks, the Romans, and across Asia, the spoils of war were cost effective; what you got was worth more than what it cost you to take it. I don't think that is true anymore. Ask Japan or Germany. The answer is that on the grand scale, we are better off trying to get along and trade with each other. WW II changed everything, and the advances in weaponry such as laser guidance, drones, smart bombs, nuclear weapons, have only made the risk reward that much more heavily favor peace. We see small local conflicts in backward nations where the risk reward may be similar to ancient Greece or Rome, but among the big nations and global scale, no way. Our global warfare now will be economic in nature IMO, such as the Chinese use of industrial espionage to catch up to US technology for high tech manufacturing.
 
As things currently stand, it is highly unlikely.

But things change.
 
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