God Emperor Megathread (Trump and his presidency)

[Le Redditeur]

During peace time, your industrial military capability is usually very limited. It's all those factories you have producing consumer goods that you can convert into producing weapons and other materiel that determines how much power a country has in case of war.

Not only that, but the US is either autosuficient on lots of stuff (including food, oil and energy), or they can acquire whatever is needed from friendly nearby countries like Mexico and Canada; no need to worry about subs hunting your only cargo lane between your country and its main provider. No other country has exactly this advantage, which would be decisive even if the US didn't have the ability to project power onto the entire globe due to its massive navy - which, again, no other country has the ability to do. And that's not even considering the advantage is spacial warfare - the US-controlled network of satellites is something else entirelly as the Russians can attest. Sure other powers have their satellites and some capability in that regard, but the US tech on that field is still number one.

[Poonoo]

The rest of them are just a bunch of neocon relics. The Republican Party is in serious trouble once Trump has to retire.

If you want to know what that looks like, look at Australia. Other than Tasmania every state is run by the Labor Party (our Democrats) and Labor run the Federal government too. Labor didn't even gain votes federally, our right wing party simply lost votes.

They have no charisma, the party leader looks like Voldemort and everything they say sounds extremely fucking scripted. They don't even have a Vivek, let alone a Trump.

If you'd asked me ten years ago, I'd have put the Russian military on par with China.

China is actually worse. At least the Russians got involved in Syria and fucked up ISIS, China's military has always been dog shit ever since they had to go up against guns.

"Yeah, the Afghan war is going slow now, but just you wait. The US government has a whole bunch of super duper high tech weapons they just haven't used yet. The minute they do, it's over for the Taliban."

Been there, done that

This also applies to Russia in the current war. It's been going on for a damn year and while it may not be as popular to fund it that didn't stop the Iraq war from dragging on as long as it did and that war was way less popular. But all I have heard from the pro-Russia people is that Russia is winning easily and Ukraine will lose the war any day now practically since the war started.

USA didn't lose in Vietnam until the war ended. They were hanging in just fine. Same in Afghanistan like you mentioned, if they wanted to put in their whole military might they could have but didn't. Russia is in the same position and it is a stupid one, before the war started people were making memes of CIA agents poking Putin to bait him into a war and him saying no.

The Western elites will not back down from this and will sink our economies to fund the war. Other than Trump every other leader in every other country will be blackmailed into supporting it regardless of how populist they are.

[McGinnis]

China is actually worse. At least the Russians got involved in Syria and fucked up ISIS, China's military has always been dog shit ever since they had to go up against guns.

China, like the US, don't fight anybody who can fight back. Their biggest advantage really is numbers, and the fact that they control most of Western manufacturing. Like I said before, Raytheon have admitted divestment from China, for them, is impossible. That means war with China is impossible, so long as they have the US by the balls

USA didn't lose in Vietnam until the war ended. They were hanging in just fine. Same in Afghanistan like you mentioned, if they wanted to put in their whole military might they could have but didn't.

This war isn't like those. Firstly, those were effectively guerilla wars whereas the war in Ukraine is a conventional one. Secondly, the main reason the US lost these wars is they lost the war for the hearts and minds of the populace. The US' lack of respect for the Vietnamese and their country turned a lot of Vietnamese against them, and the Afghans already had a deep seated hatred for the US regime because they brought back the boy rape, and it only grew once they tried to force women's lib and the LGBT nonsense on them.

In Ukraine, it's Eastern Ukrainians who have a deep seated hatred for the Kiev regime, who's been shelling them since 2014 and who's been criminalising their language, their religion, their culture and so on. What's not mentioned by the MSM is that lot of the soldiers on the Russian side are Ukrainian freedom fighters. They see Putin as their liberator.

The Western elites will not back down from this and will sink our economies to fund the war

Neither will the Russians. This is not Iraq. This is not some war against some far away desert shithole of no consequence. This is their neighbour. This war is existential for them. The west have made it perfectly clear that they want to see Russia destroyed or weakened. The Russians just won't let that happen

[Le Redditeur]

It seems to me that the easiest way for weakening Russia is to start a land grab that not only will drag for years and make them burn through the Soviet military inheritance,but also cut off their position as the sole provider of energy and materials to Central Europe before they could establish a tight grip on Germany's energy, for example. But I'm sure being unable to influence the rest of the world outside your self-inflicted bubble besides some African warlords will surely teach the West a lesson and make Mother Russia almost as stronk as Serbia.

[McGinnis]

They're buying Russian energy anyway. Just paying exorbitant prices for it. And the rise of BRICS and the coup in Niger where the military junta told Victoria Nuland to fuck off and lose some weight, suggests it's the US and their allies that are losing influence.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

>the rise of BRICS
That whole organization only exists to benefit China, and most members will have to realize this once they have agendas other than whining about NATO-senpai.

[McGinnis]

>the rise of BRICS
That whole organization only exists to benefit China, and most members will have to realize this once they have agendas other than whining about NATO-senpai.

This in no way contradicts my point

[Le Redditeur]

They're buying Russian energy anyway. Just paying exorbitant prices for it.

But they're not paying those prices to Russia, but to whoever is intermediating the deal (and buying Russian oil heavily discounted). They could be selling full price to Germany right now and turn them completely and utterly dependent on them for the foreseeable future, but surely doing a quick land grab (and then proceesing losing a significant percentage of that, even) will certainly look better in the long run.

By the way, don't forget that just eight years ago Ukraine's army was basically non-existent, and what the Russians are headbutting against for one year and a half is whatever they managed to scrape since then.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Just give it two more weeks and the Russian flag will fly over the skyline of Kyiv.

[rabidtictac]

Not only that, but you're talking shit about the USA, saying its army isn't all that. But what we're giving Ukraine is cast-off, decades-old bullshit. We don't draft people. We don't have factories converted to spit out war machines. We're just throwing random old weapons at Ukraine and they're fighting off the full military might of Russia.

SpoilerShow

Jets are a good example. We have radar-invisible jets. We don't give those to Ukraine, do we? We give them some old-ass F-16s. An F-16 is like a trainer plane for us. If we wanted to give them the good stuff, we'd be sending F-22 raptors (and yes, I know the rapter is kinda shit), F-18 hornets with vtol capability, F-15 strike eagles and stealth bombers.

We lose in the middle east because we want to lose. The goal with those wars was to make our private military sector fucking rich. It was a way for corrupt politicians to pad their landing chutes for when they left office, so they could get cushy gigs working for pmcs or owning stock in companies like Lockheed-Martin. I'm sure some True Believers really did think it was a) possible and b) a good idea to conquer Afghanistan and completely eliminate terrorism everywhere. But anyone who stopped to think about the concept for a minute would realize how impossible both goals were. Military advisors would have known that too.

In a fight-or-die scenario, the US would still stomp most other nations 1vs`1. Mainly because of the resource imbalance. "War is a contest of wealth between two nations." If you have more resources than your opponent, it's very hard for them to win. Germany made early gains in WW2 because they were in the wartime mentality before anyone else. They had their wartime economy already set up, and their neighbors didn't want to fight. France in particular was totally demoralized. But you notice that, once the USA became involved, all of its advantages became apparent.

-The USA is part of its own landmass, which is difficult to attack or conquer due to the logistics of assault
-The USA has vast tracts of land which can be exploited for resources during wartime, and these areas are largely safe from bombardment
-The USA's two neighbors are essentially satellite states of the USA, making the entire landmass of North America wholly owned and secured in event of warfare
-The USA has a bloated and over-funded military, even in peacetime. Imagine what it would look like in wartime

There are reasons why the USA took over the world after WWII. Mainly because we entered late, lost comparatively little compared to other participants and were in a prime position to capitalize after the fall. What's happening right now? Again, we're sitting back, throwing some old bullshit weapons to the people doing the fighting (just like with the lend-lease program for GB) and if we do have to fight Russia, it'll be after Ukraine and maybe even Poland, have taken the wind out of their sails.

Granted, that's assuming that a conventional war is even possible in the nuclear age. It probably is not. But IF it were, we're currently sitting in a most favorable position compared to Russia. What we give to Ukraine are dregs compared to what we keep for ourselves.

Best-case scenario for the USA is probably for the war to drag on so long that Russia's state falls and we can swoop in with the other NATO countries to carve up the pieces. But even if it remains a quagmire, Russia's military strength continues to be sapped by conflict and we lose comparatively little.