When I was young I was taught to fear nukes and the USSR and the communist threat and terrorists and how we needed to have the biggest and baddest military with all the latest gizmos and gadgets and we need more and more nukes and such. Most of this simply wasn't true.
As I got older and studied a little military history, it became apparent that we were all barking up the wrong tree. The news was just there to try and rile us up against imaginary enemies and convince us to send our boys off to distant lands we don't care about. None of it ever made any sense. Saddam has WMDs? So what? USSR can nuke us? Who cares? Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad wants to blow up our cities -- don't import them, problem solved.
The US geography is particularly suited to defense. We sit on prime real estate when you think about its defense capabilities. Many countries today exist because of similar facts. They control a particular piece of ground that is easier to defend than other kinds of ground. Russia, for instance, has a very good defense against European invasion. England and the British Isles sit across a particular kind of sea that makes an invasion almost impossible. Look at the mountains of Europe and you'll see the borders of countries. You can even look up the mountain ranges on wikipedia and get a list of the various times people tried to invade over them and failed.
WWII really woke me up to the reality of geography as the primary fact of military might. The French reinforced the common invasion route, only for Hitler to make an end run through Belgium. They though that Belgium could stop an invasion, but they were wrong. All that effort and it just ended up being a speed bump. Trying to re-take Europe from Hitler lead to one impossible challenge after another. If the Third Reich wasn't on its last legs and fighting on another front, there's a good chance Western Europe would've been the end of the American and British empires.
Air superiority doesn't buy you as much as you think. It certainly gives you an advantage in certain kinds of warfare, but in other kinds of warfare, it is completely irrelevant. Now that we have space rockets and satellites, it makes me wonder what we really get with air superiority at all.
We are programmed to think certain things are impossible or inevitable, but history is full of examples of people working around them. Many heroes won against impossible odds, and many great men lost when it was impossible to lose. Technology doesn't always win. Underestimating your enemy means you are going to lose, even if they don't have anything significant.
Isolationism of the American continents from Europe and Asia is the natural defense. Shut off all traffic across the sea. South America has her own defenses should someone actually make a landing there. The Spaniards and Portuguese only succeeded because they came from cultures where warfighting was a national past time and their technology was several steps ahead of the natives. Were one of those things not true, I am sure the natives could've defended the continent against them. Of course it doesn't help when 90% of your population is wiped out due to a new plague.
And in North America, a similar story unfolds. The Rockies form an impenetrable fortress wall. Certain rivers are almost uncrossable at any point, and the few points where a crossing could be made are easily defended. Even the vast Great Plains are impossible to seize outright. Sure, set up a fort, we'll just go around it. Again, if the Indians hadn't died out before we showed up, we would never have taken any land at all. It would've been too expensive. We're only here because they all got sick.
We do not need foreign wars. We never did. If someone really wants to fight us over stuff we care about, they'd have to cross an ocean, brave a coastal landing, and then fight for every square inch of ground over generations. Even if we were practically incompetent the odds would always be in our favor. Put us in the stone age against a modern military, they'd still have problems finding a place to sleep at night.
We are strongest when we go into turtle mode. We thrive best when we build a wall between us and Asia and Europe. We never needed their crap, we certainly don't need them, and we don't need their stupid wars. Let Israel do its thing, let Iran do her thing, I don't care. We don't need to be part of it and we never did.
As I got older and studied a little military history, it became apparent that we were all barking up the wrong tree. The news was just there to try and rile us up against imaginary enemies and convince us to send our boys off to distant lands we don't care about. None of it ever made any sense. Saddam has WMDs? So what? USSR can nuke us? Who cares? Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad wants to blow up our cities -- don't import them, problem solved.
The US geography is particularly suited to defense. We sit on prime real estate when you think about its defense capabilities. Many countries today exist because of similar facts. They control a particular piece of ground that is easier to defend than other kinds of ground. Russia, for instance, has a very good defense against European invasion. England and the British Isles sit across a particular kind of sea that makes an invasion almost impossible. Look at the mountains of Europe and you'll see the borders of countries. You can even look up the mountain ranges on wikipedia and get a list of the various times people tried to invade over them and failed.
WWII really woke me up to the reality of geography as the primary fact of military might. The French reinforced the common invasion route, only for Hitler to make an end run through Belgium. They though that Belgium could stop an invasion, but they were wrong. All that effort and it just ended up being a speed bump. Trying to re-take Europe from Hitler lead to one impossible challenge after another. If the Third Reich wasn't on its last legs and fighting on another front, there's a good chance Western Europe would've been the end of the American and British empires.
Air superiority doesn't buy you as much as you think. It certainly gives you an advantage in certain kinds of warfare, but in other kinds of warfare, it is completely irrelevant. Now that we have space rockets and satellites, it makes me wonder what we really get with air superiority at all.
We are programmed to think certain things are impossible or inevitable, but history is full of examples of people working around them. Many heroes won against impossible odds, and many great men lost when it was impossible to lose. Technology doesn't always win. Underestimating your enemy means you are going to lose, even if they don't have anything significant.
Isolationism of the American continents from Europe and Asia is the natural defense. Shut off all traffic across the sea. South America has her own defenses should someone actually make a landing there. The Spaniards and Portuguese only succeeded because they came from cultures where warfighting was a national past time and their technology was several steps ahead of the natives. Were one of those things not true, I am sure the natives could've defended the continent against them. Of course it doesn't help when 90% of your population is wiped out due to a new plague.
And in North America, a similar story unfolds. The Rockies form an impenetrable fortress wall. Certain rivers are almost uncrossable at any point, and the few points where a crossing could be made are easily defended. Even the vast Great Plains are impossible to seize outright. Sure, set up a fort, we'll just go around it. Again, if the Indians hadn't died out before we showed up, we would never have taken any land at all. It would've been too expensive. We're only here because they all got sick.
We do not need foreign wars. We never did. If someone really wants to fight us over stuff we care about, they'd have to cross an ocean, brave a coastal landing, and then fight for every square inch of ground over generations. Even if we were practically incompetent the odds would always be in our favor. Put us in the stone age against a modern military, they'd still have problems finding a place to sleep at night.
We are strongest when we go into turtle mode. We thrive best when we build a wall between us and Asia and Europe. We never needed their crap, we certainly don't need them, and we don't need their stupid wars. Let Israel do its thing, let Iran do her thing, I don't care. We don't need to be part of it and we never did.