Another great war could mean at least one country preparing for it and building weapons in advance.
As of now the US have the greatest army, but if let’s say China were to prepare for it for enough time in a somewhat stealthy way, couldn’t it bring the USA into a long and dirty foght ?
>As of now the US have the greatest army, but if let’s say China were to prepare for it for enough time in a somewhat stealthy way, couldn’t it bring the USA into a long and dirty foght ?
Well, this is one of the reasons a Great War is unlikely - how are you going to do this? Even if you build things up slowly, you still have to store them somewhere. You have to train people. There is no way to create a military force capable of fighting a Great War in today's age without it being obvious.
Which isn't to say that build up can't happen - it's just not going to be a surprise to anyone.
And it's not going to get very far before the nuclear option gets trotted out. What good is an invasion force if the other side feels threatened enough to start nuclear retaliation?
I can remember folks in the Reagan adminstration regularly touted the possibility of winning a nuclear war and used that sort of rhetoric in elections. The other part of that is the fundamentalist Christians in the USA who believe in the literal interpretation of Revelations so for them there is greater glory in armageddon that begins with a conflict in Israel. And in power now, John Bolton is one of those guys who thinks we can win a nuclear war and need simply need to outbuild the other guys.
I will say it is weird when it seems to make sense to be more scared of the people on your own side than the people on the enemy's side. Perhaps they have folks just as scary, though.
We almost went to war in 1983 - the political sloganeering by Reagan adminstration combined with the paranoia on the Soviet side (their double agents inside the West reported Able Archer 83 as an exercise but the Soviets interpreted the intel) made a military exercise for NATO appear to be the start of a first strike preparation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
The US has with no doubt the best ground on the planet to defend themselves with. Isolated by two large oceans and bordered by "mostly" friendly nations
Force extended requires significant amplification.
So for China to impact us in a meaningful way they would have to somehow sneak a force large enough to damage across a pretty wide open space, then maintain that logistically.
Ditto for the RU
That said once in the US you have 300 million small arms manned by 21+ million veterans in the US
Not sure China can actually get that many boots on the US soil before the Navy / Air get a poke or two at them
China/US are probably pretty close to a MAD situation. How many minutes do we have to decide if an oncoming Chinese missile attack is nuclear or conventional these days? And vice-versa. Fun fun.
As of now the US have the greatest army, but if let’s say China were to prepare for it for enough time in a somewhat stealthy way, couldn’t it bring the USA into a long and dirty foght ?