A power outside of North America

I agree, but the loss wasn't because the US lacked the physical combat power to do so. Power is defined as 'the ability' to act; the US had the ability to act, but chose to act in an ineffective way.
In the end, it didn't. It's just like the Battle of France: the Frogs had more tanks, more forces, etc., and the theoretical ability to whack German forces aside. But they didn't, they got wrecked like hell, and that's what History remembers. The British Empire had the Order of Battle to crush like an ant the Revolutionary armies, but it didn't, and that's what History remembers. For all the "theoretical" stuff, the practical result is that the North Vietnamese, North Korean and Afghani forces (and, one could argue, the Iraqi insurgents) prevented the US from achieving its political goals through the use of military force. Which means that they made the US lose their respective war (a war is first and foremost the act of making the enemy political will bend to yours through the use of military force). Now, sure, the US military is peerless when you look at the Orders of Battle and the Powerpoint files, but saying it cannot be defeated is a complete negation of documented facts.

Not that it matters much, for most of the US power is through diplomacy and finance. Which is exactly where rival powers are attacking, BTW.
 
In the end, it didn't. It's just like the Battle of France: the Frogs had more tanks, more forces, etc., and the theoretical ability to whack German forces aside. But they didn't, they got wrecked like hell, and that's what History remembers.

But they didn't; French tanks were shit, their organisation to employ them was shit and the doctrines were also shit, whereas the Germans were better across the board. There was no theoretical ability for the French to defeat the Germans in the war they chose to fight.

The British Empire had the Order of Battle to crush like an ant the Revolutionary armies, but it didn't, and that's what History remembers.

But they didn't: the militia controlled the countryside and British regular units had to move around in strength, and the British OOB was not sufficient for this despite being able to win big battles. Again, there was no theoretical ability for the British to defeat Revolutionary America.
 
But they didn't; French tanks were shit, their organisation to employ them was shit and the doctrines were also shit, whereas the Germans were better across the board. There was no theoretical ability for the French to defeat the Germans in the war they chose to fight.
I... think you should actually read some of the many threads about the Battle of France, you "might" have a "slightly" incomplete perception of the matter. In occurence the obscene amount of luck for the German forces, the astounding amount of idiocy - beyond a bad doctrine that quickly improved OTL, might I add - and a "few" other things.
But they didn't: the militia controlled the countryside and British regular units had to move around in strength, and the British OOB was not sufficient for this despite being able to win big battles. Again, there was no theoretical ability for the British to defeat Revolutionary America.
You also want to read up a bit about the War of Independence, which was won by the Revolutionaries through actual big battles and naval battles.

You seem to have a fascinating perspective of wars going according to theory and orders of battle, which tend to not be matched by reality in many, many cases. Tell me, if I pit 7 destroyers and 6 escorts carriers with no anti-ship weaponry for their planes against 4 battleships, 6 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 13 destroyers, in close range, who wins according to "theory"?

Just asking, because when this scenario happened in real life, a handful of destroyers managed to make a fleet of battleships run away after several cruisers were sunk by inadequate weapons.

Tell me, what happens according to theory if I pit a platoon of soldiers against several weeks' worth of near-constant armour and infantry attacks on a position they cannot retreat from? Ask Pavlov how it went in his house.
 
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I... think you should actually read some of the many threads about the Battle of France, you "might" have a "slightly" incomplete perception of the matter. In occurence the obscene amount of luck for the German forces, the astounding amount of idiocy - beyond a bad doctrine that quickly improved OTL, might I add - and a "few" other things.

Sure, as soon as you can tell me how a man in a single-man turret can effectively command a tank (let alone a section, troop and squadron of tanks) while he loads, aims and fires the main and coaxial guns?

You also want to read up a bit about the War of Independence, which was won by the Revolutionaries through actual big battles and naval battles.

A very one dimensional assessment on a war that lasted 6 years and involved several major European Allies.

You seem to have a fascinating perspective of wars going according to theory and orders of battle, which tend to not be matched by reality in many, many cases. Tell me, if I pit 7 destroyers and 6 escorts carriers with no anti-ship weaponry for their planes against 4 battleships, 6 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 13 destroyers, in close range, who wins according to "theory"?

Another one dimensional assessment, looking at a battle in a huge campaign. IIRC there were 4 Fast Carrier Task Forces and a large Battleship Task Force not too far away which influenced the Japanese decision to withdraw.
 
Sure, as soon as you can tell me how a man in a single-man turret can effectively command a tank (let alone a section, troop and squadron of tanks) while he loads, aims and fires the main and coaxial guns?
Check the threads and actual sources about the BoF to see how and why it was lost.
A very one dimensional assessment on a war that lasted 6 years and involved several major European Allies.
And yet, in theory, the massive Royal Navy should have been enough to make these allies irrelevant. In theory.
Another one dimensional assessment, looking at a battle in a huge campaign. IIRC there were 4 Fast Carrier Task Forces and a large Battleship Task Force not too far away which influenced the Japanese decision to withdraw.
And batshit insane destroyers that took the fight to the enemy and screwed the odds.

Now, if your vision of history is that wars are determined by orders of battle and theory rather than actual fighting, men and women, strategy and the uncertainty of combat and refuse to admit that theoretically superior forces did get defeated because their opponents prevented them from achieving the political goals of their war, as shown historically, then I doubt we have anything left to discuss. I guess that I will have to leave you in this very hypothetical world where the US won Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. Though, I’ll have to admit, the Afghanistan war never happened because the USSR definitely won Afghanistan with its superior order of battle. And Italy won the First Italian-Ethiopian War too thanks to its superior technology and order of battle. The Invincible Armada and Napoleon’s fleet at Trafagar also won tremendous successes thanks to their superior firepower too. The technologically superior stealth aircraft F-117 never was shot down by an obsolete SAM crewed by a smart operator who could out-think his enemies either. And Toyota pick-ups could never win a war against tank-equipped enemies.

Yes, definitely.

On to that, I’ll rather continue the discussion with anyone who lives in our world, as the fees for interdimensional calls are beyond my means.
 
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In short, what would it take for an Asian, African, European, or even South American nation to be able to project power and hold global influence in the same manner as the United States does currently?
your 'frustration' with the dominance of the US doesn't mean that a powerful nation can't arise in Asia, Africa, or SA.... you would probably need PODs going back to the 19th Century, but you could come up with a timeline for it. It's not as if the rise of the USA prevented similar things from happening around the world... for a big chunk of it's existence, the USA had scant influence on events on other continents...
 
your 'frustration' with the dominance of the US doesn't mean that a powerful nation can't arise in Asia, Africa, or SA.... you would probably need PODs going back to the 19th Century, but you could come up with a timeline for it. It's not as if the rise of the USA prevented similar things from happening around the world... for a big chunk of it's existence, the USA had scant influence on events on other continents...
Um, okay? This in no way addresses the question, nor does it provide any new information.
 
Um, okay? This in no way addresses the question, nor does it provide any new information.
I was pointing out that your OP was a bit flawed, in that the rise of the USA didn't negate similar powers from rising on other continents... the one doesn't cause the other. But you would probably need to go back to the 19th Century to change things. If we are starting out in the 20th Century and things have gone as in OTL up to 1914... then that gets a lot harder. By that time, the USA was a powerful nation already... just not an influential one. In either case, you would probably have to change things a lot more overseas than in the US itself...
 
Huh. And here I thought Vietnam happened. Or Korea. Or Afghanistan. Clear cases where the US' military power couldn't manage a victory in the war.
Yes. Those were defeats. Hardly conventional, however. It is my understanding that Korea ended in a stalemate because of the political concerns of being in a long war with China and the possibility of the USSR joining in. Afghanistan and Vietnam were both thoroughly unconventional wars fought in the enemy's home territory, where the United States' ability to destroy nation-states could not be put to use.

It shows the initial error in the OP's assessment, AKA that the US cannot be defeated because it holds control of North America. It got defeated several times, proving that theory wrong. It could also be defeated pretty "easily" in North America proper, assuming one doesn't expect to win, just to defeat the US (nuke the hell out of it, losing 70+ % of your population counts as a loss even if the other guy is also wiped out).
I've addressed it being defeated. And I have also addressed the nuclear option. Nuclear weapons are the death of major warfare, and given that the OP doesn't directly concern major wars in the nuclear age, I ask that we ignore it.

Yes, and that wasn't what I was correcting, but the first part. In any case, the OP would need to read a shit-ton of books about soft power, diplomacy, economy, finance, etc., because the US military is probably one of the LEAST influential tools at the disposal of the White House, despite the dreams of some. The media, internet, dollar, the extraterritorial juridictions, the alliance networks, the universities, Wall Street as a whole, all of these are much more influential than a military which hasn't really won a war outside whacking Saddam's military forces - people whose professionalism and initiative would be better compared to a old yoghurt's - and cannot solve the "small issue" of Mutually Assured Destruction, meaning it litterally cannot achieve a positive outcome against nuclear states.

Now, the OP does mostly concern ability to make conventional war. The United States has that aplenty, which is my concern as a fan of alternate history. To address many of the points at once, my problem is that any alternate WWII scenario goes in favor of whichever the side the United States is on, unless other factors have reduced the ability of the United States to make war or substantially boosted the ability of another state to match.

However, the other advantages possessed by the United States can also partially be traced back to its geography, just like its immense warmaking ability. Access to two oceans is an economic and political boon. Texas and Pennsylvania oil has helped the economy. And no one will ever invade the United States by means we currently understand, virtue of its oceans, mountains, rivers, and a big fucking desert.

Furthermore, many of the virtues you mentioned can be construed to fall under the moniker "warmaking ability." Soft power and global influence give us the ability to invade nations across the globe with a prayer of success. Anyway, that is an issue of semantics. Most of your argument seems to be semantics and you showing off that you really understand things. I ask kindly that you contribute something valuable to the conversation.


Riain, the US lost the war in Afghanistan fair and square. To clarify my OP, I mostly meant to refer to the United States' ability to destroy fellow nation-states, a goal it was very successful at in all three examples. The Soviet Union also succeeded at this in their own war in Afghanistan. And Germany succeeded when they brought war to France. This discussion of the definition of war and the value of material is pointless and tangential to the thread. Leave off.
 
I was pointing out that your OP was a bit flawed, in that the rise of the USA didn't negate similar powers from rising on other continents... the one doesn't cause the other.
But it did. There aren't any other powers of similar military, economic, and political power. It may not be that a fellow superpower will never arise if the United States does, but in our version of history that is certainly what occurred. My question, to state once more, is to the specifics of how another state could come to this level of power, with or without the USA.

And on second thought, I would contest and say that one superpower does preclude the existence of another. Britain and France were enemies for a long time, and Britain won that. Then Germany came along, and they too were crushed. Then the United States picked up the mantle, and brought down the USSR. THe world will always have a top dog, and when there are multiple competitors it will progress towards fewer and fewer, trying to reach the stable number of one.
 
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CalBear

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All it takes is shitloads of money.

The U.S. is the dominant military power on Earth because it can spend enough money to maintain that position. The U.S. literally defeated the Soviet Union by spending an ocean of money developing tech that the Soviets had no choice but to try to duplicate, bankrupting the USSR in the failed effort
 
The US has the world's most productive contiguous agricultural zone (the greater midwest) and that zone is overlayed by the world's largest contiguous navigable internal waterway system (the greater mississippi basin). On top of that you've got plenty of coal, oil, iron, etc and lots and lots and lots of very good ports.

And on top of THAT you have weak neighbors to the north and south and fish to the east and west.


It's tough to compare.

So to summarize, you need a power with reasonably secure borders, a unifying geography, resources, agricultural productivity, navigable waterways, and ports. Also, not too many powers who can rise up to challenge said power.


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Since we're talking about the US, I'm going to limit my ideas to after US independence (1776?).


If Russia rolls all sixes, I guess it could work. But the issue with Russia is that the country is cold. Very very cold. So cold that they didn't finish building their first road across the country until the most recent decade (because concrete doesn't settle when it's that cold). The country's rivers flooding every spring doesn't help either. And you've got enemies in every direction, which limits capacity to be a truly global (as in take action anywhere you want) player.

The Rio de la Plata basin has the capacity to rival the US. Plenty of oil/gas, productive agricultural zone, navigable river, etc... but it's divided among 5 countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay). Had Argentina managed to keep Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay as part of itself and expand at Brazil's expense, I think it could have been a pretty strong country.

Germany can be big and strong, but the country is very insecure. With threats in every direction, it is difficult to look beyond Europe. They did a good job OTL, but with France to the west, Italy to the south, the Scandinavians to the North, Russians to the east, British, etc... it's a tricky game to play.


If France gets its "Natural borders" and then some, you've got a pretty tough nut to crack. The Loire and Seine Rivers are very very agriculturally productive zones. The North European Plain is one of the few agricultural zones that can rival the greater mississippi, but it's been historically divided and the rivers alone the plain divide it further rather (allowing for various centers of power to emerge) rather than unite the place. France with it's natural borders has about 94 million people using 2019 population numbers. You've got a fairly secure boundary to the northeast via the Rhine, an ocean to the west, a maritime boundary to the north (although with a threat just across the pond...), mountains to the southwest and southeast, and a sea to play with (and potentially expand into) to the south. Meanwhile with the Atlantic to the west and mediterranean to the south, there's plenty of room for power projection. Just prevent a unified Germany from forming or make sure it's a lesser Germany (something like the Confederation of the Rhine) that excludes Austria and Prussia and is tied to France.
  • Algeria and Tunisia, on top of European France, gets you to 150 million.
  • Ergo, reach the optimal boundaries and properly integrate and develop the areas within the boundaries and you could have a very powerful country.
  • The Balearics, Sardinia, Sicily, Libya, etc. Call them cherries on top.
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