New technologies enable Russia and China to destroy U.S. bases and logistics networks—including those on the homeland.
New technologies enable Russia and China to destroy U.S. bases and logistics networks—including those on the homeland.
or most of its history, the United States has had the luxury of fighting its wars from safe havens. No major international battles have taken place on the continental United States in more than two centuries, and its offshore territory has not suffered a serious attack since Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in World War II. For the past few decades, even U.S. bases on foreign soil have faced few conventional military threats.
FP
"Armed with large and growing arsenals of long-range missiles and armed drones, China and Russia are increasingly capable of denying the U.S. military operational sanctuary."
ReplyDeleteAnd
"Historically, the United States has overhauled its military posture only after suffering a major shock."
Forget first rate powers like Russia and China. Think about what we've just witnessed with a 2nd rate power, Iran.
After the US backed out of the jpcoa and put sanctions on Iran, we've seen a series of events in the gulf region. First we saw some ships get mined (whether Iran was behind this or not is irrelevant, but as Scott Ritter put it "no body really knows who did it but everybody knows who did it. That's the point", nevertheless the vulnerability has been shown). Then in September we saw the drone/cruise missile attack on the Saudi oil facility, humiliating the American made air defense systems (5 separate systems all failed to stop it) showing how vulnerable gulf oil infrastructure is. And finally, this culminated with the first time a state actor openly attacked a US base in the region, demonstrating Iran's ability to hit targets hundreds of miles outside its borders with pinpoint accuracy. I haven't been able to find what was the deal with US air defenses that night. Were they not active or do these systems seriously not perform as advertised? Nevertheless, US assets in the region are potentially vulnerable.
While the downed airliner is very embarrassing to the Iranians, the message is still clear, if the US wants war with Iran the costs will be high. The gulf states have been put on notice.
We don't have to wait for the future, we've just been fed a pretty nice appetizer of it already. Iran is clearly the weaker power, but it looks like they've played their hand brilliantly. After the US's two decade long shitshow in the ME, I'm not sure why the public isn't shocked.
Kevin were you drunk for the entire Cold War?
ReplyDeleteNever heard of it????
The cold war was a snooze fest, unless you were dumb enough to join the military.
ReplyDeleteNowhere for us peasants to hide, but the very important people have underground bunkers.