I think we'd take China - jus' sayin'.

Not a lot. Don't shit it.

Good to be on the same side for a change, Soc Dis.

China is all air force and army and no navy. They have no way of getting over here. So the only way we'd lose in a fight against them is if we invaded them and refused to use our naval forces to bombard and soften up their defenses.

I agree, a pleasant surprise, Timur. We have the best military in the world and by a notable distance too, and I'm always bemused when people don't realize that.

And as a UK resident I'd like to thank all US citizens for electing successive US govts happy to put your country heavily into debt to protect us Europeans.
Keep up the good work because we just can't afford those debt levels

"So the only way we'd lose in a fight against them is if we invaded them and refused to use our naval forces to bombard and soften up their defenses. "

As a Marine you of all should know how useful the navy is to "bombard and soften up their defenses."

And to state the obvious, this is a stupid thread.

and not for nothing, we couldn't defeat the Chinese when o they were armed with obsolete rifles and had no air force to speak of, I wouldn't be too sure

Russia could nuke you into the stone age if they didn't mind the same in payback. Britain and France could too if they put their minds to it.

When it comes down to it most of the billions spent of the Yank military amount to little more than the ability to conquer a mid-sized overseas power. The "can't be defeated at home" badge can be earned with a tiny fraction of current spending.

America has not been seriously invaded/occupied since the War of 1812, has not sustained a serious military attack in which strategic assets were targeted since 1941, and has not been invaded at all since 1942-1943.

Not to mention that as a Japanese commander once said, an invasion of America would entail dealing with a gun behind every blade of grass.

A guy with a bolt-action hunting rifle who knows what he's doing could keep an entire platoon pinned down indefinitely, and there are a lot of hunting rifles in America. Any number of guys with semi-automatic rifles (there are a lot of those too) could fuck up an entire company with a proper ambush.

China's only real strength is numbers. Most of their hardware is a generation or two behind America, not to mention America's strategic reserves. You can pull an old M60 tank out of storage and that M60 is still combat-effective against most other main battle tanks out there.

Any real long-term shooting war would completely bankrupt America, but the government could seize private assets for the war effort and sacrifice the economy for the sake of victory.

The American people are more passive than they were in 1941, but we can still get really ripshit pissed off if someone fucks with us.

"defeat" and "combat" are terms that need to be clearly defined before this question can be answered.

combat would be defined as armed warfare including but not limited to conventional, irregular, biological, chemical and nuclear war.

defeat would be defined as surrender.

@Santa - The big guns are *very* important. Marine history shows us that at Iwo Jima. Had the full 10 days of bombardment taken place, Iwo Jima would have been a relative cakewalk, but with only 3 days after the ariel bombardment, the Marines fought for every fucking square foot.

Actually history says nothing of the sort, the Japanese were in a runnel system in Iwo Jima, much like they were fortified in several other amphibious landings (Tarawa,Okinawa, Saipan.) In all cases Naval and Aerial Bombardment were partially effective at best.

It would take China plus a hell of a lot of allies with isolation of the United States to defeat us in military combat. That being said, I find it unlikely that they could beat us if we were fighting a defensive battle, no matter how much force is put against us. I'd only see it as a possibility if it were us fighting somewhere else.

"combat would be defined as armed warfare including but not limited to conventional, irregular, biological, chemical and nuclear war."

Nobody wins a nuclear war.

That aside, the United States could never be militarily defeated in a war by any combination of nations that required an invasion of the continental US. Unless they were able to mass forces and supplies in a solidly anti-US Canada and/or Mexico before the shooting started.

ie the original red dawn

Even then it would take an insane amount of manpower to pacify and occupy even part of 330 million armed people and 3.7 million square miles after the US military is actually defeated. I do not think it could be done for the foreseeable next few decades.

With the definition of defeat being that the defeated country surenders, then no way would China defeat the US in a conventional war. But I don't think US would defeat them either. Navy or not.

The North Vietnamese didn't defeat the US by that definition. But the US still lost the war because we didn't acheive our objective. We lost when we decided to not fight them anymore. I think that's how a war with China would go.

USA vs China rundown:
Army size
USA: 3.2 million
China: 2.3 million
advantage merica

# of aircraft carriers:
USA: 11
China: 1

Defense budget:
USA: 750 billion
China: 120 billion

# of tanks:
Not sure, but I know America has more tanks then the rest of the world (including tanks combined)

And lastly most importantly # of nukes:
USA: ~7700
China: ~240

I have a small feeling that China would be brutally raped in the ass by America if they tried anything against them.

Now that we have discovered that China wouldn't stand a chance against America in a fight, who could?

Russia:
Nukes: ~8500
nuff said

America cannot be defeated in a conventional war. We have no peer, we have rivals only in a regional sense. No other country's military can come close to matching America's might. The only two states who even have the capability to project force anywhere in the world are the United Kingdom and France, hardly our enemies. If you're not France, Britain, Mexico, or Canada (and maybe Cuba) your military simply does not have the capability to reach the United States.

I'd even go so far as to say that we really could successfully turn Afghanistan into a Muslim Utah if only we were prepared to commit a million troops and not care too much about casualties. We lose wars not because we are beaten in a traditional sense, but rather because the costs of outright victory are too costly for the supposed benefits.


But to answer the question, a few states could hurt us bad. China can probably already deny us access to the Taiwan Strait in the even of a crisis, for one. Russia could probably take back the Baltics before we could stop them. Iran could pose a short-term threat to our forces in the Persian Gulf even though their eventual naval defeat would be certain, and an alternate universe Israel could conceivably wipe out our Middle East presence if it were to attack.

"And lastly most importantly # of nukes:"

Probably the least important factor. One nuclear weapon is enough to change each sides' strategic calculation. A conventuional war between China and the United States is impossible since both sides know the risks involved should the conflict escalate and there be a nuclear exchange. The Chinese know we can destroy them, and the Americans know that China can hurt America enough that victory would be little more than a technicality. If New York were destroyed with a Chinese nuke and that was all, it wouldn't matter that we made the Gobi glass. Ours, and the world's, economy would be negated.

Vietnam?

They ARE 1-0 against us after all... ;)

(And that's mostly meant as a joke, so please, no one go on and on in a me-length post about what that's totally utterly completely wrong because...just because.)

@invictus:
#1: China doesn't have (to my knowledge) any nuclear missiles that could fly to the other side of the world. LA maybe, but New York is well out of range.
#2: America has a (very ineffective) missile defense shield.
#3: Of China's 240 nukes, it is unclear how many of them actually work. North Korea has proven how easy it is to make defective nukes.
Meanwhile of the 7700 American nukes, 2200 of them are active and launchable on the push of a button. America could destroy the world with that firepower.

Fasces, number of nukes doesn't matter above a certain point. 270 is enough to decimate our population.

What does "Not sure, but I know America has more tanks then the rest of the world (including tanks combined)" mean?

The USA would easily defend against the rest of world combined. The total military spending is only 2:3 against them. The advantage of home soil (infrastructure, logistics, reaction time), experience of conducting large scale military operations, economies of scale, homogenity of troops and command and aerial and naval superiority would outweigh it pretty significantly. But that is only we assume no further production. If all nations deemed the destruction of the USA necessary, their combined industrial ouput would erase he difference in few years.

http://www.nucleardarkness.org/nuclear/nuclearexplosionsimulator/

Nuclear weapons do less damage then the movies make them out to do.

*including china, not including tanks, lol

Actually, that's not really true. Russia has more tanks than the US. Check globalfirepower.com for complete stats. The difference is US tanks are way better than Russian tanks, as proved in Iraq several times over.

Of course if a US rival ever manages to develop a workable missile defence system most of the US nukes can be written off. A half decent space based weapons platform (hell, even one of those giant sunlight focusing lens like the Russians were trying to build a few years back) and the US carrier fleet would have all the military threat of a few ants under a child's magnifying glass. None of that will likely be about for some time though.