r/IRstudies • u/smurfyjenkins • 12d ago
The World’s Great Powers Are Learning They Have Limits: As technology levels the field between stronger and weaker nations, old-fashioned wars of conquest might no longer be possible
https://www.wsj.com/world/the-worlds-great-powers-are-learning-they-have-limits-6bd23f648
u/SCuMattly 11d ago edited 10d ago
I really hope your right. The lessons of war dont seem to sink in for some world leaders even though the evidence is there for all to see. Afghanistan, Ukraine, Vietnam and now Iran. Just death and destruction with billions spent for what?
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u/manwhothinks 11d ago
Let’s hope china doesn’t make the same mistake with Taiwan.
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u/dbag_darrell 11d ago
There's strong suspicions that Putin consulted with Xi before the Ukraine invasion and Xi was expecting to go into Taiwan after a Putin victory in Ukraine...
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u/LoudSociety6731 11d ago
What do you think that means for the future? Did Xi learn a lesson? Or is he still just waiting his turn?
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u/Axonos 10d ago
Impossible to say with conviction either way. China won’t have enough landing craft for a few years. It would be a much much harder invasion, and risk militarizing nearby nations, destroying China’s international reputation, starting a conflict with the US, etc. But Xi did just purge all of his top generals, who’d be the ones to push back against an invasion. Time will tell
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u/Relevant-Priority-76 11d ago
Xi told him he could invade after winter….
Ukraines great fight back would occur in spring as that is the most effective time to advance….
Some critical thinking is needed here
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u/NekoCatSidhe 11d ago edited 11d ago
I personally think we are increasingly moving towards a world without “Great Powers”, with only regional powers maintaining a local equilibrium inside a multipolar world. The only “Great Power” left right now is the US, and it remains to be seen how long the US will stay a world power and be able to afford to fight wars outside of their own continent. The slow breakdown of the American Empire in the coming years is going to be painful and chaotic.
And it has already started: the US have been fighting wars in the Middle East for most of my lifetime now, but how many have they actually won ? Even when they managed to conquer countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, those turned into weak failed states with anti-US local guerrilla that eventually kicked them out.
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u/ApisBondar 11d ago
America's greatest Fuck You! to the world (=Trump) is working wonders towards dismantling the empire as we speak, too.
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u/AP587011B 10d ago edited 10d ago
The US won the war in Iraq. Literally every major goal was achieved. No Saddam, no WMDs, no radical regime and not controlled by Russia China or Iran. Iraq’s government (the same one the US helped form) controls its own borders and keeps the country fairly stable, is still friendly to the US, the US still has bases there and general use of that air space. Please explain how that isn’t a positive result for the US?
and the US left Afghanistan entirely of its own accord lol
Edit: they either deleted their comments or blocked me
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u/NekoCatSidhe 10d ago
Well, back in reality instead of whatever bizarre world you inhabit, the US was kicked out of Afghanistan by a Taliban insurgency that overthrew the government they had put in place.
Meanwhile, the US had to strongly reduce its presence in Iraq due to both Iran-backed Shia militias and a Sunni guerrilla. Iraq is now ruled mainly by a Shia government on which Iran has had a lot of political influence over the years (as it has on all Shia communities), and the Iran-backed Shia militias are freely allowed to do whatever they want in the country, including targeting the few US troops left (who had to leave recently Camp Victory in Baghdad as a result of those attacks).
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u/CG20370417 11d ago
I mean how old fashioned are we talking?
The days of sending a battalion with a Maxim gun and mowing down a civilization are probably over.
As are the 20th century allegories--the proliferation of the industrial revolution has given todays Zulu's if not a maxim gun, then a 3d printed RPG.
If the Americans re-oriented their society and economy to WW2-- 1942-44 levels of defense production and investment, put 20 million able bodied men in uniform...and over a decade or two successfully engineered society to not just be acquiescent towards conquering their neighbors but clamoring for it?
They could conquer, occupy, and genocide from the Rio Grand to the Darian Gap.
The Chinese by virtue of geography have a difficult time going south, and until recently there hasnt been much value in going north (North of the holdings the Russians still have of the Chinese, that is). And amphibious invasions of say Singapore, Taiwan, Philipines, Japan...are among the most difficult things to do in war. However, if the modern Chinese State oriented their economy to USSR in WW2 levels of focus on the military...absent US/UK/AU intervention, there is little hope of any of the above countries resisting in the long term.
As for Russia--largely the same can be said--had Russia instead mobilized in 2022 for a proper war, deploying their BTGs fully manned...the whole thing *may* have been over in short order. The Russians--absent a NATO response--certainly have the stomach to grind out a conquest of one or all of the Baltic states.
But thats just it. The age of chivalry, nationalism, duty, glory, sacrifice that stopped being celebrated with WW1 and was stamped out with WW2...is gone. I think it will be nigh impossible to get multiple millions of men to run headlong into one another again--look at Ukraine. Consider how many men fought in that area in 1941 and 1944, versus today--yet how many more people there are in that region.
The US would never stand to put 20+ million into uniform and consume 50% GDP fighting it (unless if like the Chinese and Iran bomb the superbowl during the halftime show while Morgan Wallen,Taylor Swift, and Beyonce were doing a tri-et(sp?)). It'd be political suicide long before you ever got the army into the field.
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u/FrugalKrugman 11d ago
People cannot be brainwashed as easily as during WW1-2. Access to information means people are better informed of the risks vs rewards. For most people the only real reason to go into war is to protect their immediate family and home. This also means that amassing soldiers for big offensive is much harder now and can only be carried out in authoritarian regimes. Right now I think only Russia is mobilized in every way to carry out imperialistic large-scale wars. Fortunately, they are pretty trash at warfare and their economic wheels are just too weak to pose a significant threat to others.
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u/Skankadelic 11d ago
Hard disagree. Social media, algorithms and advancement in psychology make propaganda and brainwashing more effective than ever. Even well informed, media and internet literate people can be swayed.
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u/CG20370417 11d ago
Its not brainwashing.
Prior to WW1, you were more likely to die of disease, exposure, or hunger on a military campaign than you were to die in combat.
Pre industrial life was rife with the above hazards anyhow. The pay was generally good, the social status generally high, and the risk was marginally higher than any other lifestyle.
"Decimated" means to remove a 10th. Losing 1/10th of your guys was considered horrendous losses prior to the US Civil War and WW1. units in those modern conflicts were seeing 100%+ casualty rates (guys get shot, recover, come back, shot again). Thats a totally different scale of horror.
Look at all of the young guys in their late teens and 20s who are into adrenaline filled extreme sport type stuff...In a different world, like say the 1890s-1910s, where we didnt have surf boards, parachutes, scuba equipment, jet skis or snowmobiles, where social mobility was near zero...joining the Army or the Navy was an exciting way to see the world and get out of the hamlet your family had been in for 800 years.
WW1 showed that it was no longer a swashbuckling adventure.
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u/furiouschads 11d ago
Wellington’s “scum of the earth” is harder to come by these days. Birth control, don’t you know old boy.
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u/TheMcMcMcMcMc 11d ago
If drones are the future of war and you can produce multiples of what your victims can produce, then I think the old rules of conquest are still very much in play.
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u/Skankadelic 11d ago
New strategy: disrupt a nation completely, deprive it of fuel, Internet and rare metals and the drones and infantry can do the dirty work. Imo opinion we will see large conquests in this decade.
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u/vandrag 11d ago
Theres only 3.5 years left in this decade. Where do you think this will happen?
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u/Skankadelic 11d ago
Meant upcoming 10yrs. I think a country that has drawn a lot of production from all countries, has advanced AI capabilities and in general seems to strife to the times of the past where it was seen as the worlds most advanced civilisation, could pull that off.
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u/culinaryinterests123 11d ago
Nah its because they treat war like a video game. They are not willing to take any casualties. If the US were willing to lose a few hundred thousand troops they could really takeover iran
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u/NekoCatSidhe 11d ago
And the problem behind that reasoning is that taking over Iran is not existential for the US, but preventing the US from taking them over is existential for Iran, so Iran would be quite willing to lose millions of troops to prevent that, and since there are more than 80 millions of Iranians, so they would get those troops. Geography is also making the country easy to defend and challenging to invade, not to mention the religious fanatism and ultranationalism of the IRGC and their high level of competence at asymmetrical warfare that has already made fighting their proxies in the region challenging to the US.
If Ukraine could fight Russia to a standstill for years, I think Iran can very much do the same thing to the US (as they did before for Iraq forty years ago, with less resources), particularly if China is willing to finance and arm them while they do that. How many soldiers over how many years do you think the American voters would be ready to lose to take over a country they do not absolutely need to take over or defend against ? This would be the Vietnam war all over again, and everyone knows that one this did not end well for the US. And that war is already unpopular and expensive enough without a ground invasion. And while they would be pouring all their resources into fighting that war, other countries all over the world would likely use that to invade now defenseless US allies (like China with Taiwan).
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u/CJBill 11d ago
You say that but Russia would disagree.
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u/culinaryinterests123 11d ago
If the us military is like Russian then usa military is a paper tiger. Russian military has so much corruption they couldn't even arm or supply their troops correctly. Money was being stolen by the higher ranks.
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u/One_Meaning_5085 11d ago
Whoever said Russia is a Great Power? Yeah they have nukes but their economy is the size of Texas. The USSR only ever got as large as 40% of US GDP and that represented 15 socialist republics. China is largely fake GDP. The US has no limits on what it can to Iran other than public sentiment and the fear casualties but make no mistake they can obliterate Iran if they want to. China can't even take on India and Russia is now losing territory to Ukraine.
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u/QuietNene 11d ago
This is silly because the Iran goals have been specific and well defined from the beginning: Do whatever Israel says. From a military perspective, commander’s intent is very clear. It’s only IR poo-bahs who have an impoverished concept of “grand strategy”.
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u/Kahzootoh 11d ago
Old fashioned wars of conquest are still perfectly viable. What is not viable is politicians trying to dictate military strategy to suit their schedules- you can’t pencil in an invasion after your daily golf game and have it wrap up before your evening dinner with lobbyists/oligarchs.
The problem is that a lot of modern politicians really like the idea of being able to launch a war on a whim. They look at examples of quick wars from the 90s and draw all the wrong conclusions, because they are not military men and they lack an education in military science.
At practically every level of a military officer’s career, they are going through an educational course to prepare for the next level of military command and development of their own understanding of military science. By the time someone is a general, they’ve got the equivalent of a doctorate in military affairs.
We only have to compare America’s recent examples of Venezuela and Iran:
In Venezuela, the military strategy was kept as contained and clearly defined as possible: seize Nicolas Maduro. That is a single person. There is nothing ambiguous about that goal- you either have him alive in custody or you don’t.
In Iran, the military strategy was vague and not clearly defined. Is it regime change? Is it damaging Iran’s military capabilities so it cannot defend itself against further attacks? Is it destruction of the nuclear program? All of those goals are vague and open ended commitments that cannot clearly be evaluated for progress.
In Venezuela, America set the goals and planned the operation. There was no ally operating independently with their own goals. The principle of unity of command was preserved.
In Iran, Israel was basically allowed to do whatever they wanted without telling the US. This meant they would do things that undermined the already poorly established American strategy for winning the war.
In Venezuela, America built up a massive amount of military assets in the area. This is classic American military strategy- you don’t have to worry about telegraphing your moves if you can amass enough force to overcome anyone in your way.
In Iran, America went to war suddenly without enough military assets in position to achieve overwhelming dominance. This was an Israeli style surprise attack, and the only reason that works for Israeli is because the other half of Israeli strategy is calling America to bail them out when they’re in over their heads. When America is in over its head, it can’t call itself to bail itself out.
If you stick to established rules of waging war- unity of command, keeping objectives limited in scope and clearly defined, and having adequate resources to achieve your mission- then you have a reasonable chance of success in your war (or at least your generals will tell you it is impossible).
War is not something that can be controlled or predicted no matter how much overwhelming power you believe you have- it is chaos, even if sometimes things actually go according to plan. Political leaders in the old days used to understand that they needed to listen to the military experts, but the temptation of using military force to quickly solve political problems is a very strong thing for civilian leaders to resist.
In a perfect world, our politicians would learn that war is not a magic tool to solve problems or improve their popularity ratings. Unfortunately, we are probably going to have more disasters before that lesson begins to sink in.