dw wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 4:10 pm
I'm not entirely sure about this analysis. It seems to depend on a certain interpretation of probabilities. If I flip a coin is it 50/50 that it will come up heads, or is it in fact either 100/0 or 0/100?
I mean, technically you and the coin are part of a quantum system in a superposition of heads/tails until it lands and becomes entangled with you and the surrounding environment in one state or the other (while the opposite result occurs in an alternative universe, maybe).
If a large country invades a smaller country with an 80/20 estimate of success, and the smaller country with the same estimate decides it's worth the cost for a chance to avoid humiliation and subservience, will the eventual outcome prove that one side was mistaken?
I would make the lesser claim, rather old hat these days, that things like morale and will and experience seem to go very far in war, despite the fact that they are easily overlooked by war planners.
I agree with the latter. The way I guess I would express it was that the larger country failed to account for the morale and will of the smaller country. What appeared to be 80/20 in favor was in reality 0/100 all along, with the failure being attributable to incomplete information.
I suspect those intangible factors are so important in fact that it is pointless to evaluate armies in a vacuum, without knowing the circumstances of the war and the resulting impacts on the will and morale of the parties. Before WWII the US had a relatively unimpressive military, but obviously that wasn't the case by the end. The war begat the military might, not the other way around, and that was due entirely to morale, public buy-in, etc.
So when you talk about a hypothetical Sino-American war, the first question should not be who has the best, or the most, Missles/Carriers/Planes. The question should be what is the war being fought over and what will the psychological impact on each country, and resulting commitment, mobilization. etc, be? Which is why I keep asking the question "where, when, what, why" and am not super interested in nuclear torpedoes or F15s vs Mig3X's
A war resulting from China's invasion of Tibet would go way different than a war resulting from China's invasion of Hawaii.