I don’t have any thorough knowledge of military history but this is not at all my impression:
France was extremely underprepared for both WW1 and WW2.
Nazi Germany didn’t really have any grand war plan and was lucky to stumble into a blitzkrieg and open another front by launching Barbarossa out of severe economic necessities.
Israel seemed to be underprepared for Operation Badr, the initially successful Egyptian offensive during Yom Kippur War. (Well, not a global war but definitely existential for Israel.)
To be clear, my main point was that they spend a lot of attention/work on the issue, not that they’re doing a highly competent job. The US spends almost $800 B per year on the military, a whole lot of which is just there to prepare for future potential conflicts. Other countries of course also have large military presences, even if they don’t have active conflicts.
My impression is that a lot of this money is being spent highly inefficiently, but it’s definitely being spent.
On “incredibly well prepared”, I just meant, “well for what I could expect from the government”. The US military has 600 international bases, and the US does lots of diplomacy in order to better secure its longstanding military strategic position. Other large governments do similar diplomatic measures.
I think it’s very easy to find flaws in these systems, but they seem more important to said governments than the vast majority of their priorities, and I think they’re correspondingly often taking fairly reasonable actions.
I have a lot of unnecessary knowledge about military history and I don’t agree with these examples:
France was extremely underprepared for both WW1 and WW2.
In both WW1 and WW2, France was formidable. In WW2, many people thought it was crazy for the Germans to go to war or attack France as soon as it did. It was astonishing to many to learn about speed of Germany’s success.
Nazi Germany didn’t really have any grand war plan and was lucky to stumble into a blitzkrieg and open another front by launching Barbarossa out of severe economic necessities.
Nazi Germany had a very solid war plan and position before Barbarossa. No one including the allies thought the Soviets would hold out. It’s unclear what “severe economic necessities” means, but it does suggests some intense, proximate motivation for an attack. But the Soviets were delivering many trains of precious raw materials of rare metals and oil in a lavish trade deal. This occurred up to the last hours before the attack.
Probably a better example is Japan, who had a very poor position in natural resources and felt forced to attack the allies US as a result of the US oil embargo.
Israel seemed to be underprepared for Operation Badr, the initially successful Egyptian offensive during Yom Kippur War. (Well, not a global war but definitely existential for Israel.)
I don’t think the Egyptian’s initial success, which was reversed by the end of this conflict, is related to this point. If anything, Israel’s supreme, carefully maintained military position in the region for half a century is evidence of the original point. The Israeli nuclear program, which definitely would have played a role if things became “existential” during 1973, is probably a good example of 40-100 years of planning.
I think my responses above don’t touch on the main issue.
The more direct reply is that ex-post realizations of losing or winning isn’t a good argument that good military planning or strategy is ineffectual or isn’t extensively planned 40 years in advance. It seems that governments spend enormous effort trying to ensure success. The fact that some get stomped doesn’t seem a surprisingly outcome for a complex adversarial conflict.
Thank you; really appreciate this comment! Short on time, so briefly:
I will basically affirm that you are right about Israel (overall) being a supporting example;
I still disagree about WW2 and was aware of things you mentioned. I think I would need to think more but at least my initial comment wasn’t appropriately qualified. Further, severe economic necessities (a constant shortage of metals/grains/oil, which the USSR covered only partially) might make it self-defeating.
Methodologically, yeah, ex-post cherry-picking is bad as most of the successes are unseen (when war actually doesn’t happen like between NATO and USSR/China). But enormous trying isn’t in itself supportive as not all bloated prestigious buerocracies are doing a reasonable job.
I don’t have any thorough knowledge of military history but this is not at all my impression:
France was extremely underprepared for both WW1 and WW2.
Nazi Germany didn’t really have any grand war plan and was lucky to stumble into a blitzkrieg and open another front by launching Barbarossa out of severe economic necessities.
Israel seemed to be underprepared for Operation Badr, the initially successful Egyptian offensive during Yom Kippur War. (Well, not a global war but definitely existential for Israel.)
To be clear, my main point was that they spend a lot of attention/work on the issue, not that they’re doing a highly competent job. The US spends almost $800 B per year on the military, a whole lot of which is just there to prepare for future potential conflicts. Other countries of course also have large military presences, even if they don’t have active conflicts.
My impression is that a lot of this money is being spent highly inefficiently, but it’s definitely being spent.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272473/us-military-spending-from-2000-to-2012/
On “incredibly well prepared”, I just meant, “well for what I could expect from the government”. The US military has 600 international bases, and the US does lots of diplomacy in order to better secure its longstanding military strategic position. Other large governments do similar diplomatic measures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases
I think it’s very easy to find flaws in these systems, but they seem more important to said governments than the vast majority of their priorities, and I think they’re correspondingly often taking fairly reasonable actions.
I have a lot of unnecessary knowledge about military history and I don’t agree with these examples:
In both WW1 and WW2, France was formidable. In WW2, many people thought it was crazy for the Germans to go to war or attack France as soon as it did. It was astonishing to many to learn about speed of Germany’s success.
Nazi Germany had a very solid war plan and position before Barbarossa. No one including the allies thought the Soviets would hold out. It’s unclear what “severe economic necessities” means, but it does suggests some intense, proximate motivation for an attack. But the Soviets were delivering many trains of precious raw materials of rare metals and oil in a lavish trade deal. This occurred up to the last hours before the attack.
Probably a better example is Japan, who had a very poor position in natural resources and felt forced to attack the
alliesUS as a result of the US oil embargo.I don’t think the Egyptian’s initial success, which was reversed by the end of this conflict, is related to this point. If anything, Israel’s supreme, carefully maintained military position in the region for half a century is evidence of the original point. The Israeli nuclear program, which definitely would have played a role if things became “existential” during 1973, is probably a good example of 40-100 years of planning.
I think my responses above don’t touch on the main issue.
The more direct reply is that ex-post realizations of losing or winning isn’t a good argument that good military planning or strategy is ineffectual or isn’t extensively planned 40 years in advance. It seems that governments spend enormous effort trying to ensure success. The fact that some get stomped doesn’t seem a surprisingly outcome for a complex adversarial conflict.
Thank you; really appreciate this comment! Short on time, so briefly:
I will basically affirm that you are right about Israel (overall) being a supporting example;
I still disagree about WW2 and was aware of things you mentioned. I think I would need to think more but at least my initial comment wasn’t appropriately qualified. Further, severe economic necessities (a constant shortage of metals/grains/oil, which the USSR covered only partially) might make it self-defeating.
Methodologically, yeah, ex-post cherry-picking is bad as most of the successes are unseen (when war actually doesn’t happen like between NATO and USSR/China). But enormous trying isn’t in itself supportive as not all bloated prestigious buerocracies are doing a reasonable job.