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[GavJ]

Thread doesnt really fully make sense without objectives. You can't just be abstractly "at war." What for? You need to know because what is winning?

[NullForceOmega]

There is one more point in th U.S. favor that is not being accounted for here.  Even with a very rough parity of forces, the U.S. simply has the capacity to outproduce almost every other nation on Earth.  While many of our factories are currently mothballed, an all out war with the EU would push us onto full wartime footing, and historicly that does not go well for anyone.  We're also sitting on what is probably the single largest aggregate of material resources on the planet.

[martinuzz]

Thread doesnt really fully make sense without objectives. You can't just be abstractly "at war." What for? You need to know because what is winning?

Since when did wars start needing reason?

[GavJ]

...? Since always?

If there is no reason, then the answer is simple: EU and America both win, by just doing nothing. 

The outcome of the war depends heavily on the necessary objective: occupation? complete destruction (and of civilians? For example, both of them get some idea in their heads of a race war)? Merely stopping the other side from doing something unacceptable, such as proliferating some new weapon, or doing something that endangers life? Control of some vital new resource that new technology has just uncovered? Etc.  All very very different strategies to fight those different wars.

The E.U. "Turtling" for example is stupid if it's the U.S. that needs to be stopped from doing something, because they'd just ignore you if you turtled and go on and do that thing and you auto-lose...

Whereas if it's a new resource in Europe, then doing anything but turtling is probably absurd.

etc. etc.

[Strife26]

Conditional curbstomp of Europe in almost any case that doesn't use some weird restriction. The United States military apparatus is the only country left that does shit like force projection or heavy scale combat. The really scary thought is how much that's fallen off. America's a brigade (and common times battalion even) based Army now instead of one that fields Divisions and Corps.


Also, the idea that the Abrams is outclassed and outclasses evenly amongst European main battle tanks is more than a little ridiculous.


 

[MonkeyHead]

Also, the idea that the Abrams is outclassed and outclasses evenly amongst European main battle tanks is more than a little ridiculous.

This I would agree with. The Challenger 2, Leopard 2 and T-90 come close (as does possibly the Le Clerk at a push) or outperform in specific ways but the Abrams is a better overall package, despite some misplaced concerns over the nature of its engine.

[Strife26]

It's a more finicky engine than the others in some respects, but it also greatly outperforms. The finickiness is compensated by the fact that the US is more than happy just to swap the damn thing out if it gets to be a problem (assuming wartime conditions, here).

[Phmcw]

America has never been cost efficient and its power never came for the military : it's the other way around, america have a huge army becaause of its huge economy and scientific dominance. On the field, the Americain army don't perform that well for its price, and is rarely used efficiently (see war in Iraq, War in afganistan, Vietnam,....). On the other hand, European power tend to use their armies more efficiently and more cost effectively.

That being said, European command isn't unified, our force projection capacities are not enough to launch an invasion and we have no military bases in the united states while they have a lot of them in Europe. Intelligence wise, all of our communication are intercepted by the US and much of our hardware rely on Americain tech. Politically, our administration are infiltrated by americain intelligence and Americain agencies are known to operate on our soil.

I don't think we could mount an attack of the US without them knowing. So the US will have the initiative, and will be able to launch an attack from its base in Europe. The war would be over in a few hours.

I expect them to fail the occupation though, and to ruin themselves trying to control a rapidely crumbling Europe.

[pisskop]

Thread doesnt really fully make sense without objectives. You can't just be abstractly "at war." What for? You need to know because what is winning?

Since when did wars start needing reason?

Aye, last night it occurred to me that if the US and EU started to fight without a proper falling out a new age of . .  . Dark Ages would fall upon humanity.  Without the 'peacekeepers' of the world, every despot would logically make gains.  Look at Russia, not even waiting!

So imagine every ambitious ruler with a dispute attacking their neighbor as the big brothers of the world are infighting.

Also yep, I have my doubts about Russia and China staying neutral in a US/EU war.  I think its the potential for gang ups that keep peace more than any real peacekeeping effort.

[Sensei]

If we want the perfect theatre for an armchair war, which will force either side to pit their forces against eachother in large battles on their own ground (very unlikely in the modern world) we should simply assume that each side's goal is the capture the other's Flag, which is in a well defended but known location of each faction's choosing.

[Flying Dice]

America has never been cost efficient and its power never came for the military : it's the other way around, america have a huge army becaause of its huge economy and scientific dominance. On the field, the Americain army don't perform that well for its price, and is rarely used efficiently (see war in Iraq, War in afganistan, Vietnam,....). On the other hand, European power tend to use their armies more efficiently and more cost effectively.

[citation needed]

The U.S. had trouble in Vietnam (and in Afghanistan as well as Gulf War Two: Electric Boogaloo) for an obvious reason: we were trying to fight asymmetric conflicts against what were functionally loosely organized militias capable of striking, dropping their weapons, and blending with civilian populations... with a military designed to take on the Soviets in a straight war. Note that the exact same thing happened to European states in the same situations (in the same places, even); the French were chased out of Vietnam and ex-Soviet soldiers could have given a word of advice or three to the U.S. about the sort of quagmire that Afghanistan turns in to when you try to occupy it. It's been more than a decade and only now are we starting to see noticeable changes targeted directly at fighting that sort of conflict.

The plain truth is that U.S. military force is still largely oriented around a type of war that really isn't fought any more -- large, powerful states don't war amongst themselves in this era. That said, that's also why the U.S. could utterly curbstomp just about any other state or group of states (barring something like U.S. vs. the world), because apart from China (whose arms are vastly out of date) nobody else bothers trying to field large militaries, not least because most of the other states which potentially could no longer have colonies to hold, and prefer to use their income for other things, especially given that many of them are in NATO and as such would reasonably expect U.S. support if for some reason they did need a big, stompy military machine for a few months.

--

Now, another question: What would the outcome have been if the Cold War had never existed, because the East-West conflict went hot as soon as Berlin fell?

[pisskop]

US would have won in that case.

But, I have more doubts about their win the longer the cold war did go on.  I think that had we fought at or around the Korean War we would have been in much less of a position to win.

---US soldiers were better Equipped, better fed, treated better with better technology.

[MonkeyHead]

In the case of a US invasion of the EU, I don't think the EU would play into the US hands of large set piece battles though - it would be a lot of hit and runs, constantly falling back, and high mobility/small scale actions (what with that being the focus of so many modern armed forces in the EU - flexibility over single specific mission effectiveness), aided by the total lack of any kind of supply lines. Of course the US would look to cause large scale engagements for the high force kerbstomp mentioned by Strife earlier, but I don't see either side playing to the others strengths.

If the Red army and the Allies kept on fighting after the fall of Berlin, I would have expected initial gains on the ground by the Soviets, possibly due to sheer weight of numbers alone before Allied air (mass bombing on Soviet cities, and fighter cover) and naval superiority (bottling the Soviets up in the Baltic or black sea, and playing hell with coastal cities) would have stopped and reversed that. I do think however that the Allies would have never made a land assault on Russia itself having learnt from Hitler's mistake, and instead have been content with pushing the soviets back to their own border, or possibly looking to force a regime change, which would have been more than enough of a victory for the US and UK.

[mainiac]

The U.S. had trouble in Vietnam (and in Afghanistan as well as Gulf War Two: Electric Boogaloo) for an obvious reason: we were trying to fight asymmetric conflicts against what were functionally loosely organized militias capable of striking, dropping their weapons, and blending with civilian populations... with a military designed to take on the Soviets in a straight war.

Honestly it's somewhat amazing how well the occupation of Iraq was handled given the impossible task requested by civilian leadership.  For a military to be asked to do a building by building clearance of a major city and walk out with only hundreds of casualties is actually pretty damn impressive.

Europe invading the US in the absence of a navy is pretty simple.  Just send the troops across the Canadian border to seize the adjacent states.  Don't even need to hold the territory, once the damage is done, Euro has won.

[gigaraptor487]

this needs to be a forum game.