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Yeah, there's a lot of ruin in a nation, and people are actually quite adaptable, especially over a long period and generally like living. What surprised me personally was the durability of the Venezuelan regime. You seem to have had a perfect storm of bad general economic trends...

Fair enough, the 20 years was Zachowon's point below. Yes, and I've already said the US is better than others for holding onto that experience and lessons learned. Otherwise, its just you insisting its extremely important. I'm less sure of how important it actually is. Especially in a...

You asked why I didn't consider those as part of the experience in the last 20 years. I answered. The fact that there was combat more than 20 years ago was irrelevant to your question. Now its just a question of how much more valuable the most senior leadership having some combat experience in...

Gulf War 1 and 2 are more than 20 years ago. Duh. My Dad served during Gulf 1, and retired shortly after we started Iraq War II. That one was fought in 2003. It is now 2024. Just about everyone who was a pilot in Iraq II who did their 20 years is retired now. Some of the people from Iraq II...

Sure, but Japan trying to blockade China probably would be.

In the last 20 years besides running exercises? Not particularly. I guess there's ISIS, but I'm not sure how much that really counts more than just running exercises.

So, how many people who faught in Praying Mantis are still serving? Since it was 36 years ago, I'm sure the number isn't zero, but its close to. And anyone who was in any sort of leadership position then is likely well retired or dead. In which case the way the current US Navy is "experienced"...

In which case we seem to be talking about China's ability to win WWIII. Which seems to be a different issue than Peter's claim. If by Piracy Peter means WWIII, then he's choosing an extremely poor term for what he means. The range of things China could do also seems to be dramatically...

I mean, if all the fleet has to do is beat up pirates, your not actually talking about ships particularly more complex than civilian, which the Chinese already build 23 million tons of a year. This seems a bit of a mote and bailey here: Warships might be hard to build, and the Chinese currently...

Well, unless I'm thinking of the wrong video, isn't his point there that China's tonnage doesn't matter for the kind of problem Peter is predicting, namely pirates? Like, sure China has a smaller navy tonnage wise might mean China can't win a head on head WWIII naval war with the US with its...

Review/Critique of Zeilhan, mostly looking at his general China claims.

Well, that can be part of how foreign intervention is seen as and is successful or not. An intervention that half the population think is a bad idea in principle is one more likely to be seen as a failure because the entire premise of the thing isn't supported. Vietnam certainly was less...

Eh, I'm not sure how much credit to give for noticing Donald Trump voters exist, especially if the diagnosis doesn't seem to have much explanatory power. For example, he seems to put a lot of weight on domestic oil production as a cause for the relative isolationist position, which I'm not sure...

Sure, which is one reason I didn't initially quote him: what struck me which crystalized my general issue with Zeihan was that first sentence that Zeihan doesn't understand the US. That's part of my argument. I'm not really resting on the specifics of his arguments.

Yeah, there's some things that are likely to push America back, but that is very different than America just "pulling out". Afghanistan might be a good example there: America didn't really "pull out" of Afghanistan. Practically, it was pushed out. The big picture difference on that is that...

Yeah, I think that was the one.

I ran into a video which I think put its finger on one of the major problems with Peter and his predictions: he doesn't really understand the US in any real way. For instance, much of his predictions of the future rests on the US "pulling out" of the rest of the world in some substantial way...

Eh, this is more a matter of faith than historical example. Mercenaries worked quite well for the Spanish empire for quite a while. Hannibal had a basically mercenary army, and he did quite well there too. They operate differently, so they optimize differently, but saying their blanket...

Eh, I somewhat disagree, but haven't been following too closely, and we do clearly have a degree of difference in expectations, and likely scale of the issue. You may be right, we will see once everythings clears up a bit post war.

Eh, I disagree generally. Mostly though I think it comes down to expectations: the Russians have more or less performed as expected to me, in line with their historical performances for at least the last 30 years, if not longer. And while its not great for them that they adapt slowly, I also...