In Defense of the Red Army

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by castlebravo92

A couple of points. One, the US superiority in technology was marginal, at best. Mig 15 vs F-86 is basically a tossup (and Russian pilots were often in those Mig 15s). T-34/85 vs Shermans? Situationally a toss-up, with some advantages to the T-34 and vise versa. Artillery? Toss-up. Small arms? M1 Garand is better than the Mosin, but sub-machine guns probably equivalent.

Those are fair comparisons, but the list is incomplete and belies the argument that US technical superiority was marginal, at best. In addition to Vesper's examples re MBTs, in the air, the USA used radar-equipped strategic bombers, to which the PLA had nothing comparable. Radar-equipped night fighters helped the UN rule the night sky. At sea, the USA employed aircraft carriers and battleships, neither of which the PLA had a single example (in fact, the Chinese had no navy to speak of). And American fighting men on land, at sea, and in the air, benefitted from relatively widespread radio communications equipment while the Chinese had to rely largely on field telephones and bugles. That's a marked technological advantage to the USA/UN.

Originally Posted by castlebravo92

Two, the US never really tried to decisively defeat the PLA. We never attacked mainland China*, and once the Chinese got involved, never had enough troops to wage any sort of decisive offensive campaign (Chinese had 1.7x the troops the Americans and their allies did).

This is the same argument made to excuse American failings in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and it misses the point, by ignoring the fact that in our system- in fact, in all democracies- military and government are inextricably linked. The Commander-in-Chief is a civilian. Congress (civilians all) holds the purse-strings. The voters have considerable indirect influence over strategic military decisions. The argument that "the American military could/would have won X, Y, Z if the politicians hadn't interfered" is like arguing that "I could swim a lot further under water if my body didn't require oxygen". It's a systemic issue, and the system is such that military decisions and political decisions cannot be separated. The US military doesn't operate in a vacuum.

Korea is a good example. It was not a popular war. The American public was especially war-weary after the preceding four years of total, world war. There was little political will to expand the war. Truman pursued a negotiated peace. Although this probably contributed to his defeat to Eisenhower in 1952, Ike (now a civilian) continued the policy.

This is, I believe, is actually an argument in defense of the Red Army. In WW2, the Soviet Union survived massive military casualties and still managed to defeat the German military. Although there were number of factors that contributed to this ultimate victory, a major one was the willpower and total control of the vicious Soviet dictator. Would the USA have continued to fight on two years into the war if it had been the ally to sustain millions of casualties? We'll never know, but I doubt it.

We're seeing something similar today in Ukraine. By many estimates, the Russians have already lost twice as many troops KIA (100,000 being a conservative estimate) in just under three years of combat in Ukraine than the USA lost in nearly ten years in Vietnam (58,000). We saw the American public largely turn against the war in Vietnam, in large part due to mounting casualties (with few strategic gains to show for them). Because of Putin's unchecked power, the Russian public has no choice but to accept rising casualties and economic costs, even without significant strategic success to show for them. The war in Ukraine grinds on.

To bring this back to WWIII/the Twilight War, NATO's strategic military decisions would be more impacted by the public's attitudes towards the war than would the Warsaw Pact's. This would give the latter more leeway in conducting military operations. This is a strategic advantage.

Originally Posted by castlebravo92

While in modern times US systems have advanced substantially compared to peer/near peer tech, another thing that sets the US apart is largely the level of training that troops get. Training like this would become a luxury as a Twilight level war would eat up troops as fast as you could deploy them, which is the real reason why I think you would see "parity" between the combatants (especially once nukes started flying and casualties really ramped up).

This is a very important point (with which I agree completely).


*Douglas MacArthur pushed hard for strategic bombing of mainland China, even advocating the use of nuclear weapons. This is one of the reasons Truman sacked him. It's also ironic because it was MacArthur's refusal to take seriously then copious available intelligence reports of China's imminent entry into the war that allowed the PLA to push UN forces back to the 38th Parallel in the first place.

To your point, given how North Vietnam withstood a greater tonnage of bombs than the entire Axis absorbed during WW2, I doubt that strategic bombing of China- a much larger country- would have made a decisive difference in the outcome of the Korean War.

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