It's curious how Russia can't seem to defeat Ukraine, and the US is having so much difficulty with Iran.
12d 7h ago by lemmy.world/u/finallymadeanaccount in justpost
The two superpowers (since the term itself was coined) having such difficulty with comparatively small nations. Does it force a rethink of their status?
Not a military strategist, but 3 things that are easily observable:
- Iran and Ukraine are fighting on home turf.
- The US and Russia were massively overconfident. Both thought a small operation to kill the top brass would cause Ukraine and Iran to topple.
- The asymmetry of objectives. The US and Russia are fighting wars of choice, while Ukraine and Iran fight wars of necessity for their survival.
Not just that, but drones have become a hell of an equalizer, especially for attrition. At this point, wars are fought on spreadsheets as much as on battlefields. Trump's battleship idea is even worse, as it's extremely costly and could be taken out by a handful of drones at less than $50k combined. Honestly it reminds me of when I was a kid screwing around on my step dad's work computer and made a car in CAD. He broke it down and turned it into a blue print for me. That's exactly what the military did when he said he wanted a battleship. "Sure kiddo, well mock up some prints and do a little video for the ship you designed."
Russias dominance was highly over inflated. The assumption was that it had the full and well maintained remnants of Soviet union military might. In reality, 30+ years of corruption, just lying and absolutely minimal if any maintenance at all resulted in everything basically rusting away.
US still has it's military might, it's just being run by an imbecile.
I disagree! It's being run by an entire cabinet, congress and senate of imbeciles.
My vote's for the raging drunk with the breath of a keg.
You'll have to be more specific 🤣
Completely fair and i have no arguments over that.
Many of the Gulf states are starting to question just how effective the US defence umbrella is, considering how little effort the US put into defending them.
Russia wasn't a superpower to begin with. If the US committed as many resources and men to taking Iran as Russia is to taking Ukraine, I bet they'd come a lot further. But there is no appetite in the US for another war, so Trump can't commit more to the war. I think the attack on Iran sucks most for Taiwan, as it shows China that while the US may be able to project force more than any other nation, they get tired very easily. If it came to an all-out war between China and the US over the invasion of Taiwan, if only a single carrier group got destroyed, the voices to drop Taiwan would grow very loud.
Another reason why Trump ruining our relationship with our long-standing allies is so short-sighted. The US was able to project power so far out because our allies enabled us. The logistics to support any operation lasting more than a few weeks would be very hard without the hundreds of bases we have scattered across the world and the freedom to move through so much friendly land and airspace without getting shot at.
I think the attack on Iran sucks most for Taiwan, as it shows China that while the US may be able to project force than any other nation, they get tired very easily.
Yes, but it also shows that a relatively weak nation can deny waterways to much more powerful navy. Taiwan is already working very closely with Ukraine on getting naval drones for that reason.
Russia is no longer a superpower. With the 9th largest economy and population that is to be expected. The only way it can compete is by using its military. The issue here is that it did inherit the Soviet Unions fairly capable military, but due to not having the same resources as the Soviet Union(it lost like half the population and a good chunk of its economy when it broke up), it was unable to maintain that. So a huge part of the number of tanks, planes and so forth Russia had on paper, just did not work properly. So when they invaded they were unable to win.
Iran and the US are a different story. The US was clearly capable of basically destroying the Iranian air force and navy with relative ease. The main issue is that it does not take much to close a strait. We have seen that with the Houthis and the Bab El Mandeb earlier. Basically the only way to deal with that is to invade Iran and everybody knows this will be very bloody. The US could probably do that, but chooses not to.
Generally speaking a superpower is a country, which position is considered by all other countries when making important decisions. This does not mean that they do what they want, but they certainly think about it. Currently that is the case for the US and China. I doubt this is going to change for the US here. They have clearly shown to be able to cause some serious damage against Iran, which is on the other site of the globe for them.
A Great Power is a country, which can influence decisions all over the world, if they want to. Currently that is probably France, UK and Russia with India, Germany and Japan being somewhat close as well.
Although the war is seriously hurting the Russian ability to project power abroad. They were unable to seriously support Venezuela and Iran, when they needed help. Sure they seem to supply some inteligence to Iran, but without the war against Ukraine, they could have delivered weapons. In the case of Venezuela that happened a bit, but it was token support. They also lost Wagner and seem to have issues with their power projection in Africa due to that. A big part of that is that the long range aviation has been hit hard by Ukraine. Also the navy has a lack of large new warships like destroyers. Their weapon sales are also down. It would take a long time to rebuilt that and it is entirly possible, that they end up not being even a great power after this.
If Ukraine wins the war, then the Russian economy will be in decline as war spending is already falling and their exports are mostly fossil fuels, which have been hit by Ukrainian drones. They also would lose millions living in the land they took from Ukraine and the economic decline will be accelerated by Central Asian migrants not coming as oppurtunites at home or in other countries are just better. That also makes rebuilding their military much much harder. Especially global power projection is very expensive after all.
The US could take over Iran easily but it’d require a full ground invasion and political will that isn’t there. There’d be videos on socials of US soldiers getting blown to bits by drones which would be a disaster for the republicans.
Without that, to keep the Strait closed all Iran has to do is keep the threat active which isn’t very costly comparatively.
And even with that, they’d need a continued presence indefinitely or they’d just hand it back to them when they left like they did with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
They’ve also spent generations compartmentalising and decentralising their command structures in preparation for this war so for every commander they kill a new one pops up to replace them.
We’re in a very dangerous position right now. If the Strait stays closed it will cause a global depression within a few months. China gets 35% of its energy through the straight and could pass advanced targeting data + supersonic anti-ship missiles to Iran to enable them to clear the blockade. Who knows how Trump would respond to that. Apparently he’s already written a letter to Xi asking him to pls not do that 😂
China would much prefer to do nothing of course but if they’re backed into a corner all bets are off.
There are multiple factions in Iran, and it seems the main one isn’t for backing down so we need Trump to be able to frame his defeat as a win somehow and fuck off before this gets really messy.
On Russia, it has a smaller GDP than Italy and it’s not just competing against Ukraine but Ukraine + support from Europe and partial support from the US depending on Trumps mood.
On both fronts it has created a rallying around the flag effect where the threat is existential to the population. That is very hard to beat.
Trump and his minions were hoping for a rebellion they could back/support in Iran - but instead the natives are surrounding power plants and acting as human shields.
Both Russia (well, the USSR) and the US lost in Afghanistan. In asymmetrical warfare a superpower's strength can be turned into a weakness.
First of all, defending is much more easier than attacking. Also, as said in other comments, Russia isn't a superpower, wasn't for a long time. And US is decimating Iran successfully, which is really impressive with how far it is from them. But Iran just isn't giving up, no matter its citizens or economy. They just try to piss everyone so much that Trump will be forced to give up, even though they are winning militarily.