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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (27770)	4/29/2002 11:42:45 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

<there is no way in Hell that we could conquer and subject to our will the continent of Africa.> Of course there is. Just land and start shooting. Kill anyone who moves who isn't in a US military uniform. Pretty soon the USA military would have the continent to themselves. Sure, it would be Hell on earth, but it could be done. Easy peasy. I don't think it would be a utilitarianism thing to do, but people have done all sorts of vicious things in history. Heck, even right now there are thousands of nukes ready to destroy billions of people, so the idea of mass extermination remains top of mind and right there in the MAD military plans. Mqurice

To: Bilow who wrote (27770)	4/29/2002 11:47:27 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 281500

Okay. We don't have enough military force to successfully occupy and subdue even the fairly poor continent of Africa. I think this idea was covered by "Of course its hard to boil that down to a percentage because there are different types of power and different amounts of power in different areas." and "Of course its not a simple comparison of numbers. Having perhaps 35% of the world's military power doesn't mean we can automatically easily dispatch a coalition with 20% or even a force with less then 5% when conditions are unvfavorable and your enemy is determined" We could bomb the crap out of Africa if we wanted to, but they can't bomb the crap out of us. That's "something", but it's not enough to allow us to extend our will over that continent. Having 30 or even 40% of the world's military power doesn't mean that we could easily occupy 30 or 40% of the world. We can't occupy Africa but we are more powerful then all of Africa combined. Thats all I meant by my rough estimate of military power. tim