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The kidnapping of Maduro and the murder of the Ayatollah went fine for the US, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The longest US op in recent memory was Afghanistan. In the end, it was a failure of comical proportions, with the Afghan army -- painstakingly trained and equipped by the US taxpayer over two decades -- surrendering to the Taliban the moment you were out of the picture.
So as much fun as the mental image of Trump gracefully playing with the globe might be for some, let's wait a bit before we declare the New American Century 2: This time We Mean It.
I am also rather bearish on nuke interception. Israel's Iron Dome works reasonably well (though they did require the cooperation of a lot of neighbors to get through the Iranian barrage unscathed). But Israel is a tiny country which spends a lot of its GDP (and some of America's GDP) on defense. The US is significantly larger, with lots of big cities on the coasts. I am frankly doubtful that you have the tech or production advantage over China to protect LA from sub-launched nukes.
And the real power of the US lies in its coalition. For countries such as Australia, Japan, Germany etc, being allied to a mostly peaceful US has been a great deal. But as some Gulf states recently found out, it also paints a bit of a target on your back for anyone who wants to strike back at the US but can't.
So the outcome of a nuclear war with China after you spend 5% of your GDP on missile defense might be that you manage to H-bomb all of China's big cities, and they only manage to nuke LA from subs and NYC by smuggling in a nuke in a container ship. So instead, China decides to nuke Japan, South Korea, Australia plus any other countries in the Pacific which host US military. Which then motivates your remaining allies in Europe to swiftly kick you out before you get them nuked when you repeat that game with Russia.
At the end of the day, you might have thrown China back a decade (because for a regime change, you would need an invasion, and I simply do not see that happening) while only having lost your empire and tanked the global economy. Do you think Trump would win the mid-terms under these circumstances?
Edit: And as far as LEO is concerned, it should be noted that it does not take a lot to make orbits unusable to anyone. A single 5mm bearing ball hitting your satellite at some km/s relative velocity is likely to turn it into space junk. Even if your price to LEO is 100x that of SpaceX, that would not stop you from getting rid of their sats, which will be the obvious strategy once they weaponize their satellites.
Do remember that a significant chunk of the Democratic base is located in LA and NYC, and thus would not be voting in this scenario. It is not immediately clear that the swing would outweigh that.
(Yes, the incentives on Trump may in fact be perverse!)
Hold on, are we considering WW3, a full nuclear exchange, global economic collapse and megadeaths on US home soil in relation to the mid-terms? Huh?
I know it's him that brought it up... but the midterms really don't matter. Elections do not matter at all in comparison, you could have a military coup and it would barely make the top 10 most important details about this situation.
I mean, I Noticed a long time ago that nuclear war means victory for the Red Tribe in the culture war (at least in the USA, and possibly in other Western nations hit). I happen to think that tearing the Blue Tribe from power isn't actually worth that, but I suspect there are some among the Trumpists sufficiently mindkilled to disagree - at the very least, my noting this factual point has been mistaken for such Posadism on three separate occasions.
(I will cop to being more of a China hawk than I might otherwise be due to the AI issue; not due to the culture war, though.)
I would predict that in this specific scenario the mid-terms would at least still probably happen, although you are correct that it's a footnote (the broader CW point less of one, but still relatively minor).
Do not be so sure.
After The End, what would "red and blue" mean anymore, what recognizable "red culture" would still exist in Fallout universe?
Big cars, big houses and giga consumption lifestyle would be out for the foreseable future, and so will be sport obssession and religion promising prosperity and worldly success.
So would be humanitarianism, public welfare, gender-anything, social justice, climate and pretty much every last thing valued by leftists. The American blue tribe won't have much to do anymore.
In other words, the outcome of nuclear war is everyone loses.
Well, @Eetan was specifically referring to a "Fallout" scenario, in which civilization-as-we-know-it is thoroughly scrubbed.
Yea, once you start thinking what TEOTWAWKI would really mean, any triumphal hopes vanish rather fast.
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