Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
The Vietnam War was the last time anyone deliberately took on the US military in a conventional fight (Noriega and Saddam Hussein made some very bad decisions that led to a conventional confrontation, but that was very much not what they expected to happen). North Vietnam a) got pasted in basically every head-to-head engagement with US forces (and that while quality of the US military was at a low ebb) b) ultimately succeeded.
One of the consequences of US conventional dominance is that no one wants to fight us. This is good, but it also means that the amount of foreign policy problems the US has that can be solved by the brute application of conventional force is fairly low. This is compounded by the accumulated psychic damage of Vietnam and Iraq, which has greatly attenuated the ability of the USG to count on popular trust to justify a sustained war effort (which is to say, I think complaints that the public has gotten soft are misunderstanding the problem).
That is a major stumbling block for people who want the US to pursue an aggressive, hard power-oriented foreign policy. Most potential adversaries know that even if the US goes ham in the air, it isn't going to put troops on the ground to force the issue. So if you can bunker down and ideally turn up the heat in response, America will lose interest because Americans do not believe in US foreign policy. Hell, one of the reasons the US foreign policy community has been guzzling the special forces kool-aid is because promises results without the cost, footprint, or media attention of large (whether or not it delivers is another matter).
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