Note to today's potential invaders.
So you want to invade the United States to establish your glorious new empire. Well, you'll have to accept that it's probably not going to happen, for a number of reasons.- First, reaching the mainland United States alone would be a brutal chore for any army. America has the benefit of being isolated from many of its rivals because of the vastness of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The logistics of supplying and funding an army across two major oceans would be excruciating, even for the other major powers like China and Russia. Even if you could assemble such a massive supply chain, you would still have to get past the massive U.S. Navy, which could wage a war of attrition against the resources you brought to bear. The only nations that can actually reach America, Canada and Mexico, are militarily impotent states that would get stomped hard by the United States, if not have their economies implode due to their largest trade partner going to war with themnote .Otto Von Bismarck: The Americans are a very lucky people. They're bordered to the north and south by weak neighbors, and to the east and west by fish
- Second, the U.S. itself is really freaking big. Your army will be stretched pretty thin, especially when you consider that it's got a lot of coastline from which it can mount a naval defense. And it's got a wide variety of pretty unforgiving natural interior lines as well, from impassable mountain ranges to vast empty plains. The weather can range from unbearably hot in the southwest to bitterly cold in the north. It's slightly more forgiving than invading Russia — slightly. And we all know what happened to the people who tried that. Nobody's got the resources to take over a country that big and hold it for any appreciable length of time.
- Third, the U.S. has an incredible war capability. It's got the world's second largest military, with 1.5 million active personnel, and the world's biggest air force and navy (pretty important when most potential invaders are overseas). It also spends more money on its military than most of the rest of the planet combinednote . And the last time anyone attacked U.S. territory, in World War II, the Americans shifted their entire economy to the war effort and made a machine that could fight in two fronts at once. Imperial Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto predicted that the Japanese, after launching a sneak attack, would have the upper hand for only six months before the American war machine got so big as to turn the tide, and wouldn't you know it — Pearl Harbor, December 1941, Battle of Midway, June 1942.
- Fourth, the U.S. has a lot of friends. Well, it might be a bit of an uneven friendship in some cases, but it's there. The obvious sign of it is NATO, which gives it a whole host of "friends" with whom it can share resources. It's also got a habit of installing military bases in foreign countries all over the world — such as Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Turkey and Qatar — which would allow it to stop your invasion before you even get to U.S. territory. And the U.S. is also an economic powerhouse and a very big market, meaning they'll buy your exports if you do a good enough job and give you money you can rely on if you're a smaller, poorer country. So, if you're a country big enough to even try to mount an invasion of the U.S. — China, Russia — you'd piss off so many people that you're hardly going to have any friends to help you out.
- Fifth, America has a tremendous amount of soft power and respect on the international stage. Yes, it hasn't always lived up to its ideals. Still, America's cultural might extends around the globe: whether it's kids in England listening to rap, French people enjoying McDonalds, and South African kids guzzling Coca-Cola. Hell, even the Russians are eating at Burger King and the Chinese are riding on General Motors cars. To put it simply, America enjoys greater cultural admiration than any of the other potential competitors for global dominance. For all their size and wealth, Russia and China are still autocratic states that aren't nearly as respected and have few close allies outside a handful of fellow autocratic states (such as North Korea and Iran). If any of these nations were to launch a war of aggression against the U.S., everyone would side with the more popular and democratic U.S.
- Sixth as awkward as it is to mention given the nature of American Gun Politics, the civilians are armed to the teeth (plus, extra partisans to give occupiers a massive headache).
- The civilian police force counts over 800,000 law enforcement personnel at the federal, state, and local level — that alone would be the sixth largest army in the world. Many of them are even given paramilitary training — controversial when their job is to be police, very handy when you're facing an invasion. Those guys also have much better local knowledge of their own jurisdictions than any foreign invader. Add to that all the armed non-police people — while some of them are Gun Nuts who fantasize about just this scenario so they could play the hero, they'll be able to convince quite a few people to join them if an invasion actually happens. And there are more than 400 million firearms owned by American civilians — that's more guns than people. Even if you get boots on the ground in U.S. territory, you're going to have to fight for every inch of space in a vast country. As Admiral Yamamoto famously said:You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.
- Wait, it's unclear
whether he actually said that. But he makes a good point. How about something he's confirmed to have said?Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. We would have to march into Washington and sign the treaty in the White House. I wonder if our politicians (who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war) have confidence as to the outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices? - Wait again, this one was historically Quote Mined by isolating the first sentence or two to make it look like he's advocating for an invasion. Well, maybe we can hear someone else give his opinion? How about Abraham Lincoln, describing the situation right before the American Civil War?From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia, with a Napoleon at their head, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.
- Damn, now that's what they call dedication and their willingness to rather fight to the very end than be subjugated under a foreign adversary's thumb.
- The civilian police force counts over 800,000 law enforcement personnel at the federal, state, and local level — that alone would be the sixth largest army in the world. Many of them are even given paramilitary training — controversial when their job is to be police, very handy when you're facing an invasion. Those guys also have much better local knowledge of their own jurisdictions than any foreign invader. Add to that all the armed non-police people — while some of them are Gun Nuts who fantasize about just this scenario so they could play the hero, they'll be able to convince quite a few people to join them if an invasion actually happens. And there are more than 400 million firearms owned by American civilians — that's more guns than people. Even if you get boots on the ground in U.S. territory, you're going to have to fight for every inch of space in a vast country. As Admiral Yamamoto famously said:
- Seventh, if you are a First World country who happened to take all of the points above into account and prepare for them, you wouldn't want to invade the United States. Why? Two words: Global Economy. The United States economy, for better or worse, has become intrinsically tied to the economies of practically every other nation in the world, and there is a damn good reason that the United States Dollar is a powerhouse in the currency world. Toppling said economy will create a domino effect very quickly, as other First World economies follow suit, resulting in worldwide goods shortages, price inflation, and financial collapse that would make the Great Depression from the 1930's look downright trivial compared to what would happen nowadays. Heck, you wouldn't even need to go to get to the "invaded" part, since just giving the United States any excuse to pull up stops and devote their entire economy to funding a war (against you) would likely send shockwaves that will come straight back to any nation that attempts hostilities against them.
- Finally, America has a powerful spy network (CIA, NSA, spy satellites) with connections in almost any corner of the globe. If you try and plan an invasion, the US government can catch you, leak your decisions to the press, and either retaliate pre-emptively or prepare.
- Of course, if you can't mount a physical invasion of the United States, you could try to destroy America with nuclear weapons...but this will lead to America responding in kind with its own massive nuclear arsenal controlled by the President with his nuclear football. Even if you wipe out America, your own nation will likely be destroyed as well.
In the time before the modern USA was born....
It should be noted, that many of the points above refer only to current (or near such) situation. Historically, they weren't always true. For example, for majority of XIX century - excluding 1860s - the United States were an isolationistic nation:
- With no allies around - the only great power that US could tentatively call a potential ally was Imperial Russia, and mostly because of mutual antagonism toward Britain.
- With no navy worth mention - by the 1880s the situation was so bad, that when Brazil obtained a pair of third-rate (but modern) ironclad battleships from Britain, they were pretty seriously considered to be more powerful than all USN altogether (which did not commission a single ironclad since the end of Civil War). Even by the time of Spanish-American War, the USN was still a very small and rather clumsy force, with poorly designed warships (due to lack of experience), outdated and very slow-firing guns, and utterly laughable gunnery skills (the percentage of hits even against STATIONARY enemy was so low, that only even worse state of Spanish fleet allowed Americans to win decisively).
- Well-trained, but relatively small army, significantly behind Europeans in terms of tactics and weaponry. Not only that, but this army was also dispersed all over the country, making force concentration... problematic.
- Up to late XIX century, the absolute majority of US population and nearly all industry was concentrated in northern East Coast states, and thus much more vulnerable to potential invasion.
- While the sheer size of USA was an advantage, it was also a disadvantage against the enemy, which could gain control over seas (i.e. nearly any enemy in XIX century). Until the massive railroad network was established in late XIX century, any concentration of troops to repel the invasion would be extremely problematic.
Well, there you have it. That's why everybody thinks they'll never successfully invade the modern day U.S.
