BF2S Forums If the US decided to fight Iran, would Iran's military have a chance?

In a defensive war, you're fighting the population of the country, on their home terrain.
In an offensive war, you're fighting the infrastructure (financial/industrial) & government willpower.

Nobody wants to fight China or Russia when China or Russia is on defense.
You don't defeat their offensive military by defeating their military on the ground, you defeat it by overcoming their political will or their financial/infrastructural capacity to support the military.

And, really, Russia's infrastructure is weakened right now.
Too much corruption on top, too little investment in the system by the lower & middle class.
Putin has balls of steel, but he doesn't have the infrastructure to back it up.

China's infrastructure is strong, but fragile.
They're also not doing themselves any favors environmentally, trying to develop a superpower industrial economy with complete disregard for long term environmental issues.

Just read that Iran could conceivably block 1/3 of the worlds supply of Jet Fuel. Holy Shit.

Spark wrote:

20% of the world's oil goes through hormuz so yeah

Between the US and Canada, we have a shitload of coal.
Time to dust off the Fischer-Tropsch coal to fuel oil conversion process.
Desulphurization of the CO stream isn't nearly as difficult as it was in the 1940's, with dual-alkali SO2 scrubbing systems.
And, with the improved understanding of catalytic reactions, not so much 'poisoning' of the nickel/cobalt layers in the F-T reactors.

Closed loop geothermal power from the Yellowstone Caldera 'supervolcano' would be a good source of energy for static infrastructure too.
(static: non-moving, buildings.  everything not flying, floating, or driving). 
Plenty of heat from a supervolcano with a permanent pipe to the molten upper mantle.

But, y'know, we can't go using those just yet.
Have to burn up the rest of the world supply first, keep prices profitable.
Can't just go pulling the US from the world energy market - that'd make things too cheap for our rivals.

Last edited by rdx-fx (2012-04-15 08:20:27)

rdx-fx wrote:

Spark wrote:

20% of the world's oil goes through hormuz so yeah

Between the US and Canada, we have a shitload of coal.
Time to dust off the Fischer-Tropsch coal to fuel oil conversion process.
Desulphurization of the CO stream isn't nearly as difficult as it was in the 1940's, with dual-alkali SO2 scrubbing systems.
And, with the improved understanding of catalytic reactions, not so much 'poisoning' of the nickel/cobalt layers in the F-T reactors.

Closed loop geothermal power from the Yellowstone Caldera 'supervolcano' would be a good source of energy for static infrastructure too.
(static: non-moving, buildings.  everything not flying, floating, or driving). 
Plenty of heat from a supervolcano with a permanent pipe to the molten upper mantle.

But, y'know, we can't go using those just yet.
Have to burn up the rest of the world supply first, keep prices profitable.
Can't just go pulling the US from the world energy market - that'd make things too cheap for our rivals.

That's a fantastic idea. No idea why I haven't thought of that before.

Groovy, except that Yellowstone is in the middle of nowhere. Who are you going to sell power to? Montana sheep herders? Yes, it's essentially free energy, but the transmission losses would be so high that you'd probably have to overbuild by a factor of five.

Jay wrote:

Groovy, except that Yellowstone is in the middle of nowhere. Who are you going to sell power to? Montana sheep herders? Yes, it's essentially free energy, but the transmission losses would be so high that you'd probably have to overbuild by a factor of five.

You seem to know about the US power grid, continue, I have no fucking clue where we get most of our power from.

Macbeth wrote:

It would pretty much fuck up the worlds economy

A straight up war would only help our economy...  WW2 is a good example of that.  Unfortunately for us/fortunately for our enemies we have yet to fight in another "straight up war", so we are going to continue to suffer if we happen to engage in another long and pointless rebuilding stage.

Jay wrote:

specops10-4 wrote:

Jay wrote:

Groovy, except that Yellowstone is in the middle of nowhere. Who are you going to sell power to? Montana sheep herders? Yes, it's essentially free energy, but the transmission losses would be so high that you'd probably have to overbuild by a factor of five.

You seem to know about the US power grid, continue, I have no fucking clue where we get most of our power from.

Annnnd youre right!  Its very cheap to mine and transport coal, so even with the losses in transportation it still is VERY cheap energy albeit terrible for the environment.

Why not just cut out the middleman and shoot the long term unemployed? No need to bother ze Germans.

Stability leads to stagnation but whatever, I'm too tired to argue with people tonight.

specops10-4 wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

specops10-4 wrote:

A straight up war would only help our economy...  WW2 is a good example of that.  Unfortunately for us/fortunately for our enemies we have yet to fight in another "straight up war", so we are going to continue to suffer if we happen to engage in another long and pointless rebuilding stage.

A war would not help our economy. The U.S. was facing food rationing during the war. After the war our economy was only doing so well because everyone else had destroyed their countries. Stability leads to economic growth. Wars are the exact opposite of stability.

Military Industrial Complex.

Have the Iraq and Afghanistan wars been profitable?

Jay wrote:

Stability leads to stagnation but whatever, I'm too tired to argue with people tonight.

The only progress chaos produces is in the field of killing people.

Hey, you know you don't have to argue with me right now. You can leave a post here and it will still be here tomorrow. The wonders of technology.

Macbeth wrote:

Jay wrote:

Stability leads to stagnation but whatever, I'm too tired to argue with people tonight.

The only progress chaos produces is in the field of killing people.

Hey, you know you don't have to argue with me right now. You can leave a post here and it will still be here tomorrow. The wonders of technology.

War isn't the only form of chaos. Chaos occurs every day in billions of transactions between individuals. The only form of non-chaos is that which is imposed by others on the system in the form of rules and regulations. It's akin to the difference between an unlined sketch pad and a coloring book. With the sketch pad the only real limits are the size of the paper and your imagination. With a paint by numbers coloring book, you're given much stricter parameters.

New industries are like the sketch book. Crony capitalism hasn't reared its ugly head yet, regulations are lax or non-existent, and the players involved are free to take pretty much any path they can. Once the industry becomes established, they buy politicians, create a bunch of rules and put up high barriers to entry for any new players. They create artificial stability and a steady revenue stream, but the consumer suffers for it. Economic stability only benefits the established players in a given society.

I prefer innovation and an open environment to stagnation and stifling rules.