Greetings Friends. So this is a similar concept to what I've been talking about as far as the causality of current wars and so on but in theory is still worth thinking and writing about. If you listen to Western Military leaders a lot of it is about "How do we deter Iran or the Houthis from fucking with us" and fundamentally the question is why would they not care about the American military response. The answer is fundamentally we are away from the unique era where deterrence exists as Nuclear Weapon usage fades from living memory so those can't function as a deterrent until they get used again (which is more likely now than at any point since the early 1960s, but still not very likely); so we are back to Great Power politics or strategic competition or whatever and the concept of global Prestige is more meritorious than anything resembling deterrence...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................American Prestige started to fade with COVID as 1.2 million Americans died as a result of it compared to 5.8 million for the entire rest of the world, if the most powerful country suffers the most then that's an indication that they aren't actually that powerful anymore with the inability to stop the spread of a contagion (due to lack of social control or the president(s) being a moron or whatever), obviously there are a multitude more factors in how and why COVID happened the way it did but those are the ones that are prominent and easily perceived by friends and foes alike. After this we had the withdrawal from Afghanistan which might as well be a total defeat for a 20 year war which didn't accomplish much of anything and then the invasion of Ukraine and October 7th; at this point its safe to assume there isn't that much American prestige on the global scale on the whole so my question is how do you stop the decline of American prestige or is there a way to stop it............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................So fundamentally I think the only way to regain prestige is an extraordinary military success against a peer competitor; the US could technically win the war in Ukraine on a whim (and risk nuclear escalation) but that doesn't seem to be in the cards so we'll just have China be the only peer competitor in this scenario. IF China invades Taiwan and the US helps stop it inflicting a catastrophic defeat then the US will re-emerge as the world leader at least for 5-10 years; I still think China will get back in position and return to the pre WWI-ish alliance system state that we're in right now but technically the US does have an out for prestige regrowth assuming China invades Taiwan. If China just does nothing for 20 years then they will probably automatically become more prestigious over time as the US becomes less prestigious both because of that and additional other factors; mostly just the progression of time. China does appear to have a superior industrial base for military procurement presently even if we still have the technological advantage in most areas, so while we have the Gerald R. Ford aircraft Carrier we lack the ability to produce more of them quickly enough but China could theoretically produce more carrier strike groups over time with their larger naval production capabilities; same is true of other areas though I would assume the US still has the advantage purely for aircraft (this is a vague area with untested systems so on one actually knows until a war breaks out)
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