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Originally Posted by lwd
You can compair potentials. If someone postulates a detailed what if then there may be enough data to postulate whether it's reasonable and/or where it leads.
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Indeed, and looking at the state of morale is just as reasonable as looking at military resources.
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Nebulous a takes on b doesn't cut it however.
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Which is what this debate is, a very unspecific 'could a take on b,' now however much data you may pull up on military potential there are other factors which would probably prove pivotal. Unless you can assess these the argument is likely bunk.
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In this case it looks to me like whoever is the aggressor gets a plus for initial surprise but a minus for moral unless the war goes very well very quickly which I don't see happening for either side. There are also tremendous time variables unframed: does this hypothetical conflict start while the war is still going on? Right after VE day? Sometime in the summer of 45? or the fall? or winter? or 46? ....
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The eternal problem with counterfactuals eh?
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You forgot to add before dominating the world to the last sentance. At least this was the stated goal. Whether or not people believed it was possible or what time frame they believed it was possible in are other questions.
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Nope, world domination is not a tennant of communism, the spreading of an ideal is but world domination is not.
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It's not that the variable is written off it's that it is undefined. You can as I stated talk military potential without it. Actually putting together a coherent what if would require defining a lot more interrelated variables that could potentially have a radical effect on the outcome.
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But without it any statement on military potential is meaningless, just as to talk about the physical state of two boxers is pretty irrelevant without consideration of whether they actually want to win a fight.
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The US already had supply lines that spanned the globe where are they going to find these "near impossible distances". The USSR would likely have had more problems with its supply lines due at least in part to allied strategic air but also limited logistic vehicles and routes.
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The same place the Germans did, as well as through the (even today untamed) expances of Eastern Russia.
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The US army was in the Pacific also Even tank armies aren't going to fair well if they are in range of US naval gunfire. Again what happens depends on when the scenario starts. My impression is prior to June of 44 the Soviet presence in the far east was rather small. Even afterwards it wasn't huge. If the Soviets try to defend the far east they have to tie up a lot of troops as the US can land in numerous locations or move through China. In some cases and times they might have to go through the Japanese or the Chinese communist but that's doable.
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Slon covered most of this, however the assumption of an easy romp through China is flawed and the idea of using naval firepower in an area the size of which we are considering is difficult at best.