[Clubber]

Because if we go to war with China, they have a lot more people to throw at us than we have active in the military. Any slightly protracted war will require a draft. I'm sure you filled out your draft card when you turned 18 like I did, even when there was no draft. That's so if and when they needed to reinstate it, it would pick up almost seamlessly where it left off.

>Are you implying that only people serving in the military should have a say in foreign policy?

No, I'm implying before people rah rah to defend Taiwan, they actually understand what that means; it probably won't mean sending only active duty and reserves after a year or two and that a draft will most likely occur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_global_manpower_fit_fo...

Even with a full, aggressive draft, we'll need allies who are also willing to draft their citizens.

[dullcrisp]

I do hope it wouldn’t come to that, but I also don’t think we can afford to immediately capitulate to any state with more manpower out of fear and still consider ourselves to be a world power.

If China has us completely militarily outmatched then of course we can’t afford to provoke them, but it’s not my sense that we’re ready to accept that currently.

[Clubber]

I agree. What's the point of a massive military if you can't scare people with it? All I'm saying is we need to be careful what we wish for and understand what we are getting into. If congress thinks the population is itching to go to war, they might just get us into one (again).

Like you said, we haven't had a draft in decades. People might think we won't ever have one, and those people would be mistaken.

[jltsiren]

Naval warfare is more about hardware than manpower. American casualties in the Pacific Theater of WW2 were only ~100k dead and ~200k wounded.

The US alone would lose in that as well, because its shipbuilding capacity is minimal. But together with South Korea and Japan, it could compete against China on a level ground.

[JumpCrisscross]

China has the ability to strike the American heartland, including naval production, in ways Japan did not.

We’re also at risk of losing strategic depth: how many more years of provocations from Washington do you think it would take a South American, Mexican or the Caribbean country to start letting Chinese drones, ships and missiles on their territory? (How confident are you in our intelligence community that this hasn’t already happened?)