Afghanistan was a live combat training exercise. It gave valuable experience to career officers who will lead the U. S. Military for the next 30 years.

Russia and China can’t deploy troops in their own country. The U.S. military can land 10’s of thousands of troops, with a support supply line any where in the world on less than 24 hours notice, along with all the firepower that comes with those troops.

To “win” in Afghanistan would require slaughtering about half the population of the country, something the U.S. military could easily do, but it would make the U.S. into an international pariah, and that would be bad for business.

If the U.S. sovereignty was actually threatened all but the nuclear weapons would be unleashed, including all the top secret weapons that have been developed since the Gulf War, it would probably seem like Star Wars.

> Afghanistan was a live combat training exercise. It gave valuable experience to career officers who will lead the U. S. Military for the next 30 years

I served in the Marines and we were well aware people, especially those with combat experience, were leaving hand over fist. Amos was commandant during my time, and this article tells some of the story about what happened: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/the-marines-corps-needs-to-c...

> Afghanistan was a live combat training exercise. It gave valuable experience to career officers who will lead the U. S. Military for the next 30 years.

Experience at losing embarrassingly. (To guerrillas it created, no less!)

> The U.S. military can land 10’s of thousands of troops, with a support supply line any where in the world on less than 24 hours notice, along with all the firepower that comes with those troops.

You'd think that, wouldn't you? But it's a paper tiger: post-Vietnam, the US takes great (but quiet) care to ensure that the big song and dance is only deployed on some dirt-poor hellhole with no capable conventional fighting force to withstand the first few episodes of an erect Wolf Blitzer watching B1's firebomb civilians. After a little while, it either leaves in "triumph" (Panama, Grenada, Gulf War I) or it stays and gets bent over the barrel by the insurgencies that inevitably form from the remnants of the regime it invaded (Afghanistan, Gulf War II). It's only good at shooting fish in a barrel and making it look like Michael Bay movie. But after falling on its face so hilariously in Vietnam it knows it can't handle much more than that.

> To “win” in Afghanistan would require slaughtering about half the population of the country, something the U.S. military could easily do

You know I almost agree with you, but it's plain that when the US military sets its mind to something, failing miserably at that thing can't be far behind. (Unless that something is using our Nintendo pilots to remote-control-incinerate a high school graduation. So you may be right after all.)

> but it would make the U.S. into an international pariah

More than it already is, somehow?

> If the U.S. sovereignty was actually threatened all but the nuclear weapons would be unleashed, including all the top secret weapons that have been developed since the Gulf War, it would probably seem like Star Wars.

A cursory glance at the average BMI of our professional fighting forces leads me to suspect that the only similarity to Star Wars in such a scenario would be to scenes involving Jabba the Hutt.

It’s a terrible deal as Australia initially had France redesign a nuclear powered submarine to be Diesel Electric. There was also massive negotiations and posturing from both governments about building the submarines locally.

Fast forward a few years and the Australian Government had announced one of the driving factors of this deal is nuclear power rather than diesel electric. We’re also building [reportedly] even less of the Submarine locally now. Not to mention the delivery delays this will cause & our lack of servicing capability.

Even as an Australian I can see how this would really annoy France.

I think the point was that, apparently, the official position of the Australian opposition (who should be more critical of the government) was that the US couldn't fight themselves out of a paper bag, rather than France was better and honour should be important. Perhaps there's no such thing as honour anymore?

But this is just my very limited European view of the news, and news is something that I restrict myself on.

> Perhaps there's no such thing as honour anymore?

Among governments though? That's rich. They treat their own citizens worse than this. They're happy to move industry and jobs offshore, change policies and legislation at a moments notice.

France was reportedly stumbling on their end of actually delivering the modified Barracudas though. Here, this is an excellent, very very detailed blog post on the whole topic https://corporalfrisk.com/2021/09/17/a-pounding-in-the-pacif...

Is it too early at this point to wonder if there isn't some kind of underhanded deal going on?

No it's not too early. We know the French deal was absolutely crappy to begin.

Follow the money. Christopher Pyne brokered this $50Bn deal to get re-elected (some boatbuilding would happen in SA) which blew out to $90Bn and rising.

Pyne immediately retired (got his pollie-perks-for-life golden ticket stamped) and then immediately became "employed" as a consult with the people profiting massively from this twisted deal against the public interest.

Pyne followed the same slimy playbook as Andrew Robb (4) who sneakily slipped the 99-year Darwin Port dodgy deal across the line, and then he got a free $880k "job" with them the day he left parliament shortly thereafter.

Borderline treasonous behavior is rife with our political elite (both sides stink badly)

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/04/would-you-employ-ch...

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/07/pyne-poisons-ey/

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/01/audit-office-torped...

(4) https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/06/chinese-sell-andrew...

Sounds like a good thing the government is scrapping the deal. Hopefully next they can redistribute the Darwin Port to those whose needs are greater.

The actions of the US government the past few decades have flat out confused me at times, so I don't really try to understand them any longer. But the more and more I know about the details of this particular deal, the less I understand what exactly Australia is doing here?

I wish there was a reliable place you could go for objective analysis in cases like this, but I'll have to settle for simple confusion for now I guess.

This is just my speculation, but I wouldn’t put it past the Australian Prime Minister making a “Captains Call” here. He’s notoriously stubborn and doesn’t listen to experts in all circumstances he should.

You are conflating actions of different governments over decades into one singular action.

The world has changed a lot and if the government of the day feels it needs to alter a $90 billion purchase (which was initially $40 billion by the way before cost overruns) to better protect their citizens then it is their right as elected officials.

Also don't focus on the PR sideshow of the submarines, this is about the alliance itself.

It’s the same government that did the original deal.

It was Turnbull government that did the deal with France; since then the Liberal party has had a change of leadership and there has been a national election.

I mean the US clearly had the military capability to "win" against anything in Afghanistan. But effective occupations and regime change are brutal. It's not the 1940s - the US public of today would not stand for something as intensive as the occupation of Germany after WW2, for example.

The U.S. won the fight handily. It's the massive project of reshaping the political culture of diverse and fiercely proud and tribal people that proved to beyond the capability of our military (a role it was never designed or trained for).

Out of interest, do you believe you the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a win or loss for the USSR?

Apples and oranges. The topic under discussion is military tech and military ability. The strategic victories or blunders of civilian leadership and diplomatic corps are just as important -- indeed often moreso -- but they are somewhat orthogonal to military strength.

There are only a couple ways to lose a battle, but countless ways to lose a war.

That’s exactly my point - of course the former USSR and current US have a more powerful military than anything that exists or existed in Afghanistan.

It wasn’t solely a military problem but both chose a primarily military solution (as did the British before them).

You appear to be disagreeing with my disagreement with "the us couldn't win a fight with a bunch of villagers with ak47 for 10 years"

How does your point support the original claim? You and I are in agreement that fighting alone can't solve the problem of Afghanistan, but I don't see how that bears any relationship to judging the fighting.

Sorry, I’ve completely missed your point (despite reading it. Sigh), and as you say, I’m agreeing with you.

I’ll leave my comments unedited unless you’d like them gone.

Not at all, brother, I appreciate the mutual respect and engagement. Thanks for making HN a great place :-)

Reshaping the political culture of a nation will either take decades, or be extremely brutal. The public won't stand for either anymore.

The only way to win in a place like AF is if you become a wild animal and just lay things to waste. No one could get themselves to do that. Not the Persians or British or Soviets or Americans. No one wanted to descend to that.