I’ve been thinking about how different paces to the Ukraine war’s culmination (eg. we increase support by 10x tomorrow) could have significant impacts on future attitudes and behaviours of all actors, especially Russia.
I am not a professional student of history and I really don’t know this war all that well, but as an audience of the future, isn’t “what were the conditions of victory?” no less important than “who won?”
I might be making no sense…
cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33931615
(incidentally, I find the timing of the Monroe Doctrine slightly suspicious, coming as it does from a slave-holding President a few years after the Vienna Convention includes an agreement [as moral imperative] to abolish the slave trade)
Hard disagree here, I am from a former british colony, where the laws etc are still inspired by the british. The American constitution and political and legal system with its checks and balances is outright better than the british system. Of course its not perfect, but its still miles better. So its good that the rebels won and the british lost.
There's pros and cons to each system of course. The American "checks and balances" results in complete inability to act a lot of the time. See the frequent budget shutdowns, or compare and contrast the ability to legislate for issues like "maniacs are shooting up our schools".
The downside of course is that the great "freedom of action" of a british government can result in self harming or ill considered policies being rail roaded through. See something like brexit: it is doubtful that many countries with "checks and balances" would be able to muster the political will and broad agreement to do it in the first place. But a british government can just go YOLO.
I think a parliamentary system is better despite this because it puts the establishment in control. To become PM, you have to climb to the top of a party first (which requires many years of dedication). Some war hero, billionaire, or other radical can't just waltz into the position from nowhere. And then a PM is at all times beholden to the support of their party, which can be removed at any time if they turn out to be an idiot (see truss - nobody had to put up with her for 4 years).
The danger in britain is the move to more "democracy" in choosing PMs. If it were left to the establishment (ie MPs) things are more boring. But when it is "democratised" to party members that's when the crazies come in - the corbyns and trusses. This is an unfortunate decline of elite control in Britain which hopefully will be rolled back now that everyone has seen the unintended consequences.
Washington had to keep British costs high while not losing, he couldn't just sit.
Mass conscription is difficult if you can't pay or properly feed or clothe the army you have and a big portion of your own population opposed to you.
Perhaps the American revolution isn't as obvious a case because the Brits tended to turtle a lot; not trying to demonstrate that they were in control of nearly the whole place and so providing a plethora of targets (unlike the Japanese, say.)
But I haven't asserted that all regular wars have front lines all the time. Just that guerrilla wars don't.
Not true. Show me where in "On Guerrilla Warfare" Zedong - an expert on the American and French Revolutions - claims that guerrilla warfare requires external support.
Guerrilla warfare requires the support of the population (pretty much all US IW joint doctrine highlights this).
Economic power facilitates guerrilla warfare, along with the transition to traditional warfare, but it isn't a requirement.
> Washington had to keep British costs high while not losing, he couldn't just sit.
The only thing Washington had to do was survive.
The KMT was also a revolutionary force (against foreign domination), and initially preferred by Moscow for practical reasons - the USSR would at that time only support a joint command.
Mao became leader of the Reds because USSR's contact defected to Mao from the previous general so the money etc had to go to Mao, the only point of contact the USSR then had with the Reds.
Post WWII Soviet support, esp military material support became very large indeed, allowing the Reds to crush the KMT.
Mao spent plenty of time and effort downplaying everything the USSR had done for him and in massive spats with the USSR, for his own political reasons. Just as Lenin didn't credit the massive support the Germans had given him, to undermine the Czar.
His opponent, General Howe, obviously had sympathy for the American cause, as he stayed the hand of destruction many times.
It was only when General Nathaniel Green was unleashed that victory favored us, ripping Tarlelton and Cornwallis' forces to tatters, giving us Yorktown.
Pardon? He forced the British to vacate Boston, and won decisive victories at Trenton and Yorktown. His worst defeats were delaying actions around NYC, where, in each case, he withdrew in good form.
I would attribute Howe's failures to incompetence rather than treason.
Much higher than the conscript armies of the 20th century - possibly as high as 13%. That’s greater mobilization than in WWII.
Considering it was as high as 80% of military aged men for Germany and France, with a few other countries in the 50-70% range, why do you think 13%, even if you mean from the whole population, is higher?
Furthermore, Washington understood what most of his contemporaries did not. Simply by having an army in the Field, he denied legitimacy to the British. Washington and his generals laid out strategies that would one by one eliminate British armies in the field. To borrow a concept from the navy theoreticians Washington had an army in being. The British could not achieve their goals without the utter destruction of Washington’s army and could not maintain the armies for long periods of time.
At the same time, political will to continue the war would eventually run out for the British. They only had one weight to win, and very many ways to lose. The fact that it was Yorktown and not Monmouth has to do with the differences between Lafayette and Charles Lee.
But let’s ignore all of that - I think at some point the colonies would have gone down the same path that the French eventually went down - a levee en masse. I suspect running into a large well armed colonial mass conscription army would have ended things very quickly.
Anyways - the French are important to the story - but it’s like claiming that American won World War I.