Tactically the US Army may lose a battle here or there in a future war. But the determination of the the American people will always make for a strategic victory for the United States. As an example one can point to WWII and Pearl Harbor. The US was beaten tactically by the Japanese but who ended up winning the war in the Pacific...The United States of America not the Empire of Japan. Another example would be the US Army's defeat at the hands of the Germans at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia during WWII, at tactical victory for Germany but due to American spirit and determination the US defeated Nazi Germany.(With the help of Britain).

Displacejim wrote: "Many of the posts here sound like little more than whiney babies from third-rate countries who are jealous that their screwed-up cultures, economies, and governments can't come close to comparing in toto to ours in terms of national power..." and "Wake up and smell the coffee, losers" Thats not the language of civilzed man for this forum. I dont even want to answer such words.

The soviet union defeated nazi germany, with a good deal of help from america and a smaller amount of help from britain. our (america's) contribution to ww2 was more in the pacific theatre, wich was eventaully going to go to us no matter what, though invading japan would of been crazy.

Lets not forget the Russians would probably have lost in 1942 were it not for the lend lease program while they were re-locating their industrail base.

if you look at tonnage figures for lend lease supplies they really didn't start to mushroom till later part of 43. up till then it was more symbolic than actually helpful. even then i don't think sending them obsolete tanks and aircraft was really all that big a help. as for the jappanese most of their army was in china and indochina fighting the assorted chinese factions and the british. the naval and air campaign the americans fought was very important to the outcome in the pacific but the army and marines were pretty much inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

Why is this discussion on the Russia page???

the `forgotten 14th` army of Britain inflicted the greatest defeat in the history of imperial jap army,in some of the bloodiest fighting of ww2 from 1939-1945.not bad for a "small contribution". Oh and lets not forget that the battle of Britain was arguably the most important turning point of ww2. If the BoB was lost,then Britain was lost,meaning the nazis only had to focus on the eastern front.The soviets would not have stood a chance and america would have not entered the war,they would not have had a base to launch the normandy landings from(Britain)and they would not have the troops or ships available(half of troops in d-day were British and canadian. It is doubtful whether Britain would have survived without soviet or american aid in ww2,but it must also be noted that Britains war effort was also equally as essential to securing victory in ww2.

I will accept your criticism that the question was about the future. I think the fact we have been defeated indicates we can be defeated, and I note you also agree we can lose future tense. So I am not sure why you are complaining about the points about the past? But they were not all made by people from third world countries jealous of the USA. I made some of them, and I am a US combat veteran who believes the US often, even usually, holds the moral as well as technical high ground. I saw no evidence of "whiney babies". I was taught by a US Army historian that we ought to be our own strongest critics, and I try to honor his advice.

False. In fact, I have seen a clear defeat for US technology in person, one I was unable to imagine in the run up to battle. If there was a division of modern US Navy warships (well, two of the ships were old, but had modern sensors, while the third was shiny brand new with fancy weapons too), had to engage wooden junks? Armed after a fashion, but only with army type weapons, and no proper naval sensors we knew about. Dangerous to be sure - so lets maximize our advantage - and fight by night. [Besides, they only came out at night, so not to easy to get them by day, when they were in neutral waters we were not permitted to violate.] The idea was "at night, in the open sea, on radar, they will present acceptable targets at gun type ranges, but we will be hard to hit, because they lack proper fire control for night engagement." No one, including me, voices any reservations about this plan. We lost the battle. Not just tactically - failing to prevent the enemy from achieving his naval mission - we lost it strategically - no one was willing to try again even with more warships. We can lose. We do lose. And technology is not a guarantee of success. [Some years later we did finally cut the enemy sea line of supply - by sending the army overland to cut off their landing sites in Cambodia. It is thought more enemy tonnage came in by sea from Malaya than came down the Ho Chi Ming Trail, at least for use in the southern part of South Vietnam. We failed to cut the sea line of supply, in spite of modern technology. But the army, using old fashioned methods, did succeed, by taking the land they needed to use to deliver the goods.]

Now it is posted I see I misread (how) "ideology" for "technology." Oops. Democracy, economic opportunity, rule of law - we do have some products to sell with universal appeal.