RA taught me almost everything I needed to know about geopolitics. Seriously, I marvel at its applicability.
- Resources
Without resources (eg. Net national income) you cannot support a national defense.
...Limited resources lead to conflict.
...Exploit and defend distant resources to preserve your domestic reserves.
- Capability Evolution & Resiliency
...You must pursue advanced capabilities that surpass or match your adversaries, and if you manage your resources properly this is achievable.
...Your infrastructure must be configured dispersed, redundant and secure.
- Combined Arms
...Combative units need a mix of capabilities to overcome defenses, unless you overwhelm (swarm) your enemy - which carries resource risks.
- Long View
...One can easily win a battle or two and lose the war without a long-term plan.
- Intelligence
...You cannot know how your capabilities measure up against your adversaries without good intel. This often means sacrificing units for a look into your opponent's capabilities.
If RA theory and gameplay were mandatory in Congress the United States would be better positioned to both deter and compete with its global adversaries.
If I tried to apply the lessons learned from Red Alert to geopolitics then every attempt at any kind of negotiation or diplomacy would be over within minutes after I attack my opposite number with a dog as a distraction while driving a car full of engineers into their base
I'm going to add a realism mod to balance this out a bit -
The car would get a flat tire on the way, and the engineers would spend hours arguing about how to fix it and whether operations would be "more scalable" if we designed a car that didn't have tires at all; Then the commander would call them to see what the heck was going on and they would all get nosebleeds from the stress.
C&C games were among my earliest forays into modding. It was so easy with the whole game wrapped up in an ini file, and so much fun to muck with stuff.
Most of the people in congress are more calculating and competent than they look. They are largely clever and socially adept, and have smart people around them. The problem is that the incentives for public speech are misaligned.
That's why it's rarely what the politician says that matters - it's what they vote for that counts. And largely, The pentagon and NSA tell politicians what they need and they get it.
I think the real story is we elect the candidates that do the best job of convincing people that they are aligned with their wishes and values, but those wishes and values proclaimed by the politician are, at best, only a very noisy proxy for how they will vote and, at worst, entirely fabricated for the sole purpose of winning votes
In terms of combined arms, I tried playing the remake of the original and realised quickly that all my humans were just run over by tanks, even in a mixed group.
In RA1-2, they are good as fodder to soak up Tesla Coil hits and tank rounds so your armor can break through, especially agianst a human player. A good amount of fodder will force a human player micro against that attack, and distract them from other things.
> If RA theory and gameplay were mandatory in Congress the United States would be better positioned to both deter and compete with its global adversaries.
Surely these "global adversaries" are a myth? Isn't the US Military like 3 times the size of the 3 next largest militaries combined or something?
There is no bogeyman except within, as far as the US Military goes. I'm not stupid - I know there are threats to the wellbeing of US society and citizens, but they aren't _existential_ threats to the US. Meanwhile the list of "de-throned and/or de-fanged by the US" nations is huge.
I think the one critical lesson missing from the "RA Theory" is you need to continue to live, and there is more to life than just squashing your "enemies."
> Isn't the US Military like 3 times the size of the 3 next largest militaries combined or something?
The PLA is larger. The PLAN is larger. China is situated far closer to the likely contested areas.
> _existential_ threats
Your head is firmly embedded in the sand. If you care you need to do some reading. A shortcut to your learning looks something like this: The CCP's ascension and probable downward spiral is only reversible through control over resources contested by the West and regional players. The parties cannot cooperatively resolve the disputed issues because more resources are required than are available and no viable alternatives exist. War is probably coming, perhaps inevitable, unless one of the key players implodes domestically.
Pretty much only if you count number of active duty troops. USA outspends China significantly, and the number of tanks, warships, planes, etc. is vastly in favor of the USA, not even to mention nuclear warheads.
>unless one of the key players implodes domestically.
If you listen to Zeihan, you'd be convinced china is on the verge of implosion due to it's demographic crash. I think he's a bit too deterministic, but it does lend credence to the 'now or never' idea that china is, in fact, serious about invading Taiwan by 2030 as things only get worse for them from there...
- Resources
Without resources (eg. Net national income) you cannot support a national defense.
...Limited resources lead to conflict.
...Exploit and defend distant resources to preserve your domestic reserves.
- Capability Evolution & Resiliency
...You must pursue advanced capabilities that surpass or match your adversaries, and if you manage your resources properly this is achievable.
...Your infrastructure must be configured dispersed, redundant and secure.
- Combined Arms
...Combative units need a mix of capabilities to overcome defenses, unless you overwhelm (swarm) your enemy - which carries resource risks.
- Long View
...One can easily win a battle or two and lose the war without a long-term plan.
- Intelligence
...You cannot know how your capabilities measure up against your adversaries without good intel. This often means sacrificing units for a look into your opponent's capabilities.
If RA theory and gameplay were mandatory in Congress the United States would be better positioned to both deter and compete with its global adversaries.