I doubt there is a European nation that can fight a serious war.

@Elessar Someone is forgetting all the dead colonial European empires

@Elessar exactly

@Elessar Smartest thing was not starting the war and supplying the bulk of the soldiers, material and monetary aid.

@Elessar You might want to rethink that. The French lost against the Viet Cong before the Americans did, and do you know why the Russians faced Afghanis armed with Enfield rifles?

@Bados Nations come and go. Expand, divide, merge.

The (independent) U.S. is less than 300 years old, which is a baby in terms of age of a country, and is already visibly in decline, if you want to judge countries by this metric you don't have much to stand on.

@IronHamster You might want to rethink that as well. As you just equated US intervention in Vietnam to a colonial war.

@Longpatrol I was too little to remember back then, but I've been reading that if you were against the intervention you would've been easily labeled as an "extremist pacifist" or even "siding with the terrorists".

Which is ridiculous, but knowing the influence that the military complex has in some countries™ I wouldn't be too surprised if it was actually like that.

@Elessar I'm a bit older than you and I remember that being pretty much the narrative.

@Elessar y’all ain’t ever gonna win another war because you won’t do what has to be done to win a war against them.

@SweetNSassy But above all because we don't actively engage in them. We've got a huge public debt already, a war is literally the last of the things I'd want to see taxpayers' money getting thrown at.

@Elessar well no one wants to go war, but sometimes necessary to protect your own.

@SweetNSassy Albeit I agree with you in general, I think we can also agree that is seldom the case.

@EuphoricTurtle war is hell and should always be the last resort

@SweetNSassy Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. Not bad for the victor, eh?

@SweetNSassy Preventive war, pretty much marketing to sweeten the pill to the taxpayers who will have to fund it (in the very very large majority of cases, I'd dare to say high-90%)