We cannot go to war….we cannot make what we need in the USA…
China wins by default
Think World War II
The only reason we won is we out produced both Japan and Germany
Pattons tanks were not as good as the Germans but we had more
In WW2 we used the Sherman tank, not the Patton which came later. Compared to German tanks, especially the Tigers, Shermans were total junk. But we didn’t just produce more than the Germans, we produced more by the tens of thousands than the Germans.
The best overall tank in WW2 was the Russian T-34. While it was torture on the crew, it was a reasonably good performer and could be produced cheaply and quickly. But from a pure performance standpoint, nothing compared to the German tanks.
Bingo. Germany had a frightening lead on us in technology and Japanese fighters literally flew circles around some of our planes. But because our homeland and factories were all but untouchable we could build ships and planes and tanks faster than they could be destroyed...as well as train men to competently run them in safety. Both of those nations were also wasting a large amount of effort in genocide (especially Germany) and Japan had such a huge infrastructure deficit that planes were being shipped by ox-cart.
Hell, same held true for the Civil War. Our starting generals were largely crap and the South had sympathizers all over the place. They even had the first ironclad ship out! But they had virtually no industry at all and after Pickett’s Massacre they couldn’t recover.