We talk a big game, but after we take casualties, our dick and balls shrivel up and we tend to disappear.
There is a huge gap between how we see ourselves, the Hollywood portrayal, and who we really are.
We get whacked and leave: https://history-maps.com/story/Vietnam-War/event/US-Withdrawal
We get whacked and leave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombings
We get whacked and leave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_%281993%29
We get whacked and leave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_United_States_troops_from_Iraq_(2007%E2%80%932011)
We get whacked and leave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_U.S._troop_withdrawal_from_Afghanistan
You're making a HUGE assumption in thinking that the public in the West and the political ruling class would stick the course. They will not.
***WE ONLY HAVE COURAGE IN UKRAINE BECAUSE IT'S NOT OUR PEOPLE BLEEDING.***
We are also great at playing Nintendo and waging high tech cyber, air, missile strikes, intel service (clandestine) campaigns. We are good at asymmetric warfare using the combo of SOCOM and intel community, leveraging our political and economic weight to destabilize a foe... However, actual ground wars where we take a bloody nose we do not fair so well at. The people (public) change their mind about how cool war is once body bags come home.
Old movie, but very true about us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no-cHBoTDBQ (it's always the same, at first we're excited, then we change our mind)
In fact, if NATO were to get involved in Ukraine, as surely as I could predict this war and its outcome after we gave the green light for NATO admission to Ukraine, I can assure you that this would be the end of NATO.
NATO would get torn to shreds if we did this. The internal strife / conflict, political finger pointing... it would be a disaster. You have NATO countries that won't want to send combat troops (Germany), some that aren't even contributing their NATO minimum (Germany, Austria), others will not want to get involved at all (Hungary, Spain, Italy), some like France would want a leadership role and would compete with us for this, there would be disagreement over what sort of systems can be deployed (used)... It would become an issue that tears this security alliance apart.
The support of Ukraine has gone way beyond the fecklessness we have seen in these other conflicts. Nobody wants to go back to a predatory and aggressive Russia. I think we will stand together pretty well and that will make a big difference.
Well... Mogadishu and beirut were merely tiny police operations by the US. The US had a 48 hour battle in Mogadishu and a couple of years of counterterrorism operations there. It was definitely not a war.
By the way we are still in Somalia. 500 US troops in Somalia as we speak. We regularly conduct airstrikes there. It’s just counterterrorism efforts, not war.
However, Iraq and Vietnam... They were true wars.
Militarily speaking, America won both of them.
Iraq was won in 21 days, and.. we got him! Remember? I supported both wars.
Our mistake was that we changed our objective after the great victory in Iraq. We decided to do nation-building there... that was a costly mistake.
In Vietnam we were crushing the Russian proxies. We had won the war! It’s only because of the marxists, hippies and Hanoi Janes in America that prematurely forced us to withdraw. American internal and political discord let the Vietcong communists take over. That’s all. Its has nothing to do with the US army.
Militarily speaking, America has never lost any wars.
Politicians make us “lose” wars.. every time they listen to our homegrown pacifists and hippies that is...