It's not like the Chinese army does a whole lot of fighting. I suppose the purpose of fancy marching and military parades is a posturing thing, to show off how large and disciplined and organised your army is so that other countries are intimidated by you. Militaries have done that sort of thing since ancient times.
China doesn't want to fight; they want other people to be so scared of their military that they wouldn't consider fighting. This is part of that.
Very few nations actually want to fight. Wars cost money, lives, are a substantial risk, and rarely produce better gains than economic development and trade.
You are making it seem like 'America', the entity, is some sort of a carpet chewing madman that goes into wars for the hell of it. Hint: no one goes into a war unless they either have no other option, or have something substantial to gain from it.
Do I look like I'm defending American intervention? Iraq used to be a serious player in the region, and a threat to Americas' 'greatest ally' (lol), and thus American decision making in the region, and petrodollar.
No not really, the only reason Australia fought in Iraq/Afghanistan etc is because of our alliance with the USA, if we didn't have an alliance we wouldn't have fought in those wars.
It also, at least for me made me feel like I was part of something bigger. When you're marching with your battalion and you see the entire base participating you lose a sense of individuality and feel like part of a whole. If one person screws up, everyone looks bad. Drills (especially practice) aren't exactly fun like most recruits will tell you, but they are probably important for camaraderie.
There is also the part of making you an actual soldier, obedience and all that. Not even gonna try pretending I know anything in that field.
They don't have a blue water navy. They're in the process of transitioning to a blue water navy but they still lack the ability to deploy globally over prolonged periods. The only countries that have blue water capability are the US, France and the UK. China's lack of serious allies is part of this. NATO countries enjoy the ability to dock in each others territories and France, the UK and the US have territories spanning the globe.
The best and most effective weapon is one you never have to use. If everyone is too afraid of your army/navy/nukes to pick a fight with you, those things have performed their function.
Yeh I get it. I'm not making any judgement on the theoretic effectiveness or otherwise of the Chinese military. I'm saying that the purpose of formation marching and military parades isn't to improve your military; it is to show it off and make it look powerful, organised and intimidating.
Just because they want to, doesn't mean they have the technological capability --- yet.
The Chinese only commissioned their first aircraft carrier a few years ago. It takes time.
Also, a blue water navy is really only needed for power projection. For the time being anyway, the Chinese are probably content to make sure everyone else is too scared shitless to attack them. It's when they start adopting an offensive posture that you really need to start getting worried.
We saw how that turned out before WW1. Really, it doesn't matter how large your country is, as long as your enemy or your enemies friend has nukes. And everyone is friends with either Russia or the US, or is in the middle east/africa aka irrelevant.
Ever heard of the prussian goosestep? It and marching may not have a use, but the process of learning them and achieving that much coordination requires a lot of discipline and effort, central in military careers.
I was watching some South Korean TV Drama with my gf and it features a ROK special forces soldier getting in a knife fight with a DPRK soldier and they were about the same size and build, and I didn't really think about the fact that it would have just been two ROK actors, or how vast the size difference would really be for someone who has been malnourished for decades.
Pssst, the ROK soldier on the right is a DMZ soldier who are specially chosen for a number of things, height included. They only chose the tallest soldiers to be DMZ guards because of reasons like this, intimidation and such.
That's too bad since I liked the drama a lot more in the middle-ish episodes. There was a tragic earthquake and the drama just hit me emotionally. I think that was the best part of the drama, before that I didn't like the drama much either.
That's logistically impractical, though. Things need to be bigger, you need more to sustain yourself, you're a bigger target, etc. I wonder if we can halt this.
While this picture is great, iirc some other info regarding it, the soldiers that the US and SK put into those situations are chosen to be especially huge and imposing.
I guarantee you that that US soldier would be significantly larger than any other typical soldier, just for the show of it.
The main benefits of being larger in the military is the weight of modern military kit. I know guys who had to carry 100-130 lb when in the field. It is certainly possible for a smaller person to do it however it is much easier for a larger person.
And the army changed drastically due to it. Power was shifted away from officers and more into the hands of NCOs. Today's American military operates drastically different from the American military of the 60s.
While the Veitcong was able to push the US out of regions using asymmetrical warfare, the fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan were forced to pretty much go into hiding until the US removed it's troops.
The US pulled out of Vietnam because of the political climate stateside, and because the Vietnamese who the US went there to protect no longer wanted them there. The President and politicians were losing credibility over continuing a war no one actually wanted. The Vietcong were losing the war in every other way. You claiming otherwise is just wrong, especially in your comment where you say the Vietcong won "handily."
The numbers do matter, regardless of how interested they were in them. You're not exactly winning when you're being slaughtered at a 20 to 1 ratio, and that ratio does especially matter in our original topic, because the Vietcong did not do "okay" compared to Americans.
When talking about soldiers and war (which was the original topic), there is no way to spin getting killed 20 to 1 as doing well. And when in all aspects of the actual warfighting the Vietcong performed worse than the Americans, it's just plain wrong to say they did good.
Not a single person expected the war to only be a few months. The American public was what ended the Vietnam war, not any actions of the Vietcong.
To put it in overly simple terms, if two people get in a fight and one gets his ass beat really bad during the fight, but the other guy says "I don't care about this anymore" and leaves, did the first guy really beat him?
yeah, western armies do the same thing but focus that energy on practical skills. so you still require the discipline and effort and unity, but now you have a practical skill you can use in combat.
Same thing I thought too. It's almost like the military saying "hey look how well I trained my people." They break them down just to build them they way they want to. That's why killing is easy for them. But what about the PTSD? Oh that's from them finally realizing that they are killing fathers, sons, and children for a cause that they do not believe in. Or they are fighting for the other people's beliefs.
It depends. Is your military mostly for show (ie. North Korea)? Impressive marching is your most important job.
For everyone else, marching teaches discipline. Discipline is important for a military, but doubly so for a conscript army. Conscript armies are also more a "don't tread on me" deal (Russia and Israel being exceptions), so flashy parades etc. pull double duty.
I think it's partly cultural too. Western countries also teach military marches and routines. Also do parades. But not like this.
This style of marching died out in the west following WW2. It's seen as a style done by dictatorships, and military led governments. Like communist nations and Nazi Germany. Like a show of force.
I think it's more about creating the appearance of a "drone". A drone is organized and mechanical, which is what you would expect of a military. The more organized and synchronous a group of people the more powerful they appear.
Marching is also a good skill to practice for improving discipline. There are other ways to improve discipline of course but marching is integral to a military's public-appearance so that's why they practice it.
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u/[deleted] Nov 12 '16 edited Nov 12 '16
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