65G and Future Urban Warfare

[stanc]

Not sure why you seem to think that's an issue. As long as births exceed deaths each year, won't the population -- and the number of young people -- continue to increase?

No. The aging population continues to increase because they aren't dying at normal life expectancies, so population growth is driven by this in most of the world and has been since the 1950s...

Illogical. The population does not increase because people are living longer. It increases because there are more births than deaths.

If no children were born each year, the population would not increase. It would decrease, regardless of increases in life expectancy.

Why should it? The US has historically shown very little interest in getting involved in Africa.

...to the shores of Tripoli. We've been involved in Africa to some degree dating back centuries, but more so lately. North Africa goes without saying, including the North Africa campaign in WWII, US focus on peace accords between Egypt and Israel, US commitment to the UN Sinai mission, as well as our involvement in Somalia, our hub in Djibouti even before, but especially since 9/11, and the growing threat of terrorist expansion into Africa, compounded with Chinese thirst for resources in the Dark Continent.

Tripoli was two centuries ago. The US invaded North Africa during WWII only to fight the Germans and Italians, not because of a desire to get involved in Africa.

Somalia was the only example of a commitment of large numbers of combat troops, and that effort was soon abandoned. As I said, very little historical interest.

We're looking at more of a global LE mission than a traditional military one, if you read between the lines of their mission profile mindset.

That's reasonable. After all, global law enforcement is what the mission has typically been since the Vietnam War ended.

In other words, they've written off any Fulda Gap scenarios for Europe, since Russia is in decline.

I don't know how much of a decline Russia is in, but I always considered the obsession with the Fulda Gap scenario to have been based more on wishful thinking of American Generals who wanted to emulate Patton's exploits, than on any real likelihood of a Russian invasion.