God, please give us honorable commanders in chiefs.
IMO, if the socialists get in power for an extended period, in the US, they will set up their own destruction, but not quite in the way being discussed above.
Yes, the US has a tremendously powerful military, but, the libs will suck it dry of funds in order to finance their socialist “utopia”. At the same time, their policies will be economically ruinous, AND they will be trying to police an increasingly restive population, which will take a lot of money. Further pressure will occur because as the US weakens abroad, all sorts of conflicts will erupt, and as we have seen, despite their unwillingness to spend sufficient money on the military, Socialists also just can’t help but get involved, if not inflame troubles abroad.
(IMO there is also a very high danger that US weakness abroad would spur nuclear races and eventual nuclear conflict abroad that will have anywhere from a moderate to large damaging effect on the US, but that is so drastic and different a scenario that I won’t cover it further in this post.)
Corruption and moral decay will exacerbate the above problems.
This results in an erratic tailspin that Socialist types cannot reverse without abandoning their core beliefs, which of course they will not do. Eventually some outside power, China, perhaps, will try to take advantage: Assuming a nuclear exchange does not occur, either we back down, causing further weakening, or, we get in a grind-it-out war we are ill prepared to fight, poorly supported by a population already war weary. If conscription is brought back, then moral probably goes through the floor, and that might well wreak havoc on the loyalty of the troops — at least loyalty sufficient for them to kill US civilians in large numbers.
(I point out here that the US can barely keep up support to fight the threat of Radical Islam. That is partially due to our own bungles and misadventures, true, but still, anyone with 1/10th a brain should recognize that this is a struggle that has been going on for centuries. Given the ROE, even under Trump, it will continue until one side or the other is vanquished, or, until Islam is transformed by a new “Prophet” who is a man of peace and deep reform. If extended support for such an existential struggle is hard to come by, then how patient will the population be in supporting other military follies?)
Eventually the economy is so poor, the government’s financial position so weak, the repression so bad, the divisions so deep, and the contempt of the gov’t by a majority (even though a divided majority elsewise) so great, that some incident sets off the civil war. I think the gov’t would have a VERY difficult time suppressing it, and the military might refrain itself to safeguarding he nukes and repelling outside militaries who might try to take advantage. Those things alone might overtax the military.