A superb summary by Arctic Fox, which I gladly put upfront as a guest column.
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Every nation is hostage to its history. USA more than most... US is a
continent-sized country with traditionally strong isolationist bent...
Deeply against what George Washington called "foreign entanglements"
right up to the morning of December 7, 1941. And despite such previous
history, by September 1945 US power straddled the globe. Along the way,
something had happened to the collective US brain... Part of it the idea
of "We just got attacked, fought a huge war and now we don't want to do
THAT again." (Similar, certainly, to the Soviet mindset.) But a darker
part, too... The idea of being a powerful nation that can confront
& control events far away... Shape things -- energetically -- to US
national interests.
.
In a characteristic US way, the realities of the singular 1945 moment transformed into long-term programs... FDR's New Deal, proto-nanny state went global... A Navy/Air Force in the Pacific became a fixture; Pacific Ocean became a US "western lake." And the army in Europe became a post-war "presence," which morphed into an anti-Soviet alliance/NATO. The power of bureaucratic, well-funded programs is such that when USSR went away, NATO remained and even expanded... incl travesties like the war on Serbia & other out-of-area ops to MENA.. Why wasn't NATO disbanded in about 1993? (Some of us asked that question; were told to sit down & shut up.)
.
Now, 74 yrs post-war, US is still rigged for that WW2 conflict... Not exactly "fighting the last war," but the DNA is similar... Global power projection... Idea of "full spectrum dominance" (hey, how's that working out?) yet generally, Intel is not nearly as good as we think... Requirements definition is poor... R&D is iffy & very political... Procurement is just plain warped. eg... Still building glorified versions of WW2 systems... Like aircraft carriers, just bigger & better (arguable; USS Ford speaks for itself). Still building fighter planes (and Hornets beat Hellcats). Still doing amphibious warfare, just w/ helos and not Higgins Boats. And operational/doctrinal thinking is... predictable; although "unimaginative" is perhaps a good way of saying it.
.
Program-dominance leads to what I mentioned in another note above... That US spends so much & builds/accomplishes so little. $800 billion defense/energy dept budget? I wouldn't brag about it... (Heck, a brand new Navy LCS just rammed a berthed freighter in Montreal the other day... disgraceful.) While other nations spend relatively less and accomplish far more... And approach fighting US on asymmetric terms.
.
And through it all... the US has this fundamental legal precept of the military being subordinate to civilian leadership... No mad/crazy generals running off free-lancing, eh? No more Dr Strangelove scenarios... Yet who are these mysterious civilian authority wizards?? Some guy/gal who rose through politics from a local base like Director of Snowplows, to the Senate Armed Services Committee? Or some other guy/gal who was a minor professor at a B-level women's college (Albright of Wellesley), or a draft-dodger from Yale (Clinton, Cheney, Bolton, others...)? You often discuss the utter lack of qualifications for most (nearly all) US high level policymakers to hold their jobs... Someone studied "International Relations?" Oh goody... It's like you watched every episode of Star Trek, and now you want to be an astronaut.
.
We've had this discussion before... Much of the root of the problem is based on an "endless" supply of dollars extruding out from the US monetary system. US politics -- entire culture -- acts as though there's no need to pay for things... US writes checks that others never cash. Never a need to prioritize things; to say "No"... And we now see it going full-three-ring-circus in US 2020 presidential race... Who can promise more "free $h!t" to the voters... Although the good news is that in some ways, it all seems to be coming to an end... Weaker dollar, rising gold price, etc... But it has seemed that way for a while.
.
It's not as if many Americans don't understand what's happening... It's more like the media & politics (heck, the whole deformed culture) have hijacked the levers of power. If you're on the outside of the cockpit door, you can't break it down to get in.
.
In a characteristic US way, the realities of the singular 1945 moment transformed into long-term programs... FDR's New Deal, proto-nanny state went global... A Navy/Air Force in the Pacific became a fixture; Pacific Ocean became a US "western lake." And the army in Europe became a post-war "presence," which morphed into an anti-Soviet alliance/NATO. The power of bureaucratic, well-funded programs is such that when USSR went away, NATO remained and even expanded... incl travesties like the war on Serbia & other out-of-area ops to MENA.. Why wasn't NATO disbanded in about 1993? (Some of us asked that question; were told to sit down & shut up.)
.
Now, 74 yrs post-war, US is still rigged for that WW2 conflict... Not exactly "fighting the last war," but the DNA is similar... Global power projection... Idea of "full spectrum dominance" (hey, how's that working out?) yet generally, Intel is not nearly as good as we think... Requirements definition is poor... R&D is iffy & very political... Procurement is just plain warped. eg... Still building glorified versions of WW2 systems... Like aircraft carriers, just bigger & better (arguable; USS Ford speaks for itself). Still building fighter planes (and Hornets beat Hellcats). Still doing amphibious warfare, just w/ helos and not Higgins Boats. And operational/doctrinal thinking is... predictable; although "unimaginative" is perhaps a good way of saying it.
.
Program-dominance leads to what I mentioned in another note above... That US spends so much & builds/accomplishes so little. $800 billion defense/energy dept budget? I wouldn't brag about it... (Heck, a brand new Navy LCS just rammed a berthed freighter in Montreal the other day... disgraceful.) While other nations spend relatively less and accomplish far more... And approach fighting US on asymmetric terms.
.
And through it all... the US has this fundamental legal precept of the military being subordinate to civilian leadership... No mad/crazy generals running off free-lancing, eh? No more Dr Strangelove scenarios... Yet who are these mysterious civilian authority wizards?? Some guy/gal who rose through politics from a local base like Director of Snowplows, to the Senate Armed Services Committee? Or some other guy/gal who was a minor professor at a B-level women's college (Albright of Wellesley), or a draft-dodger from Yale (Clinton, Cheney, Bolton, others...)? You often discuss the utter lack of qualifications for most (nearly all) US high level policymakers to hold their jobs... Someone studied "International Relations?" Oh goody... It's like you watched every episode of Star Trek, and now you want to be an astronaut.
.
We've had this discussion before... Much of the root of the problem is based on an "endless" supply of dollars extruding out from the US monetary system. US politics -- entire culture -- acts as though there's no need to pay for things... US writes checks that others never cash. Never a need to prioritize things; to say "No"... And we now see it going full-three-ring-circus in US 2020 presidential race... Who can promise more "free $h!t" to the voters... Although the good news is that in some ways, it all seems to be coming to an end... Weaker dollar, rising gold price, etc... But it has seemed that way for a while.
.
It's not as if many Americans don't understand what's happening... It's more like the media & politics (heck, the whole deformed culture) have hijacked the levers of power. If you're on the outside of the cockpit door, you can't break it down to get in.
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