... to be a great power, which it is not. Four Germans and the Fourth Reich.
Friday, May 1, 2026
Losing Military ...
... ah, wait. This cannot be, right? But NYT somehow arrives to this conclusion yesterday.
The U.S. Military Was Losing Its Edge. After Iran, Everyone Knows It.
From the get go they bring up same beaten to death argument.
On paper, the war in Iran should not be much of a contest. The United States spends around $1 trillion a year on its military, more than 100 times as much as Iran. That money buys a vastly larger Air Force and Navy, as well as advanced weapons technologies that Iranian generals can only dream about. In the war’s early days, the mismatch played out as one might expect. American forces destroyed much of the Iranian military. Now, however, the contest looks less one-sided. Iran has taken control of the Strait of Hormuz, and its missiles and drones still threaten America’s allies in the region. While President Trump seems eager for a negotiated truce, Iran’s leaders do not. Somehow, the weaker nation is in the stronger negotiating position. That reality exposes the vulnerabilities in the American way of war. Tactical success has not yielded victory.
I have news for NYT--the US doesn't know what REAL war is. Nor can it sustain not to mention increase the effort--a critical operational parameter, because ... yes, again, even the fanatical Russophobe Richard Pipes figured it out:
The United States wants to win its wars quickly and with the smallest losses in American lives. It is disinclined, therefore, to act on protracted and indirect strategies, or to engage in limited wars and wars of attrition. Once it resorts to arms, it prefers to mobilize the great might of its industrial plant to produce vast quantities of the means of destruction with which in the shortest possible time to undermine the enemy’s will and ability to continue the struggle. Extreme reliance on technological superiority, characteristic of U.S. warfare, is the obverse side of America’s extreme sensitivity to its own casualties; so is indifference to the casualties inflicted on the enemy.
When even this hack figured it out. Russians, the ones who really matter, not some retired generals in search for publicity and with political aspirations, have never been impressed with the "American Way of War". Nor "technological edge" which Hollywood portrayed and pundits love to talk about was that great to start with, especially with a technological and operational complexity of the war growing exponentially since 1960s.
Today? Well, some obscure Russian author wrote something about this.
Trying to warn that the encounter with a reality will be devastating for the US military in particular and the US as a whole when the REAL balance of power will emerge. Now it emerged and it cannot be hidden anymore behind mountains of corpses of VSU's cannon fodder. All it took was for the US step out from the behind backs of its proxies and try to fight a real fight.
Now it may not matter at all because, as NYT (to my surprise) noted correctly--now everyone knows it(c). In related news, Israel has been defeated in Southern Lebanon.