There are those who’ll ask what war America last won? Everything from Korea to Afghanistan turned into a draw and then effectively a loss as the Americans withdrew and their enemies slowly took control – with the sole exception of South Korea and even then they live under the shadow of a nuclear-armed and still nutty North Korea. The threat of nuclear war can explain it up to 1990, but not since then.

That’s despite regularly winning on the actual battlefield, with the Yanks inflicting deaths, casualties and damage far out of proportion to their own losses. The most clear cut military victory was the Gulf War, where the fourth largest military in the world was overwhelmed in just 100 hours of ground combat with about 100 allied deaths, most of them American.

But Saddam and his regime survived for another twelve years, resulting in yet another war, this time a full-scale invasion of Iraq, to finally put an end to him. And again, have the long-term results been worth it, with an Iraq dominated by Iran? Iraq is certainly not the horror show it was under Saddam but it’s hardly Germany or Japan circa 1970, let alone a Jeffersonian democracy.

Still, the focus of the following video (7m long) is not on the strategy but purely the pointy end of the bang, bang sticks, and it makes the argument that the US could now lose there too, especially against a peer-to-peer rival, of which the only one is China. For those of you who don’t want to watch there’s a synopsis below.

And the people who are thinking this include soldiers themselves:

Under 20 percent of warrant officers, highly specialized enlisted troops who have deployed to Afghanistan and other U.S. battlefields during America’s post-9/11 wars, said they were confident their unit could win today. While fewer generals responded to the survey, about 40 percent of them were confident they could immediately deploy and win.

The video makes the following points about each of the following factors:

  • While the US still has superior technology, getting it into the front line is slow and getting slower, and the maintenance is bad (only 4 out of 49 aircraft types met readiness goals and 26 out of 49 had never met them in ten years).
  • A lot of munitions production lines have been shut down since the end of the Cold War. For example the US has just five factories producing ammunition, explosives & propellents. The Ukraine war has shown that basic stuff like artillery shells are still vital. Meanwhile on the high tech front, if China invaded Taiwan the US would shoot off between 800 and 1200 long-range anti-ship missiles: they have 200 and expect to have 1000…. by 2032.
  • Component materials are sometimes sourced from adversaries (see the F-35 example).
  • Although much is made of America’s No. 1 position in the world with spending at about $800 billion per year it’s at the lowest level of GDP% since 1953.
  • Public opinion is increasingly split 50:50 between involvement in foreign wars and staying out of them, and although the video does not make the point, that split is increasingly bi-partisan, varying from war-to-war. But the point is made that irrespective of this and paraphrasing Teddy Roosevelt, it’s not a good idea to speak loudly while carrying a small stick.
  • Recruiting shortages are bad and getting worse, starting with the Army and this year spreading to the Air Force and Navy. In a recent survey the military found that 23% of 17-24 year olds don’t meet military standards, whether because of generally poor health, obesity, or drug convictions.

Then there’s all the woke shit. I wrote about the recruiting problems being caused by this in Pride goeth before the fall (featuring advertisements like this one) and it hasn’t got better since then. In fact it’s so bad they’re now begging the C-19 unvaccinated they dismissed to come back. It should therefore be no surprise that military surveys have found that fewer than 10% of 17-24 year olds are interested in enlisting, and the cynicism is off the charts, as was revealed in responses to a new Army recruiting advertisement that… featured only White guys:

I guess TPTB are starting to get a clue.