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For the past 50 years, American leaders have been supremely confident that they could suffer military setbacks in places like Cuba or Vietnam without having their system of global hegemony, backed by the world's wealthiest economy and finest military, affected. The country was, after all,
the planet's "indispensible nation," as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
proclaimed in 1998 (and other presidents and politicians have insisted ever since).
The U.S. enjoyed a greater "disparity of power" over its would-be rivals than any empire ever, Yale historian Paul Kennedy
announced in 2002.
Certainly, it would remain "the sole superpower for decades to come," Foreign Affairs magazine
assured us just last year. During the 2016 campaign, candidate Donald Trump
promised his supporters that "we're gonna win with military... we are gonna win so much you may even get tired of winning." In August, while announcing his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, Trump
reassured the nation: "In every generation, we have faced down evil, and we have always prevailed."
In this fast-changing world, only one thing was certain: when it really counted, the United States could never lose. No longer.The Trump White House may still be basking in the glow of America's global supremacy but, just across the Potomac,
the Pentagon has formed a more realistic view of its fading military superiority. In June, the Defense Department issued a
major report titled on
Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World, finding that the U.S. military "no longer enjoys an unassailable position versus state competitors," and "it no longer can... automatically generate consistent and sustained local military superiority at range." This sober assessment led the Pentagon's top strategists to "the jarring realization that 'we can lose.'"
Increasingly, Pentagon planners find, the "self-image of a matchless global leader" provides a "flawed foundation for forward-looking defense strategy... under post-primacy conditions." This Pentagon report also warned that,
like Russia, China is "engaged in a deliberate program to demonstrate the limits of U.S. authority"; hence, Beijing's bid for "Pacific primacy" and its "campaign to expand its control over the South China Sea."
Comment: A masterful conclusion to an unnecessary and horrific conflict, should plans not go awry or the West rear its ugly head to undermine or sabotage the effort.