Big change in the military is typically framed as a “revolution” or “transformation” and is almost always about “innovating” and “adapting” to new technology. Yet the most important—and most worrisome—form of change is usually not driven by technology.
Simply, it is the loss of military effectiveness, often coming as a rapid-onset decline. Armed forces that have reached “peak war” status in victorious and decisive battle can—and do—quickly lose their combat edge. An extreme example is the U.S. Army during the American Civil War. In 1865, it was the greatest army on earth. Within months it was demobilized, its expertise gone.
Of course, some of this is natural. Long-service legionary armies are drained by years of peace. Battle-scarred veterans age out and retire, and junior assault leaders rise at last to command an army of green young officers untested in combat. Next time they lose. This is the way of things.
Sometimes, when an adversary surprises with a hot new “wonder weapon,” technology can suddenly shift the goal posts of military effectiveness. Yet there are other, and arguably more likely, ways in which a “peak war” force can lose its edge, and fast. Here are four non-tech roads to rapid onset military decline, with historical examples that should feel familiar. So too should the danger, which lies in an unravelling that goes unnoticed or denied, and thus unaddressed, until it is too late to remedy.
First, the unexpected rise or resurgence of a rival power can dramatically shift the terms of military effectiveness. This is a relative shift, but it is very real. In 1860 the French Army, by reputation, was the world’s best. In the preceding five years it had defeated both the second- and third-ranked armies in open battle. Yet just six years later, the esteemed Austrian army was blasted by a new nation—the German Confederation—which had no legacy military reputation at all. Rather than triggering wholesale, top-to-bottom Armée reform and a national mobilization, however, France’s superb but way too small all-volunteer force turned instead to “game changer” technology like the mighty Mitrailleuse. When the reckoning came for France just four years later, defeat was not merely complete; it was shameful.
Second, there is the habit-forming lure of fighting lesser militaries. In the last two decades of the 19th century (1878–1899), Britain’s army and navy fought Ashanti, Zulu, Afghans, Egyptians, Sudanese (twice), and faced down the armies of the Tsar with ironclads alone—and everywhere, every time, victory was theirs. Yet these were “little wars” against outclassed, tribal fighters. When, however, the British Army ran into the Afrikaners, the “very model of a modern Major General” was shockingly, and repeatedly, humiliated—names like Majuba, Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso shook the Empire. The British Crown needed 10 times the troops—gathered from across the world empire—to at last defeat the Boer Commandos. Yet only eight years after its victory in the Second Boer War, Parliament handed the whole of South Africa over to the former enemy, with the face-saving consolation that it became a British Dominion. Worse was to come, in World War I.
Third, there is the temptation to live inside “peak war” legend. The 18th century’s God of War, Frederick the Great, transformed Prussia—by force of will—from just another Holy Roman principality to a full-fledged European Great Power, on par with Britain, France, Austria, and Russia. His battle record begged comparison to the war-deities of antiquity: Marius, Scipio, and Caesar. Frederick’s army, assiduously crafted, molded its collective mind to his vision of war. Long after his passing, Soldaten and Generalen alike saw themselves as anointed. A celestial baton had been passed on, forever. Enter Napoleon. The Prussian General Staff had a whole decade to watch the new way of war that Napoleon had wrought. As it turned out, the smug Prussians were not the spiritual progeny of Friedrich der Große after all. Their army was crumpled in just one day at Jena–Auerstedt. Eleven days later, Bonaparte rode in triumph through Berlin.
Fourth, there is the army hollowed out by agendas at home. Here, America is our historical exemplar of rapid onset decline. We call it the Vietnam War. In 1965, the U.S. delivered into hot battle perhaps the best army America ever sent to war. Contrary to common lore, only one-in-eight was a draftee. The Korean war was just 12 years in the historical rearview, and World War II only 20. Yet just seven years later, the U.S. Army was broken. Why? If you send millions of men into battle, with no touchstone mission and no measure of victory, all sacrifice will be in vain, and deadly demoralization will follow. Added to this, like a proverbial “stab in the back”: the very ruling elite that sent this army into battle turned around and betrayed it. America’s soldiers were fingered for the horror-failure of a misbegotten war, while the “best and the brightest” who made it happen were spared the reckoning they deserved.
So, has the U.S. military today lost its military effectiveness, and how should it be appraised in light of these four historical scenarios of military decline?
As for scenario one, the rapid and unexpected rise of a rival: That is easy. The People’s Liberation Army Navy of China came out of nowhere in little more than a decade to surpass a once-peerless U.S. Navy. Moreover, its entire power is concentrated where it counts, while the USN is spread thin everywhere. When Beijing made its bid to become a world-class naval power after 2012, Washington just kept plodding along on the high seas. It still plods along today, only more so.
As for Russia, America’s foreign policy elites have long assumed it could be swatted away like a mosquito. In 2014 it was simply “a gas station with nukes.” In 2022, they declared it was doomed to collapse, taking down the dictator Putin and his loathsome regime. For the past three-and-a-half years—as a stoic Russia mobilized to win its war in Ukraine—our sneering contempt remained unmoved. NATO narcissism and denial, and its unshakeable faith in “game changer” weapons, has brought the U.S.-led West to the brink of shameful defeat.
What of scenario two, glorying in beating chump fighters? In America’s case, there was little glory to be had. Twenty years of feckless “small wars,” “irregular conflict,” and “counterinsurgency”—during which several millions of people were killed—garnered no victory and sometimes brought humiliating defeat. Recall also that in 1878 six clunky British ironclads faced down a Russian army at the gates of Constantinople. By contrast, U.S. Navy “super carriers,” missile cruisers, fighter jets, and drones failed to dent or deter the determination of Yemen’s “primitive” Houthi tribesmen this year.
As for scenario three, living large on past military victory against a regional power, America’s military emerged from its “100-Hour War” in the early 1990s against the evil-mustachioed Saddam as Gods of War incarnate: a state of transcendence that U.S. elites convinced themselves would attain for all time. For a decade after 1991, the soldiering world feasted on its Olympian perch, assured by talk of the “end of history” that their tenure was immortal. Military doctrines like “Rapid Decisive Operations” and “Effects Based Operations”—and the attendant presumption that anything could be done by the U.S.—were the orthodoxies of the day. As with all orthodoxies, truth was anathema, and reality soon harshly reasserted itself. The Iraq War that George W. Bush launched in 2003 was like a slow train wreck, exposing these delusions of godhood. Yet they were still, stubbornly believed.
Scenario four, the hollowing-out at home, unfolded throughout the armed forces after 2009 and ramped up after 2020. Ruling (Blue) elites declared a transformation of American life that went by the name“woke.” Moreover, their wider agenda needed a “Vanguard Party” that through federal law would drive a military metamorphosis, which in turn would become the tip of the spear for radical change nationwide.
The prime directive of all fighting forces—to win wars—was ditched by Blue regimes that put their urgent social agenda above the defense of the nation. How did this affect U.S. military effectiveness? First, recruitment plummeted, as stoic men from America’s heartland were increasingly alienated from a military that seemed to prize racial and gender diversity over effectiveness in combat.
Add to this a hard push to normalize and publicly privilege LGBTQ+ demands, and replacing merit with quota, and a military crash-and-burn is not hard to imagine. The Trump administration has, thankfully, put a stop to much of the madness. A post-2024 Blue Defense policy trajectory would have deep-fried US military effectiveness in a decade. Still, social engineering in America’s armed forces has had deleterious consequences.
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The senior military command deserves blame for America’s march down the first three roads to rapid decay. However harsh, such corrosion is their responsibility. Only root-and-branch reform will staunch the bleeding quickened by their cupidity, corruption, vanity, and hubris.
Responsibility for the fourth, and darkest, road to decline, however, lies with civilian leadership. When elected officials and their political appointees abandon soldiers for whatever banner slogans promise political power, this betrayal becomes the force multiplier of rapid-onset decline. Such political malpractice creates an open wound, sapping the soldier’s very will to fight, sacrifice, and endure privation.
Do America’s political and military leaders have the will and competence to correct course? Perhaps, but only in the next war, when it will be too late. After that, they will end up as a sad footnote of history, and the military they misled, once the envy of the world, will be seen as the very model of a fighting force that—eyes wide shut—marched blindly to tragic decline and fall.
