Life at the End of American Empire
<i>&quot;Any single defeat can be attributed to particular and ad hoc circumstances, but America is unique among the world’s dominant powers of the past 500 years in its repeated failure to achieve military objectives over decades. Those failures are even more extraordinary because they occurred in the absence of a rising military rival and as America’s ability and willingness to produce and pay for the weapons needed for military supremacy remained undiminished.&quot;</i><p>Yes. That&#x27;s extremely important. Vietnam was the US&#x27;s first total loss, and the US hasn&#x27;t had a successful outcome since then. The US blew the endgame in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and, most importantly, in Russia after the Cold War.<p>What went wrong?<p>After WWII, the US had confidence in its own system of government, and imposed it on Germany and Japan with a sizable occupation force. It worked.<p>The US underfunded the post-war period of round one in Afghanistan, after kicking the Soviets out. In Iraq, the occupation was botched. Paul Bremer is generally blamed for this.[1]<p>Blowing the aftermath of a war leads to big trouble. See: WWI.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Paul_Bremer#Criticism_and_controversies" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Paul_Bremer#Criticism_and_cont...</a>