As Bane said to Batman, ‘victory has defeated you.’
America has the most effective formidable military machine in the history of the world. This has resulted in victory after victory, with any setbacks primarily being due to political weakness and not anything to do with the actual military.
The spate of near-constant wins have made the political elite feel that winning is a permanent situation rather than something that has to be constantly worked on. Something to be affirmed and reaffirmed through hard focused effort, daily.
This has resulted in the political elite feeling that a) there is a ‘peace dividend’ (a myth), b) that we will always win (another myth, since winning is a result of a lot of hard work/preparation/tech leadership/top training/and many other things) and c) an assumption that America’s enemies will always be some ragtag unwashed goat herder with a kalashnikov and a suicide belt.
And that is the issue …that as America has been winning and smiting the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s near-peer adversaries have been watching.
They have seen America devastate the KARI integrated air defense system over Baghdad ranging from SEAD to stealth, they have seen the decentralized magic of America’s special mission units, they have seen the use of technology, seen tactics, and a whole host of other factors. They have learned, and incorporated some of that into their own methods by either aping what is good or realizing they have some exploitable weaknesses to be resolved.
This doesn’t mean they would win. Even at its weakness America is still better.
But it will cost American lives.