One commonly made assumption is that the United States has for decades enjoyed conventional military dominance, the ability to defeat any other actor in a conventional fight. The assumption of historic military dominance, often understood as fact, is almost entirely unsupported by meaningful evidence. While the U. Because American conventional military dominance is an assumption rather than a fact, strategists need to question its validity and its importance for policy and strategy.
Confidence in the U. President Barack Obama, in a speech to U. Similar declarations have come from foreign policy intellectuals. Understandably, this discussion seems to have influenced how the American public sees its military as well. Every one of the abovementioned experts and leaders spoke in good faith, but from a shared assumption about the character of global military power. This belief, founded in an underexamined narrative, is worthy of further scrutiny.
Most Americans learn a history of U. Narratives of triumph in two world wars, a one-sided fight in the first Gulf War, and rapid invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan all support the belief that through most of the 20th century and no small amount of what we have seen thus far from the 21st, the United States has been the inevitable victor when its enemies are brave enough, or perhaps foolish enough, to meet it on the field of conventional warfare.
On closer examination, however, history provides little obvious support for a narrative of American military dominance. Americans fought hard, sacrificed, and made a key difference in both wars, but did so as part of large alliances that included other powerful states, not as a military titan crushing its enemies.
During the World War I, the U. Instead, the French, British, and Russian militaries each bore a heavier burden. World War II arguably made a much greater impression on the American narrative, whether measured through recent remembrance on the anniversary of D-Day or the number of Call of Duty games the war is featured in.
The s through the s are less commonly portrayed as a period of military dominance, but still affect how Americans see their military. The Korean War is rarely mentioned. When it is, stories of Chinese human-wave tactics control the narrative rather than depictions of a stalemate against an adversary with occasional small numerical advantages at the theater level.
Instead of a reminder of the limits of American military power, Vietnam is often part of a parallel narrative about the hazards and frustrations of fighting unconventional forces. Instead of challenging American conventional dominance, that narrative is used as a demonstration that the American military has so much conventional power that its enemies may choose to avoid it on the field and fight as insurgents.
The United States and its allies outperformed expectations in Kuwait and Iraq. Instead of taking the projected , casualties , the United States and its allies steamrolled the Iraqi military. At the time, the victory seemed to prove both the value of post-Vietnam reforms and emerging information technology capabilities.
President George H. Bush captured the spirit of the hour when he announced the United States had finally beaten Vietnam. Unfortunately, the first Gulf War was not a strong indicator of American military power compared to other major powers.
India, which has been engaged in a prolonged territorial conflict with nearby Pakistan over the Kashmir region, has an estimated 1,, people actively serving in its armed forces. China, the most powerful country in Asia and a growing adversary to the U. The communist superpower has an estimated active personnel of 2,, — the largest in the world. China has been building out its Navy in recent years while engaging in territorial disputes across the South China Sea.
Today, they have 74 submarines, 52 frigates and 36 destroyers, Global Firepower says. On land, China has 33, armored vehicles and 3, tanks. Their Air Force has amassed 1, fighter aircraft and attack helicopters.
Russia, whose military has become involved in Syria and Ukraine in recent years, has the most tanks of any country in the world: 12,, more than double what the U. While that might have normally led to war, the horrifying power of nuclear weapons kept them from fighting outright.
Instead, the US and Soviet Union competed for global influence. American and Soviet fears of a global struggle became a self-fulfilling prophecy: both launched coups, supported rebellions, backed dictators, and participated in proxy wars in nearly every corner of the world. Both built up systems of alliances, offshore bases, and powerful militaries that allowed each to project power across the globe.
By , the US and the Soviet Union had settled into a stalemate; this map shows the world as it had been utterly divided. The Soviet Union, along with many of its trappings of global power, disintegrated — leaving the United States with a vast global architecture of military and diplomatic power that was suddenly unchallenged. Image credit: Minnesotan Confederacy. It expanded during the Cold War to include virtually every European country west of the Soviet bloc.
This may have staved off another war in Europe by pledging that the US would defend any member as it would its own soil. It also left Western Europe, once full of independent powers that jostled against one another and against the United States, unified against a common threat — and led by its most powerful member, the United States.
That dynamic did not really change after the Cold War ended. NATO ensures the stability of Europe and the security of its members, but at a cost: Europe's nations are now reliant upon, and thus yoked to, American power. This dynamic has played out in several places across the globe — South Korea and Japan are similarly tied to the US through security agreements and American military bases, for example — but it is most clearly pronounced in Europe.
Image credit: Arz. Another way to show America's status as the sole global superpower is its military budget: larger than the next 12 largest military budgets on Earth, combined. That's partly a legacy of the Cold War, but it's also a reflection of the role the US has taken on as the guarantor of global security and the international order.
For example, since , the US has made it official military policy to protect oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf — something from which the whole world benefits.
At the same time, other powers are rapidly growing their militaries. China and Russia in particular are rapidly modernizing and expanding their armed forces, implicitly challenging global American dominance and the US-led order.
The US is so powerful for reasons other than its size, its military might, and its global system of alliances and bases — although those are certainly important. There is also America's tremendous advantage in scientific research, which both furthers and is an expression of its technological and economic lead on much of the rest of the world; it's also an indicator of innovation more broadly. An imperfect but revealing shorthand for that is the US's tremendous lead in Nobel prizes from its inception through , when I made this map the US has not lost its Nobel lead since then.
The US has won Nobels, mostly in the sciences; the US thus accounts for 4 percent of the world population but 34 percent of its Nobel laureates.
This is the result of many factors: wealth, a culture and economy that encourage innovation, education, vast state- and private-funded research programs, and a political culture that has long attracted highly educated migrants. All of those factors contribute to American wealth and thus power in more ways than just Nobel prizes, but the sheer number of US laureates is a sign of the American advantage there. Image credit: Max Fisher. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.
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Anand Katakam. Image credit: Anand Katakam.
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