Quote Originally Posted by Eden
To posit a decline one has to either assume or demonstrate that things were somehow better in the past.
The greatest measurement for the effectiveness of the military instrument is whether it wins its nation's wars. So the military may or may not have been more apolitical, intellectual, macro-managed, moral, and capable in the past, but that does not mean that the condition of those things have not contributed to a posited decline in American warfighting power. If it is true that the military now lacks a fundamental understanding of strategy, for example, it should reveal itself in American wars where even if battlefield victory was attained, the political objectives sought were not secured.