The Defense of the United States must reinvent itself to adapt to the challenges of the future

At the end of the Cold War, the American armed forces were, without question, the most powerful military force in the world, capable on their own of imposing themselves on all theaters. And for nearly 25 years, this status quo will endure, comforting Washington and the Pentagon in the omnipotence of their armed forces. But in recent years, the simultaneous rise in power of the Chinese and Russian armed forces has called this hegemonism into question, to the point that, now, American strategists believe that they could not simultaneously win in Europe against Russia, and in the Pacific against China, if applicable. But while the United States already concentrates more than 30% of global defense spending, with a budget more than twice that of the Sino-Russian couple, the only responses provided by the Pentagon to respond to these threats are based on increase in defense budgets. In reality, American Defense is facing a deep conceptual crisis, and is failing to reinvent itself to face the challenges posed by Moscow and Beijing.

Post-Cold War American military hegemony

In 1991, when the USSR had just collapsed under the weight of its defense investments, the United States at the head of an international coalition won, in a few days, a decisive victory against Iraq, then presented as the fourth world army. The military victory reinforced Washington's political victory over the Communist camp, and its equipment over weapons of Soviet and partially European origin. This military superiority was prolonged due to the absence of a challenger, when, jointly, the American forces and their allies engaged in very asymmetrical wars, as in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. Nothing seemed to be able to oppose the US Army, its Abrams tanks and its AH-64 Apache helicopters, the US Navy, its super Nimitz aircraft carriers and its Los Angeles submarines, or the US Air Force, its stealth F22s and its 2500 fighter planes.

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