Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning

Time after time the American military has failed to match loftydeclarations about its superiority, producing instead a mediocrerecord of military accomplishments. Starting from the Korean Warthe United States hasnt won a single war against a technologicallyinferior, but mentally tough enemy.The technological dimension of American strategy hascompletely overshadowed any concern with the social, cultural,operational and even tactical requirements of military (andpolitical) conflict. With a new Cold War with Russia emerging, theUnited States enters a new period of geopolitical turbulencecompletely unprepared in any meaningful wayintellectually,economically, militarily or culturallyto face a reality which washidden for the last 70+ years behind the curtain of never-endingChalabi moments and a strategic delusion concerning Russia,whose history the US viewed through a Solzhenitsified caricaturekept alive by a powerful neocon lobby, which even todaydominates US policy makers minds.This book explores the dramatic difference between the Russian andUS approach to warfare, which manifests itself across the wholespectrum of activities from art and the economy, to the respectivenational cultures; illustrates the fact that Russian economic, military andcultural realities and power are no longer what American elitesthink they are by addressing Russias new and elevated capacitiesin the areas of traditional warfare as well as cyberwarfare andspace; and studies in depth several ways in which the US can simplystumble into conflict with Russia and what must be done to avoid it.Martyanovs former Soviet military background enables deepinsight into the fundamental issues of warfare and military poweras a function of national powerassessed correctly, not throughthe lens of Wall Street economic indices and a FIRE economy,but through the numbers of enclosed technological cycles andculture, much of which has been shaped in Russia by continentalwarfare and which is practically absent in the US.