The United States: Powerful and Weak at the Same Time

What happens when the body is strong and the mind is not

Hi All,

This is going to be a highly speculative essay as I’m wrestling with ideas of national power as part of a new book I’m writing (called War and Power). The book looks at the big questions of what makes a state powerful and what really matters in war. It has caused me to reconsider many of my previous conceptions of both—in a way that I find both refreshing and a little humbling.

I would like to begin this piece with another mea culpa—or at least an admission that I might have gotten the balance wrong on a major question in the past. Anyone who knows my work knows that I look at economic/technological predominance as the key to national power. Its simply because such predominance can’t be faked. And when it comes to war, economic/technological predominance is almost always the thing that determines the outcome of the clash of arms. Its those who act powerful but lack the economic/technological underpinnings that normally end up being crushed.

That being said, I was more than aware that economic/technological dominance does not always win wars (you might look at the United States and its record winning wars since 1945).