The key, again, is matériel superiority, which in today’s U.S. military amounts to a bootless faith that technology and industrial capacity can prevail against foes with greater initial military competence. But there is no end in sight to China’s arms buildup. The U.S. ought to consider the possibility that China will possess larger forces than ours, and we should look upon the exceptional military competence of Israel as a model. Underscoring this is the U.S.’s vastly diminished ability to equal American industry’s extraordinary World War II output. The U.S. may not have its former ability to overcome a powerful enemy with matériel in time to prevail.

Moreover, the notion that sheer mass enabled past American victories stems from a warped reading of strategic history. In each conflict, the U.S. did have supremely talented commanders at the highest levels — again, Grant and Sherman in the Civil War, Dewey in the Spanish–American War, Pershing and Sims in World War I, and Eisenhower, Patton, Nimitz, Halsey, and others in World War II. Yet in most cases, it took U.S. statesmen time to identify their generals. Lincoln burned through three commanders before settling on Grant in 1864. Roosevelt took several months to choose Eisenhower, while Nimitz assumed command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet only after the war began. Pershing was promoted in part for his well-timed recent Mexican service.

However, the issue is that the U.S. military has so deeply imbibed the matériel element of strategic history that its ability to identify command talent is a troubling question.