Marine Corps legend Chesty Puller was fond of noting that the road to Hell is paved with the good intentions of 2nd lieutenants. If so, it is also littered with the overconfidence of generals and admirals who underestimated their adversaries.

One of the most egregious recent examples of the latter was found in the remarks of General Eric Smith, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s National Defense Forum. Smith told the audience that the recent combat experience of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan would enable U.S. forces to defeat China in a war because China had not fought one since the time that images of war were confined to canvas.

The implication here is that the Chinese have grown soft and weak while Americans have developed a “warrior culture” due to our recent combat experience. That assumption is wrong on several levels and it is disturbing because Smith is one of the architects of an extremely questionable new strategy aimed specifically at China. Let’s examine the basic fallacies of Smith’s assumption.

Forgotten History

First, as former Marine and Ph.D. candidate Josiah Lippencott points out, Smith’s comments reflect the pre-World War II assumption of many Western military leaders that the Japanese were not first-class warriors due to poor eyesight and inferior technology. As it turned out, the Japanese were actually excellent night fighters in the air and on land or sea. In the early months of the war, Japanese Zero fighters dominated the sky and their surface ships embarrassed both the British and Americans.