The entire body of assumptions that the post-Cold War US military was built on is flawed. China didn't democratize, Russia's oligarchs didn't stop using NATO as

The entire body of assumptions that the post-Cold War US military was built on is flawed. China didn't democratize, Russia's oligarchs didn't stop using NATO as their boogeyman, and the world isn't willing to turn dictatorships and ultraconservative theocracies into pariah states. All of that was assumed to be true. The US would do small police actions here and there with highly-specialized forces. The rules-based system would more-or-less do the rest. In the meantime we gutted not only the logistics but the manufacturing base needed to feed that system so that we could "cut costs"... which didn't really happen anyways. We should be throwing people in prison over this.