The long Russian strategy has been to undermine the NATO via the US. The right wing nonsense in the US plays into that, by design, and is happening at the worst time for the US.

Reality is the value that the US brings is lower than it was. Ukraine has chewed up the old Soviet-era WW2 style tank divisions, but we’ve also seen that 4th generation fighters can’t survive in contested airspace and traditional Navy ships need to stay offshore (for now) to avoid being sunk by drone jetskis. Kinda a problem where we have limited inventory of 5th generation aircraft in either of our air forces.

The Navy sort of figured this out, but instead of building submarines built stealth ships with no weapons.

We need a reappraisal of US military force structure, based on the technology of 2026 vs 1986, as we’re on the path to end up like the Russians.