Go Big or stay home

I know that I'm not alone in thinking that as a civilization (Western part, anyway) we've lost the will to win. The linked article by Angelo Codevilla is well worth your time as a description of the gap between the "Ruling Class" and the bulk of the population in the USA. There are symptoms of that up here too, but we started from a statist position so this isn't as big a problem in Canada.

This part however is the most on-message with AotF, so I'll block quote it here:

Because our ruling class deems unsophisticated the American people's perennial preference for decisive military action or none, its default solution to international threats has been to commit blood and treasure to long-term, twilight efforts to reform the world's Vietnams, Somalias, Iraqs, and Afghanistans, believing that changing hearts and minds is the prerequisite of peace and that it knows how to change them. The apparently endless series of wars in which our ruling class has embroiled America, wars that have achieved nothing worthwhile at great cost in lives and treasure, has contributed to defining it, and to discrediting it -- but not in its own eyes.

No better summary of those actions/wars is necessary. Countries that fall into the clutches of their "progressive" elements lose all sense of themselves and thence have nothing to cling to as a National Interest.

National Interest can be well served by short/sharp wars, assuming that all more reasonable options have been exhausted first. Note that I do not say "in the last resort" because sometimes a smackdown is what is called for sooner rather than later. For example I'll use Afghanistan 2001; the Taliban were given a choice about turning over OBL, and they chose poorly. The SOF/Northern Alliance campaign that followed was exactly the right way to do it but the nation building/insurgency after the fact has been and will ultimately be a failure, an expensive and embarrassing one at that.

As long as the lily-livered run foreign policy we must hope that we don't face an existential (external) threat, because the "elites" won't let us win.