The Tyranny of Distance: Explaining the Decline in U.S. Military Performance

• In Event: The End of Unipolarity?

Abstract

There is a growing sense that U.S. military effectiveness has been on the wane in recent years. Is this the case? If so, what are the reasons for the decay in American combat performance? We first examine the available systematic evidence for American military decline, showing that the United States has indeed experienced a drop in the quality of outcomes of its military contests. This trend is most apparent when analyzing the much larger number of minor U.S. disputes and armed conflicts than when examining the relatively small number of U.S. wars. Observers have offered a number of explanations for declining American military success. Critics often emphasize normative themes that highlight putative moral or organizational shortcomings in U.S. culture or institutions. We offer a compatible, simpler and less pejorative account that relies on physical geography and prior success. Precisely because the United States did so well in the past, remaining conflicts are bound to be less tractable. For example, previous victories in the Western hemisphere mean that the United States is increasingly fighting farther from home. Distance is tyrannical. It saps military strength and increases the cost of contests, even as it reduces U.S. expertise and motivations to prevail. Indeed, this attenuation of interests and abilities with distance provides an objective basis for advocating a policy of military restraint.

Authors

• Michael Patrick Hulme, University of California, San Diego

• Erik Gartzke, UCSD