Jack on the Transition

He be nimble, he be quick; he jumped over that burning hot candlestick.

Why do superpowers sometimes struggle against weaker powers?  Because superpowers are slow giants that throw their weight and waste their energy.  Weaker powers are the smaller judo fighters that use their size to their advantage, hiding, choosing their battles carefully, accepting defeats rather than always seeking total victory, and adapting to changing conditions quickly.  They are innovative to use whatever advantages they do have and compensate for their weaknesses to create asymmetric warfare that larger nations are ill-equipped to fight.  They use their opponent's massive size against them.

(Yes, I know this isn't judo.  Shut up.)

The larger often gets stuck in a quagmire, always making ground in ever diminishing returns, but never winning.  The smaller power accepts long, drawn out wars of attrition, even at a continuous loss, because their will to fight is stronger than their value of life, as compared to the larger power.  These are the the reasons why larger, stronger powers struggle to win against smaller, weaker powers.

This does not have to be so.

Larger powers can re-organize to be like quick and nimble smaller powers.

It will require a willingness to redefine everything from Basic Doctrine.

What might that look like?  In implementation, it might look something like:

• Drastically reduce the current active duty Army to a mere fraction.  They will serve as continuity of mission and trainers of Guard and Reserves only.  Very few would ever deploy ever again.
• Increase the Army Guard and Reserves to provide the backbone of any future contingencies.
• Reduce the size of the other active duties branches, but not as much as the Army.  Reduce missions and refocus on homeland defense and alliance building and alliance preservation, rather than empire building and empire preservation.  This is a major paradigm shift in thinking and mission, not something to gloss over!  This is a massive global drawback  and pivot.
• Reduce presence overseas to advisors, planners, and exercise participants only.  Increase tour lengths to reduce turnover knowledge loss.  Re-form overseas US installations as coalition bases owned and operated by host nation.
• Overseas force projection can be maintained with aircraft carriers, submarines, stealth fighters/bombers, and ballistic missiles.
• Increase force multipliers, such as special operations forces, cyber operations, and intelligence.
• Integrate more with other US government and civilian entities, especially concerning cyber defense.
• Increase non-military instruments of power, such as diplomatic, economic, and humanitarian, etc.
• Stay out of conflicts unless truly necessary.  Get involved in conflicts only as much as necessary, and withdraw from conflict as soon as possible.  Choose less ambitious goals from the outset and accept less than ideal outcomes as closure.  This entire bullet should be bold, but I don't want to burn eyes.
• Reduce tensions rather than raise them when possible, without sacrificing key boundaries or "red lines".

Or, um, beach volleyball teammates??

With the drawdown of the total military size and presence overseas to something smaller and more nimble, we would have the resources to invest in our future development at home rather than increasing energy trying to expand outward in diminishing returns, or hold onto an empire that is in slow decline.  That's wasting our nest egg.  Instead, transfer the wealth of our empire into something better now, rather than repeat Rome, et al.

The United States, being a powerful, wealthy empire in a slow decline, needs to adapt to be quick and nimble.  If we try to continue to expand or hold onto the empire, we will wind up like all of the other empires.  If we get ahead of the curve now, we can re-invest what we have into a different future.  In short:  create lasting alliances, even with adversaries; turn enemies into frenemies, and invest inward rather than outward.  But these things have long lead times.  We cannot delay the shift.

• Focus cultural and corporate demand more on community colleges, technical colleges, and trade schools.  See Mike Rowe.  Most decent jobs in America should only require a 2-year college degree and some OJT to start.  No need to accumulate $100,000 of student loan debt or wait to join the job market.  You can continue your education as you work.  Some jobs or some people will obviously want a 4-year degree or higher degree first, which is fine.
• Refocus national budget on programs that provide grants for education: AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, Teacher Loan Program, etc.  Create many more programs that put 16-20 year olds to work where they are needed most in America in exchange for a stipend, job experience, and college grants.  Something like a new Civilian Conservation Corps but focused on teaching underprivileged, helping the homeless and veterans, improving infrastructure like telecommunications and green energy, etc.
• Get corporations and education to work together to build the skills through education programs where they're needed, and to put jobs where the people are.  Do not let cities race to the bottom to give corporation giants the biggest tax breaks, at least not without also putting jobs where they are needed most.  (There is nothing wrong with creating Silicon Valleys, etc, but not at the expense of Rust Belts, etc).
• Alter the primary school education to focus more on critical thinking, problem solving, and emotional intelligence, etc, and less on memorizing history dates.  Cover the latter, but focus more on the context and lessons learned.  Don't force every student to be an expert in every area, but a generalist in the basics and allow students to flourish in the areas they can.  Incorporate elements of the magnet school concept into every school. 
• Spend more national budget on next wave infrastructure:  high speed rail, mass transit, and hyperloops, high speed internet, 5G cell phone, etc.  Increase vehicle mpg requirements over time.  Invest in more clean energy and provide tax rebates.  Slowly transfer away from the single-owner vehicle, which is cost and space inefficient.
• Some type of real, legitimate Green New Deal.  This is just a no-brainer.  There is so much free energy everywhere.  There is no one solution that will work anywhere, but rather a combination of solutions (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, wave, etc) that can be woven together differently everywhere.  It is possible to make America completely energy independent.
• Harden our cyber infrastructure.  This will become a long-term battle.
• Explore space.  This is not necessarily the final frontier (wink wink), but one of the next ones.  We don't want to be the last ones to the party.  The government should not be out of the loop, but continue to work with private corporations.
• And more to come.  These were just the ones on my mind right now.