The Shattered Myth of US Military Primacy
Techtonic Shifts in the International Balance of Power
SEP 4 2026
Western defeats in the wars of the 21st Century are in part because US and NATO political and military leaders do not understand the balance of power. The foundations of the balance of power are industrial capacity, energy, and a country’s ability to think and act strategically. But when assessing balance of power for a particular geopolitical context, one needs also to consider the military utility and political deployability of one’s forces. Recent operational developments in the NATO-Russia and US Iran Wars show that, because the US and NATO are no longer able confidently to secure air superiority and sea control, their capacity successfully to project power in the world is now severely reduced. The consequent force structure implications are profound, and it is unlikely that this situation will change markedly in anything less than 10 years.
INTRODUCTION
On 9th February 1871, Benjamin Disraeli warned Britain’s House of Commons of the upheaval caused by Prussian unification and France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War:
“You have a new world, new influences at work, and new and unknown objects and dangers with which to cope, … The balance of power has been entirely destroyed.”
A century and a half later, we are witnessing another tectonic shift in the balance-of-power.
Yet few Western commentators understand what has happened. The reason appears simple: they do not understand how the balance of power works.
If Americans and Europeans are intelligently to shape their future foreign policy and, where necessary, military strategy, they must rediscover how to calculate the balance-of-power. This, in turn, will allow them better to judge the West’s true politico-military leverage in the Russo-Ukraine War, or in the US-Iran War, or in whatever follow-on events lie in human society’s geopolitical future.
An instructive starting point is the work of Professor John Mearsheimer, particularly given his unusual Russo-Ukraine prescience – which stands in stark contrast to the failed forecasts of the West’s governments, commentators and journalists over the last 10 or so years. Mearsheimer emphasises economic wealth and population size as fundamental determinants of potential power[1]. All other things being equal, larger populations are more powerful than smaller populations, richer ones more powerful than poorer ones.
However, in my judgement, national power is determined not only by foundational factors such as these, but also by assessing the military utility and the political deployability of such power in the geopolitical context into which it might be deployed. By exploring all three determinants, we should be able more rigorously to calculate the balance of power prior to the use of military force, to then make more intelligent decisions about whether or where such force should indeed be deployed, and to gain a better understanding of the new strategic context.
Industrial Capacity
Economic wealth is routinely – and unhelpfully – assessed using GDP figures, a particularly poor way to calculate national military power. For example, Britain, France and Russia have broadly similar GDPs, whether measured in nominal terms or purchasing power parity. Yet industrial production represents only around 30% of Russia’s economic output. Whereas in Britain’s and France’s post-industrial economies, services represent nearly 80% of their economic outputs.
Which, in balance of power terms, matters because it should surely be obvious that the service sector produces little that is useful on the battlefield? Unfortunately, not. Most Western commentators still cite national GDP output as evidence that Russia is weak whereas Europe is strong. But if Russia is so weak, why is Europe so desperate to hold a reluctant America in NATO and tempt an even more reluctant America back into the Russo-Ukraine War? The reason is that Europe may be GDP strong – whatever that means – but it is militarily weak.
So, when calculating the balance-of-power, the first foundational factor is not economic output but instead industrial capacity. A synthetic collateralised debt obligation is of little obvious use on the battlefield. Unlike a 155mm shell, of which Russia is outproducing Europe and the US combined. This disparity also brings into sharp relief the unusually poor value for money that the West secures from taxpayers’ investments in its military-industrial complex. Here, Professor Michael Hudson’s distinction between industrial and financial capitalism is instructive.
Whereas China’s and Russia’s industrial capitalism directs state-controlled resources toward productive industrial capacity — steel, shipbuilding, munitions – the financial capitalism of Western economies has optimised for shareholder return and rentier extraction, instead of focusing on the unglamorous business of building military capacity and winning wars.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, the balance of power framework developed here reveals a tectonic shift in the international balance of power, profound in both nature and geopolitical implications.
For America – a super-power with a force structure built on the assumption that the dominance of its air and sea forces would enable it to project power across the world at a time and place of its choosing – the era of military primacy is evidentially over[10].
For Europe, weak across all three foundational factors – industrial capacity, energy, strategic thinking ability – unlikely ever again to secure substantive American engagement in Europe, and with an angry Russia on its border, the position is different, but consequences equally profound.
But realisation of this tectonic shift is not universal. Notwithstanding continuing White House and Department of War pronouncements of US military invincibility, I suspect professional recognition of the shift is 99% clear to the Pentagon’s military professionals. I suspect it is also clear in the IDF’s military professionals. Similarly, I suspect it is also clear to the GCC states – now all facing difficult and delicate choices about how to provide for their future security, and where to invest their future hydrocarbon profits. And last but not least, I suspect it is clear to many if not most in the Rest of the World, unencumbered by Western political narratives.
Sadly though, the recognition still appears absent amongst important Western actors. Neocons – within and outside the Beltway – still seem determined to pursue policies to confront China and Russia, and execute regime change where next takes their fancy. Israeli politicians still seem to believe that their Greater Israel project is intact. European leaders – political and military – still seem to think that, if the US can be tempted back into the NATO-Russo War, Russia can be forced to the negotiating table on terms that suit Europeans.
The implicit assumption that united these disparate actors was that, with the US military on your side, you would win. The assumption still unites them. But when viewed through the logical lens of rigorous balance of power calculation, the tectonic truth is impossible to ignore.
It is thus surely time to recognise and accept this changed strategic context and the new geopolitical realities on the ground. For NATO’s European nation-states to recognise and accept that, even in the extremely unlikely situation that the US could be tempted back into the NATO-Russian War, NATO would still lose. For Israeli politicians to recognise and accept that, absent US invincibility, they will need a Plan B based around something other than war. For US politicians to recognise and accept that it is now impossible to conceive a remotely plausible politico-military strategy to decisively win the US-Iranian War.
In 1965, General André Beaufre wrote: ‘In war, the loser deserves to lose because his defeat must be due to failures in thinking either before or during the campaign.’[11] I agree. So does history.
When considering the deployment of military force, a critical element of such thinking is the ability rigorously to calculate the balance-of-power. With competent strategic thinking and rigorous balance of power calculation, each and every one of West’s wars of the 21st Century would probably have been avoided in the first place. With competent strategic thinking and rigorous balance of power calculation, the West could now better understand and accept the all too real political and military limitations of US and NATO power. With competent strategic thinking, all could agree to pivot from war to dialogue, and begin the patient hard work to bring the Russo-Ukraine and US-Iran Wars to a more humane, less physically destructive, and less economically disastrous close.
B. The Shattered Myth of US Military Primacy
Techtonic Shifts in the International Balance of Power
STEVE JERMY SEP 4 2026
Western defeats in the wars of the 21st Century are in part because US and NATO political and military leaders do not understand the balance of power. The foundations of the balance of power are industrial capacity, energy, and a country’s ability to think and act strategically. But when assessing balance of power for a particular geopolitical context, one needs also to consider the military utility and political deployability of one’s forces. Recent operational developments in the NATO-Russia and US Iran Wars show that, because the US and NATO are no longer able confidently to secure air superiority and sea control, their capacity successfully to project power in the world is now severely reduced. The consequent force structure implications are profound, and it is unlikely that this situation will change markedly in anything less than 10 years.
INTRODUCTION
On 9th February 1871, Benjamin Disraeli warned Britain’s House of Commons of the upheaval caused by Prussian unification and France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War:
“You have a new world, new influences at work, and new and unknown objects and dangers with which to cope, … The balance of power has been entirely destroyed.”
A century and a half later, we are witnessing another tectonic shift in the balance-of-power.
Yet few Western commentators understand what has happened. The reason appears simple: they do not understand how the balance of power works.
If Americans and Europeans are intelligently to shape their future foreign policy and, where necessary, military strategy, they must rediscover how to calculate the balance-of-power. This, in turn, will allow them better to judge the West’s true politico-military leverage in the Russo-Ukraine War, or in the US-Iran War, or in whatever follow-on events lie in human society’s geopolitical future.
An instructive starting point is the work of Professor John Mearsheimer, particularly given his unusual Russo-Ukraine prescience – which stands in stark contrast to the failed forecasts of the West’s governments, commentators and journalists over the last 10 or so years. Mearsheimer emphasises economic wealth and population size as fundamental determinants of potential power[1]. All other things being equal, larger populations are more powerful than smaller populations, richer ones more powerful than poorer ones.
However, in my judgement, national power is determined not only by foundational factors such as these, but also by assessing the military utility and the political deployability of such power in the geopolitical context into which it might be deployed. By exploring all three determinants, we should be able more rigorously to calculate the balance of power prior to the use of military force, to then make more intelligent decisions about whether or where such force should indeed be deployed, and to gain a better understanding of the new strategic context.
Energy
The second foundational factor in balance of power calculations is energy. In operations and war, combat and logistics are extremely energy intensive, be it in the land, sea or air domains. As an example, whilst deployed in Afghanistan in 2007, despite my own war-fighting experience, I was still shocked to discover that, for every 1 litre or gallon of diesel delivered to front line land forces, 400 (sic) litres or gallons were needed for this single unit’s delivery through the logistics supply chain.
Energy and industrial capacity are, of course, critically interlinked. In that industrial capacity requires access to reliable supplies of cheap, high-quality and plentiful energy. As Europeans in general and Germans in particular are finding to their self-inflicted economic cost, thanks to their imposition of foreseeably self-defeating sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons.
But we should none of us be surprised, because these two foundational factors have been clear over history. In World War II, the United States, Russia and Britain had large industrial sectors, but also reliable energy supplies. The German army’s failure to capture Russian oilfields and the US Navy submarines’ success against Japan’s Indonesian oil convoys were key factors in the eventual defeat of both Axis nations[2].
CONCLUSION
To conclude, the balance of power framework developed here reveals a tectonic shift in the international balance of power, profound in both nature and geopolitical implications.
For America – a super-power with a force structure built on the assumption that the dominance of its air and sea forces would enable it to project power across the world at a time and place of its choosing – the era of military primacy is evidentially over[10].
For Europe, weak across all three foundational factors – industrial capacity, energy, strategic thinking ability – unlikely ever again to secure substantive American engagement in Europe, and with an angry Russia on its border, the position is different, but consequences equally profound.
But realisation of this tectonic shift is not universal. Notwithstanding continuing White House and Department of War pronouncements of US military invincibility, I suspect professional recognition of the shift is 99% clear to the Pentagon’s military professionals. I suspect it is also clear in the IDF’s military professionals. Similarly, I suspect it is also clear to the GCC states – now all facing difficult and delicate choices about how to provide for their future security, and where to invest their future hydrocarbon profits. And last but not least, I suspect it is clear to many if not most in the Rest of the World, unencumbered by Western political narratives.
Sadly though, the recognition still appears absent amongst important Western actors. Neocons – within and outside the Beltway – still seem determined to pursue policies to confront China and Russia, and execute regime change where next takes their fancy. Israeli politicians still seem to believe that their Greater Israel project is intact. European leaders – political and military – still seem to think that, if the US can be tempted back into the NATO-Russo War, Russia can be forced to the negotiating table on terms that suit Europeans.
The implicit assumption that united these disparate actors was that, with the US military on your side, you would win. The assumption still unites them. But when viewed through the logical lens of rigorous balance of power calculation, the tectonic truth is impossible to ignore.
It is thus surely time to recognise and accept this changed strategic context and the new geopolitical realities on the ground. For NATO’s European nation-states to recognise and accept that, even in the extremely unlikely situation that the US could be tempted back into the NATO-Russian War, NATO would still lose. For Israeli politicians to recognise and accept that, absent US invincibility, they will need a Plan B based around something other than war. For US politicians to recognise and accept that it is now impossible to conceive a remotely plausible politico-military strategy to decisively win the US-Iranian War.
In 1965, General André Beaufre wrote: ‘In war, the loser deserves to lose because his defeat must be due to failures in thinking either before or during the campaign.’[11] I agree. So does history.
When considering the deployment of military force, a critical element of such thinking is the ability rigorously to calculate the balance-of-power. With competent strategic thinking and rigorous balance of power calculation, each and every one of West’s wars of the 21st Century would probably have been avoided in the first place. With competent strategic thinking and rigorous balance of power calculation, the West could now better understand and accept the all too real political and military limitations of US and NATO power. With competent strategic thinking, all could agree to pivot from war to dialogue, and begin the patient hard work to bring the Russo-Ukraine and US-Iran Wars to a more humane, less physically destructive, and less economically disastrous close.
C. The Shattered Myth of US Military Primacy
Techtonic Shifts in the International Balance of Power
STEVE JERMY SEP 4 2026
Western defeats in the wars of the 21st Century are in part because US and NATO political and military leaders do not understand the balance of power. The foundations of the balance of power are industrial capacity, energy, and a country’s ability to think and act strategically. But when assessing balance of power for a particular geopolitical context, one needs also to consider the military utility and political deployability of one’s forces. Recent operational developments in the NATO-Russia and US Iran Wars show that, because the US and NATO are no longer able confidently to secure air superiority and sea control, their capacity successfully to project power in the world is now severely reduced. The consequent force structure implications are profound, and it is unlikely that this situation will change markedly in anything less than 10 years.
INTRODUCTION
On 9th February 1871, Benjamin Disraeli warned Britain’s House of Commons of the upheaval caused by Prussian unification and France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War:
“You have a new world, new influences at work, and new and unknown objects and dangers with which to cope, … The balance of power has been entirely destroyed.”
A century and a half later, we are witnessing another tectonic shift in the balance-of-power.
Yet few Western commentators understand what has happened. The reason appears simple: they do not understand how the balance of power works.
If Americans and Europeans are intelligently to shape their future foreign policy and, where necessary, military strategy, they must rediscover how to calculate the balance-of-power. This, in turn, will allow them better to judge the West’s true politico-military leverage in the Russo-Ukraine War, or in the US-Iran War, or in whatever follow-on events lie in human society’s geopolitical future.
An instructive starting point is the work of Professor John Mearsheimer, particularly given his unusual Russo-Ukraine prescience – which stands in stark contrast to the failed forecasts of the West’s governments, commentators and journalists over the last 10 or so years. Mearsheimer emphasises economic wealth and population size as fundamental determinants of potential power[1]. All other things being equal, larger populations are more powerful than smaller populations, richer ones more powerful than poorer ones.
However, in my judgement, national power is determined not only by foundational factors such as these, but also by assessing the military utility and the political deployability of such power in the geopolitical context into which it might be deployed. By exploring all three determinants, we should be able more rigorously to calculate the balance of power prior to the use of military force, to then make more intelligent decisions about whether or where such force should indeed be deployed, and to gain a better understanding of the new strategic context.
Strategic Thinking
There is finally a third foundational factor to consider in balance of power calculations – one which may appear ephemeral yet is anything but. It is the ability of a nation-state’s leaders, and the military-diplomatic establishment that supports them, to think and act strategically. In short, it is a nation-state’s strategic thinking capability.
In Strategy for Action, I suggested that successful strategic performance – that is the ability successfully to formulate and execute strategy – could be judged after the fact with three simple tests. Was the strategy effective, i.e. did it achieve its objectives? Was it efficient – that is, did it achieve its objectives with the level of resources originally intended? Were the results enduring?
‘Some may question the efficacy of these [three] simple tests. They are too hard on the strategy makers. War is complex. No one, no matter how talented, can foresee all. Unexpected events, bad luck, changing political situations and so on, all combine to deliver setbacks and defeats that could not have been anticipated. Perhaps. But ultimately political and military leaders make strategy in a hard Darwinistic school where there are no prizes for second best, no matter what the explanation.’[3]
When I provided evidence[4] between 2010 and 2013 to Britain’s House of Commons Select Committees and emphasized the importance of strategy thinking capability, sadly my message fell mostly on deaf ears. In part, I suspect, because I had an evidence database of only two modern operations, Afghanistan and Iraq, on which to draw. Today, the database is substantially larger. Indeed, with four defeats suffered in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and two defeats pending in Ukraine and Iran, the case is watertight. To be sure, when judged against the effective, efficient and enduring tests, the West’s strategic-thinking track record in the 21st Century has been little short of dismal.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, the balance of power framework developed here reveals a tectonic shift in the international balance of power, profound in both nature and geopolitical implications.
For America – a super-power with a force structure built on the assumption that the dominance of its air and sea forces would enable it to project power across the world at a time and place of its choosing – the era of military primacy is evidentially over[10].
For Europe, weak across all three foundational factors – industrial capacity, energy, strategic thinking ability – unlikely ever again to secure substantive American engagement in Europe, and with an angry Russia on its border, the position is different, but consequences equally profound.
But realisation of this tectonic shift is not universal. Notwithstanding continuing White House and Department of War pronouncements of US military invincibility, I suspect professional recognition of the shift is 99% clear to the Pentagon’s military professionals. I suspect it is also clear in the IDF’s military professionals. Similarly, I suspect it is also clear to the GCC states – now all facing difficult and delicate choices about how to provide for their future security, and where to invest their future hydrocarbon profits. And last but not least, I suspect it is clear to many if not most in the Rest of the World, unencumbered by Western political narratives.
Sadly though, the recognition still appears absent amongst important Western actors. Neocons – within and outside the Beltway – still seem determined to pursue policies to confront China and Russia, and execute regime change where next takes their fancy. Israeli politicians still seem to believe that their Greater Israel project is intact. European leaders – political and military – still seem to think that, if the US can be tempted back into the NATO-Russo War, Russia can be forced to the negotiating table on terms that suit Europeans.
The implicit assumption that united these disparate actors was that, with the US military on your side, you would win. The assumption still unites them. But when viewed through the logical lens of rigorous balance of power calculation, the tectonic truth is impossible to ignore.
It is thus surely time to recognise and accept this changed strategic context and the new geopolitical realities on the ground. For NATO’s European nation-states to recognise and accept that, even in the extremely unlikely situation that the US could be tempted back into the NATO-Russian War, NATO would still lose. For Israeli politicians to recognise and accept that, absent US invincibility, they will need a Plan B based around something other than war. For US politicians to recognise and accept that it is now impossible to conceive a remotely plausible politico-military strategy to decisively win the US-Iranian War.
In 1965, General André Beaufre wrote: ‘In war, the loser deserves to lose because his defeat must be due to failures in thinking either before or during the campaign.’[11] I agree. So does history.
When considering the deployment of military force, a critical element of such thinking is the ability rigorously to calculate the balance-of-power. With competent strategic thinking and rigorous balance of power calculation, each and every one of West’s wars of the 21st Century would probably have been avoided in the first place. With competent strategic thinking and rigorous balance of power calculation, the West could now better understand and accept the all too real political and military limitations of US and NATO power. With competent strategic thinking, all could agree to pivot from war to dialogue, and begin the patient hard work to bring the Russo-Ukraine and US-Iran Wars to a more humane, less physically destructive, and less economically disastrous close.