The reason is very simple. The winners of the last war re-fight the last war. The losers fight the next one.

The best example of that is the Panzers of the Wehrmacht in early WWII. Germany lost WWI. Thanks to people like Heinz Guderian they looked at why and decided how to avoid another such loss.

It worked too. For two years they kicked the living shit out of countries much larger and stronger than Germany. The Allies, in my opinion, never got as good at it as the Wehrmacht did. If Germany hadn’t been saddled with crazy morons for strategic leadership I think the best we could have done was a draw.

However, the States won that war. So they insist on doing what won that war, just bigger and more expensively. And America has never really lost a war since. At least in their minds. So they haven’t received the psychic shock needed to rethink what sort of wars they fight and how to win them with minimum blood and treasure.

Also, it occurs to me that the American idea of economics, what they call capitalism, comes into play. Much of American thinking about warfare is based on economics. Armed forces are as much about feeding the economic machine as about fighting and winning wars. The ‘profitability’ of a weapon or force structure is a major consideration. So the U.S. armed forces go big. Big tanks, big guns, big ships, big planes. There’s money and careers to be made.

So, between lack of imagination and economics, it’s nearly impossible for the U.S. to reconsider what types of wars it will fight and how to win them.