"Put bluntly, the U.S. military could lose the next state-versus-state war it fights."

If the United States went to war with Russia or China tomorrow, the military would almost certainly suffer a " decisive military defeat," so far that the "security and wellbeing" of the U.S. "are at greater risk than at any time in decades," according to an alarming new assessment of the Trump administration's 2018 National Defense Strategy.

• The report, composed by a bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission selected by Congress, suggests that a likely U.S. military campaign against the Russian military in Northern Europe or with China over the island of Taiwan would yield "enormous" losses of both military personnel and "capital assets" (ships, aircraft, and other vehicles) for the United States.

• The reason is simple: While the U.S. military has "eroded to a dangerous degree" since the end of the Cold War, the Russian and Chinese militaries have come to rival the Pentagon in capabilities previously possessed solely by the U.S., including precision strikes, integrated air defenses, cruise, and ballistic missiles, and "advanced cyber warfare and anti-satellite capabilities."

• As a result, the Pentagon "would face daunting challenges in establishing air superiority or sea control and retaking territory lost early in a conflict," the report states. "Against an enemy equipped with advanced anti-access/area denial capabilities, attrition of U.S. capital assets—ships, planes, tanks—could be enormous."

• "The prolonged, deliberate buildup of overwhelming force in theater that has traditionally been the hallmark of American expeditionary warfare would be vastly more difficult and costly, if it were possible at all," the authors add. "Put bluntly, the U.S. military could lose the next state-versus-state war it fights."

This article by Jared Keller originally appeared at Task & Purpose. Follow Task & Purpose on Twitter. This article first appeared in 2018.

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