David Allan Adams, U.S. Navy (Retired): Since the end of World War II, the U.S. armed forces have proved largely inept at exercising military power as an instrument of national policy. Retired Navy Admiral James Stavridis concedes that “we have become less successful over the past decades, beginning with the failures in Vietnam and continuing to the frustrations today in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The cause of these military struggles, Harlan Ullman claims, is an inability of the nation’s political leaders to think in coherent strategic terms. Similar problems exist with coherent energy planning.
