Has America ever ever been weaker?

[SoCal]

According to the polls, 36 percent of our population consider themselves to be conservative, while only 25 percent consider themselves liberal.

Thankfully as the Dems winning the popular vote in 16' proves, many conservative women know a conman when they see one...

 

[southwest88]

OK...revise the question. Has the post WW2 US been any weaker than it is today?

The Korean Conflict was hard on the US. I would say that near the end of US involvement in the Vietnam War - as voters, business, government & especially the military understood that the end of the tunnel was not approaching, & in fact was receding - that was very hard on the voters, & left the country very leery of ever becoming involved in wars of national liberation, no matter where they occurred.

It was a very strange war - we slaughtered the VC whenever they stood & fought. Which was why they never chose to stand & fight. Just as we slaughtered the VC @ the Tet Offensive - but by then the damage to US perception of the war had been done.

The French were much better @ comprehensively understanding the languages & cultures & ethnicities & religions they worked with in Vietnam - much better than the US, @ least - & even the French couldn't make it work. For whatever reasons, the US wound up backing the French efforts to retake VN - we supplied them abandonded in place arty, trucks, ammo. We underwrote their military expenditures (80% by the time the French called it quits - the figure I remember) & gave them diplomatic support.

Once the French phased out, we took over the French role directly in VN. But we never decided what, exactly, our aims were. We should have followed FDR's foreign policy condition for WWII - No US troops were ever to be sacrificed for the restoration of any foreign empire - not British, French, Dutch, nor Belgian. FDR didn't survive the war, & someone convinced Truman that France was going to be useful in post-WWII Europe.