Reading through some of the marine corps warfighting manuals I was exposed to the idea of the various degrees of war.
That there is [individual], tactical, operational, strategy and grand strategy. I include individual myself because it is valid but didn't make sense for the manual so was omitted there.
The individual level there are fights, one man vs others and the ability to run faster/further or shoot straighter determine greater success for the individual.
The tactical through strategic levels would be battles where success is determined by how many people can be effectively employed specifically to kill others.
Grand strategy is where wars are won and rarely have anything to do with explicit murder.
The success of a state is entirely founded upon her ability to employ superior grand strategy.
When that is achieved the smaller divisions of conflict are made the most decisive.
The grand strategy America employs is having the most robust logistical network in the world allowing her to send ships across the pacific with the sole duty of making sure marines have ice cream while the Japanese starve to death on rations in caves on islands.

The thing that I think about often is if it would be possible to have superior grand strategy to America simply by living humbly.
If everyone in the military is satisfied with eating exclusively water, canned tuna, beans and pasta; food stores could be buried and last for decades.
The grand strategy advantage of America is thwarted by a very inexpensive logistic group.
War could be waged with America and the only offensive weapons necessary would be one's own fists in order to agitate American communities.
Once sufficiently agitated, run to a food store and wait until there is an opportunity for escape.
On every scale of warfare no modern state would have the capacity to retaliate.

One problem is that basic foods like Potatoes are only getting more expensive per pound with every passing year.
in 1940 if you ate primarily potatoes you could get a year supply of potatoes for less than $10.
Today it would cost $1,000 to do the same.


I suppose I don't need to explain what a 100x increase in price is but it illustrates how with time this logistical superiority is getting harder and harder to oppose.
It benefits the American military specifically to have things get more expensive because then it is harder to survive long enough to starve America specifically.
Wars are never won by who kills more people, it is just whose leadership decides to give up first and that comes down to being able to feed their people.
There's a reason why the most powerful person in an area was called a "Lord" it's short for "Loaf warden" or someone who protects food stores.
It's not complicated but simple doesn't mean easy and it's certainly getting harder.

Most inflation metrics are off by an order of magnitude because if they really admitted to the true magnitude of inflation it would lead to bloodshed.