I was watching a show on the History Channel last night, and it was all about the World War II and Cold War efforts in the U.S. to produce nuclear weapons.  That's how wars used to work:  You dump all kinds of money and people into an effort to produce the most advanced, most numerous, and most powerful technology that would cause the most damage to your enemies.  Whoever gets there first, essentially wins. 

Wars these days are quite different.  The U.S. is certainly the leader in terms of military might and defense spending, but somehow the nation hasn't actually won a war since World War II (I don't think conflicts like the Vietnam War count as wins, though this can probably be argued).  Modern wars largely consist of guerrilla efforts led by decentralized, rag-tag groups of unskilled, untrained, uneducated people.  Larger nations with larger weapons can surely drop large bombs from large distances, but this would cause too many innocent civilian deaths.  So fully-equipped, combat-trained soldiers are forced to leave their heavily-armored tanks and fighter jets and drive around cities in lightly-armored vehicles looking for bad guys.  The winner is the side who can last the longest.  And when nations with large defense budgets also have things like bills of rights, the battle becomes more about public opinion than an actual battlefield. #psychology