>The USA has never been defeated. It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities.

Except for the capability to prevail in those conflicts.

On the other hand the US did prevail in Iraq, and often prevails in smaller interventions such as Kosovo, or various strikes on particular targets.

>Since then they've been voluntarily giving up much of that industrial advantage out of greed.

American workers just don't want to do those jobs any more, at least not enough of them, and the country won't tolerate enough immigration to make up the shortfall domestically. There just aren't tens of millions of Americans sitting around waiting to take up manufacturing jobs. If citizens prefer to do other jobs, then non citizens have to do them, whether that's in the USA or outside it.

> Except for the capability to prevail in those conflicts.

Doubt. The US suffered around 60k deaths in Vietnam before it pulled out, yet it has proven a willingness to withstand at least 5x more losses than that. WWII cost the US around 300k deaths, its civil war cost around 200k deaths.

I think they just didn't want to commit more american lives to whatever objectives it is that they had. They definitely had and still have the capability to do so, but they chose not to.