The US govt no longer has the intestinal fortitude to actually do what it takes to win a war. Wars are brutal and ugly and if you fight to actually win it, with minimal cost to yourself, there will be lots of collateral damage (both structural and human). There are very few in Washington and unfortunately very few now, at the helm of our military, that are willing to do what it takes to truly win. The US absolutely has the ability to end wars decisively and to do so extremely quickly, but we are not willing to deal with the consequences of fighting to actually win. Hence, we win the conflicts and major battles but still lose the war by getting repeatedly drawn into these long-term guerilla style conflicts and then spending our treasure to rebuild all these other countries. My dad always told me growing up, "Son, always do your best to avoid a fight if you can, but if you know one is coming for sure, you hit him first and you make dang sure that you keep pounding him once he's down. You dont get off of him until people pull you off or he's limp or knocked out and can no longer fight back. You make sure that he knows that he doesnt want to ever mess with you again. If you do this just once or twice, you wont have to fight very much afterwards." As a country, we've lost our edge and therefore nobody in the world truly fears or more importantly respects the US anymore. IMO, Trump truly wanted the rest of the world to regain both a fear and a respect for the US and wanted the US to return to being the single dominant super-power in the world. This is the reason why all the other countries around the world were happy when Trump was not re-elected.

Truman bombed Japan. Completely destroyed two entire cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was horrific, and horrible but it sent the message loud and clear. Frak with us and you and your country will cease to exist. While not formally official at the time, the war really ended that day. Vietnam could've gone in a different direction but the libs were already taking over the country at that point. Gaddafi was showing his azz and sponsoring terrorism against US citizens and our military personnel and Reagan bombed his personal residence, killing his daughter and 36 others. No apology. Gaddafi got the message and you didnt hear much from him after that. You can absolutely project peace through strength, but you have to have strong leaders that are willing to hammer people if necessary, and those same leaders also have to be strong enough to deal with the consequences and negative press associated with it. Biden is weak, therefore we will not formally get involved in the Ukraine/Russia conflict, other than to lightly supply Ukraine with a few weapons. China has been diligently watching our response to Russia and will most likely go ahead and invade Taiwan (would not surprise me if it is done just before or just after the mid-terms). We, as a country, are projecting weakness throughout the world right now and the bad players will continue to openly laugh at the US while taking advantage of it while the timing is right and there are no consequences for their actions.