As others have noted above:
- Size generally matters more than spirit. My 100 children with machine guns will win against 10 bodybuilder samurai masters with the ultimately built up Ki energy. Why? Because they have machine guns. The samurai will be Swiss cheese before they get anywhere close to the kids.
- Increased hazing, rape culture, etc. are more likely to reduce the esprit de corps than raise it.
- Modern warfare is more about manufacturing and logistics than about killing. Less than a third of soldiers are ever expected to fight in a war. The other 2/3rds are there to create the support systems and infrastructure to move the soldiers around and keep them armed and fed. And within the realm of killing, a lot more of it is about positioning and communication than doing aerial ninja flips. The Romans didn’t win because they had more muscular, bloodthirsty troops, it’s because they drilled them to maintain a tight shield structure and turtle their way through the enemy. The American military is strong because we can manufacture buttloads of shelf-stable food and boat it to every continent.
All of the above being true, it’s probably more important to note that Donald Trump’s average position on international affairs is that the US should get out of the business of interfering with other people on the global stage. Occasionally, he gets pissed at someone and goes the opposite direction (e.g. after 9/11) but, generally, his position through the decades has been that the US should just turtle and mind its own business. From that, we see things like him calling to reduce the US budget while maintaining Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security yet staying pointedly quiet on the question of the military budget; calling for the US military to focus on fighting city crime (which is against the law and would be law enforcement, not warfighting); and movements like this to focus on national defense over global positioning, or like these to reduce headcount. In general, with all things Trump, you need to focus less on what they’re saying on a stage and more on what they’re actually doing and not talking about.
The more you see a complete 180 between talk and action, the more that you’ve got to be deeply suspicious.
Benedict Arnold, I’m sure, gave a whole bunch of credible and important reasons to defer maintaining the defensive structure of the West Point fortress that he was meant to lead. But the simple reality was, was that he was telling people to do the wrong things to actually maintain a defensive position.
In general, when you’re dealing with a guy who was caught embezzling the charitable givings for cancer kids and veterans - even if he was saying all of the right things, and no one could find a single flaw in the pitch, you should still stay vigilant on watching what actual movements he’s taking and where the cash is actually flowing.