GENERAL CHARLES “CQ” BROWN, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, America’s top military officer, recently told the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering of the country’s foreign-policy elite, that the nation’s armed forces were the “most lethal, most respected combat force in the world”. Steely-faced, and to jubilant whoops, he declared: “I do not play for second place.” In reality, America’s military position is eroding. That is the message of a report published on July 29th by a bipartisan commission entrusted by Congress with scrutinising the Biden administration’s national defence strategy (NDS), a document published two years ago.