Source?
It's unclear to me that the military is currently any less effective and efficient than it was in the 90s. In Hollywood films in those days, it was typically portrayed as being incredibly efficient, but that has nothing to do with reality.
My own anecdote says that "The wastefulness of the military budget" has been an issue for many decades -- go look up Eisenhower's warnings of the military/industrial complex, and consider that the problem had been building for quite a while at that point.
Back then, of course, "cultural rot" would've meant "Treating black soldiers as equals"; in the 90s, IIRC, it would've meant "Treating female soldiers as equals". Just wondering, are you in favor of racism and sexism as well, or are you just anti-trans? Please note that anti-trans attitudes are likely to age about as well as racism and sexism have.
IMHO, every social change feels a little weird at the time; you're used to thinking a certain way, and now you're told that it's wrong; people take that sort of things personally. Other self-righteous people sometimes realize they can use the new woke attitude to swan around and club people who're moving more slowly -- bullying, really, and this bullying is the serious problem on the left, not the wokeness itself. We'd all be better off if we were better at granting grace to people making good-faith efforts to change their habits and attitudes.
So social change is hard. But that doesn't make it wrong, or rot, or virtue-signaling; it really does make life better for unfairly marginalized people, and as it spreads, the power of the leftist bullies will dissipate, and we'll be left with a better world overall.
And: if you want to disempower those leftist bullies faster, support racial justice, support women's rights, support trans rights. You don't have to club people over the head with it; just offer quiet support, because it's the right thing to do, and it'll make the bullies all the madder if there's nothing they can use to feel superior to you. :-)