6 ms·

Why is it so hard for the U.S. to win wars?

51 points by rbanffy 4mo ago

oggreen 4mo ago
In WW2 thousands of troops could die in a single day and we wouldn't know their names until months or years later. Today a single troop dies and it is the first story on the national news. Millions of civilians also died, just the amount of soldier deaths would be the equivalent of 2-3 September 11s (worldwide) every day for a period of 6 years. So we say "war" but modern conflicts are absolutely nothing compared to what has happened historically. Even though these new "wars" don't seem to have the same definitive results, the alternative could be much, much worse. We're much better off with the bomb critical sites, apply sanctions and political pressure methods vs. the send entire generations off to die methods of old.
- spacebanana7 4mo ago
  The “special military operation” euphemism that both the US/Russia used in Iran/Ukraine does have a degree of truth. These wars are really military engagements with directional objectives rather than truly existential wars with binary outcomes. Modern wars really resemble Rome’s Germanic wars more than the Punic ones.
  - mewpmewp2 4mo ago
    I mean Russia definitely keeps losing very many soldiers every day, I don't think that is comparable at all. It's completely different from US vs Iran.
    - SanjayMehta 4mo ago
      This comment epitomises one of the reasons why the US does not and cannot win any war against a peer adversary. Flawed data.
      - dralley 4mo ago
        I don't even understand what this comment is supposed to be saying in relation to the previous one.
        SanjayMehta 4mo ago
        Look at the body exchange ratios between The Ukraine and Russia. Jan 29th: 1000 - 38 Feb 26th: 1000 - 35 Apr 9th: 1000 - 41 May 15th: 526 - 41 Jun 18th: 522 - 33 Jul 16th: 501 - 31 Total: 4549 - 219
        tencentshill 4mo ago
        The only sources I can find for that are all Russian. Wikipedia (Which I assume you will dismiss out of hand) says it's complicated to determine at best, as they both hide information and boost propaganda. At least don't state it as fact. No one actually knows, which is why citing sources is helpful so that weight can be added.
        helij 4mo ago
        Here's some from BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7ed4rp7x5o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7ed4rp7x5o and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9jl8vxdy9o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9jl8vxdy9o) and one from Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hands-ukraine-1000-war-dead-rbc-says-2026-04-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hands-ukraine-10...). No reason not to believe these numbers as neither side denied it. The reasons for such numbers mismatch are many and don't always tell the story of who's "winning".
        SanjayMehta 4mo ago
        Mediazona is a British intelligence asset and even they can't find the Russian bodies that western propaganda hallucinates. While YouTube is full of videos of miles and miles of Ukrainian graveyards. No need to use the Wikipedia excuse.
        4mo ago
    - spacebanana7 4mo ago
      Rome lost loads of soldiers in the Germanic wars too. The parallel is that these wars are too expensive (for a non-existential conflict) to take to fulfilment, but also can't easily be disengaged from.
      - ryandvm 4mo ago
        > but also can't easily be disengaged from I guess it depends on what you mean by "easily", but Putin could very much just say "fuck this" and turn off the war machine in one day and it's not at all clear to me that there would be much consequential blowback other than the personal humiliation of one man. Would other countries now decide to attack Russia? Of course not. Would the oligarchs flip out and have him assassinated? No. Would the West disassemble the sanctioning apparatus? Eventually. But the real downside is just simple humiliation and to prevent that, they will continue sacrificing young men. Politics is a fucked up game.
  - bojan 4mo ago
    Russia's goal is direct annexation of about quarter of the Ukrainian territory and installing a lifelong puppet regime to control the other three quarters. Ukrainians stand to lose not just their voice and any semblance of economic prosperity, but also their very identity. With the exception of extreme cases like Gaza, it doesn't get more binary than that.
    - spacebanana7 4mo ago
      From Ukraine's perspective it's existential for sure. Russia however, just revises its objectives every few months according to how well/badly its prospects on the battlefield are looking.
      - microtonal 4mo ago
        Isn't it more that they started changing objectives because their original objectives turned out to be unattainable? I also think that for Putin it is pretty existential. Otherwise, they would have negotiated a temporary deal, took the pretty large amount of land that they had taken at the end of 2022. Work on another 'project' like Georgia for a few years, do a lot of disinformation campaigns in Europe in the meanwhile and then revisit Ukraine later. That would have a lot of benefits, like no reaming of Europe, no development of Ukraine's capabilities (resulting in a drastic drop in refinement capabilities), etc. But he couldn't. It would make him look weak and would make him vulnerable to a coup. Continuing is the only way for him.
    - spwa4 4mo ago
      Russia's goals have far evolved over the course of the war, and started out comically ridiculous, prompting a great many people to ask questions about the information "bubble" around Putin. Over the past year, I believe most people would agree Russia has lost a LOT of ground when it comes to their war aims, even if not that much territory. 2014: seize Crimea (success, although it no longer serves any purpose) and Sevastopol (total failure, Sevastopol can no longer serve the Russian black sea fleet, and when it comes to the other goal: keep NATO out of the black sea, it's an even bigger failure. Russia has lost control of the skies above the black sea completely and are losing control over the sea of Azov, by withdrawing air defenses. Now go look on the map where the sea of Azov is to see the magnitude of this failure), prevent Ukraine from approaching NATO and EU (complete failure is putting it very mildly), keep Ukraine unstable (succeeded, until Euromaidan revolution, ie. actually this is a failure) 2022: maintain control over Crimea (looks to be failing, as in Ukraine still controls Crimea's water supply), build a land bridge to Crimea (successfull, except that they can't use their land bridge for anything), seize control over Ukraine's government ("denazify" Ukraine), demilitarize Ukraine (as in Ukraine accepts no to have an army. Obviously total and complete failure), and prevent Ukraine and others from coming closer to NATO (obviously total failure, and not just in Ukraine) In June 2026, ie. about 4 weeks ago, Russia once again confirmed these goals. Oh and they were going to do this in 3 days. Then in 3 weeks. Then in 2 months. Then they stopped making predictions. Today is day 1608 of their 3-day attempt.
  - enopod_ 4mo ago
    For Ukraine it's very much an existential war. If they lose, Ukraine will cease to exist. The only way of winning is, well, winning this war. It is also very much a real war, with hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides, a true massacre not seen in Europe since WW2. Trumps stupid war on Iran on the other hand is really just some air strikes, and Iran can win by just not losing, which is easy, because the US will not invade.
    - hackinthebochs 4mo ago
      It's interesting how casually we replace concern for the population with concern for the political entity. No, the Ukrainian identity will not cease to exist with the replacement of the political entity.
      - enopod_ 4mo ago
        Ask Ukrainians what they think about that. Putin made it more than clear that he wants to erase the Ukrainian identity. [1] In this case, the political entity of Ukraine represents the Ukrainian population, which wants to be free, democratic, Europe-oriented, and last but not least, never ever be under Russian dictatorship again. Russias attitude towards Ukraine has turned borderline genocidal since the start of this war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Russians_and_Ukrainians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Rus...
      - mewpmewp2 4mo ago
        What Russia has done in the past is take people who want to hold onto their old national identity and send them to labor camps far away where most will die, and migrate Russians to the areas so as generations go by Ukrainian identity would be fully gone.
      - IAmBroom 4mo ago
        You are stunningly unaware or maliciously ignoring the cultural genocide that Russia is engaging in, inside taken territories. Children are routinely taken from parents and shipped off to Russia. Parents are encarcerated, conscripted, or slaughtered.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - prmph 4mo ago
    It may not be a lot of dying at once, but some modern wars are rivaling these catastrophic wars of old in casualties. By some counts there have already been at least a million casualties in the Ukraine war, and in Gaza there is probably 100,000 casualties now (military + civilian). And, the conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo over the decades have produced about 5–5.4 million casualties, although accumulated over decades rather than in a single war. So modern conflicts may be lower intensity and lest existential, but they can be every bit as deadly.
    - SanjayMehta 3mo ago
      https://sonar21.com/the-ny-times-lies-about-russian-and-ukrainian-casualties/ https://sonar21.com/the-ny-times-lies-about-russian-and-ukra...
      - prmph 3mo ago
        Your article is all over the place and seems to have agenda. It is unable to stay on point and present a coherent argument. I'd rather trust the Nytimes and the UK intelligence who have confirmed these losses, than some random website pushing an agenda. By hey, if it makes you happy to create you own reality, you do you.
        SanjayMehta 3mo ago
        It's not my article. As for the NYT, read Ashley Rindsberg's "The Gray Lady Winked." And British intelligence? Okay then. Let me chortle into my single malt.
- criddell 4mo ago
  > send entire generations off to die methods of old Of old? Isn't that what Russia is doing right now?
  - Georgelemental 4mo ago
    No, they haven't implemented mass conscription, and won't because even autocrats can't ignore public opinion
    - criddell 4mo ago
      Not sure if the numbers are correct, but it looks like the number of Russians killed in Ukraine is about the same as the number of Americans killed in WW2. Does it matter if the state uses a carrot or stick to send a generation off to die? These may be rookie numbers for Russia, but it's still significant.
      - nradov 4mo ago
        Well there is Russian and then there is Russian. The elites in Moscow and St. Petersburg don't really regard people from the outer provinces as fully Russian, especially not the ethnic minority groups. They're expendable. Most of the casualties have come from those areas so far but they're starting to run out of potential recruits. If the authorities start conscripting men from the core cities and feeding them into the meat grinder then internal dissent will likely increase.
    - giardini 4mo ago
      Russia does conscript men: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-conscripts-war-combat/33415104.html https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-conscripts-war-combat...
    - pibaker 4mo ago
      Correct. Conscription in Russia largely happens to rural people, ethnic minorities and convicts. Russia is the way it is because a large enough number of ethnic Russian middle class urbanites don't give a fuck about anything, and Putin knows the moment he starts drafting them he turns them into anti war activists.
- ButlerianJihad 4mo ago
  > single troop dies Really, now? What national news do you watch? I have literally never seen current/breaking news stories about the death of American troops in action. It seems literally the most silent thing going on. I really don't know--are casualty numbers reported on a regular basis, from the "front"? I would sometimes, after the fact, learn of repatriation flights or interment ceremonies for fallen soldiers. But only on a sporadic basis. Literally, I think I would be familiar with them by now, since Operation Desert Storm or so. This is not something they put on the news. I think that a comparison of casualties from allied and belligerent troops would be something to report, but if they do, it's just sort of being slotted into some Wikipedia article somewhere, I guess.
  - sokoloff 4mo ago
    I’m fairly surprised you are not seeing them. As a test, I checked for US servicemember deaths in the Middle East in July 2026 and checked against my own recall from casual news consumption. I knew of the helicopter crash (1) and missile attack (2). I did not know of the EOD accident (1) this weekend. So, 3 of 4 I knew about without any particularly directed effort to follow it (and the 4th, I’m sure I’ll see reporting about during the week but wasn’t consuming much content of any type over the weekend).
  - cbm-vic-20 4mo ago
    Right now, the front page of CNN's web site in the US has as the primary headline "Third US service member killed as US ramps up strikes on Iran"[1]. The secondary headline has the names of two of them.[2] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/world/live-news/iran-war-trump https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/world/live-news/iran-war-trum... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/politics/us-military-soldiers-killed-iran-war-jordan https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/politics/us-military-soldiers...
  - basisword 4mo ago
    >> Really, now? What national news do you watch? I have literally never seen current/breaking news stories about the death of American troops in action. It happened about three days ago. I'm not even in the US and it was a top headline here.
- Jamesbeam 4mo ago
  > modern conflicts are absolutely nothing compared to what has happened historically. ‎> vs. the send entire generations off to die methods of old. Feel free to click and zoom yourself through the generational pile of almost a quarter million dead Russians below, armchair general. https://200.zona.media/ https://200.zona.media/
  - jst1fthsdys 4mo ago
    Mocking him while linking to a BBC propaganda piece is funny.
- ponector 4mo ago
  [dead]
testfrequency 4mo ago
They are pretty good in the comment sections online. In the real world, they choose to engage in wars that provide political power for the underlying party in power, without having a clear goal or objective on how the war would benefit the average U.S. person. This becomes more and more apparent as they continue to lose, until it’s viewed as a “success” by an invented exit criteria at the 11th hour.
one33seven 4mo ago
Depends on the war. Venezuela was quickly won.
- epolanski 4mo ago
  Wasn't a war but a criminal kidnapping under Venezuelan and international law. The White House asserts that it is defending the American people from the devastating consequences of the illegal importation of drugs by ‘narco-terrorists’ – consequences that could be compared to an armed attack against the US. However, in international law, only a kinetic assault with military or similar means qualifies as a trigger for self-defence. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/us-capture-president-nicolas-maduro-and-attacks-venezuela-have-no-justification https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/us-capture-president-ni...
  - rbanffy 4mo ago
    Combined with a coup.
    - bakies 4mo ago
      Is it a coup? Maduros government is still in control
      - watwut 4mo ago
        Yes, but Maduro is not. His former right hand is in charge and Rubio is controlling her. It was not regime change, but an internal coup helped with foreign soldiers. New leader is equally oppressive, but this time guided by American admin.
        epolanski 4mo ago
        This makes everything worse, not better.
        jimnotgym 4mo ago
        It is not under US control though. The new president is simply playing each side
reactordev 4mo ago
Because US Leadership is inept. Have been since the 50s.
expedition32 4mo ago
The question should be "why is it so hard for the US not to start wars". America didn't have to do this. And now they cry that nobody is helping them.
- sanderjd 4mo ago
  Who is crying about that? You just mean the administration? If so, then sure. But Americans at large aren't under any illusions about whether anyone would or should be helping with this.
  - rbanffy 4mo ago
    I've heard more than one complaining that Iran was an everybody problem because "nuclear weapons" and that the US is doing all the heavy lifting. I usually reply to that with reminding them Obama solved the problem and that Trump destroyed that accomplishment out of spite.
    - sanderjd 4mo ago
      Yeah fair enough, there's always someone saying anything :) But my sense is that this is not a commonly held view.
ck2 4mo ago
what an ugly question super easy for US to kill lots of innocent civilians tho just get rid of the agencies responsible for reviewing targets for civilians imagine one person being able to put the entire country into yet another forever war it will be 2029 and this nightmare will still be going down, sucking trillions from our economy while everyone suffers his damn ego now we are taking out civilian bridges and water supplies, Iranians will never forgive us for generations, wait a another decade or two and the idiots here will elect someone even worse btw diesel will hit all time record by the end of this year so even those who really don't care kids are being murdered for no reason might finally take it personally
jmclnx 4mo ago
First the meaning of "war" needs to be defined. FWIW, in the US, only Congress can declare war. IIRC, that really has not happened since Korea. Also since WW2, none of these countries posed a real danger to the US Public, plus people in the US are not invested. Compare what the public in the US had to do in WW2 compared to these "wars". If the life style of the Average US person is affected like in WW2, then you can bet these "wars" would never happen. Just look at what a slight raise in US Gas Prices cause. If gas prices did not go up, people in the US would not care at all what Trump is doing to Iran.
- rbanffy 4mo ago
  A mobilisation such as what we saw in WWII is unthinkable because it'd crash markets. That's one reason.
  - expedition32 4mo ago
    The last time a mobilisation happened was the Vietnam War and it almost tore America apart. The Pentagon learned their lesson.
    - rbanffy 4mo ago
      So, it will be quagmires from now on.
  - aqme28 4mo ago
    That has nothing to do with it. Congress should still have to declare an operation like what is happening in Iran.
    - jimnotgym 4mo ago
      How would a future president ever be motivated to give power back to Congress I wonder? A coup by congress?
      - 4mo ago
kqr 4mo ago
It's not exactly rocket surgery, is it? Because they are fighting on the other side of the world. I feel like the article glosses over this way too quickly. It's not surprising the US aren't winning. It's surprising they are at all able to do something that resembles waging war at that distance. Wars are incredibly hard to fight away from home. On the other side of the world? There is basically only one country in the history of ever that has been able to do that. The article does go on to discuss the Kuwait case and that's a meaningful discussion to have, because actually winning a war so far away is surprising. It's interesting to dig into why that might have been, and the article briefly does. But why they aren't winning is less interesting. For more meat on how important a factor distance is, Bueno de Mesquita's The War Trap presents one of the most accurate models for predicting wars[1] I know of. That model measures the fighting ability of a country by two factors: 1. It's at-home military power as a sum of population size, metal production, fuel consumption, military expenditure, etc. 2. It's power projection as the distance between its capital and the closest point of enemy land. Note that the second number is weighted equally to the sum of all other factors, because wars are a logistical nightmare. [1]: https://entropicthoughts.com/war-what-is-it-good-for https://entropicthoughts.com/war-what-is-it-good-for
- usrnm 4mo ago
  > There is basically only ever one country in the history of ever that has been able to do that I guess you mean the British empire? Or Dutch? Maybe Spanish?
  - malfist 4mo ago
    Or the romans or the Mongols?
  - kqr 4mo ago
    I was thinking of the British Empire. Their naval technology was superior enough to overpower the distance term. I was under the impression the Dutch didn't really wage interstate war in the same sense, but rather that a bunch of paramilitary private organisations happened to fly Dutch flags. I have to admit I know very little about the Spanish case, but again I thought they mainly fought proxy wars with other European colonial powers, i.e. both were equally disadvantaged by distance.
ReptileMan 4mo ago
Because the military industrial complex is acting like socialist jobs program. If the USA could produce 4000 tomahawks per day, instead of 400 per year the Iran thing would be over. Also USA is very sensitive about the other side's civilian deaths.
- aqme28 4mo ago
  > Also USA is very sensitive about the other side's civilian deaths. I'd argue that it's not sensitive enough. We've bombed schools and desalination plants. If your goal in a war is to topple a regime and prop up a more friendly one, then you can't just bomb them to submission. All that does is topple the regime and replace it with a probably worse one. You need to convince the population that the new regime is actually better, and you don't convince anyone of anything by killing their kids.
- wasfgwp 4mo ago
  > Also USA is very sensitive about the other side's civilian deaths. Well depends what you compare against. Also its generally not worth wasting precision munitions (you have a limited amount of them to start with) on non military targets.
- watwut 4mo ago
  > Also USA is very sensitive about the other side's civilian deaths. Its literally bragging about the oposite while intentionally killing civilians.
  - ReptileMan 4mo ago
    In Iran USA has killed 1/4 of a civilian for every enemy combatant. That is unprecedented by any war level.
    - copper4eva 4mo ago
      [dead]
    - watwut 4mo ago
tialaramex 4mo ago
To "win" a war you must have specific and measurable goals. If your politicians start a war but cannot articulate such goals, you're going to lose. They'll assure you they will win, but they've already lost. They are bad at their jobs, why did you hire these morons?
- jongjong 4mo ago
  The goal is to sell weapons during the war; then afterwards, sell loans to rebuild what the weapons have destroyed... And sometimes it's also to control access to natural resources or trading routes. They don't care who it is who facilitates them on the other side of the ocean; be it a dictator or an 'elected' official. The lobbyists running the show in the background make money from both the destruction as well as the reconstruction. What is stupid about that? The politicians later get appointed to lucrative executive roles at the companies which they helped enrich on taxpayer dollars (from both countries). Not stupid either. It's smart retirement planning. The government is a lot of things but absolutely not stupid; fooling people into thinking it is incompetence is likely part of the ruse... It's a lot easier for people to sit back quietly and watch incompetence unfold, then it is to sit back and watch evil unfold. "It's incompetence" is also a nice easy answer which prevents people from having to look deeper as I have done here. Julian Assange said about the war in Afghanistan: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war." If you look at any war, you will realize that the same principles are at play. Our current global monetary order has a built-in mechanism for monetizing destruction, unfortunately. It's architected that way, intentionally or not. I've dedicated much of my life so far to try to convey this simple message.
  - dudefeliciano 4mo ago
    it's stupid because there are ways of turning a profit without killing thousands of people while turning your own country into a pariah ridiculed by the whole world. It's stupid because it's shortsighted.
    - 4mo ago
mohamedkoubaa 4mo ago
"You lose 100% of wars you don't wage", Don Gretzky
Oarch 4mo ago
I assumed the point of war these days was largely just money making. "Winning" puts an end to the grift - it's far more profitable to keep a nice long term rolling boil going.
fitsumbelay 4mo ago
... possibly due to the lying bumblefucks who start them. George W Bush was a lying bumblefuck who talked himself into being a war criminal who can't travel to certain countries. Trump is the kind of lying bumblefuck who lets a dependent bumblefuck that Netanyahu is to talk him into the dumbest and most embarrassing military engagement in US history of my lifetime, possibly only next to Grenada npr, btw, is in some sort of decline in news source legitimacy having to resort to these simple-minded click bait headlines ...
- wasfgwp 4mo ago
  Bush won the conventional war in Iraq and generally the US military was quite good at that part (same in Afghanistan or the first Gulf War). They had no clue what to do after the war was won and made a complete mess of it. Trump hasn’t got the slightest idea how to even get as far as Bush did..
  - dh2022 4mo ago
    Hmm, US did not destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan. So I do not think US won much in Afghanistan (for ex. bin Laden was killed in Pakistani)
    - wasfgwp 4mo ago
      They occupied the country and mostly/almost did accomplish that. 2002 to ~2005 were reasonably clam. Then their failures to bulld a stable government brought the Taliban back.
      - dh2022 4mo ago
        US did not occupy the country- they occupied the big cities and a built a huge airbase. Countryside was in Taliban hands for the most part. US never closed the border with Pakistani - and the talibans retreated in Paki when under attack and then went back in Afghanistan when things calmed down. In Afghanistan US won as much as it won in Vietnam.
  - 4mo ago
fofoz 4mo ago
In general, it seems that superpowers are no longer capable of winning wars against medium-sized powers.
- dudefeliciano 4mo ago
  the US being the only existent superpower
- lopsotronic 3mo ago
  I think that the problem might be even more fundamental than that. Ownership of a strategic nuclear deterrent seems to short circuit some of the internals of the modern Westphalian state apparatus. Possible mechanisms include 1) centralizing the threat of force into one singular technical system, and 2) making any condition of peer conflict necessarily existential. With such technical systems under state control, the state is able to focus on little other than its own powers of destruction. It becomes a zombie state, a tottering shell around an ever-growing national security apparatus. Looking around at the world, this seems to be a common morphological stage in the development of nuclear powers. There is no "collapse of commmunism" nor "collapse of financier capitalism", but different shadings on the same depressing chrysalis. One aspect of being stuck in such a chrysalis is the utter inability to solve non-existential conflicts. There is an overwhelming tendency to make all conflict existential so the full power of the state may be brought to bear, but it's a tendency offset - so far - by the presence of deterrence. The zombies can smell each other. The most dangerous scenario, by far, is when a nuclear power has uncertain territorial borders. Ukraine, Taiwan, Korea, Kashmir, a fair hunk of Israel - there is a reason we focus on these places in the news. This also transforms non-nuclear states into "half sovereign" states, something which we have been seeing play out especially with the end of the SU-US Cold War.
fg137 4mo ago
Is the US expected to win wars? We all know how Vietnam went. Maybe consider that before asking the "why" question? Is Russia expected to win wars? And I would rather see none of these stupid wars start in the first place.
- IAmBroom 4mo ago
  What a strange comment. Are you saying no one expects the US to win a war? Or that no one hopes they will? Honestly, I can't tell what you are implying, except "war bad".
  - rbanffy 4mo ago
    > Are you saying no one expects the US to win a war? I certainly don't
greenoracle9 4mo ago
It depends on what "win" means. The US can win the opening military phase pretty decisively. The part that keeps failing is turning that into a political end state that can survive after the shooting slows down.
- jimnotgym 4mo ago
  Which requires troops in the ground, a large civil administration, and a way of making some ofthe existing powers in the civilian population feel like they are better off under you
- simiones 4mo ago
  > The US can win the opening military phase pretty decisively. Can they? Iran seems to have destroyed them pretty decisively, after the literal first day of casualties (which were happening while Iran thought it had just reached an agreement that would prevent a war, per the Omani negotiators at that time).
- giardini 4mo ago
  It should be no surprise that the US cannot immediately overwhelm Iran, which has prepared for war with the USA since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. Iran's new leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in November 1979, one day after 66 American diplomats and civilians were taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, labelled the USA "the Great Satan": https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/07/18/iran-ayatollah-khamenei-great-satan/4891784399709/ https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/07/18/iran-ayat... Consider that, since that time (46 years), much of Iran's income has been directed to preparation for surviving nuclear war with the USA. Ergo underground living and production facilities, similar to those that the Soviet Union has constructed in Russia: https://www.bing.com/search?q=how%20many%20soviet%20%20underground%20nuclear%20bunkers%20&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&lq=0&pq=how%20many%20soviet%20%20underground%20nuclear%20bunkers%20 https://www.bing.com/search?q=how%20many%20soviet%20%20under... have been built and occupied in Iran. Defeating such an entrenched enemy requires conquering surface forces, then denying each bunker access to the surface and bunker-by-bunker surrender, asphyxiation or destruction. This requires boots on the ground and/or automation beyond the current SOA. The alternative is to allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons.
francisofascii 4mo ago
The inside traders and people who benefit from a higher oil price are winning.
Planktonne 4mo ago
The US defines its objectives on a large scale (e.g. regime change, or peace in the Middle East), but doesn't then use tactics that can achieve that. What they're doing in Iran, for example, is probably best described as 'raiding'--quick, damaging strikes--but that doesn't lead to the final result they want. It hurts the attacked country, but it doesn't control it.
copper4eva 4mo ago
It's kind of complicated, because a lot of these are kind of political wars. Where the goal of the US is to not simply defeat the enemies, such as in WW2. They want to minimize civilian casualties and cause a regime change. Not always the easiest thing to do. They half succeeded in creating South Korea. They succeeded in Iraq, which I like to always point out because that war is often cited as a "loss" for the US. Mostly because Bush declared it over when it was really just beginning. Really hard to say what will happen with Iran. Everyone online likes to act like military prophets that know the future, but truthfully it's very difficult to predict imo. And what does happen depends probably on how deep the US invests into it. If they start sending troops in to invade, then that obviously changes things.
jimnotgym 4mo ago
I wonder if part of the problem is impatience? Trying to conquer whole countries at the same time? Britain didn't take India in one go. It got concessions to trade from a port, then took over the port. Consolidated its power, then took the the next one. You need a bunch of powerful locals to see how they are better off with you there.
k310 4mo ago
Wars are not declared wars since WWII. They are instruments of international or domestic political projection. Lately, a distraction from damning evidence of the largest illicit sex, blackmail and money-laundering operation in recorded history. "Weapons of Mass Destruction" a lie. "Weapons of Mass Distraction" a cover-up, and a mistake about to grow bigger than Putin's "walk in the park" in Ukraine. A war based on politics and not national survival is unwinnable. Ask Putin, Trump, Mussolini and others.
mcbrit 4mo ago
This Kind of War (reading list Marine Corps commandant 2026 Vietnam War) suggests the answer is that the US fought crusades through WW2. Then they got Korea; not absolute war, not a crusade. And the US had no reference frame for that. Who is winning and why and why are Americans dying for this?
- rbanffy 4mo ago
  > why and why are Americans dying for this? This last one is to distract people from the Epstein files. And, maybe, get some oil as well.
giardini 4mo ago
[flagged]
- rbanffy 4mo ago
  Are you comparing NPR with Fox News and their definitions of victory.
  - giardini 4mo ago
    [flagged]
tsoukase 4mo ago
"Hear me, then strike" Themistocles They are not wars in the narrow meaning. They are long term superficial conflicts, that human history has not seen before. With the modern weapons and technology a traditional war should annihilate the globe in 3 days, not still f.. around after 3 years. The whole theatre seems to happen for three purposes: media consumption to cause widespread bother, constant increase of defense budgets and multiplication of public debts. The top leaders are not the presidents but the owners of the three pilars: finance, weapons and media, which happens to be the same group of people (guess who). Since 1992 we are experiencing a slow war that continuous for about 8-10 years before a new one begins immediately after the previous ends. It's a perfectly executed soap opera in episodes and seasons that has managed to persuade us that it's inevitable and natural like sunlight.

51 points by rbanffy 4mo ago

In WW2 thousands of troops could die in a single day and we wouldn't know their names until months or years later. Today a single troop dies and it is the first story on the national news. Millions of civilians also died, just the amount of soldier deaths would be the equivalent of 2-3 September 11s (worldwide) every day for a period of 6 years. So we say "war" but modern conflicts are absolutely nothing compared to what has happened historically. Even though these new "wars" don't seem to have the same definitive results, the alternative could be much, much worse. We're much better off with the bomb critical sites, apply sanctions and political pressure methods vs. the send entire generations off to die methods of old.

spacebanana7 4mo ago
The “special military operation” euphemism that both the US/Russia used in Iran/Ukraine does have a degree of truth. These wars are really military engagements with directional objectives rather than truly existential wars with binary outcomes. Modern wars really resemble Rome’s Germanic wars more than the Punic ones.
- mewpmewp2 4mo ago
  I mean Russia definitely keeps losing very many soldiers every day, I don't think that is comparable at all. It's completely different from US vs Iran.
  - SanjayMehta 4mo ago
    This comment epitomises one of the reasons why the US does not and cannot win any war against a peer adversary. Flawed data.
    - dralley 4mo ago
      I don't even understand what this comment is supposed to be saying in relation to the previous one.
      - SanjayMehta 4mo ago
        Look at the body exchange ratios between The Ukraine and Russia. Jan 29th: 1000 - 38 Feb 26th: 1000 - 35 Apr 9th: 1000 - 41 May 15th: 526 - 41 Jun 18th: 522 - 33 Jul 16th: 501 - 31 Total: 4549 - 219
        tencentshill 4mo ago
        The only sources I can find for that are all Russian. Wikipedia (Which I assume you will dismiss out of hand) says it's complicated to determine at best, as they both hide information and boost propaganda. At least don't state it as fact. No one actually knows, which is why citing sources is helpful so that weight can be added.
        helij 4mo ago
        Here's some from BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7ed4rp7x5o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7ed4rp7x5o and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9jl8vxdy9o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9jl8vxdy9o) and one from Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hands-ukraine-1000-war-dead-rbc-says-2026-04-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hands-ukraine-10...). No reason not to believe these numbers as neither side denied it. The reasons for such numbers mismatch are many and don't always tell the story of who's "winning".
        SanjayMehta 4mo ago
        Mediazona is a British intelligence asset and even they can't find the Russian bodies that western propaganda hallucinates. While YouTube is full of videos of miles and miles of Ukrainian graveyards. No need to use the Wikipedia excuse.
      - 4mo ago
  - spacebanana7 4mo ago
    Rome lost loads of soldiers in the Germanic wars too. The parallel is that these wars are too expensive (for a non-existential conflict) to take to fulfilment, but also can't easily be disengaged from.
    - ryandvm 4mo ago
      > but also can't easily be disengaged from I guess it depends on what you mean by "easily", but Putin could very much just say "fuck this" and turn off the war machine in one day and it's not at all clear to me that there would be much consequential blowback other than the personal humiliation of one man. Would other countries now decide to attack Russia? Of course not. Would the oligarchs flip out and have him assassinated? No. Would the West disassemble the sanctioning apparatus? Eventually. But the real downside is just simple humiliation and to prevent that, they will continue sacrificing young men. Politics is a fucked up game.
- bojan 4mo ago
  Russia's goal is direct annexation of about quarter of the Ukrainian territory and installing a lifelong puppet regime to control the other three quarters. Ukrainians stand to lose not just their voice and any semblance of economic prosperity, but also their very identity. With the exception of extreme cases like Gaza, it doesn't get more binary than that.
  - spacebanana7 4mo ago
    From Ukraine's perspective it's existential for sure. Russia however, just revises its objectives every few months according to how well/badly its prospects on the battlefield are looking.
    - microtonal 4mo ago
      Isn't it more that they started changing objectives because their original objectives turned out to be unattainable? I also think that for Putin it is pretty existential. Otherwise, they would have negotiated a temporary deal, took the pretty large amount of land that they had taken at the end of 2022. Work on another 'project' like Georgia for a few years, do a lot of disinformation campaigns in Europe in the meanwhile and then revisit Ukraine later. That would have a lot of benefits, like no reaming of Europe, no development of Ukraine's capabilities (resulting in a drastic drop in refinement capabilities), etc. But he couldn't. It would make him look weak and would make him vulnerable to a coup. Continuing is the only way for him.
  - spwa4 4mo ago
    Russia's goals have far evolved over the course of the war, and started out comically ridiculous, prompting a great many people to ask questions about the information "bubble" around Putin. Over the past year, I believe most people would agree Russia has lost a LOT of ground when it comes to their war aims, even if not that much territory. 2014: seize Crimea (success, although it no longer serves any purpose) and Sevastopol (total failure, Sevastopol can no longer serve the Russian black sea fleet, and when it comes to the other goal: keep NATO out of the black sea, it's an even bigger failure. Russia has lost control of the skies above the black sea completely and are losing control over the sea of Azov, by withdrawing air defenses. Now go look on the map where the sea of Azov is to see the magnitude of this failure), prevent Ukraine from approaching NATO and EU (complete failure is putting it very mildly), keep Ukraine unstable (succeeded, until Euromaidan revolution, ie. actually this is a failure) 2022: maintain control over Crimea (looks to be failing, as in Ukraine still controls Crimea's water supply), build a land bridge to Crimea (successfull, except that they can't use their land bridge for anything), seize control over Ukraine's government ("denazify" Ukraine), demilitarize Ukraine (as in Ukraine accepts no to have an army. Obviously total and complete failure), and prevent Ukraine and others from coming closer to NATO (obviously total failure, and not just in Ukraine) In June 2026, ie. about 4 weeks ago, Russia once again confirmed these goals. Oh and they were going to do this in 3 days. Then in 3 weeks. Then in 2 months. Then they stopped making predictions. Today is day 1608 of their 3-day attempt.
- enopod_ 4mo ago
  For Ukraine it's very much an existential war. If they lose, Ukraine will cease to exist. The only way of winning is, well, winning this war. It is also very much a real war, with hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides, a true massacre not seen in Europe since WW2. Trumps stupid war on Iran on the other hand is really just some air strikes, and Iran can win by just not losing, which is easy, because the US will not invade.
  - hackinthebochs 4mo ago
    It's interesting how casually we replace concern for the population with concern for the political entity. No, the Ukrainian identity will not cease to exist with the replacement of the political entity.
    - enopod_ 4mo ago
      Ask Ukrainians what they think about that. Putin made it more than clear that he wants to erase the Ukrainian identity. [1] In this case, the political entity of Ukraine represents the Ukrainian population, which wants to be free, democratic, Europe-oriented, and last but not least, never ever be under Russian dictatorship again. Russias attitude towards Ukraine has turned borderline genocidal since the start of this war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Russians_and_Ukrainians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Rus...
    - mewpmewp2 4mo ago
      What Russia has done in the past is take people who want to hold onto their old national identity and send them to labor camps far away where most will die, and migrate Russians to the areas so as generations go by Ukrainian identity would be fully gone.
    - IAmBroom 4mo ago
      You are stunningly unaware or maliciously ignoring the cultural genocide that Russia is engaging in, inside taken territories. Children are routinely taken from parents and shipped off to Russia. Parents are encarcerated, conscripted, or slaughtered.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- prmph 4mo ago
  It may not be a lot of dying at once, but some modern wars are rivaling these catastrophic wars of old in casualties. By some counts there have already been at least a million casualties in the Ukraine war, and in Gaza there is probably 100,000 casualties now (military + civilian). And, the conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo over the decades have produced about 5–5.4 million casualties, although accumulated over decades rather than in a single war. So modern conflicts may be lower intensity and lest existential, but they can be every bit as deadly.
  - SanjayMehta 3mo ago
    https://sonar21.com/the-ny-times-lies-about-russian-and-ukrainian-casualties/ https://sonar21.com/the-ny-times-lies-about-russian-and-ukra...
    - prmph 3mo ago
      Your article is all over the place and seems to have agenda. It is unable to stay on point and present a coherent argument. I'd rather trust the Nytimes and the UK intelligence who have confirmed these losses, than some random website pushing an agenda. By hey, if it makes you happy to create you own reality, you do you.
      - SanjayMehta 3mo ago
        It's not my article. As for the NYT, read Ashley Rindsberg's "The Gray Lady Winked." And British intelligence? Okay then. Let me chortle into my single malt.
criddell 4mo ago
> send entire generations off to die methods of old Of old? Isn't that what Russia is doing right now?
- Georgelemental 4mo ago
  No, they haven't implemented mass conscription, and won't because even autocrats can't ignore public opinion
  - criddell 4mo ago
    Not sure if the numbers are correct, but it looks like the number of Russians killed in Ukraine is about the same as the number of Americans killed in WW2. Does it matter if the state uses a carrot or stick to send a generation off to die? These may be rookie numbers for Russia, but it's still significant.
    - nradov 4mo ago
      Well there is Russian and then there is Russian. The elites in Moscow and St. Petersburg don't really regard people from the outer provinces as fully Russian, especially not the ethnic minority groups. They're expendable. Most of the casualties have come from those areas so far but they're starting to run out of potential recruits. If the authorities start conscripting men from the core cities and feeding them into the meat grinder then internal dissent will likely increase.
  - giardini 4mo ago
    Russia does conscript men: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-conscripts-war-combat/33415104.html https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-conscripts-war-combat...
  - pibaker 4mo ago
    Correct. Conscription in Russia largely happens to rural people, ethnic minorities and convicts. Russia is the way it is because a large enough number of ethnic Russian middle class urbanites don't give a fuck about anything, and Putin knows the moment he starts drafting them he turns them into anti war activists.
ButlerianJihad 4mo ago
> single troop dies Really, now? What national news do you watch? I have literally never seen current/breaking news stories about the death of American troops in action. It seems literally the most silent thing going on. I really don't know--are casualty numbers reported on a regular basis, from the "front"? I would sometimes, after the fact, learn of repatriation flights or interment ceremonies for fallen soldiers. But only on a sporadic basis. Literally, I think I would be familiar with them by now, since Operation Desert Storm or so. This is not something they put on the news. I think that a comparison of casualties from allied and belligerent troops would be something to report, but if they do, it's just sort of being slotted into some Wikipedia article somewhere, I guess.
- sokoloff 4mo ago
  I’m fairly surprised you are not seeing them. As a test, I checked for US servicemember deaths in the Middle East in July 2026 and checked against my own recall from casual news consumption. I knew of the helicopter crash (1) and missile attack (2). I did not know of the EOD accident (1) this weekend. So, 3 of 4 I knew about without any particularly directed effort to follow it (and the 4th, I’m sure I’ll see reporting about during the week but wasn’t consuming much content of any type over the weekend).
- cbm-vic-20 4mo ago
  Right now, the front page of CNN's web site in the US has as the primary headline "Third US service member killed as US ramps up strikes on Iran"[1]. The secondary headline has the names of two of them.[2] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/world/live-news/iran-war-trump https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/world/live-news/iran-war-trum... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/politics/us-military-soldiers-killed-iran-war-jordan https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/politics/us-military-soldiers...
- basisword 4mo ago
  >> Really, now? What national news do you watch? I have literally never seen current/breaking news stories about the death of American troops in action. It happened about three days ago. I'm not even in the US and it was a top headline here.
Jamesbeam 4mo ago
> modern conflicts are absolutely nothing compared to what has happened historically. ‎> vs. the send entire generations off to die methods of old. Feel free to click and zoom yourself through the generational pile of almost a quarter million dead Russians below, armchair general. https://200.zona.media/ https://200.zona.media/
- jst1fthsdys 4mo ago
  Mocking him while linking to a BBC propaganda piece is funny.
ponector 4mo ago
[dead]

testfrequency 4mo ago

They are pretty good in the comment sections online. In the real world, they choose to engage in wars that provide political power for the underlying party in power, without having a clear goal or objective on how the war would benefit the average U.S. person. This becomes more and more apparent as they continue to lose, until it’s viewed as a “success” by an invented exit criteria at the 11th hour.

one33seven 4mo ago

Depends on the war. Venezuela was quickly won.

epolanski 4mo ago
Wasn't a war but a criminal kidnapping under Venezuelan and international law. The White House asserts that it is defending the American people from the devastating consequences of the illegal importation of drugs by ‘narco-terrorists’ – consequences that could be compared to an armed attack against the US. However, in international law, only a kinetic assault with military or similar means qualifies as a trigger for self-defence. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/us-capture-president-nicolas-maduro-and-attacks-venezuela-have-no-justification https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/us-capture-president-ni...
- rbanffy 4mo ago
  Combined with a coup.
  - bakies 4mo ago
    Is it a coup? Maduros government is still in control
    - watwut 4mo ago
      Yes, but Maduro is not. His former right hand is in charge and Rubio is controlling her. It was not regime change, but an internal coup helped with foreign soldiers. New leader is equally oppressive, but this time guided by American admin.
      - epolanski 4mo ago
        This makes everything worse, not better.
      - jimnotgym 4mo ago
        It is not under US control though. The new president is simply playing each side

reactordev 4mo ago

Because US Leadership is inept. Have been since the 50s.

expedition32 4mo ago

The question should be "why is it so hard for the US not to start wars". America didn't have to do this. And now they cry that nobody is helping them.

sanderjd 4mo ago
Who is crying about that? You just mean the administration? If so, then sure. But Americans at large aren't under any illusions about whether anyone would or should be helping with this.
- rbanffy 4mo ago
  I've heard more than one complaining that Iran was an everybody problem because "nuclear weapons" and that the US is doing all the heavy lifting. I usually reply to that with reminding them Obama solved the problem and that Trump destroyed that accomplishment out of spite.
  - sanderjd 4mo ago
    Yeah fair enough, there's always someone saying anything :) But my sense is that this is not a commonly held view.

ck2 4mo ago

what an ugly question super easy for US to kill lots of innocent civilians tho just get rid of the agencies responsible for reviewing targets for civilians imagine one person being able to put the entire country into yet another forever war it will be 2029 and this nightmare will still be going down, sucking trillions from our economy while everyone suffers his damn ego now we are taking out civilian bridges and water supplies, Iranians will never forgive us for generations, wait a another decade or two and the idiots here will elect someone even worse btw diesel will hit all time record by the end of this year so even those who really don't care kids are being murdered for no reason might finally take it personally

jmclnx 4mo ago

First the meaning of "war" needs to be defined. FWIW, in the US, only Congress can declare war. IIRC, that really has not happened since Korea. Also since WW2, none of these countries posed a real danger to the US Public, plus people in the US are not invested. Compare what the public in the US had to do in WW2 compared to these "wars". If the life style of the Average US person is affected like in WW2, then you can bet these "wars" would never happen. Just look at what a slight raise in US Gas Prices cause. If gas prices did not go up, people in the US would not care at all what Trump is doing to Iran.

rbanffy 4mo ago
A mobilisation such as what we saw in WWII is unthinkable because it'd crash markets. That's one reason.
- expedition32 4mo ago
  The last time a mobilisation happened was the Vietnam War and it almost tore America apart. The Pentagon learned their lesson.
  - rbanffy 4mo ago
    So, it will be quagmires from now on.
- aqme28 4mo ago
  That has nothing to do with it. Congress should still have to declare an operation like what is happening in Iran.
  - jimnotgym 4mo ago
    How would a future president ever be motivated to give power back to Congress I wonder? A coup by congress?
    - 4mo ago

kqr 4mo ago

It's not exactly rocket surgery, is it? Because they are fighting on the other side of the world. I feel like the article glosses over this way too quickly. It's not surprising the US aren't winning. It's surprising they are at all able to do something that resembles waging war at that distance. Wars are incredibly hard to fight away from home. On the other side of the world? There is basically only one country in the history of ever that has been able to do that. The article does go on to discuss the Kuwait case and that's a meaningful discussion to have, because actually winning a war so far away is surprising. It's interesting to dig into why that might have been, and the article briefly does. But why they aren't winning is less interesting. For more meat on how important a factor distance is, Bueno de Mesquita's The War Trap presents one of the most accurate models for predicting wars[1] I know of. That model measures the fighting ability of a country by two factors: 1. It's at-home military power as a sum of population size, metal production, fuel consumption, military expenditure, etc. 2. It's power projection as the distance between its capital and the closest point of enemy land. Note that the second number is weighted equally to the sum of all other factors, because wars are a logistical nightmare. [1]: https://entropicthoughts.com/war-what-is-it-good-for https://entropicthoughts.com/war-what-is-it-good-for

usrnm 4mo ago
> There is basically only ever one country in the history of ever that has been able to do that I guess you mean the British empire? Or Dutch? Maybe Spanish?
- malfist 4mo ago
  Or the romans or the Mongols?
- kqr 4mo ago
  I was thinking of the British Empire. Their naval technology was superior enough to overpower the distance term. I was under the impression the Dutch didn't really wage interstate war in the same sense, but rather that a bunch of paramilitary private organisations happened to fly Dutch flags. I have to admit I know very little about the Spanish case, but again I thought they mainly fought proxy wars with other European colonial powers, i.e. both were equally disadvantaged by distance.

ReptileMan 4mo ago

Because the military industrial complex is acting like socialist jobs program. If the USA could produce 4000 tomahawks per day, instead of 400 per year the Iran thing would be over. Also USA is very sensitive about the other side's civilian deaths.

aqme28 4mo ago
> Also USA is very sensitive about the other side's civilian deaths. I'd argue that it's not sensitive enough. We've bombed schools and desalination plants. If your goal in a war is to topple a regime and prop up a more friendly one, then you can't just bomb them to submission. All that does is topple the regime and replace it with a probably worse one. You need to convince the population that the new regime is actually better, and you don't convince anyone of anything by killing their kids.
wasfgwp 4mo ago
> Also USA is very sensitive about the other side's civilian deaths. Well depends what you compare against. Also its generally not worth wasting precision munitions (you have a limited amount of them to start with) on non military targets.
watwut 4mo ago
> Also USA is very sensitive about the other side's civilian deaths. Its literally bragging about the oposite while intentionally killing civilians.
- ReptileMan 4mo ago
  In Iran USA has killed 1/4 of a civilian for every enemy combatant. That is unprecedented by any war level.
  - copper4eva 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - watwut 4mo ago

tialaramex 4mo ago

To "win" a war you must have specific and measurable goals. If your politicians start a war but cannot articulate such goals, you're going to lose. They'll assure you they will win, but they've already lost. They are bad at their jobs, why did you hire these morons?

jongjong 4mo ago
The goal is to sell weapons during the war; then afterwards, sell loans to rebuild what the weapons have destroyed... And sometimes it's also to control access to natural resources or trading routes. They don't care who it is who facilitates them on the other side of the ocean; be it a dictator or an 'elected' official. The lobbyists running the show in the background make money from both the destruction as well as the reconstruction. What is stupid about that? The politicians later get appointed to lucrative executive roles at the companies which they helped enrich on taxpayer dollars (from both countries). Not stupid either. It's smart retirement planning. The government is a lot of things but absolutely not stupid; fooling people into thinking it is incompetence is likely part of the ruse... It's a lot easier for people to sit back quietly and watch incompetence unfold, then it is to sit back and watch evil unfold. "It's incompetence" is also a nice easy answer which prevents people from having to look deeper as I have done here. Julian Assange said about the war in Afghanistan: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war." If you look at any war, you will realize that the same principles are at play. Our current global monetary order has a built-in mechanism for monetizing destruction, unfortunately. It's architected that way, intentionally or not. I've dedicated much of my life so far to try to convey this simple message.
- dudefeliciano 4mo ago
  it's stupid because there are ways of turning a profit without killing thousands of people while turning your own country into a pariah ridiculed by the whole world. It's stupid because it's shortsighted.
  - 4mo ago

mohamedkoubaa 4mo ago

"You lose 100% of wars you don't wage", Don Gretzky

Oarch 4mo ago

I assumed the point of war these days was largely just money making. "Winning" puts an end to the grift - it's far more profitable to keep a nice long term rolling boil going.

fitsumbelay 4mo ago

... possibly due to the lying bumblefucks who start them. George W Bush was a lying bumblefuck who talked himself into being a war criminal who can't travel to certain countries. Trump is the kind of lying bumblefuck who lets a dependent bumblefuck that Netanyahu is to talk him into the dumbest and most embarrassing military engagement in US history of my lifetime, possibly only next to Grenada npr, btw, is in some sort of decline in news source legitimacy having to resort to these simple-minded click bait headlines ...

wasfgwp 4mo ago
Bush won the conventional war in Iraq and generally the US military was quite good at that part (same in Afghanistan or the first Gulf War). They had no clue what to do after the war was won and made a complete mess of it. Trump hasn’t got the slightest idea how to even get as far as Bush did..
- dh2022 4mo ago
  Hmm, US did not destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan. So I do not think US won much in Afghanistan (for ex. bin Laden was killed in Pakistani)
  - wasfgwp 4mo ago
    They occupied the country and mostly/almost did accomplish that. 2002 to ~2005 were reasonably clam. Then their failures to bulld a stable government brought the Taliban back.
    - dh2022 4mo ago
      US did not occupy the country- they occupied the big cities and a built a huge airbase. Countryside was in Taliban hands for the most part. US never closed the border with Pakistani - and the talibans retreated in Paki when under attack and then went back in Afghanistan when things calmed down. In Afghanistan US won as much as it won in Vietnam.
- 4mo ago

fofoz 4mo ago

In general, it seems that superpowers are no longer capable of winning wars against medium-sized powers.

dudefeliciano 4mo ago
the US being the only existent superpower
lopsotronic 3mo ago
I think that the problem might be even more fundamental than that. Ownership of a strategic nuclear deterrent seems to short circuit some of the internals of the modern Westphalian state apparatus. Possible mechanisms include 1) centralizing the threat of force into one singular technical system, and 2) making any condition of peer conflict necessarily existential. With such technical systems under state control, the state is able to focus on little other than its own powers of destruction. It becomes a zombie state, a tottering shell around an ever-growing national security apparatus. Looking around at the world, this seems to be a common morphological stage in the development of nuclear powers. There is no "collapse of commmunism" nor "collapse of financier capitalism", but different shadings on the same depressing chrysalis. One aspect of being stuck in such a chrysalis is the utter inability to solve non-existential conflicts. There is an overwhelming tendency to make all conflict existential so the full power of the state may be brought to bear, but it's a tendency offset - so far - by the presence of deterrence. The zombies can smell each other. The most dangerous scenario, by far, is when a nuclear power has uncertain territorial borders. Ukraine, Taiwan, Korea, Kashmir, a fair hunk of Israel - there is a reason we focus on these places in the news. This also transforms non-nuclear states into "half sovereign" states, something which we have been seeing play out especially with the end of the SU-US Cold War.

fg137 4mo ago

Is the US expected to win wars? We all know how Vietnam went. Maybe consider that before asking the "why" question? Is Russia expected to win wars? And I would rather see none of these stupid wars start in the first place.

IAmBroom 4mo ago
What a strange comment. Are you saying no one expects the US to win a war? Or that no one hopes they will? Honestly, I can't tell what you are implying, except "war bad".
- rbanffy 4mo ago
  > Are you saying no one expects the US to win a war? I certainly don't

greenoracle9 4mo ago

It depends on what "win" means. The US can win the opening military phase pretty decisively. The part that keeps failing is turning that into a political end state that can survive after the shooting slows down.

jimnotgym 4mo ago
Which requires troops in the ground, a large civil administration, and a way of making some ofthe existing powers in the civilian population feel like they are better off under you
simiones 4mo ago
> The US can win the opening military phase pretty decisively. Can they? Iran seems to have destroyed them pretty decisively, after the literal first day of casualties (which were happening while Iran thought it had just reached an agreement that would prevent a war, per the Omani negotiators at that time).
giardini 4mo ago
It should be no surprise that the US cannot immediately overwhelm Iran, which has prepared for war with the USA since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. Iran's new leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in November 1979, one day after 66 American diplomats and civilians were taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, labelled the USA "the Great Satan": https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/07/18/iran-ayatollah-khamenei-great-satan/4891784399709/ https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/07/18/iran-ayat... Consider that, since that time (46 years), much of Iran's income has been directed to preparation for surviving nuclear war with the USA. Ergo underground living and production facilities, similar to those that the Soviet Union has constructed in Russia: https://www.bing.com/search?q=how%20many%20soviet%20%20underground%20nuclear%20bunkers%20&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&lq=0&pq=how%20many%20soviet%20%20underground%20nuclear%20bunkers%20 https://www.bing.com/search?q=how%20many%20soviet%20%20under... have been built and occupied in Iran. Defeating such an entrenched enemy requires conquering surface forces, then denying each bunker access to the surface and bunker-by-bunker surrender, asphyxiation or destruction. This requires boots on the ground and/or automation beyond the current SOA. The alternative is to allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons.

francisofascii 4mo ago

The inside traders and people who benefit from a higher oil price are winning.

Planktonne 4mo ago

The US defines its objectives on a large scale (e.g. regime change, or peace in the Middle East), but doesn't then use tactics that can achieve that. What they're doing in Iran, for example, is probably best described as 'raiding'--quick, damaging strikes--but that doesn't lead to the final result they want. It hurts the attacked country, but it doesn't control it.

copper4eva 4mo ago

It's kind of complicated, because a lot of these are kind of political wars. Where the goal of the US is to not simply defeat the enemies, such as in WW2. They want to minimize civilian casualties and cause a regime change. Not always the easiest thing to do. They half succeeded in creating South Korea. They succeeded in Iraq, which I like to always point out because that war is often cited as a "loss" for the US. Mostly because Bush declared it over when it was really just beginning. Really hard to say what will happen with Iran. Everyone online likes to act like military prophets that know the future, but truthfully it's very difficult to predict imo. And what does happen depends probably on how deep the US invests into it. If they start sending troops in to invade, then that obviously changes things.

jimnotgym 4mo ago

I wonder if part of the problem is impatience? Trying to conquer whole countries at the same time? Britain didn't take India in one go. It got concessions to trade from a port, then took over the port. Consolidated its power, then took the the next one. You need a bunch of powerful locals to see how they are better off with you there.

k310 4mo ago

Wars are not declared wars since WWII. They are instruments of international or domestic political projection. Lately, a distraction from damning evidence of the largest illicit sex, blackmail and money-laundering operation in recorded history. "Weapons of Mass Destruction" a lie. "Weapons of Mass Distraction" a cover-up, and a mistake about to grow bigger than Putin's "walk in the park" in Ukraine. A war based on politics and not national survival is unwinnable. Ask Putin, Trump, Mussolini and others.

mcbrit 4mo ago

This Kind of War (reading list Marine Corps commandant 2026 Vietnam War) suggests the answer is that the US fought crusades through WW2. Then they got Korea; not absolute war, not a crusade. And the US had no reference frame for that. Who is winning and why and why are Americans dying for this?

rbanffy 4mo ago
> why and why are Americans dying for this? This last one is to distract people from the Epstein files. And, maybe, get some oil as well.

giardini 4mo ago

[flagged]

rbanffy 4mo ago
Are you comparing NPR with Fox News and their definitions of victory.
- giardini 4mo ago
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tsoukase 4mo ago

"Hear me, then strike" Themistocles They are not wars in the narrow meaning. They are long term superficial conflicts, that human history has not seen before. With the modern weapons and technology a traditional war should annihilate the globe in 3 days, not still f.. around after 3 years. The whole theatre seems to happen for three purposes: media consumption to cause widespread bother, constant increase of defense budgets and multiplication of public debts. The top leaders are not the presidents but the owners of the three pilars: finance, weapons and media, which happens to be the same group of people (guess who). Since 1992 we are experiencing a slow war that continuous for about 8-10 years before a new one begins immediately after the previous ends. It's a perfectly executed soap opera in episodes and seasons that has managed to persuade us that it's inevitable and natural like sunlight.