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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.
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.
> send entire generations off to die methods of old
Of old? Isn't that what Russia is doing right now?
> 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.
> 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.
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?
I can't believe I had to scroll down to see this. Victory always flows down; you can have the most badass of technical equipment or cunning tactical victories in the field, then still quite enthusiastically lose the war, due to bad strategy or even the original political goals of conflict.
Or because the political goals were impossible or - almost breathtaking that this state can even exist - because the goals are entirely absent. Incidentally, having a "rotating roster" of different political goals probably counts as something worse than "absent", due to the illusory impression that it gives of "someone deciding something".
> why did you hire these morons?
The democratic process is the selection of incompetent people by unqualified people.
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.
Has anyone does analysis on Home vs Away wars ? Russia is in a Home war. Similarly US is in Away war. Also being a land power vs sea power. US is a sea power vs Iran being a land power.
If the goal is to deny Iran nukes then it's been succeeding.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
In general, it seems that superpowers are no longer capable of winning wars against medium-sized powers.
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.
the US being the only existent superpower
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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
The inside traders and people who benefit from a higher oil price are winning.
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.
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".
"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.
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.
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-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%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.
> 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).
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
"You lose 100% of wars you don't wage", Don Gretzky
Because US Leadership is inept. Have been since the 50s.
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.
> First the meaning of "war" needs to be defined. FWIW, in the US, only Congress can declare war.
The Korean War was not approved by congress. And I don't see the point of bringing semantics into it. Are you saying that the Vietnam War, to take one, was not a war because there was no formal declaration of war?
This "definition of war" reasoning is circular. It's not that these are not wars because Congress didn't declare them, it's that they are wars that are being waged illegally, at odds with the Constitution.
A mobilisation such as what we saw in WWII is unthinkable because it'd crash markets. That's one reason.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> Also USA is very sensitive about the other side's civilian deaths.
Its literally bragging about the oposite while intentionally killing civilians.
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.
... 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 ...
Depends on the war. Venezuela was quickly won.
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.