Why America keeps losing wars

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Perhaps the most dangerous moment in an American war is when everything appears to be going according to plan. Enemy air defenses and command centers collapse while aircraft dominate the skies. Within days, Washington can make a distant army look hopelessly outmatched. Ironically, that is also often when the real trouble begins.

Battlefield superiority gives American leaders something few countries possess. The option and ability to escalate before the executive office has even decided what victory should look like. The problem begins when a limited military operation expands beyond its original purpose. Airstrikes turn into regime change, and regime change creates political complications that missiles alone cannot solve. That same impasse is now playing out again in Iran.

The United States begins wars with almost every material advantage imaginable. Yet, historically, it has struggled with prolonged conflicts. In fact, the longer hostilities continue, the harder it becomes to turn overwhelming military power into a lasting political victory. And that has been the recurring dilemma of American power for generations. As advantage shifts from firepower to patience, America's greatest military weakness may simply be time. Washington, after all, tends to win wars quickly, but lose them slowly.

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It's one of the strangest records in modern military history. On paper, it shouldn't even happen. The United States spends enormous money on defense. It maintains military bases around the world, operates the largest fleet of advanced combat aircraft, and possesses naval and cyber capabilities that most countries cannot hope to match. If Washington wants to destroy a radar station, sink a ship, or flatten a military compound, there are few places on earth beyond its reach. The war with Iran proves as much. American forces can hit Iranian targets repeatedly and from far beyond the country's borders. And yet, despite months of sustained attacks, Washington is no closer to achieving its political objectives.

This then gets to the heart of the problem. Military power is good at destroying things. Political objectives, however, usually require something more. When looking at America's record since World War II, a pattern comes up again and again.

Take Korea. When North Korean forces invaded the South in 1950, Washington had substantial interests at stake. A communist victory across the entire peninsula could have shifted the balance of power in Asia during the early days of the Cold War. American and allied forces eventually pushed the North Koreans back and advanced toward China.

But Beijing looked at the same battlefield very differently. For Washington, Korea was an important piece on a much larger geopolitical chessboard. For China, hostile forces approaching its border represented a direct existential strategic threat. As a result, the Chinese leadership committed enormous numbers of troops to remedy that threat. At least 200,000 Chinese soldiers were killed and, potentially, many more depending on the estimate. China was prepared to absorb those losses because it believed the stakes justified them. Three years later, the Korean front line ended almost where it had begun.

The United States had vastly greater economic and technological resources. But China had something equally important, if not more. The political will to pay the price necessary to prevent an American victory.

Vietnam took that imbalance even further. The Vietnamese communists had already fought and defeated French colonial rule. Their struggle against the United States was tied to nationalism, reunification, and control of their own country. Washington, however, viewed Vietnam through the lens of the Cold War. American policy makers feared the so-called domino effect. If South Vietnam fell, they worried that other countries across Southeast Asia might follow. Then there was the question of credibility. Once the United States had committed itself publicly, withdrawal risked looking like weakness. And these arguments kept the war politically sustainable for years. The Viet Cong, however, only had to survive. North Vietnam did not need to invade California or destroy the US military. It needed to make the cost of continuing the conflict greater than the value Americans attached to winning it. That was the magic equation. And eventually, that's precisely what happened. Public support collapsed, American forces withdrew, and two years later, the Vietnamese Communist forces captured Saigon. The weaker power had won by refusing to lose.