Why Modern Wars Are Increasingly Pointless
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- The United States has fought numerous post-WWII conflicts against weak states—Korea (a draw), Vietnam (a defeat), Somalia (humiliating withdrawal), Kosovo (a draw), and the Iraq and Afghanistan "forever wars" (costly defeats)—with only the 1991 Gulf War and the 1983 Grenada invasion cited as clear successes.
- Donald Trump's assault on Iran is described as a "strategic disaster," with the author claiming supporters are "trying desperately (and unconvincingly) to deny" that assessment.
- Russia's invasion of Ukraine has become a "costly quagmire," with Vladimir Putin gaining only about 20% of Ukraine's original territory after four years and hundreds of thousands of killed and wounded.
- Israel's military campaigns have not eliminated Hamas in Gaza or removed Hezbollah from Lebanon, and the author warns the country is becoming a "pariah state" whose addiction to war threatens its special relationship with the United States.
- China is thriving precisely because it has avoided these conflicts and concentrated on domestic power-building, scientific dominance, and global influence through trade—mirroring what the author calls the 19th-century American strategy of staying aloof while rivals exhaust themselves.
- The author attributes war's futility to four structural forces: nuclear weapons capping achievable objectives, nationalism making societies resist foreign occupiers tenaciously, and globalization shrinking conquest's economic payoff—even seamlessly incorporating Taiwan would add only 5% to China's GDP.
Why it matters: The article's tally gives ammunition to any policymaker arguing against new military commitments: initiators from Washington to Moscow to Jerusalem have absorbed huge costs for minimal political gain, while the one great power sitting out—China—has gained relative ground. For the US specifically, the post-1945 ledger the author catalogs undercuts the strategic rationale for further interventions of the kind Trump has pursued against Iran.
