[myrmidon]

If you can not win a war because your population is unwilling to bear the cost, then you are still unable to win (that is in fact a very typical way for a war to end).

Nobody is disputing the fact that the US spends more money on arms than anyone else and has the shiniest of toys as a result, but "winning" in war is about effecting the outcomes that you want, not about whether your weapon systems are superior.

The US military has clearly failed to deliver the outcome that Americans wanted in many recent conflicts (Vietnam, Taliban); counting those wars as "lost" makes a lot of sense.

[roncesvalles]

One of the reasons to do a war is to simply show the enemy that you are able and crazy enough to go to war with them over whatever grievances you had. This is called strategic deterrence.

You are making the folly of thinking of war like lawsuits, where one side wins and the other side loses, and the losing side goes home with nothing. This is not so.

If you're walking home from work and some person tries to mug you, even if they are unsuccessful, that will permanently change your behavior as if they had successfully robbed you anyway. Maybe you'll change your route. Maybe you won't walk and drive instead.

[myrmidon]

You can both "win" or both "lose" if your goals are not in direct conflict (rare).

I'd argue that the most important thing when trying to win wars is to aim for realistic outcomes.

The first gulf war was arguably a win because of realistic goals (get Iraq out of Kuwait and stop them from invading it again), while most other interventions in the region were basically "designed to fail", and unsurprisingly never achieved anything of note (and the problem was not lack of military capability).

[protocolture]

Yes but if you spend some billions of dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, you have only demonstrated that you are willing to make your own citizens suffer with diminished resources for no outcome.

>If you're walking home from work and some person tries to mug you, even if they are unsuccessful, that will permanently change your behavior as if they had successfully robbed you anyway. Maybe you'll change your route. Maybe you won't walk and drive instead.

In global politics, this tends to make you want to increase your defenses so it doesn't happen again, and find local partners for that defense. This usually comes at the cost of US influence, not its increase.

Like Iran is looking at its current situation and going "The literal only deterrence we could have to prevent this is to develop a nuclear capability. The US cannot be trusted to deal with, and it is pointless to try."

A nuclear Iran can now only be avoided by scorched earth. Scorched earth will now just cause an already partly US hating population to hate them more and create matyrs. Theres no possible upside to this conflict.

[roncesvalles]

With Afghanistan, I think people fixate on the fact that the Taliban is still there and while that's true, Al Qaeda has completely been wiped out (except fringe groups that have adopted the name) and OBL, the person most responsible for 9/11, was successfully killed by an attack launched out of Afghanistan. The current Taliban and whatever terrorist groups remain in that region no longer have an interest in hurting the US directly. The current Taliban is also very different from the one in 2001, almost geopolitically flipped in some ways (allied with India instead of Pakistan, and almost certainly responsible for majorly disrupting China's OBOR project in that region, another win for the US.

Not to mention, 20 years of no Taliban. An entire generation of Afghans grew up without being under a Taliban government.

[voganmother42]

“A Kourier has to establish space on the pavement. Predictable law-abiding behavior lulls drivers. They mentally assign you to a little box in the lane, assume you will stay there, can't handle it when you leave that little box.” - Snow Crash

Is it strategic deterrence, or just being so unreliably and inconsistent that insider information becomes more valuable?

Is it strategic to demonstrate a lack of planning or that you are a poor ally incapable of garnering support (either domestically or abroad)?