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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

> Ukraine is not a tiny nation, and Russia is huge.

The US, the most well-funded army in the world for the past generation, hasn't won a war since the end of WW2. Army size and the like does not matter. The Ukranian forces can entrench themselves and maintain a guerilla war for a long time, as long as they have supplies.

I strongly feel like wars are unwinnable. It either ends up in a stalemate and attrition - see the US trying to do a thing in the middle east for two decades only for things to go back the second they leave - or MAD. And the last one hasn't and will hopefully never happen.

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>The US, the most well-funded army in the world for the past generation, hasn't won a war since the end of WW2.

That depends on the definition of winning. In many cases, US military won everything militarily, but lost politically.

I mean, is Iraq even a loss politically?

The US thoroughly rolled the Iraqi military, killed over 1 million Iraqis, overthrew their government, and installed a new government in Iraq that still exists today.

To say this is a "loss" leaves us at a place where the term has no meaning.

Yes, because it required 20 years of active occupation, numerous offensives, and trillions of dollars and it's unlikely that the result will last.

While we fucked around in the middle east, Russia regained strength and China emerged as a peer world power. Does anyone want to bet that Iraq or Afghanistan will remain our loyal ally in this new multipolar world?

We're now $30T in debt with a 125% debt-to-GDP ratio. All of our allies are completely emasculated by 70+ years of U.S. hegemony. And no one has an appetite for war on ideological grounds when we lied about all the past wars and protestors are getting trampled by horses and un-personed from the financial system without due process in a 'liberal' western democracy.

Strategically speaking, you can win a battle but lose the war. It was an absolute loss from that perspective.

> Yes, because it required 20 years of active occupation, numerous offensives, and trillions of dollars and it's unlikely that the result will last.

By that logic, the Germans lost the Franco-Prussian War because they subsequently lost the First World War.

Killing over 1 million Iraqis, most of them civilians, counts as a "win"?

The war massively damaged the US government's credibility, both domestically and internationally, cost the US ~$2T, and did little to stabilize the region; one might be able to argue that it destabilized it, in fact. The US won a military victory in Iraq, but emerged worse off on the whole as a result.

If wars have either winners, losers, or ties, the Iraqis definitely were the "losers" of the invasion of Iraq by the US. This isn't intended to be a moral value judgement on the slaughter of the 1 million Iraqis in the process.

>> The US, the most well-funded army in the world for the past generation, hasn't won a war since the end of WW2.

> That depends on the definition of winning. In many cases, US military won everything militarily, but lost politically.

This. It also really, really depends on definitions. Did the US win the Korean war because South Korea still exists, or lose because North Korea still exists?

> Did the US win the Korean war because South Korea still exists, or lose because North Korea still exists?

Neither, the Korean war never officially ended.

>The US, the most well-funded army in the world for the past generation, hasn't won a war since the end of WW2.

The First Gulf War was a pretty decisive victory. Also Grenada.

> I strongly feel like wars are unwinnable.

I think wars are winnable. It is technically possible for the US (or Russia, China) to annihilate their opponent.

The bigger question is: what follows?

Let's say that NATO got involved and retaliated. Somehow Putin gets handcuffed and sent to prison or otherwise is removed from office.

What then? A HUGE power vacuum in Russia that will be filled by... another ex-KGB officer? A Russian oligarch? A freely-elected politician?

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