Honestly, it’s hard to believe that, once upon a distant time, I was born into an America still fighting a world war. No, it wasn’t World War I! I’m not quite that old! My actual birthdate was July 20, 1944, while World War II was still ongoing. And though it ended in August 1945, in some strange sense, American-style war has never truly ended. Stranger yet, despite my country’s endless warmaking since then, the global war that concluded more than 80 years ago was the last truly victorious one this country has fought.
In the decades since 1945, the U.S. did indeed emerge as the world’s greatest power (along with the Soviet Union, which, of course, collapsed in 1991). And like all great powers, it did indeed fight endless wars. Remember, there was Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq (to mention only the most obvious of the conflicts my country hasn’t been able to keep out of since 1945). And even now, the U.S. is still fighting (typically ineffectively) in Somalia (of all places!) and — with more to come after the U.S. midterm elections — Iran. (And I’m not even mentioning past, more minor conflicts in places like Panama or Libya.)
But here’s the strange thing and something I believe to be unique for a great power over the course of its rise and — as the very existence of Donald Trump as president of the United States (twice!) suggests — decline (not to say fall): in not a single one of those wars did my country even come close to winning. They were all functionally defeats (though the Korean War has always been seen, in sports terms, as a kind of a tie, since that peninsula ended up divided between North and South Korea).
And consider that ongoing reality (think: Iran today) all too historically strange, if not simply inexplicable, for a great imperial power. In short, the single most powerful country on the planet couldn’t win a single war — not one! — against distinctly lesser powers!
And then, of course, a near-majority of the American people elected Donald Trump who promised, at least the first time around, to keep us out of such wars (which he did then, except for some unsuccessful combat in Syria), only to launch a significant war against Iran the second time around that — shock! shock! — has turned out just as well as all the other wars I’ve mentioned. In short, you explain it (I can’t), but the greatest power on this planet, which for endless decades has poured literally trillions of dollars into its military and, in just the next fiscal year, is planning to add at least another $1.5 trillion to the Pentagon’s wildly out-of-control budget (and that figure may, in the end, prove a gross underestimate), unbelievably — or do I mean all too believably? — simply hasn’t won a war since the one I was born into in 1944 (and that’s not even to mention some of its other unsuccessful skirmishes in those years). Phew! No sentence can truly hold the full militarized mess this country has created over and over again in those decades.
Worse yet, as Trump’s Iran War suggests, its leadership seems to learn absolutely nothing from that reality — or do I mean surreality?
