From Vietnam to Iran, why can’t the West win wars?

Lyndon Baines Johnson was reportedly determined not to become the first US president to lose a war – despite realising the folly of Vietnam well before his term was up. Yet in the decades since, the United States has accumulated a litany of military disappointments, from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. Asymmetric warfare offers one explanation, as does the effectiveness of guerrilla tactics against conventionally superior armies. But does the West’s repeated failure to defeat militarily weaker opponents point to a deeper malaise? Why can’t the West win wars?

Although there was broad consensus that Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran were a military blunder – leaving the Iranian regime strategically stronger than before – the conflict was not criticised solely on strategic grounds. Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, condemned the strikes as a ‘mistake’ because they risked damaging living standards, while IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned that wider escalation could undermine investor confidence. Of course, economics matter. But wars have always disrupted markets, driven up prices and imposed hardship. If temporary economic pain – and even stock market trends – become a constraint on military action, what happens to our willingness to defend ourselves when we are genuinely threatened?

This speaks to a broader criticism of the modern Western psyche: that we have lost our tolerance for the sacrifices war demands. Civilian and military casualties, rising energy prices, higher taxes and cuts to public spending to fund defence are all politically toxic. Could modern Western societies imagine rationing fuel and food as their forebears did during the Second World War? Is Vladimir Putin not betting that he need not defeat a Western-backed Ukraine militarily, but merely outlast the West’s willingness to support it? Equally, in Ukraine and in other conflicts, have Western governments failed to define clear, realistic and achievable political objectives from the outset?

Of course, sceptics would offer a persuasive rebuttal. The US and UK, with their allies, spent more than 20 years in Afghanistan, which hardly implies short-termism or an unwillingness to fight. Trump’s failure to reckon with the potential economic costs of the Iran war has been widely criticised. After all, economic strength is itself a pillar of strategic capabilities. A nation that bankrupts itself through endless wars is scarcely in a stronger strategic position to defend itself. As the saying goes, we need to pick our battles.

Further, are we not living through a period of asymmetric warfare? It’s not just the West who cannot defeat inferior opponents. Russia has found it impossible to break through a stalemate in Ukraine. Cheap drones have kept the Russian fleet in its docks, they’ve downed an American helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz and have allowed the Houthis to hit flats in Tel Aviv. The First World War did not drag on because of a lack of will, but due to superior defensive capabilities that prevented either side from making serious progress for years.

Has the West lost the political will to win wars, or has the nature of warfare fundamentally changed? Are economic constraints and public intolerance of casualties now strategic weaknesses? Is Ukraine evidence that resolve still matters, or proof that asymmetric warfare has made decisive victory increasingly elusive? And in an age of drones, cyber warfare and proxy conflicts, what does ‘winning’ a war even mean?