"However, all wars must eventually be won with boots on the ground."
Can wars even be "won", in this sense, any more?
Modern war is asymmetric. If the enemy is a radicalized percentage of the civilian population, hiding in plain sight, when do you "win"? Who surrenders? Who signs a treaty?
It's a question of setting what the strategic objectives of the war are.
The first gulf war, Operation Desert Storm, was deliberately limited in scope -- liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control. Its predecessor, Desert Shield, as similarly scoped, to prevent an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia. Both were successful by the metrics set out for it. Bush Sr. got a lot of flak from the burgeoning neocon movement for not driving through to Baghdad, a decision which in retrospect was incredibly correct.
Afghanistan and the second Iraq war, and the various "police actions" undertaken since then, have objectives that are unclear or are metric-based and do not easily translate to a simple objective that can be reasoned to be a stable endpoint. In this, it seems that the military is following suit with general industry trends towards vaguely defined metrics and objectives that allow for technical "success". This approach was pioneered, really, during the Kennedy administration with our approach to Vietnam and the "domino theory".
> Both were successful by the metrics set out for it.
Because they were beat downs.
> Afghanistan and the second Iraq war, and the various "police actions" undertaken since then, have objectives that are unclear or are metric-based and do not easily translate to a simple objective that can be reasoned to be a stable endpoint.
i.e. not beat downs. America is good at beat downs, any idiot with a gun is good at a beat down because as the Beastie Boys said it takes a second to wreck. It takes time to build.
Remote wars then are bad because they facilitate beat downs. Because America has big guns, lots of money, and little actual intelligence of how to fix or change anything.
It's funny all these people saying oh well the CIA doesn't do anything it's those stupid people who are fighting with each other because of their ideology. And then look at how Russia with a bit of money screwed up American politics and how badly they reacted to this little bit of interference.
Did Russia screw up American politics or did American media unrelentingly obsessing over Russia screwing up American politics screw up American politics?
This isn't a modern problem. If you read Thucydides you'll find that cities were often betrayed by a small, radicalized percentage of the civilian population hiding in plain sight. Their solution was sometimes to kill all of the men and enslave the women and children. Obviously this wouldn't fly today, but I imagine that a nation like China might simply surveil everyone, sending anyone suspicious to concentration camps. That seems like effectively the same win condition; making it effectively impossible to resist.
The history of warfare is littered with decision makers failing to accept how out of dating their thinking is in face of current technology. This why the US civil war and WW1 were so damn bloody.
In this current age of instant communications, global logistics, and rapid deployment people are again failing to accept how strategy must change in response to these technologies.
Ever since Vietnam the world has entered the age of long war. War can be won, but not when people lack the necessary patience, persistence, and drive to win. For the home team to win all they have to do is remain vigilant. They don't have to win a single battle. They just have to remain militant longer than the opposing force has patience. Game over.
For an invading force to win they must be able to have a quick and decisive invasion that results in a clear military victory and then must hold the ground, in cooperation with supporting elements, as long as it takes for the defending forces to cease military action. COIN (counter-insurgency) is rarely taken seriously, but is so incredibly essential. All of this could take decades.
That is a hard win since most people in a first-world country understand warfare about as well as they understand poverty or astrophysics. Everyone seems to think they are an expert in these matters despite all evidence to the contrary and their clearly never working with or in proximity to the field of study.
When George W. Bush did his infamous "Mission Accomplished" stunt,[1] he was sort of right. The "war" had been won. The trouble was that there was no plan for what to do next. The occupation was managed poorly and the insurgency had a chance to grow turning what really was a quick victory into a protracted "war."
Of course, the real root cause of many subsequent troubles and years of war is that there was no reason to attack, even less invade, either Iraq or Afghanistan after 9/11. GWB just had to do something to show that he protects Americans and retaliates against enemies. So, he did that. And it was a big mistake on many levels.
Iraq? Perhaps not. But Afghanistan was sheltering Osama Bin Laden, and would not hand him over (or even expel him). Leaving him free to operate after 9/11 did not look like a good option.
They were telling people that at the beginning of the civil war. Houston and Sherman were laughed at for thinking otherwise. This was also the thinking before each of the world wars and Vietnam.
You would think people would be educated enough to see through that bullshit on its face regardless of what politicians say. I don’t have any sympathy for people lacking this ultra basic level of education.
I was watching a talk on YouTube last night about the end of WW2 with Japan. According to the speaker, one fear was that the emperor would surrender, but the military units individually would refuse to follow the order, meaning the army would have to pacify the country in pieces.
The fanaticism of Japanese soldiers may have nuances when compared to the guerrilla and insurgent wars of today, but the potential for fighting to drag on for decades seems to have been demonstrated.
Hiroo Onoda has a biography about his time as a Japanese holdout in the Philippines. I just read it this summer and found it fascinating. I'd definitely recommend it!
The only vector I can think of would be improving society for the general public to the point where there's no reason to support the militants. i.e. so they end up being viewed the same as biker-gangs / outlaws rather than representing anyone. The boots being used to protect such work from interference.
That's not how it works. For example, fundamentalist extremism/terrorism has ramped up in Bangladesh in the last decade, even as the economy has been growing at 5-7% annually.
The US brought the Taliban to the negotiating table and have seen mixed success. The goal is not to kill the radicalized sect. It's to compromise with them and get them to assimilate back into the population.
And they're not going to do that. They know the lessons of Vietnam and the Soviet-AFG experience: chill out, wait for them to leave, then roll in and take over.
I would say so, but it's more of a political than a kinetic displacement process. You win when the population would unilaterally have you in charge. I think the major challenge of 21st century warfare will be building better infrastructure in the middle of a war zone.
One insight from reading about Vietnam, was that the US military actually was largely achieved the goal it set out for. It was strategy of attrition, and they were able to post very positive metrics throughout.
My sense is that with more technology, you get more focus on metrics, not less, with an even greater likelihood of choosing the wrong strategy.
So I read this is less of a "good vs evil" debate. It's just that when you are up close to the evil, you are really left questioning, "is the end really going to justify the means". If you are far away, you just see "hey, we're winning".
Thus, this "bad war" is less of a statement of "evil war" but _ineffective_ war.
I'd take issue with that -- the US Military was able to put up certain goalposts and make a credible claim that they hit them. The problem was that the point of the conflict was poorly defined, and victory was even more poorly defined. Bodycount was used as a metric for doing something.
IMO, Vietnam was a vanity war against an idea ("Communism"), and remote warfare is bad because it lowers the cost of vanity conflicts dramatically.
If I need metrics in a historical narrative to keep score, nobody is winning. That's the problem.
One of the first rules you learn when working for the US military is, if your kick doesn't go between the goalposts... find a way to move the goalposts.
Every military contract/mission officer wants one thing: to claim success for their project at the end of the year. They quickly learn the best way to do this is to reshape the metrics for success so that, whatever the outcome was for that year, you can claim that was the real objective all along. In the space of R&D contracting, it turns out that "blind the generals with flashy demos" does that rather well.
Of course, that also requires that the original mission objective be phrased in ambiguous terms so "goalpost" and "kick" remain freely fungible concepts. To that end, in 1964, "Defeating Communism" fit the bill nicely. Today it's "Defeating Terrorism".
When it comes to Vietnam I recall a phrase I heard a long time ago: "We successfully executed a misguided strategy." I take it to mean we were killing the ever-living shit out of them, but doing so did NOT contribute to our strategic desires. But the numbers! They looked great on the weekly report!
Fascinating that you could also read that as executing, as in putting to pasture, said misguided strategy. Not sure that reading would be very true though.
> the US military actually was largely achieved the goal it set out for
Yes--the US literally bombed villages of innocent people because maybe someone had written a Viet Cong slogan on the wall. It then counted these huts as "enemy structures" and "munitions factories." All civilian casualties were indiscriminately counted as enemy combatants.
That's literally what the US government did, while supporting an oppressive feudal government trying to crush a populist uprising (which was considered as obviously illegitimate because they were not Christian and capitalist).
KPIs, everyone.
It's also part of why black communities in the ghetto are harassed by police officers. If you have to hit growth numbers, you start going after people who aren't doing anything wrong and arresting people on bogus charges.
Here's the version I was told in the early 2000's by a US Army Ranger: "Firing at humans with a .50 caliber weapon is illegal, but firing at military 'equipment' is allowed. If a soldier is wearing a helmet, the helmet counts as 'equipment.'"
These types of discussions were popular with the barracks' lawyer types when I was in, circa ~2010, and I'm sure it was even more popular to debate before the internet was around to actually answer the question.
The root of the idea is to get soldiers to think about the "rules of war", so if nothing else its been very successful in that area. I wonder if any one has done a study on to the effectiveness of these various training(s), to see if it has a measurable impact on behavior
I find this very strange, .50cal is one of the standard sniper caliber all around the world (although originally intended as anti-materiel it works OK for anti-personnel purposes too).
In fact, longest confirmed hit AFAIK was done quite recently by .50, I think by canadian sniper.
Plus you have these machine guns on vehicles that are .50, I can't imagine they are not used 'because rules'. Maybe not against civilians, but that's another topic.
.50 BMG (aka 12.7x99) is the common NATO heavy cartridge. The .338 Lapua Magnum is a more modern cartridge and briefly had several record-holding shots, but the .50 BMG again has the lead.
The equivalent Warsaw pact round woud be the 14.5x114 (.57 cal) and is the third round with confirmed hits from a rifle at over 2km.
Note that both the 12.7x99 and the 14.5x114 are heavy machine gun rounds while the .338 lapua is specifically designed for rifles (at least I'm not aware of an HMG that fires them). It turns out that for long range you want a heavy bullet moving really fast with low-drag. an HMG cartridge fitted with a low-drag bullet does that pretty well.
As I understand it these types of restrictions are "best effort". You're not supposed to set out to shoot someone with an inappropriate type of round from the get-go (eg, using incendiary against a human), but if you are shooting it and a target presents itself, you aren't blocked from shooting it if it is a threat to you or your boys.
None of this really matters in my opinion. Once the stuff is flying in both directions most restrictions (short of nuclear weapons) kind of get relaxed.
> I find this very strange, .50cal is one of the standard sniper caliber all around the world
As a long-distance paper-punch, the .50BMG has some nice ballistic properties, if your shoulder can take the punishment. Thus its modern use. But the natural enemy of the .50BMG is the engine block. It was optimized for the objectives of the tail-gun crew in a WWII-era bomber.
Remote wars are inhuman wars. Not that war is humane, but people (soldiers) have empathetic reactions when confronted with the conditions on the ground. Drone wars also have a negative moral impact. Without people witnessing the horror on the ground, no drone is ever going to go back home and protest the injustice. Combine that with the end of conscription and you have a perverse situation in which Nations claim legitimacy, but they rest on armies that are immoral, dishonorable. In the end, it hurts the sense of nation itself.
Depressing topic. I am sure scientists will argue that adversity is a required ingredient for evolution etc. I just hoped that we/humans can come together and decide that _this_ particular type of adversity (ie war) is no longer required. Heck, maybe, I'd settle for Star Trek style simulated war[1]
If the article's thesis is resonant, consider a David Drake novel or two. Rolling Hot comes immediately to mind, but Hammer's Slammers started the series.
Drake served in armored cavalry in Vietnam -- many of his science-fiction books imagine a universe of higher technology that is no less human.
> I am not a grunt who thinks wars can only be won with boots on the ground. However, all wars must eventually be won with boots on the ground.
This has to be an over-simplification, and we should think this narrowly about armed human conflict. It's definitely possible to win a war by simply not fighting it, to win a war via stalemate (cold war), by finding a political alternative, or by just not showing up.
Fair point! I only bring it up because we didn't directly fight the Soviets, although the use of combat troops was a large part of the cold war geopolitical strategy, as you mention!
WW2 is an almost unique example of an enemy that was inherently monstrous on a huge scale - but that wasn't actually the reason for the war.
If Germany and Japan had started the war with their first strikes in the same way, but had not committed war crimes on a colossal scale, it might be remembered rather differently. Few people talk up WW1, it gets remembered as a pointless slaughter. Or all the various post-WW2 conflicts the West chose to get involved in.
Yes -- the framing of WWII as a war of "good against evil" and "fascism must be fought at all costs" is entirely retrospective. Roosevelt and Wilkie were stepping over each other trying to argue who was the most anti-interventionist.
It was only the bombing of Pearl Harbor that gave Roosevelt the political power to openly support intervention in the European theater, which before he could only passively push for. If he had announced his intention to get boots on the ground before the 1940 election, we would have had a different president in 1941.
Presumably some of the difference is that WWI didn't involve as much intentional targeting of civilians, where WWII did (the London Blitz, Dresden, firebombing Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
It's also worth noting that the Japanese first strike on Pearl Harbor was mostly an acknowledgment that America's involvement in WW2 was inevitable. The question was no longer, "Should start a war with America?" but rather, "How can we gain advantage in the inevitable war with America?" Striking first was a strategic military move, not a political move.
Diplomatic relations between the US and Japan were already essentially ended before the attack on Pearl Harbor. With the financial freeze already in place, particularly the refusal to sell Japan oil, Japan could not continue their wars in Southeast Asia. The Hull Note signalled a final refusal to terms which Japan could accept, and with that, war between the US and Japan was inevitable[1].
Japan's aggression in Southeast Asia could be seen as aggression against US allies, but it has to be seen within the context of colonialism. Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia was primary directed at colonies which were themselves the result of Dutch and French aggression. It's harder to see the US as being the "good guys" when you realize that until Pearl Harbor, US involvement in WW2 was that of an imperialist power meddling in the colonialist activities of another imperialist power[2].
Even after Pearl Harbor, the atrocities committed by the Germans and Japanese were not a big part of the public justification for war. If you look at American propaganda from during the war, all of it appeals to fear of the Germans and Japanese rolling through Europe and Asia and then finally invading America. It was only after the war, when the true extent of Axis atrocities started to become apparent, that these atrocities were used as an ex-post-facto justification of the war.
Hindsight makes it fairly obvious (to me, at least) that WW2 was a justifiable war. But I don't think, given the knowledge the average American had during the war, that we could have said the same thing then.
[2] The war which was then called the Second Sino-Japanese was was an exception, in that Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist Chinese government wasn't a colony, but Roosevelt and Chiang Kai-shek were allies of the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" variety--it is unlikely that Japanese aggression against the nationalist Chinese would have motivated the financial sanctions the US placed on Japan in the absence of Japanese aggression against European colonies. There's little evidence that American attitude toward Chiang Kai-shek's government became any less imperialist, even after the war: Roosevelt offered Chiang Kai-shek's government control of French Indochina, but this was still a colonialist move, in addition to being a token gesture given none of the allies had the resources to reclaim the colony (and indeed, neither did the nationist Chinese: Chiang Kai-shek declined Roosevelt's offer).
Good-Bad is the wrong scale. WW2 was a justifiable and necessary conflict.
That's different than "good". The only reason that WW1 is seen as pointless and throwaway is that the scope is such that we can sort of internalize the horror and pointlessness. End of the day, WW1 and WW2 was the same conflict, and the scale of it was too horrific and too big for a human to appreciate.
This certainly is an interesting alternate reality exercise. If US didn't participate, would it become a military superpower? Would Korea/Vietnam/middle east wars/... happen? What would USSR do? Would there be a nuclear race? Would Nazis be able to control most of Europe, long term? Or would they self-destruct with their megalomaniacal desire to expand their reich?
I guess I'm glad US did participate, because I wouldn't be sitting here otherwise. :) Hard to argue against something that resulted in me existing.
Anyway, whether something is justifiable is subjective. Millions of people who died from US actions during WWII and millions who were killed by US after the WWII may have had a different opinion. To the dead, who the executioner was doesn't really matter after all.
It's also probably good to compare what happened, instead of what might have happened, because that is unknowable.
Nazis killed millions and had a disgusting ideology. US killed millions too, and one has to wonder what their ideology was or how important it was if they decided to kill hunderds of thousands of civilians just to show their new found military power, without even thinking about the victims (at least some National Geographic documentary I've seen recently mentioned that there were no indications in archives/diaries that anyone involved in decision making mentioned civilian lives that would be destroyed, while dropping the atomic bombs). How about millions of destroyed lives in the fight to "stop the reds"?
All war is bad war. War is mass killing for profit and control based on lies. All of it.
It's amazing that people continuously by into the bullshit propaganda they keep making up.
The wars are about the same thing they have been for thousands of years. Why is there really conflict in places like Syria and between the US and Iran? It's the same thing as the Roman-Persian wars. Or the Crusades. It's about control of resources and territory.
> "The moral distance a society creates from the killing done in its name will increase the killing done in its name."
> Then why is violence worldwide decreasing?
Actual violence mostly occurs when one side is willing to use violence and the other side has enough belief in their ability to resist (including in that belief that the first side will back down before resorting to force) to compel the first side to actually resort to violence to achieve their actual aims, to which violence is usually merely a means. States becoming more willing to use violence and gain greater capacity to accurately (at least, avoiding false negatives) target that violence might plausibly result in populations becoming more compliant without actual resort to violence (or, at least, more quick to capitulate on an issue once the state first responds violently on it), reducing total active violence but increasing repression through the omnipresent threat of violence.
(Also, violence done “in [society's] name”—mostly state violence—and violence in total aren't the same thing; it's also plausible that total violence might decrease while, perhaps even because, state violence increased in a way which eliminated more non-state violence.)
Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker. It's a well-researched book that goes over how all kinds of violence (at least the easily-measured kinds) have consistently fallen over time. This includes war as well as crime.
There are local maxima, of course, but over any significant time scale and area, violence is down a lot.
I don't remember many wars being stopped by soldiers, but I do remember many instances of shocking imagery causing change. Maybe the problem could be mitigated by requiring cameras.
All war is remote war unless the people who actually start the wars and profit from them are first to the front. Let Congress and the rich fight their own battles for once.
except that the "good reason" tended to be that such cultures valued perceived bravery and martial skill as amongst the most important traits of a leader. Since this was best demonstrated by waging wars of aggression, such cultures certainly didn't tend to fight fewer futile conflicts, or offer social advancement opportunities to pacifists. The theory that leaders' proximity to conflict leads towards decisions being made with caution and/or compassion for one's potential adversaries is not one which survives contact with history.
the reason for the leader fighting at the front was so that they would take on most of the risk of their decision. This is important to ensure balanced decision making valuing bravery and martial skill came later when leaders started shifting the risk of their decisions onto others while still keeping most of the upside.
We already have economic conscription, and it's worked wonderfully for the military as long as there are enough young poor people with no other options.
> When domestic economic prospects are grim, the military has no problem recruiting soldiers. When those prospects improve, recruitment falls. How do we know? We can see a micro-version of this process happening right now.
> This year, for the first time in thirteen years, the Army reported it was short thousands of recruits. This year’s unemployment rate is also the lowest we’ve seen in that same time period. These facts are related, and the military agrees.
It's not the same, economic conscription always existed throughout history. I also find the idea that a country's military can be staffed with calculating mercenaries laughable. Nobody could build a state like that
I was here to comment the exact same thing. My phrasing however was that "All wars are bad wars if the people handling it remotely wont send their loved once on the frontline".
The real issue with remote wars is that people sit in their air conditioned offices in Washington DC and move other people's sons into the deserts. They pay no personal cost for the failed operations and accidental drone strikes.
Why should the war pigs' kids suffer for their parents' greed and ambition? Let those who start wars for their own political and financial gain be the first to die in the trenches.
Why should the war pigs' kids suffer for their parents' greed and ambition?
Because those kids are more than willing to, say, accept extremely lucrative directorships at foreign oil companies, despite lacking any discernible expertise in the industry.
> Enlisted recruits in 2006 and 2007 came primarily from middle-class and upper-middle-class backgrounds. Low-income neighborhoods were underrepresented among enlisted troops, while middle-class and high-income neighborhoods were overrepresented.
Officers, of course, and civilian leadership tend to come even more from the upper part of the income spectrum. The idea that wars are fought by the poor for the rich is a myth--the lowest 20% of households in terms of income account for just 10% of enlisted ranks.
As to "profit"--war isn't particularly profitable. Raytheon, the third largest defense contractor, is about as profitable as Starbucks (both in terms of absolute profit and profit margin). The defense industry doesn't mint billionaires or enjoy 30%+ profit margins like say tech. Raytheon has a valuation similar to WeWork. With the exception of a few highly-compensated CEOs, defense contractors are dominated by upper-middle class scientists and engineers.
The U.S. has a middle class military that serves middle class interests. Anti-war people fail to understand that because they fail to understand that Americans aren't anti-war. We're an ideological people and we're not afraid to use the military to achieve a wide variety of ends.
45% of Americans self-identify as "hawks." https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs/public.... And more than 50% of Americans believe the following would justify military intervention: stopping genocide (70%), humanitarian crisis (70%), stopping Iran nukes (69%), ensurign oil supply (55%), peacekeeping in the middle east (50%).
Over 70% of both Democrats and Republicans support: U.S. airstrikes against terrorist training camps, drone strikes to assassinate terrorist leaders, and assassination of terrorist leaders generally.
There were Nazi sympathizers in what would have been Union states during that time. Support for the war was not 100%.
If we're defining the South by the slave trade, then they'd have strong ties to the British, the French, and the Dutch through that. All Allied powers. Connections to the Axis powers would have been Portugal and Spain.
You're making the mistake of assuming that just because one immoral act was committed that there were no redeeming values to be found in the people.
That is just untrue.
It is interesting to speculate what would have happened had secession succeeded. We can speculate that slavery would have still eventually ended, maybe later. Reconstruction obviously doesn't happen. Do the two nations become more Canada/US, Mexico/US, East/West Germany, or even North/South Korea? Are there scuffles over unclaimed territory? Who knows.
The point is that it could have just as easily be the former Union joining the Axis. We don't know.
I'm assuming most of the alt-history buffs reading this have already heard of it, but I thought I'd point out that this scenario plays out in great detail in Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory series of novels.
And something the nations of the United States, Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, and Belgium all engaged in.
Yes, it was horrible. Yes, it was reprehensible. No one is denying that. But let's not pretend that it was only the Southern states in the United States that engaged in it.
To assume that just because those states attempted secession over slavery that they'd also be sympathetic to the Axis powers is to deny them any sort of nuance. It also ignores that by that logic, all of the countries I mentioned earlier should also have been Axis powers.
How did you jump to the conclusion that I wanted to blame only southern states? I made a remark on how "one immoral act" so egregiously downplays slavery.
> To assume that just because those states attempted secession over slavery that they'd also be sympathetic to the Axis powers is to deny them any sort of nuance. It also ignores that by that logic, all of the countries I mentioned earlier should also have been Axis powers.
Hitler admired America, the Reich took great inspiration from it. The British pioneered industrialized concentration camps. Belgium is on the hook for extraordinarily cruel amounts of genocide on top of slavery.
It makes you think that maybe history isn't the result of some Manichean battle of good and evil.
There should be a rule that anyone who says "by that logic" is about to put stupid words in your mouth.
throwaway123x2 speculated that the South would have joined the Axis.
I mentioned that that is not a guarantee. And that if his reasoning was the slave trade, then there are issues with that line of thought. Because there are.
I made a plea for empathy and suggested that just because a society has made mistakes doesn't make them "evil".
You decided to argue the semantics of me saying "one immoral act".
I was the one arguing for a view of history that isn't some "Manichean battle of good and evil". And I don't see how any of my posts do anything but that.
People who say "there should be a rule" don't really want to argue points. And maybe if you don't want stupid words in your mouth, don't say them.
No, my point was that if there was a state whose founding cause was white supremacy, they would be much more likely to align with Nazi Germany's idea of Aryan Supremacy.
And regardless of whether that is true or not, my even greater point is that the USA and CSA would likely have found themselves on opposite sides of the conflict and fought a war on the North American continent that would have not only caused much greater loss of life, but also prevented either state from helping an isolated Britain in Europe, greatly improving chances of a Nazi triumph there.
I think the cultural imperative for white (or indeed, Aryan) supremacy would have closely linked the south to Nazi Germany.
However, regardless of how the war would've played out, the North American continent would've been ravaged again as there would be an American front that would've prevented the Americans from providing much needed reinforcements in Europe.
> I'll bite - imagine then a South that sided with Germany in WWII.
Or, imagine WWII not happening at all, because it would be the CSA, not Mexico, that the Germans prodded into conflict with the USA during WWI (if, as seems likely, the USA still managed to become a major industrial power and was still inclined towards the Allied Powers; otherwise there would be no need), and that likely is more successful at distracting the USA from being in a position to swoop in as a fresh power when both sides are near collapse, so you don't get the clear Allied victory and punitive terms at the end of WWI that lead to the Nazi rise to power.
Can wars even be "won", in this sense, any more? Modern war is asymmetric. If the enemy is a radicalized percentage of the civilian population, hiding in plain sight, when do you "win"? Who surrenders? Who signs a treaty?