How to lose a war.

History has many lessons about wars and how to lose them. Trump’s latest dismal escapade shows how completely he has failed to learn.

There is one immutable rule about war: nobody wins. There are only degrees of loss.

Throughout the whole of history, war has been a consistent destroyer of lives, wealth and human happiness. In no previous era, though, have the means of destruction been so sophisticated, expensive and pointless as they are now.

From the history of modern warfare, three principles emerge:

1: Those who start wars usually lose.

2: Invading someone else’s country invites defeat. People fight hard for their homelands.

3: Success in war is in inverse proportion to military spending. Those who spend most also lose most.

Don't start a war

Some people think they can’t ever lose. When someone like that gets control of a nation and its military forces, thousands and sometimes millions have to die before they’re proved wrong.

Think of Louis IV, the absolute ruler of France between 1661 and 1715, who won some wars but lost a lot more. Or of Napoleon, who won a lot of battles but lost the war. Or the Crimean war of 1853-56, when Russia invaded the Ottoman empire and lost badly. Or the First and Second World Wars, when Germany invaded France and was each time crushed.

The last major war in which the United States was on the winning side ended in 1945. Since then, the five which followed resulted in a draw (Korea) and three losses (Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq).

Russia and the US both also failed to learn from history that nobody has ever won a war by invading Afghanistan. Persians, Alexander the Great, the Maurya Empire, Arab Muslims, the Mongols, Britain, the Soviet Union, and America have all found out the hard way why it known as the graveyard of empires.

There have been many other smaller, mostly localised wars. The two stages of Russia’s war against nationalist separatist forces in Chechnya (1994 to 2009) is, for now, contained under a brutal authoritarian puppet regime. The difficulty of suppressing nationalist passion is illustrated by that unfortunate country. Its national cohesion survived even the deportation by Stalin of the entire population in 1944. For now, Putin has the place locked down. For now.

When Trump started his war against Iran, he didn’t seem to be familiar with the Strait of Hormuz. Now he is.

Invasions don’t work

Attacking another country, even one where the ruling regime is unpopular, tends to unite its people under the existing government. There were no popularity polls in Nazi Germany, though it’s widely held by historians that by 1943, Hitler and the Nazis were deeply unpopular. But the country fought on to the end, to the point of almost utter destruction.

In more recent times, US and Israeli attacks on Iran have served to strengthen the Iranian theocracy. Polling indicates that only 10% to (at most) 20% of the population support the regime and that 89% want a democratic government. Many Iranians initially hoped the war would topple the regime, but that hope quickly soured into anger and resentment at the civilian casualties and massive destruction of cities.

The invasions, by the US and some of its allies, of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) ended in bitter humiliation for the country that believes itself to be the most powerful in the world. Russia’s experience in Afghanistan, as we have seen, was even more debilitating.

Until well into the 20^th century, invasions had a history of continued success. The era of colonial expansion by western nations began with Portugal and Spain in the 15^th century and reached its apogee in the 19^th. By the time of the First World War the whole of Africa, most of Asia and Oceania, and all of North and South America, had been colonised by European powers. With the end of the colonial period, invasion stopped working. Modern nation-states were developing and their peoples had their own ideas of who ought to run things and how.

The American empire, unlike any of its predecessors, was built by trade, political influence, media and persuasion. As a method it was no less successful than war and a great deal cheaper. That is the pattern now being emulated by China.

And that’s another reason why armed invasions don’t work any more. They’re not necessary.

Money won’t buy you power

The history of the past few decades has a consistent lesson most leaders prefer to ignore: military spending loses wars

Since 1945, the United States has spent $53 trillion (in 2025-equivalent dollars) on its military. Let’s spell that out: it’s $53,523,864,420,000. That’s an increase of 413%. In all of those 80 years, and despite all that money, it has not won a single war.

Peaks in spending have predictably accompanied active wars, most notably those against Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. But there was also a bump, just as big, when Ronald Reagan embarked on his fanciful Star Wars program to take war into space. It did nothing for America’s safety but made a lot of money for corporations and top executives in the military sector.

A somewhat different pattern emerges when we look at the numbers of people serving in America’s armed forces. The peaks that occurred during the Cold and Vietnam wars failed to reappear during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq earlier this century.

But the amount spent for each service member reveals how machines are now doing much of what people did in the past. Mechanisation of armed forces is hardly new, but the recent rate of change is nevertheless remarkable. More equipment – and, critically, more expensive equipment – is behind the soaring costs of the world’s armed forces. Between 1985 and 2020, spending per service member rose by 66% in France, 83% in the US, 96% in Britain, 145% in Germany, 150% in Australia and 382% in Sweden.

Today’s military hardware is unprecedentedly complex and, therefore, expensive. A single F-35 Lightning fighter costs between $US100 million and $130 million, and the US plans to buy 2,456 of them. Every hour in the air costs $35,000. Twelve other countries (including Australia, which has already bought 72) will bring total production to over 3,000 either in service or on order.

It’s good business for the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. In 2024, that aircraft provided 26% of the company’s revenue. Lockheed Martin’s average share price rose from $41.78 in 2005 to $488.87 in 2025, an increase of 1,070%. Over those two decades, it took in revenue of just over $1 trillion.

The first shot fired in anger by an F-35 was in February 2026, when a US navy aircraft destroyed an Iranian Shaheed drone over the Arabian Sea. That incident illustrates the asymmetrical nature of warfare: a fighter costing around $100 million took on a drone costing somewhere between $5,000 and $30,000.

As well as the cost of the aircraft, there’s the cost of its munitions. That drone was probably destroyed by a General Dynamics GAU-12/U Equalizer, a 24-barrell rotary cannon that costs around $1 million each. A single round costs between $100 and $200 and it fires up to 4,200 rounds per minute.

Using a missile against a drone would be even more expensive. A US-made Patriot missile battery costs over $1 billion. Each missile costs $4 million.

Shaheed drones, used by Iran and Russia, cost as little as $5,000 when they are mass-produced. Other drones are even cheaper: Ukraine has had great success in adapting hobbyist drones for combat, and military drones made of cardboard have been developed in Australia and Japan. Those cost around $2,000 each.

When wars break out, costs predictably soar.

According to the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military expenditure in 2025 reached $2.887 trillion in that year alone. The top 20 accounted for most of it. The United States accounted for a third of all the money spent on all the world’s military forces in that year.

Opportunity cost

On the basis that you can’t spend the same dollar twice, military spending must compete with all other calls on government budgets: health, education, civil infrastructure and all the rest.

The primacy of defence spending is justified by the principle that the first responsibility of any national government is to ensure the security and safety of its people. But there is often little recognition that practical “security” extends far beyond military capability. What sort of security is it if buying a few squadrons of aircraft that cost $100 million each means patients are dying because they can’t get into hospital?

This is a real issue in many countries, particularly in poorer ones. A comprehensive 2022 study concluded that higher military spending often meant less money for health:

“We find a significant crowding-out effect of military expenditure on domestic government health spending by taking into account government fiscal capacity,” the researchers wrote.

“The evidence we present supports the long-standing view that military expenditure has a particular ability to compete government financial resources away from publicly funded health spending …

“Based on our evidence, we suggest that freeing up government financial resources that would be drained by the military for health-care spending is particularly relevant to the prospects for human development in low- and middle-income countries.

“Faced with the unprecedented challenge of surviving COVID-19, many countries have seen a sudden, unexpected rise in public health spending. In spite of the devastating pandemic, the biggest military spenders (including the largest developing economies) have again raised their annual defence budgets. Given that military expenditure may crowd out public health-care spending out of total government expenditure, this aberrant policy development is especially worrisome and merits further attention.”

The United Nations agrees.

“Military spending does not guarantee security; instead, it often fuels arms races, deepens mistrust among countries and further destabilizes the international political landscape, said the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.

“Diverting funds to military spending locks countries into long-term military-centred policies, prioritizing defence spending over development gains, and signalling a dangerous decline in international cooperation.”

The message – at least, from the people who aren’t making billions out of the war game – is that arms races can’t make you safe. There was an arms race before 1914 and again before 1939. Look what happened then.