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I feel like the US has lost plenty of times and been fine. Korea had an unsatisfactory stalemate (that still haunts us). Vietnam was a clear loss and retreat. Iraq and Afghanistan were immediate victories followed by long drawn out slogs that no one feels we "won" at.
The 1990 Gulf war was a victory of sorts, but that seems to have happened because we didn't get involved in regime change in Iraq at that time. Otherwise you have to go back to WWII for a clear victory.
Your specific phrase "overthrowing the regime" is kind of a strange victory condition. We have arguably already done that in Iran. Bunch of their leaders dead on day one. There might be a technical continuance of governance, but there is already going to be a different set of people in charge in Iran. And historically our attempts at regime change in the middle east have gone poorly. It's why no one wants us committed to a ground war.
The USA did not lose Vietnam, although the public thinks we did. America concluded(wrongly) that south Vietnam was capable of fending of a north Vietnamese invasion, and declined to bail them out when this turned out not to be the case- the republic of Vietnam was independent for several years without US troops or support, and the commies had promised not to invade in exchange for American withdrawal. Nixon and Kissinger surely knew that they would go back on this promise, but the ARVN fended off a full scale invasion without US support before reshuffling their general staff due to political turmoil and then losing the next round.
Vietnam is weird. People who are like "hurr hurr USA hasn't won a war since WW2" are obviously retarded.
But the USA fought a war for many years with the explicit goal of preventing South Vietnam from being communist. They then made assumptions the ARVN could stand on its own, which was a convenient assumption given the political unrest at home. Regardless of the assumption, they were wrong. You don't get points for saying "okay but at the time we really did believe it". They were wrong, and south Vietnam was taken over by the communists. The war that was fought, the lives that were spent, did NOT achieve the outcome. Full stop. I would call that a strategic loss, despite the numerous and overwhelming tactical victories. I think Clausewitz would agree.
Amusingly, I think this is actually the most important part in this context. Power is exercised much more about belief than kinetic force. That's much more efficient too. The belief of your kinetic power means it doesn't get tested. Once that belief starts to slip, it gets much harder to maintain your power. You still can, especially with lots of kinetic force, but that comes with many costs of its own. It's way way cheaper when everyone respects the big stick, using it a lot sucks, and if absolutely everyone says "fuck you, bring it" you can only hit so many of them...
Vietnam was a strategic loss, that’s true. But also the ARVN did stand on its own until political turmoil in the Republic of Vietnam caused coup-proofing shakeup in the army’s leadership post-US withdrawal, leading to a collapse of the front in the face of the north Vietnamese 1975 offensive- the ARVN had been highly successful with 0 direct US assistance for three years at that point. It would be like if Ukraine suddenly fired all its generals and put a rando in charge who proceeded to lose the war in a matter of weeks.
I know this isn't the point , but this made me chuckle
This would probably be accretive to Ukraine, and would 100% be accretive to Russia. These old-guard Soviet generals are so fucking bad.
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Korea and Vietnam happened during the height of the Cold War, when the world was perceived as bipolar. In a way - some losses here and there were baked in. After the 90s (or 80s - I don't think anyone took seriously the USSR in 1985) - we live in Pax Americana. And one of the things that underpins Pax Americana is that US has mightier military than the next 20 combined.
And while Afghanistan and Iraq could be considered as political losses - the US forces never lost a battle there. I am not even sure that they lost many during the korean and vietnam wars.
Whereas leaving Iran in the hands of the islamic revolution after such fireworks display will be a first of a kind post Cold war.
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I agree with everything you've said, except
I wouldn't call that regime change. I think you'd need substantial change in the policies/views/beliefs/actions in the governance of Iran for it to count as "Regime change". Ending the war right now means the IGRC #100, #101, #101... people step up and get right back to "death to America, death to the Jews" after 24-48 months of rebuilding.
I would not call Venezuela regime change either by that metric. Although it did seem to very much alter the relationship between Venezuela and America's respective "regimes".
Mostly unilaterally, on the part of the United States.
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It's not quite that dire. Grenada and Panama were fairly unambiguous successes and the NATO mission in the Balkans can reasonably be characterized as a success as well.
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