History Main / WonTheWarLostThePeace

So, you won a war, you bask in the glory of victory, and all that stuff. But when you finally get over all this excitement, [[AndThenWhat you realize your problems still aren't solved]]; perhaps you bungled the end-game negotiations, your enemies are still strong, or your strategic genius [[CripplingOverspecialisation doesn't extend to politics]]. In any case, your enemy has already regrouped and is ready for another turn, like nothing happened. You won, but you totally botched the peace talks, or didn't care to finish off what you've begun.

* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', the Marines and World Government experience this after winning the Summit War against the Whitebeard Pirates. Their victory did not bring peace as the death of Whitebeard created a power vaccum in the New World that other big name pirates would fight over. Whitebeard's last words confirming that, "One Piece does exist", inspired a second Great Age of Piracy even wilder than the one started by Roger's last words, and the large casualties the Marines suffered during the conflict meant that they were severely understaffed to deal with the sheer amount of pirates. All of this combined caused the world to fall into chaos over the [[TimeSkip two year timeskip]], so much that the Marines were forced to institute a [[{{Conscription}} Worldwide Draft]] to conscript more people just to get the manpower necessary to police the worlds oceans, and even that is implied to still not be enough.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''Manga/MakenKi'' In episode 9, the boys declare that the swimming pool should be coed, while the girls want segregated pools at the previously all-girls school. So they decide it by having a water calvary battle. In the end, the boys do win, but then the girls make one of the boys [[ItMakesSenseInContext turn them invisible]], so while they can hear the girls playing in the water, the guys can't see any of them.

** The Universal Century setting is plagued by this. The One Year War from the first series is followed by multiple smaller (if for no other reason than the fact that having a second war on the scale of the OYW less than a generation later would likely render humanity ''extinct'') but still extremely destructive conflicts going hand in hand. Each is a result of the previous conflict and ends with the issues which led to the war left unresolved. Additional side stories between the major series further add conflicts which create a more and more bleak picture of the Universal Century.
** The Cosmic Era of ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED'' is not much better, seeing two major world endangering conflicts in just 2 years, and both series ended without the underpinning issues being resolved.

* ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' gives us a downplayed example in the early episodes of Season 2. HotBlooded badasses are vital during crisises and wartime, but as rebuilders of society, it's a mixed bag to say the least. Rossiu is the only one who really knows what he's doing (though Leeron is still engineering and Yoko became a teacher.) Simon is only a bit better off than the others and that's mainly because of Rossiu. [[spoiler: Deconstructed since this leads to escalating tensions when the Anti-Spiral shows up and Rossiu's pragmatic decisions just bite them in the ass and Simon has to save them all. Everyone does acknowledge and knows Rossiu was doing the smart thing, though Rossiu is so consumed by his guilt he nearly kills himself out of atonement before Simon [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan snaps him out of it]]. By the end of the second season, most of the veterans are dead with Simon becoming a wanderer and letting Rossiu and the survivors lead humanity. Even in the second film (a retelling of the second half) where there are more survivors (only Kittan's death remains), things still play out similarly, though Simon also lives to accomplish Nia's goal.)]]

* ''Literature/LordOfLight'' has an inversion. The protagonist loses the battle of Keenset, but as an eventual result of it his "Accelerationist" viewpoint that technology should be shared wins the day over his opponents' "Deicrat" viewpoint that this is dangerous, as the battle weakens them enough that they can't maintain the same level of strict technological control as they were accustomed to.

* In ''Literature/HonorHarrington'', the ceasefire between the Star Kingdom of Manticore, led by [[ObstructiveBureaucrat High Ridge government]] and The People's Republic of Haven, led by [[StateSec Oscar Saint-Just]], is an example for Manticorans. Despite being on the brink of total military victory, the new government following an assassination accepts Saint-Just's proposed ceasefire, then drags on the "negotiations" for several years, in the process screwing up their own military, and giving the next Havenite government plenty of time to build up their military, catch up some technologically, and get good and pissed off that Manticore is stringing them along. When the war inevitably restarts, it starts with Haven at a ''huge'' advantage. [[spoiler:They ultimately make peace and ''sign a military alliance'' thanks to the discovery of a common enemy and the most audacious diplomatic gambit ever seen in the series -- and by "diplomatic gambit" we mean "the President of Haven shanghaied most of her Cabinet and paid an entirely unannounced call on the Queen of Manticore" -- but not before a cataclysmic attack on the Manticore System guts both navies and leaves hundreds of thousands dead.]]

** Daenerys Targaryen also deals with this after leading her own anti-slavery crusade through the cities of [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Slavers' Bay]]. Once she settles in Meereen, she hears stories of atrocities carried out in Astapor, the first city she liberated, and realizes that Meereen is in its own state of fresh chaos. She decides to put the whole "retake the Seven Kingdoms" thing aside until she can maintain some order in her new kingdoms, first. She explicitly considers this a training run so she can get a handle on what she's going to do later; and, both as expected and as a result... things go badly. Turns out treating real people, places, and problems as simple practice for "the real thing" adds up to a lot of half-baked "solutions" primed to blow up in your face in record time.

** The Third Age prior to the main events of the books is a three-thousand year version of this. The Last Alliance defeat Sauron at the end of the Second Age, but Isildur fails to destroy the Ring, which leads to the estrangement of Elves and Men and his untimely death, which itself causes the split of Arnor and Gondor. Arnor ends up fragmenting into smaller states and slowly being gobbled up by Angmar, with the Elves only helping when it is destroyed, while Gondor spends centuries fighting the Easterlings, Haradrim, and itself, leaving it a shadow of its former self by the time Sauron rolls round again.
* [[Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli Machiavelli]] points out in ''Literature/ThePrince'' that a Prince who was won a war and want to avoid be perceived as cruel will left the opposition live. This inevitably concludes in a later war, disorders and a lot of people dead. So, the paradox is that a Prince who truly wants to won the peace must [[ThePurge crush the opposition]] (but not [[CrushingThePopulace the general populace]]) [[NoKillLikeOverkill fast even when the war has already been won]], so all their subjects cannot see any hope in opposing their new ruler, [[HumansAreBastards and don’t waste time and effort trying it and truly accepting the new peace]].

* Happens in ''Literature/{{Heimskringla}}'''s "Saga of King Harald Hardrada", where Harald fails to conquer the Kingdom of Denmark, even though he is almost always victorious in battle against his rival Svein Estridson. The trope is lampshaded and discussed later by Earl Tostig of England in conversation with Harald, when he points out that Harald's failure was solely because of his lack of favor with the Danes, who clung to the popular Svein in spite of defeat.
* In the ''Literature/WorldWar'' books by Creator/HarryTurtledove, a group of aliens invade Earth in the middle of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. The aliens prove to be so politically naive and diplomatically inept that at one point UsefulNotes/JosefStalin tells his NumberTwo Vyacheslav Molotov that as long as the Lizards cannot achieve [[TakeOverTheWorld complete victory in war]], they will certainly lose during peace time.

* In the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' SpinOff novel ''The Ellimist Chronicles'', the Ellimist seeks to end a war between two planets by creating an impenetrable AsteroidThicket between them, forcing the two sides to call off the war because their ships are no longer physically capable of prosecuting it. He returns after a TimeSkip to discover that rather than end the war, the AsteroidThicket gave one side the idea to plant SpaceMines in the other planet's path, nuking the enemy into extinction. Suddenly without an enemy, they fell into civil war and ended up bombing themselves to a preindustrial state.

* ''LightNovel/TheCombatBakerAndAutomatonWaitress'': After [[FantasyConflictCounterpart the setting equivalent of World War I]] is won by Wiltia (Germany), they soon find themselves struggling to hold the country together, to the point where some officers claim that things were easier back in the war. This includes the recently-annexed Pelfe region coming to the brink of rebellion, the ruthless General Genitz taking control of the nation's PraetorianGuard and amassing resources to attempt a MilitaryCoup, foreign assassins lurking around visiting dignitaries, and a series of treaties which place heavy restrictions on Wiltia's use of LostTechnology weapons (but not any LostTechnology that [[ArchaeologicalArmsRace other nations may have dug up in secret]]).
* The French children's book ''Fattypuffs and Thinifers'' plays this extremely straight. [[spoiler: The efficient Thinifers crush the indolent Fattypuffs miliarily, but the amiable Fattypuffs are much better at dealing with people than the impatient Thinifers and eventually take over all the key jobs in the combined country.]]
* The second arc of ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' series deals with the spectre of this trope hanging over the protagonist's home nation, and his increasingly desperate attempts to avert it, because after [[ForeverWar literal decades of brutal war of attrition]] the side that [[PyrrhicVictory technically]] won is almost as battered and war-weary as their erstwhile enemies.
* Spin-off series ''Literature/TheLostStars'' has many of the same themes, being set in one of the solar systems that played a brief but important role in the last volume of the main series. The main characters lead a successful coup and throw off the shackles of [[OneNationUnderCopyright the Syndicate Worlds]]... in the first chapter of the first book in the series, ''Tarnished Knight''. The ''rest'' of the four-book series is devoted to them figuring out how to build a functional government from scratch while fending off multiple unfriendly polities on their borders, while [[HeroWithAnFInGood Planetary CEO-turned-President Gwen Iceni]] desperately tries not to fall back into bad habits and have the whole endeavour turn into a FullCircleRevolution.

** Robert Baratheon crushes the Targaryen dynasty during the rebellion and becomes king. However he is such an irresponsible ruler that his government is in massive debt and only a few steps away from civil war.
** Daenerys conquers the cities of Slaver's Bay and ends slavery there. Within a few months there are uprisings against her rule and the former slavers are working to regain control. Violence gets so bad that some people are asking to be made slaves again so they can at least be safe.

** In the Season 6 finale, Cersei has managed to eliminate all threats to her rule in King's Landing, and the suicide of her son means she now sits on the throne. However, her actions have alienated pretty much every ally the throne might have had. The Reach has sided with Dorne and Daenarys Targaryen in retribution for the deaths of most of their family line. House Bolton has been extinguished by the joint forces of surviving loyal Northern houses under Jon Snow and the Knights of the Vale, so the North is in rebellion once more. Walder Frey and his male descendants have been assassinated by Arya Stark, freeing the Riverlands from the Freys' control. Finally, the last Targaryen is coming to Westeros to reclaim her right for the Iron Throne. Cersei will be hard-pressed to retain her power in such a climate. However, as of the Season 7 finale, [[spoiler:Cersei was able to retain her position, even after her forces were crushed by Daenerys Targaryen, thanks to the bigger White Walker threat coming from the North forcing everyone to make a truce and fight together against it. That said, Cersei has no intention of honoring it and plans to stay back and watch her enemies bleed each other, nevermind that whoever comes out of the conflict will come after her]].

* In the back story of ''Series/{{Revolution}}'' Sebastian Monroe and Miles Matheson fought a series of brutal campaigns to pacify most of the American Northeast and Midwest and bring the territories into their new Republic. However, with the wars won they quickly realized that they were over their heads when it came to actually governing a new nation in a world without electricity. Monroe became more tyrannical and brutal in his rule and a disenchanted Miles decided to just walk away from the whole enterprise since he would have been just as bad a ruler as Monroe. By the time the series has started the Monroe Republic is a technologically backwards place that is on the verge of being attacked and defeated by its more advanced and better ruled neighbors.
* ''Series/DeusSalveORei'': The war between Montemor and Artena results with the former coming out as the victor and solving its water shortage issue by seizing the latter's supplies. However, with Artena completely devastated and its royal family either missing or taken hostage, a refugee crisis ensues as the defeated's people are absorbed by the winners, with famine ensuing due to so many mouths to feed. To make matters worse, the King of Montemor is an egotistical and incompetent RoyalBrat that looks only after himself and made things much worse and that [[spoiler:the entire conflict was staged between him and the crown princess of Artena so that they could unite the two kingdoms by marrying each other (since their formal union was forbidden by her father), only for said princess to plot to get rid of her new husband so [[ICanRuleAlone she could rule over the two kingdoms]], even if she cause thousands of innocent deaths to get it]].

** ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' has a civil war variant -- Ten Black Days in Tethyr. With the backing of Guilds and mafia-like Knights of the Shield the monarchy was overthrown and the nobility nearly exterminated. The net result? De-facto a 20 years long CivilWar: a swarm of petty warlords, marauders and [[ReligionOfEvil unholy priesthoods]] all over the place and 200 people who tried to rule the ''whole'' land in this time. Monsters grew bolder. Tethyrian economy, let alone populace, was devastated. Then a force who united at least some people appears, wipes out monsters terrorizing the capitol, and the same people scream "[[RightfulQueenReturns All hail Queen Zaranda!]]" till their throats are raw.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}} Interstellar Wars'' the Terrans defeated the Vilani only to find that they simply did not know how to rule thousands of planets. As a result the whole system disintegrated.

* Each of ''VideoGame/ASPAirStrikePatrol'''s normal endings, in which the one or more of the Force, Supplies, or Opinion Ratings were too low to get the GoldenEnding, result in this. The [[{{Qurac}} Zarakis]] are defeated and the war ended in victory, but (depending on which meter was low) a [[OpeningScroll Closing Scroll]] will narrate the disastrous effects the war has had on your country.

* ''{{VideoGame/Killzone}}'' is one long string of Pyrrhic victories lined up in a row, but the cake-taker with losing the peace added is the ending of ''VideoGame/{{Killzone 3}}''. The heroes manage to stop the new big bad Stahl from deploying his super weapon on Earth to kill billions of civilians, by destroying his cruiser above Helghan. The heroes are about to cheer, having just managed to end the war... only to watch in horror as the super weapons on the exploding cruiser goes off in Helghan's orbit and the entire planet is turned into a wasteland in literally seconds, with almost no survivors, signaling the birth of a new age of terror. The end result is an unholy peace treaty, turning the heroes' capital planet Vekta into a refugee camp for the Helghast. Neither side takes losing their home planet well and Vekta is thrown into a state of cold war between them.

* In 535 CE, Byzantine Emperor Justinian I sought to retake Italy from the Ostrogoths, triggering a 20-year long war that actually did more harm than good to the former Western Empire (who did enjoy some stability with Ostrogothic King Theodoric). The Byzantines won in end, but the war left their empire broke, left Italy [[DepopulationBomb utterly ravaged and depopulated]], and also ThePlague made things even worse. The Byzantines found out Italy costed too much to keep, and when the Lombards marched into Italy to conquer it ten years after the war was won, they barely met resistance.

** The principal reason was the constant redistribution of land between various lords, barons and magnates after the defeat of their faction in one rebellion or another. UsefulNotes/RichardIII on his accession had hoped to avoid this but even he had to transfer Northern magnates in Southern lands after ousting the Woodville faction. The end result ironically was that the constant land exchanges over time made the Royal Crown the biggest landowner (since they claimed land for which no dispute could be resolved and with the constant deaths and in-fighting this was easy enough). [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfTudor Henry Tudor]], reclaimed the throne and established the House of Tudor and he put a stop to all the land-exchanges and used his old base to build a solid centralized monarchy.

** For the Western Allies as a whole, there was some bitterness over the European situation after the war. The UsefulNotes/ColdWar was obviously on-coming, and absolutely nothing could be done to prevent Stalin from assembling the Eastern Bloc given the world has just exhausted itself defeating the Axis.

* The Suez Crisis was a military victory but political failure for Britain and France. When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, Britain and France sought to retake the canal by having Israel capture it and then the two European nations intervene under the guise of peacekeeping. While the British, French and Israeli military forces soundly defeated Egyptian military forces, the ruse was revealed to the public and they subsequently lost the political goodwill from the international community. US President UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower angrily condemned the invasion as he feared it would drag [=NATO=] into a costly war, and USSR Premier UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev even threatened to deploy nukes in the Middle East. Rather than reassert British and French dominance, the Suez Crisis only weakened their international standing and hastened the end of European colonialism while Nasser became a hero amongst Third World nations.

* This is a popular stereotype how Bulgaria's wars end.
** The rule of Simeon the Great of the First Bulgarian Empire (the one who actually made it into an empire) is hailed in historiography as Bulgaria's golden age. Simeon waged many wars of expansion and beat enemies such as Croatia and the Byzantine Empire into submission, turning Bulgaria into the sole major power in the region. This, however, only lasted until his death. Between a populace exhausted by wars, huge expenditures on culture and prestige, a greedy clergy causing heresy and dissent among the peasants, vengeful neighbors and HordesFromTheEast taking lands too far away to guard, his son Peter I, even if he had 40 years of nominal peace (absence of open war but not rebellions and incursions), ushered in the empire's downfall.

** Between the two wars, Bulgarians staged the bloodless reunion of the country with its southern half, which had been left as an autonomous region within the Ottoman empire. This went without the approval of the Great Powers and Russia prompted Serbia to attack Bulgaria as punishment. Bulgaria won the war but lost Russia's geopolitical support, which resulted in three of its surrounding countries (Greece, Serbia and Romania) forming a long-term alliance against it with Russian blessing.

* This was the common opinion of the Congress of Vienna, which ended UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars and established a new status quo for Europe. Justified or not, virtually every party felt betrayed by some portion of the outcome. [[note]]Russia's ambitions for a united Poland and dual monarchy were quashed, as were Prussian goals to absorb all of Saxony. The Bourbon French and Hapsburg Austria were annoyed that Murat was to be tolerated in "their" Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (until his sudden betrayal in the Hundred Days gave them an excuse to depose and shoot him anyway). Denmark's loss of Norway to Sweden was confirmed to compensate the Swedes for their own loss of Finland to Russia. Austria ceded the Austrian Netherlands to the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which was content with that until they eventually rebelled to form Belgium. France was on the verge of coming out ahead in spite of losing the war after Talleyrand successfully divided the Allies against each other and set himself up as a kingmaker player between the two alliances, but the SpannerInTheWorks -- Napoleon's Hundred Days -- overturned Talleyrand's designs and cost France all their gains from 1790-1792, 700 million francs in indemnities, although to the dismay of German nationalists it was allowed to keep Alsace and Lorraine. German patriots also were disappointed that Germany became nothing more than a fairly loose confederation of 38 mostly small states. The only major powers to come out in front across the board was Britain, who still had to admit defeat in convincing the other powers to accept anything stronger than a StronglyWordedLetter-style condemnation of the slave trade; the new Kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemburg, who had their borders confirmed; and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, which regained their old borders with the addition of the Republic of Genoa, but still had to tolerate Hapsburg statelets throughout Italy in addition to Austrian Lombardy and Venetia.[[/note]] On the other hand, the system established in Vienna proved able to preserve peace in Europe for a long time, at least until the UsefulNotes/RevolutionsOf1848. In particular it is notable that the Vienna system managed to avoid a major European war over the revolutions of 1830 and 1831 and after the Oriental Crisis of 1840, when the government of France was itching to compensate for its loss of face in Egypt by starting a war to "regain the natural frontier" on the Rhine.

** Americans themselves were left pretty bad off. The war brought distrust of the government, a generation of young men dead, wounded, or [[ShellShockedVeteran mentally scared for life]]. Even their main objective, stopping the spread of communism south, was only delayed for a few years and eventually [[DisasterDominoes the theory]] behind that intervention was discredited when Communist Vietnam's invasion of Communist Cambodia uncovered and ended the Khmer Rouge's genocide.[[note]]The underlying assumption behind American foreign policy at the time was that Communists worldwide were a united front against the US and its allies.[[/note]] the same time, Vietnam successfully fought off Cambodia's main backer, Communist China (allied with America and Cambodia at one point) in a bloody border war.
* The jury is still out on UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, but the outlook isn't rosy. The primary goal of UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror has thus far been achieved: the security of the United States, though at the cost of dancing distressingly close to the limits of constitutionality (whether the line was actually crossed is a matter of interpretation; what is undisputed is that it has been extremely unpleasant for all involved), and the thousands of lives lost and tens of thousands wounded, plus billions and billions of dollars. And with Iraq's government showing its weakness in the face of ISIS in 2014, followed by the almost immediate collapse of the U.S. supported Afghan government the moment the U.S. military withdrew in 2021, the long-term prospects for the secondary goal to create stable democracies in the Middle East and Central Asia seem bleak.

** The Taliban's jubilation in retaking Afghanistan was quickly undermined by the fact that they now have to govern a failed state. Any attempts to rebuild the country have been mired by economic depression, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and a mass exodus of Afghans fearing reprisals from the Taliban. At the same time, an offshoot of ISIS began carrying out their own insurgency against the Taliban and supporters. Even neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan that would've welcomed Taliban victory now have to contend with Afghanistan becoming a haven for drug lords and terrorists.

* This seems to be the case for a lot of modern-day coups and revolutions. Hoping (perhaps) to emulate other successful revolutions, the two major ones that stand out are the American and French as a source of inspiration, many of these countries fall into relative disarray shortly afterwards. But perhaps a cause why many of these revolutions fail is because they weren't led by people who actually know how to run a country (or any large body of people). As one historian put it "They win, have a big party, wake up with a hangover, and ask 'Now what?'" The Libyan civil war may be given a an example. Although the anti-Gaddafi forces had won, and UsefulNotes/MuammarGaddafi was dead, the country is left in disarray with the new government now trying to restore proper order while fighting rival militias.

** In the end, what the Allies produced was, to paraphrase the words of Ferdinand Foch, "Not a peace treaty, but an armistice for 20 years." When it was all said and done, everyone on both sides had reasons to be resentful of the treaty; some were ignored entirely (Russia, China), some gained something from the war but not all they wanted (Italy, Japan, France) and some believed they lost everything (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey), and thus, instead of making peace, the treaty merely sowed the seeds for more conflict. Not to mention that the various governments reasons for going to war and stifling internal dissent, cracked with the rise of UsefulNotes/RedOctober and greater demand for democracy at home and in the colonies.
** Italy's case is particularly notable, because the lack of some gains (namely Istria, Dalmatia and some of Germany's African colonies) was caused by both the incompetence of the Italian delegation ''and'' Woodrow Wilson's stubborn refusal to award them the former two regions. The diplomats walked out in protest when the American president tried to stop the acquisition these Austro-Hungarian territories and did not rejoin until he had failed, by which point the German colonies had already been assigned. That (along with the appalling economic situation) nearly caused a three-way civil war between the Italian government, war veterans on the anarchist side and war veterans on the far-right side (with at least one incident where far right activists and Royal troops nearly fired on each other), and paved the way for the rise of Fascism.

** The case of Germany was long argued by John M. Keynes who felt the treaty was overly punitive to Germany and unfairly targeted their economy and held them guilty for the war. This argument was rebutted by Etienne Mantoux, a liberal French economist who died in LaResistance. Mantoux pointed out that the reason the peace the failed was because other governments were ''too lenient'' on Germany, which had an economy that could have easily paid the reparations to no point. Mantoux also noted that Keynes' beliefs of the war hurting Germany's resources and economy is not borne out by statistical examinations of their output in TheRoaringTwenties. Furthermore, as later German historians such as Hans Mommsen have admitted, the Treaty of Versailles became a rallying cry among Nazis and other nationalists, and internalized by leftists and liberals, because it never categorically and fully extracted responsibility for the war from Germany. Other historians have pointed out that from a strategic point of view, the treaty actually made Germany even ''stronger'' than before the war. While its army was almost entirely disbanded and they lost some territory, they kept pretty much all of their industrially viable territories and workforce population, so they could easily rebuild it. Geopolitically, their entire eastern frontier was no longer covered by two huge empires that could keep it in check, replaced by several, smaller, weaker states with their own internal and external feuds.
* The 18th century wars would end up exhausting the European powers and bringing an end to their colonial ambitions in North America.
** The British victory would in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. Although the British successfully forced the French to secede the Great Lakes and northern territories, it also became saddled with debt that lead to the British government imposing taxes on its subjects. Some of these colonists in America would then revolt to protest the taxation, leading to another war for Britain to fight.

* Italy's conquest of Libya in 1912. The actual invasion and defeat of the Ottoman forces was relatively easy, given the difference in firepower between the Italian invaders and the Ottoman Army, supported by the local tribes. Then corruption and incompetence among the bureaucracy prevented the defeat of a revolt in southern Fezzan when it was still small, the attempt at defeating it in open field ended in [[CurbStompBattle defeat]] due a combination of incompetence on the part of the Royal Army's upper echelons (who failed to provide the Italian or colonial Eritrean troops needed to do the job) and arrogance of the field commander (who could have still won the day or limit the damage had he not brought too many supplies with him) -- therefore, by the time Italy entered UsefulNotes/WorldWarI the Italians had been forced to the coast. They eventually managed to "pacify" the colony, but only in the early '30s and after a long, bloody and expensive war of reconquest.

** At the end of the day, the South got pretty much everything it wanted, with slavery traded for segregation and black suffrage taken away through a set of sneaky laws known as Black Codes, or Jim Crow laws. These included but were not limited to poll taxes, literacy tests, and having to guess how many items were in a full jar -- [[GrandfatherClause but you were exempt from these tests if your grandfather had been eligible to vote]], which mean all white males were in and black males were out. This situation lasted for almost one hundred years, until the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement picked up in the 1950s. Slavery was replaced with "prison labor," with all kinds of new laws targeted at blacks (requirements for jobs they didn't have, to be literate even though just a few years before they would face all kinds of punishments if they tried, or just flat out pay off debts that didn't exist). The white judges and all-white juries would convict any black man that came into the court. The worst part about this was that while slaves were an investment, prisoners are expendable.

** It is also worth noting that Sparta's inward-looking culture caused it to miss several opportunities that rivals seized. Sparta's hyper-religious and xenophobic attitudes worked great for maintaining their social order and scaring off potential invaders, but more than once neighboring states went to Sparta for help, only to get a lame excuse about needing to stay home for a religious festival, or else just being ignored. Athens, on the other hand, had a somewhat flexible social order and was filled with ambitious politicians who jumped at a chance to look like a hero. Rome's same lack of flexibility ultimately undermined even their military power; the rest of the Greek cities slowly developed more advanced phalanx tactics to the point that Spartan techniques were outdated and overshadowed, and they had no chance at all against Roman legions. After the Roman conquest their culture was continued... as a quaint tourist attraction.
* How the First Fitna ended: the reigning Caliph Ali won all military engagements, but on the verge of destroying the army of his last enemy Muawiya he saw the latter send out ambassadors asking for an arbitration based on the Quran, and the majority his soldiers, tired of fighting fellow Muslims, forced him to accept and name a popular but politically naive man as his representative in the arbitration over his own better judgement and the objections of some of his other soldiers, who felt the correct way would have been to fight and let Allah pick the righteous side by granting them victory and for this act formed the Kharijite movement, that believed both Ali and Muawiya were unworthy of rulership. As a result, the arbitration ended up declaring him deposed and naming Muawiya as the legitimate Caliph, depleting his power base, his initial attempt at defeating Muawiya before he could raise a new army had to be diverted to fight a Kharijite insurrection, and before he could try again a Kharijite assassin killed him while he was leading the prayer, paving the way for Muawiya's rise after escaping another Kharijite assassin. Islam has been divided into Sunni and Shia since.

->''Even despite our estrangement, I've got a small query for you:\\
What comes next?\\

You're on your own\\
Awesome, wow!\\

** At the end of the day, the South got pretty much everything it wanted, with slavery traded for segregation and black suffrage taken away through a set of sneaky laws known as Black Codes, or Jim Crow laws. These included but were not limited to poll taxes, literacy tests, and having to guess how many items were in a full jar -- but you were exempt from these tests if your grandfather had been eligible to vote, which mean all white males were in and black males were out. This situation lasted for almost one hundred years, until the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement picked up in the 1950s. Slavery was replaced with "prison labor," with all kinds of new laws targeted at blacks (requirements for jobs they didn't have, to be literate even though just a few years before they would face all kinds of punishments if they tried, or just flat out pay off debts that didn't exist). The white judges and all-white juries would convict any black man that came into the court. The worst part about this was that while slaves were an investment, prisoners are expendable.

->''Even despite [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution our estrangement]], I've got a small query for you:\\

** The Cosmic Era of ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED'' is not much better seeing two major world endangering conflicts in just 2 years and each series also ending without the underpinning issues being resolved.

* The aptly-named AlternateHistory timeline Literature/LosingThePeace demonstrates this perfectly. [[spoiler:While the United States successfully pacifies West Germany, the repercussions of the actions taken there cause a resurgence of the German-American identity, which turns violent during the 2nd Great Depression.]]

* The French children's book Fattypuffs and Thinifers plays this extremely straight. [[spoiler: The efficient Thinifers crush the indolent Fattypuffs miliarily, but the amiable Fattypuffs are much better at dealing with people than the impatient Thinifers and eventually take over all the key jobs in the combined country.]]

* In the backstory for Kanako from ''{{VideoGame/Touhou}}'', it's written that she had conquered Suwako's realm in a war, but found out that she couldn't get its inhabitants to worship her, and had to ask Suwako to come back to reign alongside her.

* ''{{VideoGame/Killzone}}'' is one long string of Pyrrhic victories lined up in a row, but the cake-taker with losing the peace added is the ending of ''Videogame/{{Killzone 3}}''. The heroes manage to stop the new big bad Stahl from deploying his super weapon on Earth to kill billions of civilians, by destroying his cruiser above Helghan. The heroes are about to cheer, having just managed to end the war... only to watch in horror as the super weapons on the exploding cruiser goes off in Helghan's orbit and the entire planet is turned into a wasteland in literally seconds, with almost no survivors, signaling the birth of a new age of terror. The end result is an unholy peace treaty, turning the heroes' capital planet Vekta into a refugee camp for the Helghast. Neither side takes losing their home planet well and Vekta is thrown into a state of cold war between them.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* How the First Fitna ended: the reigning Caliph Ali won all military engagements, but on the verge of destroying the army of his last enemy Muawiya he saw the latter send out ambassadors asking for an arbitration based on the Quran, and the majority his soldiers, tired of fighting fellow Muslims, forced him to accept and name a popular but politically naive man as his representative in the arbitration over his own better judgement and the objections of some of his other soldiers, who felt the correct way would have been to fight and let Allah pick the righteous side by granting them victory and for this act formed the Kharijite movement, that believed both Ali and Muawiya were unworthy of rulership. As a result, the arbitration ended up declaring him deposed and naming Muawiya as the legitimate Caliph, depleting his power base, his initial attempt at defeating Muawiya before he could raise a new army had to be diverted to fight a Kharijite insurrection, and before he could try again a Kharijite assassin killed him while he was leading the prayer, paving the way for Muawiya's rise after escaping another Kharijite assassin. Islam has been divided into Sunni and Muslim since.

* How the First Fitna ended: the reigning Caliph Ali won all military engagements, but on the verge of destroying the army of his last enemy Muawiya he saw the latter send out ambassadors asking for an arbitration based on the Quran, and the majority his soldiers, tired of fighting fellow Muslims, forced him to accept and name a popular but politically naive man as his representative in the arbitration over his own better judgement and the objections of some of his other soldiers, who felt the correct way would have been to fight and let Allah pick the righteous side by granting them victory and for this act formed the Kharijite movement, that believed both Ali and Muawiya were unworthy of rulership. As a result, the arbitration ended up declaring him deposed and naming Muawiya as the legitimate Caliph, depleting his power base, his initial attempt at defeating Muawiya before he could raise a new army had to be diverted to fight a Kharijite insurrection, and before he could try again a Kharijite assassin killed him while he was leading the prayer, paving the way for Muawiya's rise after escaping another Kharijite assassin.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'': The Imperium "won" the Literature/HorusHeresy, and despite devolving into a [[CrapsackWorld fascist nightmare]] they're doing their damnedest to not lose the "peacetime". So far they've managed to mostly hold together for eleven thousand years, but they have no idea how much longer they'll be able to last.

** It is also worth noting that Sparta's inward-looking culture caused it to miss several opportunities that rivals seized. Sparta's hyper-religious and xenophobic attitudes worked great for maintaining their social order and scaring off potential invaders, but more than once neighboring states went to Sparta for help, only to get a lame excuse about needing to stay home for a religious festival, or else just being ignored. Athens, on the other hand, had a somewhat flexible social order and was filled with ambitious politicians who jumped at a chance to look like a hero. This contrast was later taken UpToEleven with Rome. The same lack of flexibility ultimately undermined even their military power; the rest of the Greek cities slowly developed more advanced phalanx tactics to the point that Spartan techniques were outdated and overshadowed, and they had no chance at all against Roman legions. After the Roman conquest their culture was continued... as a quaint tourist attraction.

** Philippines' peaceful EDSA Revolution did overthrow then President UsefulNotes/FerdinandMarcos for abusing his power during the Martial Law era. But as two decades past, the country is still suffering from corruption and decadency which doesn't help that Marcos' wife and children are elected in several government positions with the son running and ''nearly winning'' for vice-presidency for the 2016 elections and planning to run for president for the 2022 elections. Several political analysts [[http://opinion.inquirer.net/93539/the-millennials noted]] that incompetence and the lack of political will in the previous administrations resulted the current state of the country and people who were born after EDSA became cynical and disillusioned on the price which the revolution left for them.

** In the end what the Allies produced was, to paraphrase the words of Ferdinand Foch, "Not a peace treaty, but an armistice for 20 years." When it was all said and done, everyone on both sides had reasons to be resentful of the treaty, either because they were ignored entirely (Russia, China), they gained something from it but not all they wanted (Italy, Japan, France) or they believed they lost everything (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey), and thus, instead of making peace, it only really sowed the seeds for more conflict. Not to mention that the various governments reasons for going to war, stiffling internal dissent, cracked with the rise of UsefulNotes/RedOctober, greater demand for democracy at home and in the colonies.
** Italy's case is particularly notable, because the lack of some gains (namely Istria, Dalmatia and some of Germany's African colonies) was caused by both the incompetence of the Italian delegation ''and'' Woodrow Wilson's stubborn refusal to award them the former two regions. The diplomats walked out in protest when the American president tried to stop the acquisition these Austro-Hungarian territories and did not rejoin until he had failed, by which point the German colonies had already been assigned. That (along with the appalling economic situation) nearly caused a three-way civil war between the Italian government, war veterans on the anarchist side and war veterans on the far right side (with at least one incident where far right activists and Royal troops nearly fired on each other), and paved the way for the rise of Fascism.
** The underlying problem here was often that many of the victors immediately got into conflicts over territories and spheres of influence with each other, e. g. Italy and Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia, France and Britain (over parts of the former Ottoman Empire and also over the policy towards the new Turkish state). Another problem was that the League of Nations and the European system of defense treaties was irreparably weakened by President Wilson losing his domestic support, which led to the United States refusing to ratify the peace treaties or to join the League.
** The case of Germany was long argued by John M. Keynes who felt the treaty was overly punitive to Germany and unfairly targeted their economy and held them guilty for the war. This argument was rebutted by Etienne Mantoux, a liberal French economist who died in LaResistance. Mantoux pointed out that the reason the peace the failed was because other governments were ''too lenient'' on Germany which had an economy that could have easily paid the reparations to no point. Mantoux also noted that Keynes' beliefs of the war hurting Germany's resources and economy is not borne out by statiscal examinations of their output in TheRoaringTwenties. Furthermore, as later German historians such as Hans Mommsen have admitted, the Treaty of Versailles became a rallying cry among Nazis and other nationalists, and internalized by leftists and liberals, because it never categorically and fully extracted responsibility for the war from Germany. Other historians have pointed out that from a strategic point of view the treaty actually made Germany a lot ''stronger'' than before the war. While its army was almost entirely disbanded and they lost some territory, they kept pretty much all of their industrially viable territories and population so they could easily rebuild it. Their entire eastern frontier was also no longer covered by two huge empires that could keep it in check and replaced by several smaller, weaker states with their own internal and external feuds.

** The post-1877 compromises between the Federal governmnent and the South [[PragmaticVillainy actually paid off in the long run]]. What it needed for the USA to raise themselves to superpower status was ''naval power'' -- the only form of power which decided between nations at the height of the Victorian Age.

* How the First Fitna ended: the reigning Caliph Ali won all military engagements, but on the verge of destroying the army of his last enemy Muawiya he saw the latter send out ambassadors asking for an arbitration based on the Quran, and the majority his soldiers, tired of fighting fellow Muslims, forced him to accept and name a popular but politically naive man as his representative in the arbitration over his own better judgement and the objections of some of his other soldiers, who felt the correct way would have been to fight and let Allah pick the righteous side by granting them victory and for this act formed the Kharijite movement, that believed both Ali and Muawiya were unworthy of rulership. As a result the arbitration ended up declaring him deposed and naming Muawiya as the legitimate Caliph, depleting his power base, his initial attempt at defeating Muawiya before he could raise a new army had to be diverted to fight a Kharijite insurrection, and before he could try again a Kharijite assassin killed him while he was leading the prayer, paving the way for Muawiya's rise after escaping another Kharijite assassin.

** The Taliban's jubilation from retaking Afghanistan were quickly undermined by the fact that they reclaimed what is essentially a failed state. Any attempts to rebuild the country have been mired by economic depression, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and a mass exodus of Afghans fearing reprisals from the Taliban. At the same time, an offshoot of ISIS began carrying out their own insurgency against the Taliban and supporters. Even neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan that would've welcomed Taliban victory now have to contend with Afghanistan becoming a haven for drug lords and terrorists.

* After the first war with Voldemort in the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' novels, many of his top followers were able to bribe their way out of prison and were quickly reestablished as pillars of the community. By the time Voldemort returned, they were effectively running the government, making the Death Eater takeover pathetically easy once Voldemort finally decided to move.

A close relative of PyrrhicVictory; the difference is in that Pyrrhic Victory is a victory achieved through an exertion a bit too big to bear, while what we think of here is a victory that is squandered. A MyopicConqueror tends to experience this as well.

** The Taliban's jubilation from retaking Afghanistan were quickly undermined by the fact that they reclaimed what is essentially a failed state. Any attempts to rebuild the country have been mired by economic depression, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and a mass exodus of Afghans fearing reprisals from the Taliban. At the same time, anti-Taliban rebels and an offshoot of ISIS began carrying out their own insurgency against the Taliban. Even neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan that would've welcomed Taliban victory now have to contend with Afghanistan becoming a haven for drug lords and terrorists.

* ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'' has several examples of this between it and the original game. After the Destroyers were driven back the races became complacent thinking it was the end of the threat in the Dwarven prophecies, rather than preparing for the Elder Dragons. The original fanatics behind the Ministry of Purity were defeated and it was reformed, but the hardline ideals the founders espoused persisted and led Cantha into a dark age of racism, xenophobia, and oppression. Jalawa Poko used the freedom he received in exchange for defeating Abaddon to reform his armies and successfully conquer Elona.

A close relative of PyrrhicVictory; the difference is in that PyrrhicVictory is a victory achieved through an exertion a bit too big to bear, while what we think of here is a victory that is squandered. A MyopicConqueror tends to experience this as well.

* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', the Marines and World Government experience this after winning the Summit War against the Whitebeard pirates. Their victory did not bring peace as the death of Whitebeard created a power vacuum in the New World that other big name pirates would fight over. Whitebeard's last words confirming that, "One Piece does exist", inspired a second Great Age of Piracy even wilder than the one started by Roger's last words, and the large casualties the Marines suffered during the conflict meant that they were severely understaffed to deal with the sheer amount of pirates. All of this combined caused the world to fall into chaos over the [[TimeSkip two year timeskip]]. So much so that the Marines were forced to institute a [[{{Conscription}} Worldwide Draft]] to conscript more people just to get the manpower necessary to police the worlds oceans and even that is implied to still not be enough.

** The Universal Century setting is plagued by this. The One Year War from the first series is followed by multiple smaller (if for no other reason than the fact that having a second war on the scale of the OYW less than a generation later would likely render humanity ''extinct'') but still extremely destructive conflicts going hand in hand. Each is a result of the previous conflict and the issues which led to the war left unresolved. Additional side stories between the major series further add conflicts which create a more and more bleak picture of the Universal Century.

** The Taliban's jubilation from retaking Afghanistan were quickly undermined by the harsh reality that they reclaimed what is essentially a failed state. Any attempts to rebuild the country have been mired by economic depression, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and a mass exodus of Afghans fearing reprisals from the Taliban. At the same time, anti-Taliban rebels and an offshoot of the ISIS began carrying out their own insurgency against the Taliban. Even neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan that would've welcomed Taliban victory now have to contend with Afghanistan becoming a haven for drug lords and Sunni extremists.

* This ''nearly'' happens to the Bureau of Internal Investigation in ''VideoGame/EscapeVelocity Nova'' -- as part of their schemes to place themselves as the [[TheManBehindTheMan The Men Behind the Men]] of all humanity, they help arrange a war between the Federation (the government the Bureau ostensibly answers to, and the first to be suborned) and the Polaris (the last remaining independent power, [[HigherTechSpecies and a very powerful one at that]]). Thanks in much to one of the Bureau's agents, the Federation wins... followed by the Polaris using the Bureau's inability to ''directly'' control the Federation to put forward a peace proposal that is highly favourable to the Federation but has clauses that (without actually saying so) would allow the Polaris to subtly work against the Bureau's control over the Federation. The Bureau ends up having to bomb the peace conference and restart the war to ensure the peace is in line with their goals.

* The premise of the ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'' {{Continuation}} fic ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/22987531/chapters/54956803 To Those Who Are Never Going Home]]'' is that Edelgard and the Empire have won the war, but 15 years later Edelgard has completely failed to uphold her promise to wipe out "those who slither in the dark" and Fódlan is once again a house of cards waiting to collapse.

** The Universal Century setting is plagued by this. The One Year War from the first series is followed by multiple smaller but still extremely destructive conflicts going hand in hand. Each is a result of the previous conflict and the issues which led to the war left unresolved. Additional side stories between the major series further add conflicts which create a more and more bleak picture of the Universal Century.

** Any jubilation the Taliban would've had became quickly undermined by the fact that they reclaimed a failed state. Any attempts to rebuild the country have been mired by economic depression, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and a mass exodus of Afghans that would in a labor shortage and brain drain. At the same time, anti-Taliban rebels and an offshoot of the ISIS began carrying out their own insurgency against the Taliban. Even neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan that would've welcomed Taliban victory now have to contend with Afghanistan becoming a haven for drug lords and Sunni extremists.

** While US withdrawal from Afghanistan was a political victory for the Taliban, they now have to govern a war-torn country suffering from a bad economy, insurgency and the COVID-19 pandemic. Fearing a potential reprisal, anti-Taliban and educated Afghans have left the country ''en masse'', resulting in a labor shortage and brain drain. At the same time, an offshoot of the ISIS called ISKP is carrying out its own insurgency against the Taliban. Even neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan that would've welcomed Taliban victory over the US now have to contend with the Afghanistan becoming a haven for terrorists and drug lords.

* This trope is both the main premise and CentralTheme of ''VideoGame/RedFlood'', a GameMod for ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIronIV''. ''Red Flood'' is set in an AlternateHistory CrapsackWorld where ''no one'' won [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI the First World War]]. Great Britain's empire was almost completely shattered, with the London Stock Market crash resulting in TTL version of the Great Depression. The British Raj, Belgian Congo, and Russian Empire all fell into various squabbling warlord states, with the remains of Russia proper becoming a dictatorship under Alexander Kolchak. The German Empire was savagely beaten by Russia and then had the Spartacist Revolution succeed, making Germany the first Communist country ITTL. And France easily had it the worst, with the Great War having so completely ''broke'' French society that this is where the [[BlueAndOrangeMorality utterly insane]] ideology of [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Accelerationism]] first rose in power.

* UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar is a complicated matter to be certain. While it should be noted that the American Military won the majority ([[http://www.g2mil.com/lost_vietnam.htm though not all]]) of individual ''battles'' they were involved in, they never achieved a decisive victory. The Americans underestimated how durable the spirit of their Vietnamese enemy was: they wanted to win far more than the Americans wanted them to lose, meaning that a prolonged war and large casualties were not enough to stop them. The Americans eventually headed back home, [[PyrrhicVictory the cost of victory being too high]] and substantial political pressure building against the war. However, even with the opposing force out of their hair, governing the new Communist Vietnam was not easy for the victors. There were rebels to quell, and even a war or two with its neighbors to the West before things became truly stable. After all that fighting with the Americans peace did not come easy for the Vietnamese.