History WonTheWarLostThePeace / RealLife

* Any war in Afghanistan becomes an empty victory. While it's possible to conquer Afghanistan, holding onto it and forming a centralized government is next to impossible given the mountainous terrain and tribalism of ethnic groups. [[UsefulNotes/TheAchaemenidEmpire No]] [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire foreign]] [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn invaders]] [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror since]] UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat has actually managed to take ''and'' hold Afghanistan, and seeing as Alexander died rather young it's unknown whether even he could've maintained control. As such, historians have nicknamed Afghanistan the 'graveyard of empires'.

** 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the rest of the Greek cities slowly developed more advanced phalanx tactics to the point that Spartan techniques were outdated and overshadowed, and they had no chance at all against Roman legions.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 continued... as a quaint tourist attraction.

* Despite the numerous claims that they "won" the UsefulNotes/KoreanWar due to successfully preventing occupation of the northern half of the country by UN forces, North Korea ultimately ended up being the biggest loser of the conflict. Pre-war, the north was actually more industrialized and developed than the south but all of that infrastructure was destroyed during the course of the war. After the cease fire that ended open hostilities was signed, South Korea received massive economic support and investment from the West, propelling it into one of the most developed countries in the world in less than half a century. North Korea, meanwhile, only received token postwar support from the USSR and China and never recovered from the massive losses it suffered to its population and industry. Even today, North Korea remains an isolated hermit state that largely only serves as a buffer state for China.

!!Dark Ages

* It has [[https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023// been argued]] by [[Blog/ACollectionOfUnmitigatedPedantry Bret C. Devereaux]] that the "Long Peace" of the late 20th century is about virtually all nations realizing this problem. The aftermath of the industrial revolution has meant that war is more destructive (meaning that you destroy more of what you're trying to take), and at the same time conquest itself is less valuable than spending that same money on your own economy. As a result, armies and waging war are becoming less useful for states because you really can't win the peace in the long run, which makes fighting wars mostly pointless.

** France found itself in a similar position to Britain after the war. Having suffered through Nazi occupation, a weakened France tried to reassert itself after the war and hold onto its colonial empire, including colonies that it had lost such as French Indochina. This ended very badly for France. First, France lost its possessions in Indochina following a humiliating defeat in the First Indochina War. Then, France fought through the long and brutal Algerian War, leading to the collapse of the Fourth Republic and the birth of the Fifth Republic (the current one), before President Charles De Gaulle was forced to grant Algeria its independence. At this point, France was forced to accept the decolonization of the rest of her empire and, like Britain, settle into its role as a supporting player on the world stage.

* 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.

** 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.

* UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar only looks like a victory for the North if you end it when Lee surrendered to Grant at the Appomattox Court House. However, the actual war was followed by the twelve-year-long Reconstruction Era, which despite being won by the North was eventually reversed by the South via Jim Crow.
** For those twelve years, the South was more-or-less under martial law with Northern troops forcing the Southern states to observe reforms being made by the federal government, such as black men being granted the right to vote. There was massive resistance from the South, including the emergence of the UsefulNotes/KuKluxKlan. The Klan and associated goon squads in effect to harass and disenfranchise black voters were shut down after UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant sent reinforcements. However, the North and the Union lost interest in Reconstruction by the end of Grant's tenure, with fence-sitters and other liberals no longer feeling content to stand up for African-American suffrage.
** 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 meant 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.
** Neither was it a true victory for Southern Whites. Some members of the planter elite who formed the aristocracy were dispossessed of their lands, and since the US government abolished slavery without compensation (the Confederates who fired on Fort Sumter spat on Lincoln's mercy when he offered this, which put this forever off the table), they were never quite able to properly replace their losses and industrialize. The sheer scale of destruction and the economic tumult basically destroyed the independent yeoman class, which was seen for a hundred years prior as a bastion of American Republicanism, as previously self-sufficient farmers were forced into a sharecropper system that essentially amounted to economic serfdom. If anything, the Scorched Earth policies of Sherman may be a case of GoneHorriblyRight, with the economic damage being so horrific that only in the closing years of the 20th century would citizens of modern Southern states achieve economic parity with their pre-Civil War ancestors.

* The Haitian Revolution, which ended in 1804, ended with the former Black slaves overthrowing their French colonial masters and creating their own independent country. Unfortunately, the country was plagued with a wrecked economy, infighting between rival governments, bloody massacres of the remaining French colonists, and a vengeful France that [[ShameIfSomethingHappened "persuading" the newly independent country to repay the French colonists for the loss of their "property"]], leaving it with crippling debts. Since then, Haiti has been plagued by [[TheCoup regular coups]], leaders who often acted as TheCaligula, PerpetualPoverty and occupations by the United States.

* Despite the numerous claims that they "won" the UsefulNotes/KoreanWar, North Korea ultimately ended up being the biggest loser of the conflict. Pre-war, the north was actually more industrialized and developed than the south but all of that infrastructure was destroyed during the course of the war. After the cease fire that ended open hostilities was signed, South Korea received massive economic support and investment from the West, propelling it into one of the most developed countries in the world in less than half a century. North Korea, meanwhile, only received token postwar support from the USSR and China and never recovered from the massive losses it suffered to its population and industry. Even today, North Korea remains an isolated hermit state that largely only serves as a buffer state for China.

* {{UsefulNotes/Ethiopia}}'s victory over {{UsefulNotesItaly}} in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Italo-Ethiopian_War First Italo-Ethiopian War]] was an utter humiliation for Italy. Forty years later, when UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini was in power in Italy, he proved to be a SoreLoser by starting the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Ethiopian_War Second Italo-Ethiopian War]]. The Italians won the rematch, in no small part due to their massive technological advantage, and drove Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie into a GovernmentInExile. Unfortunately for Italy, an Ethiopian LaResistance formed in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbegnoch Arbegnoch]]. The Arbegnoch constantly harassed the Italian occupation into UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo. They received aid from UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire, {{UsefulNotes/France}}, {{UsefulNotes/Belgium}} and their colonies in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_campaign_(World_War_II) East African Campaign]], which finally broke Italy's hold over Ethiopia. Emperor Selassie eventually [[RightfulKingReturns returned to Ethiopia's capital of Addis Ababa]] five years to the day he was forced to flee.

* Ethiopia's victory over Italy in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Italo-Ethiopian_War First Italo-Ethiopian War]] was an utter humiliation for Italy. Forty years later, when UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini was in power in Italy, he proved to be a SoreLoser by starting the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Ethiopian_War Second Italo-Ethiopian War]]. The Italians won the rematch, in no small part due to their massive technological advantage, and drove Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie into a GovernmentInExile. Unfortunately for Italy, an Ethiopian LaResistance formed in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbegnoch Arbegnoch]]. The Arbegnoch constantly harassed the Italian occupation into UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo. They received aid from UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire, {{UsefulNotes/France}}, {{UsefulNotes/Belgium}} and their colonies in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_campaign_(World_War_II) East African Campaign]], which finally broke Italy's hold over Ethiopia. Emperor Selassie eventually [[RightfulKingReturns returned to Ethiopia's capital of Addis Ababa]] five years to the day he was forced to flee.

* UsefulNotes/Ethiopia's victory over UsefulNotes/Italy in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Italo-Ethiopian_War First Italo-Ethiopian War]] was an utter humiliation for Italy. Forty years later, when UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini was in power in Italy, he proved to be a SoreLoser by starting the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Ethiopian_War Second Italo-Ethiopian War]]. The Italians won the rematch, in no small part due to their massive technological advantage, and drove Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie into a GovernmentInExile. Unfortunately for Italy, an Ethiopian LaResistance formed in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbegnoch Arbegnoch]]. The Arbegnoch constantly harassed the Italian occupation into UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo. They received aid from UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire, {{UsefulNotes/France}}, {{UsefulNotes/Belgium}} and their colonies in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_campaign_(World_War_II) East African Campaign]], which finally broke Italy's hold over Ethiopia. Emperor Selassie eventually [[RightfulKingReturns returned to Ethiopia's capital of Addis Ababa]] five years to the day he was forced to flee.

* UsefulNotes/Ethiopia's victory over UsefulNotes/Italy in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Italo-Ethiopian_War First Italo-Ethiopian War]] was an utter humiliation for Italy. Forty years later, when UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini was in power in Italy, he proved to be a SoreLoser by starting the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Ethiopian_War Second Italo-Ethiopian War]]. The Italians won the rematch, in no small part due to their massive technological advantage, and drove Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie into a GovernmentInExile. Unfortunately for Italy, an Ethiopian LaResistance formed in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbegnoch Arbegnoch]]. The Arbegnoch constantly harassed the Italian occupation into UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo. They received aid from UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire, UsefulNotes/France, UsefulNotes/Belgium and their colonies in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_campaign_(World_War_II) East African Campaign]], which finally broke Italy's hold over Ethiopia. Emperor Selassie eventually [[RightfulKingReturns returned to Ethiopia's capital of Addis Ababa]] five years to the day he was forced to flee.

** By 1461, the Lancastrians were a spent force. Their king was captured, their queen was in hiding, and their generals were dead or captured. London was firmly in Yorkist hands and [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfPlantagenet Edward of York]] had been crowned Edward IV. Unfortunately for him, he inherited a country run by a DysfunctionJunction of noblemen who represented the worst of feudalism. His main benefactor, the Earl of Warwick, was alienated by the King's refusal to marry one of his daughters, rather than the Lancastrian widow who became his queen, and raised a rebellion with the help of his transparently treacherous younger brother George, which briefly put Henry VI back on the throne. Edward got the throne back, in battle, but he could never quite achieve enough political control to ensure a smooth succession.

** The UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution would become this for the French. During the American Revolutionary War, France decided to back the colonists in seceding from the British as revenge for their humiliating defeat in the Seven Years War. However, while the American revolution succeeded, France was left in crippling debt that led to the country undergoing [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution its own revolution]] a few years later.

* It has [[https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023// been discussed]] that the "Long Peace" of the late 20th century is about virtually all nations realizing this problem. The aftermath of the industrial revolution has meant that war is more destructive (meaning that you destroy more of what you're trying to take), and at the same time conquest itself is less valuable than spending that same money on your own economy. As a result, armies and waging war are becoming less useful for states because you really can't win the peace in the long run, which makes fighting wars mostly pointless.

** Though none of those empires were defeated by failing in Afghanistan, so perhaps a better term is that it is the [https://acoup.blog/2021/08/27/fireside-friday-august-27-2021/ [midlife-crisis-car of empires]]. It is something that prosperous empires get drawn into before eventually coming to realize that it just isn't worth the cost.

* It has [[https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023// been discussed]] that the "Long Peace" of the late 20th century is about virtually all nations realizing this problem. The aftermath of the industrial revolution has meant that war is more destructive (meaning that you destroy more of what you're trying to take), and at the same time conquest itself is less valuable than spending that same money on your own economy. As a result, armies and waging war are becoming less useful for states because you really can't win the peace in the long run.

* This tends to happen a lot in [[MobWar conflicts between criminal cartels (or sections of said cartels)]]. They'll often got to extreme lengths to rid of the other guys, no matter what; the winning side will often be left with far less gangsters than when they started. And that can leave an EvilPowerVacuum that other gangs and criminals can maneuver to fill in the fallout. And then you have different factions who may want to continue the war for their own petty reasons, and it goes on until mobster higher ups like the Commission intervene, or until the police and/or feds get involved and either arrest or shoot everyone.