Superpower Follies
by Ambassador Thomas Graham (Retired) and David Bernell
March 2026
The Cost of War
For many decades the United States has been willing to engage in wars to reorder governments and societies. Since 2001 this has meant war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now it seems in Iran. This process has involved years of spending considerable resources and suffering terrible casualties – a high cost in blood and treasure. Over a period of more than 20 years, the United States lost over 2,400 servicewomen and men in Afghanistan, and another 20,700 were wounded in action. In Iraq 4,400 US soldiers died, and 32,000 were wounded. The deaths and casualties that the people of Afghanistan and Iraq suffered was far higher than this. Estimates have been difficult to assess, but in each country the number of deaths from the wars is thought to range from 180,000 to half a million people. This is a staggeringly high number in and of itself, and in terms of the proportion of the population of each country, it is even more so. Had the US seen an equal proportion of its people killed in either of these wars, it would have lost over 2.5 million Americans (and that’s using a number closer to the lower end of the estimates).
In addition to these human costs, the financial costs were also extremely high. The war in Afghanistan has been estimated to have cost the US government $2.2 trillion dollars, while the war in Iraq has come to a total of $1.9 trillion.
Those wars did not turn out as America intended when entering the conflicts. The high human and financial costs did not produce strategic and political benefits. Rather, it can be more convincingly argued that American and global security were worsened by these wars. Moreover, these efforts to change regimes and remake societies – the “forever wars” decried by not only by Donald Trump, but people across the political spectrum – led to the loss of American power, credibility, economic strength, trustworthiness, and reputation.
What’s more, the opportunity costs of fighting these wars has been immeasurable. What were the larger, long-term interests or strategic initiatives that got neglected involving China, Russia, global economic development, global health, or a myriad of other possibilities? It’s hard to determine this, much less attach a monetary value, but try this thought experiment. Imagine how different things might be today if twenty years and $4 trillion had been spent on developing alternatives to petroleum to power automobiles, funding medical research, or building schools or medical clinics or power plants overseas. If someone told you that they would give you $4 trillion to make the world a better place, and you could either wage the two wars America fought or spend the money on something else, such as the items suggested above, what would seem more likely to offer a better payoff twenty years down the line? The answer is obvious, and even more so when considering the disastrous results in Afghanistan and Iraq, looking back at 2001 from today’s vantage point.
Repeating the Mistakes of the Past?
The United States faces a similar situation once again in Iran. There is no compelling reason why the United States of America should be trying to remake Iranian politics and government, much less any reason why its government officials should believe that they have this capacity. America will almost certainly fail to meet these maximalist goals.
The United States has often acted abroad to address humanitarian crises, responding to both natural disasters and populations suffering in the midst of war, and it has been a helpful force. For example, the US military and US Agency for International Development have acted to help victims of the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, to deliver much needed aid to besieged populations in Syria during its civil war, and to facilitate peacekeeping and the delivery of food and medical supplies in Liberia in 2003. However, when it has come to changing the politics of a country, which involves taking sides in determining who will hold political power, the United States does not have a good track record. Limited interventions in Somalia and Haiti in the 1990’s were efforts that did not stabilize, pacify, or democratize either country. Larger efforts in Libya to oust Muammar Qaddafi’s government led to greater violence and chaos. And of course, the most substantial American efforts – in Afghanistan and Iraq – failed in their ultimate objectives of bringing democracy, peace, stability and prosperity to these countries. Why does America continue to allow this to happen, why are its leaders unable to better understand its own interests and limitations better? The United States should not have been engaged in long term fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere. Nor should it be engaged in trying to remake Iran.
History has furnished other examples of why a superpower should not pursue a course such as this. Great Britain, the country that had held the balance of power in Europe, dominated the oceans with the world’s most powerful navy, and held an empire upon which “the sun never set,” overextended itself in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its aggressive imperialism drew it into it one war after another in Africa and Asia (the Zulu war, the Boer War, the Benin expedition, the occupation of Egypt, the Iraqi revolt, the Opium Wars, the Anglo-Afghan War, the Anglo-Persian War) to try and maintain British-run governments, stop rebellions, deny colonial territories to European competitors like Russia, France and Germany, or project its power, believing that all these actions made it stronger and gave it advantages over other major powers. By the time World War I began in 1914, Britain had weakened itself and drained its treasury as its attention had been diverted from larger, more important interests of dealing with the rising power of the United States, Germany, and later the Soviet Union, while ensuring its economic power and centrality as the financial capital of the world. A more recent example is the Soviet Union’s 10-year, futile intervention in Afghanistan to keep a friendly government in power. This misadventure cost the country so greatly that it was one of the main drivers leading to the eventual collapse of the Soviet government in 1991.
When one considers the United States campaign in Iran, the American government does not even have a coherent rationale for its intervention. President Trump has offered multiple reasons, often contradictory to one another. And far from developing or explaining an exit strategy or criteria which would constitute a victory or achievement of objectives, the talk from the Trump administration is about expanding the war by possibly going after Iran’s oil infrastructure (which will only worsen the global economic crisis resulting from high energy prices), or putting “boots on the ground” by sending American troops into Iran.
American entry into this war was a product of Donald Trump’s erratic, impulsive behavior, and his disregard for even considering the views of Congress, the American public, or countries friendly to the United States in the Middle East and Europe. The administration has been surprised by the staying power of the Iranian government, its ability to retaliate against targets throughout the region, and the ease with which Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz. Trump and his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have also demonstrated immense incompetence and foolishness in removing much needed military assets from the region prior to the war, and alienating NATO allies who have no love for the Iranian government but are absolutely unwilling to help an American president who only berates them and complains about them.
The government of Iran has been a danger and a menace to its own population and to countries throughout the Middle East. It is a scourge in global politics. It makes sense to limit that government’s capacity to do more damage. But for Trump to start a war of choice, unleash the uncontrollability and unpredictability of war, and do so in such an incoherent and poorly thought-out way is not a recipe for success. It would be folly to expect that the result of this war will be a peaceful, democratic, stable Iran, or that the United States can engage in this war without costs to its immediate and longer-term interests.
A Better Path
If one were to list the major interests of the United States, it would not begin with “start another war in the Middle East to try and bring a friendly government to power.” Instead, it would include the following.
One immediate interest would be wholeheartedly helping Ukraine to defend itself against Russia’s invasion, while also countering Russia’s efforts involving economic sabotage and disinformation campaigns, which are designed to cause chaos and division in democracies in Europe and North America. These American goals are part of a larger long-term objective that the United States has (albeit inconsistently) sought in the past: making military conquest of neighbors and territories a clear and obvious losing proposition for any country seeking such gains. Success by the United States in achieving (or even just pursuing) these objectives would limit the capacities of Putin’s Russia, preserve a democratic Ukraine, and strengthen the NATO alliance of like-minded democracies with common interests. This would also enhance American credibility and trustworthiness by living up the promise that the United States made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukrainian independence and security in exchange for Ukraine giving up the 4,000 nuclear weapons it inherited upon the breakup of the Soviet Union.
A second major American interest is in preserving and strengthening a system of global trade and finance that has helped to foster an 80-year period in which the world has achieved greatest economic growth it has seen in history. This global economic system, championed and led by the United States since World War II, has served the US, and it has served others well too. Not only have hundreds of millions (maybe billions) of people have been lifted out of poverty as more countries around the world have achieved significant economic growth, the growth and (relative) stability of the global economy has helped to keep the peace. As we have previously argued in “Trump’s Tariffs Will Not End Well,”
One of the great triumphs after World War II was the restoration and formalization of a more open, global trading system, like the one that existed when the British were the richest global power. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade allowed countries a peaceful, easy, and fair way to acquire the resources they wanted – by engaging in global trade, rather than being tempted to conquer lands with the resources and markets they coveted…Trading rules and institutions, along with U.S. power and leadership, helped to break, or at least greatly diminish, the links between nationalism, violence, and resource sufficiency.
The United States has been far from flawless in its global leadership, but the political and economic order it has fostered since 1945 has maintained its staying power not because of American coercion of other countries, but because it has provided benefits to countries that have voluntarily joined NATO, the EU, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and other international organizations.
The Trump administration has been systematically breaking this global economic order since it came to office in 2025 with tariffs, economic threats against friends and trading partners, and a belief that any political or economic relationship the US is involved in which helps another country in any way is, by definition, doing harm to the United States. In short, the priorities of the Trump administration are undermining American interests.
Strange Bedfellows
In the midst of fighting a war against Iran, the Trump administration’s incoherence and volatility – not only regarding Iran, but other places as well – is not only putting in motion a course of events that looks all too familiar. It is also producing some surprising outcomes.
- In order to keep oil prices from rising further due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the United States is allowing Iranian oil shipments to flow out of the Persian Gulf (Iran is obviously not targeting its own tankers). At the same time, the countries friendly to the United States are seeing their own oil and gas tankers sit idle.
- The United States has eased some of the sanctions it has placed on Russian sales of oil around the world. Again, this is to keep energy prices from going up more than they already have. Still, the war and the sanctions relief is bringing an additional windfall to Russia of $125 million in earnings every day.
- The Russian government, which is benefitting from high energy prices caused by the war and from the easing of American sanctions, is providing intelligence to the government of Iran so it can fight more effectively against the United States.
- Trump has refused help from Ukraine, whose president declared that he is willing to share with the US the technology his country developed to effectively and affordably shoot down the swarms of drones Russia uses to attack. (After four years of defending themselves, the Ukrainian military and its equipment are battle tested.) Many of these drones are supplied by Iran, which is now using its arsenal of small, cheap drones to go after American targets. Meanwhile, the US rapidly uses up its limited and expensive Patriot and THAAD anti-missile systems to shoot down the drones, instead of accepting the help from Ukraine.
- Though Putin provides aid to Iran and Zelensky offers help to the United States, Trump continues to treat Russia better than Ukraine. He disclosed that he had a “very good” call with Putin and said that the Russian president “wants to be helpful” ending the war in Iran. Contrast this with Trump’s statements rejecting Ukrainian help: “No, we don’t need (Ukraine’s) help in drone defense,” and “The last person we need help from is Zelensky.”
One must ask what kind of American president this is. Apparently one who cannot seem to understand the interests of the United States, or much less care about them.
There is definately a lot to find out about this subject. I like all the points you made