President Donald Trump attends a ceremony marking the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 on the United States at the Pentagon, in Washington D.C., September 11, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstei
President Donald Trump's war machine is not what it used to be, and as one historian explained for The i Paper, there is a key reason why the U.S. military now "consistently fails" at its primary job.
Dominic Erdozain is a historian whose body of work has focused on modern political history. Writing for The i Paper on Monday morning, he argued that Trump "is losing the war in Iran," even if "the White House refuses to admit it." Despite this "floundering" effort, reports indicate that the U.S. military is nevertheless plotting a major new offensive against Iran, supposedly set to commence after the midterms.
"Why has America thrown itself into another unwinnable conflict? Why does it invest more than a trillion dollars annually in a war machine that consistently fails in its chosen subject of 'security?'" Erdozain wrote. "As security analyst Peter Bergen’s withering audit of America’s post-9/11 wars reveals: the United States has failed to bring peace, stability or freedom to any of the countries it has attacked in the past 25 years. What it has done is inspire terrorism and blowback, as well as causing the deaths of more than 4.5 million people from the direct and indirect effects of these ill-thought crusades."
Erdozain explained further that the problems bedeviling the U.S. military did not begin with Trump, even as his time as commander-in-chief has thoroughly embodied them.
"America has long misunderstood power, confusing the possession of superior weaponry with the ability to fulfill strategic and political goals," he explained. "From the earliest days of the puritans to the Christian nationalism now haunting the Pentagon, a powerful current of American thought has vastly overstated what can be achieved through the blunt instrument of war."
He added later: "Ever since President Harry Truman unveiled the atomic bomb in 1945 with hollow certainty that 'our enemies' will never possess such a weapon, Americans had been dazzled by technology, which they cherished as a sign of their exceptional status, rather than see its limitations."
The Vietnam War, he noted, was a prime example of how ineffective the U.S. military's blunt force approach to warfighting could be, with bombing campaigns neither "breaking Hanoi’s will or bringing Ho Chi Minh to the table," but rather "simply [hardening] their resolve."
"It has fallen to combat veterans including retired Marine Lyle Jeremy Rubin to say what should have been clear all along: “I don’t see how you can be a killer and be a nation-builder at the same time,'" Erdozain wrote. "It is difficult to win hearts and minds 'by walking around with a machine gun,' observed another jaded veteran. Ultimately, 'you just create more insurgents.'"
