President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a war with Iran looks less like strategy than reflex — the latest in a long line of interventions driven by misjudgment rather than necessity. Wars, by definition, should be rare instruments of policy, deployed only when anchored in a clear global strategy. Yet recent history suggests the opposite: they are easy to start, and exceedingly hard to finish.
The war in Ukraine already proved that point. Even so, Washington has opened another front.
The United States has offered various justifications, but the historical record is less forgiving. Since World War II, few American wars have produced decisive success. Even the Korean War — often framed as a qualified victory — ended where it began, after three years of destruction.
More often, U.S. interventions have followed a familiar arc: rapid entry, prolonged entanglement, and ambiguous or humiliating exits. Vietnam remains the defining case. What began with limited deliberation escalated into a decade-long conflict that drained national resources, fractured domestic consensus and ended without victory. The images of evacuation from Saigon still define the cost of strategic overreach.
The pattern repeated after Sept. 11. Afghanistan and Iraq were entered with confidence and exited with fatigue. Despite overwhelming military superiority, the United States failed to achieve its political objectives, spending trillions of dollars over two decades only to leave both countries unstable.
There was one exception: the 1991 Gulf War. It was limited in scope, backed by a broad coalition and aligned with a clear objective. It ended quickly — precisely because it was not unilateral.
That distinction matters. When Washington acts alone, strategy often blurs into ideology.
The deeper cost of these wars lies not only in their outcomes but in their opportunity cost. While the United States was consumed by the “war on terror,” China — now its principal rival — expanded its economic and strategic power. A more disciplined strategy might have curtailed Middle East entanglements early and redirected focus toward Beijing. That window has now closed.
The Ukraine war has compounded the problem. Rather than isolating Russia, it has tightened alignment between Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang. Russia’s ability to supply China with energy and food via land routes has reduced Beijing’s vulnerability to U.S. naval dominance — a strategic shift that arguably benefits China more than it weakens Russia.
The Iran conflict risks repeating — and accelerating — that dynamic.
If the war drags on, it is likely to strengthen China and Russia while weakening the United States and its allies. Tehran is already experimenting with non-dollar oil transactions, raising the prospect of a gradual shift toward a “petroyuan” system that could erode the dollar’s reserve status — one of the foundations of American power.
At the same time, fractures within alliances are becoming more visible. Washington’s call for allies to secure the Strait of Hormuz has been met with hesitation, exposing the limits of U.S. leadership in a more multipolar world.
This is not simply a series of tactical errors. It reflects a deeper structural failure in American strategic thinking.
Realist scholars such as John Mearsheimer have described this as a “great delusion” — the belief that the United States can remake the world in its own image. That belief rests on several pillars: American exceptionalism, an enduring faith in the universality of liberal democracy, and a persistent overconfidence in the durability of U.S. primacy.
That overconfidence has been costly. Even as economic competitiveness eroded, Washington continued to expand military commitments, assuming its dominance would persist indefinitely. The result has been a widening gap between ambition and capability.
China was the most consequential miscalculation. The United States treated it as a partner rather than a peer competitor, enabling its rise through trade and integration while underestimating its strategic intent. By the time Washington recalibrated, the balance had already shifted.
History offers a warning. Hegemonic dominance rarely lasts beyond a century. The United States has already crossed that threshold, yet continues to act as if the world remains unipolar. The result is a foreign policy that accelerates the very multipolarity it seeks to resist.
The Iran war may prove to be another turning point.
If it ends without a clear outcome, it will deepen perceptions of strategic drift. If it escalates, it risks overextension. Either scenario points to the same conclusion: the absence of a coherent grand strategy is no longer sustainable.
For allies such as South Korea, the implications are immediate. The era of relying on a single stabilizing power is fading. What comes next is a world defined less by order than by adjustment — and by the need for greater strategic autonomy.
The United States is not simply fighting another war. It is confronting the limits of its own power — and the cost of failing to recognize them.
*The author is an adviser to law firm Yulchon.
About the author:
△Seoul National University, German literature △Ambassador to Myanmar △Special envoy for foreign affairs to the National Assembly speaker △Ambassador to Australia
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