1. Empire-Building in the Techno Era
In the past, great empires were created through wars.
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William the Conqueror gained entire England in just one day with only a few thousand dead (Battle of Hastings, 1066)
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The US invaded Mexico (1846-48), and for 13,000 dead soldiers, got California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming and Oklahoma
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In the Spanish-American War (1898), the US captured Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and Cuba
Besides land, past victors invariably enriched themselves with bullion, grain, resources, mines, etc, while captured civilians were deployed as slaves. However, that era is clearly over.
And unlike wars of earlier eras, there are no great treasures to be acquired from captured lands. In contrast, given the proliferation of modern small arms, and simple dual-use materials and technologies, the populations in captured lands can put up a determined resistance, tying down armies for years.
Thus, in most such wars, there’s no “gain” beyond the destruction of the other side and/or fulfillment of chimeric “national interests”. That the US gained nothing substantial from its numerous wars (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan) provides context.
In fact, its intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11 proved debilitating. After the April 2001 downing of its EP-3 spy plane by China, the US had decided to downsize China—and then 9/11 happened, after which, especially the 2003 Iraq invasion, the entire might of this global power got confined to a small area between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.
This limiting allowed Russia to capture parts of Georgia (2008), North Korea to progress its nuclear programme, and importantly, China to “rise peacefully” and become a peer competitor. The two decades of combat against insurgents (and not structured armed forces) in Afghanistan alone cost the US around $2.26 trillion. The 17 August 2021 report by the Pentagon’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction states that the US failed in every aspect of its strategy.
