Why can’t the U.S. win its wars?

This episode of Front Burner examines why the United States, despite being the most powerful military force in history, has failed to win any major war since 1945. Host Jamie Poisson interviews journalist and author Seth Harp, who argues that the U.S. doesn’t lose wars due to military weakness, but because of a fundamental mismatch between its war-making strategy and the demands of modern conflict. Harp traces the roots of this failure to a lack of popular support, unwillingness to accept mass casualties, and a shift toward low-casualty, technologically driven warfare—air strikes, drone strikes, and special operations—that avoids the political costs of conventional war. He highlights how the U.S. fights asymmetrical wars as a foreign invader, lacking home-field advantage and facing existential resistance from adversaries like Iran and the Taliban. The episode also explores how war has become a profitable enterprise for defense contractors and political insiders, creating a self-sustaining 'permanent war' economy that resists closure. Harp warns that the violence and surveillance tools developed abroad are now being turned inward, militarizing domestic policing and threatening American democracy. The conversation ends with a sobering reflection on how the U.S. has become a nation that wages war without ever truly defending itself, while the consequences of that war—both abroad and at home—continue to reverberate. Key takeaways include: 1) Victory in war requires popular support, mass troop commitment, and acceptance of casualties—none of which the U.S. currently embraces; 2) The U.S. has replaced conventional warfare with a covert, technologically precise model that avoids domestic political backlash but fails to achieve lasting strategic outcomes; 3) The military-industrial complex has a vested interest in prolonging conflicts, turning war into a profitable enterprise; 4) The 'boomerang theory' suggests that foreign violence and surveillance tools are increasingly used domestically, undermining civil liberties; 5) The U.S. has never had to defend its own territory in modern times, making its wars feel abstract and distant to the public; 6) The failure to define clear, achievable war aims and the tendency to declare premature victories (e.g., 'Mission Accomplished') have eroded strategic credibility; 7) The inability to end wars once they go wrong—passing the burden to future administrations—has created a cycle of perpetual conflict; 8) The normalization of war as a tool of foreign policy, rather than national defense, has fundamentally distorted American democracy and national identity.