After Asculum, he issaid to have uttered, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.” Plutarch wrote it down for posterity, and the line outlived everything else known about the campaign.

The problem wasn’t that Pyrrhus paid a high price for victory. Rather, it was that every victory shifted the balance against him.

A war can be costly without being “Pyrrhic.” If you come out of a battle clearly stronger than the opponent, then – whatever the bill – something real was gained. The Pyrrhic case is when the side that claims victory is, in fact, in a weaker position than when the fighting started.

So how does that all relate to US conflicts in the 21st century?

Iraq in 2003 is the obvious starting point. US and coalition forcesdismantled Saddam Hussein’s regimein just three weeks. On its own terms, the operation worked. But it alsocollapsed the Iraqi statein the process: army gone, ministries hollowed out and police absent.

What followed, in broad terms, was insurgency, sectarian war and then therise of the Islamic State group.

Saddam’s Iraq also functioned as one of the main checks on Iranian power in the Persian Gulf – not by design, and not in any cooperative sense, but as a rival that kept Tehran boxed in. Removing Saddamcleared space for Iranto exert regional influence not enjoyed since 1979.

Thecurrent war in Irandoes not make sense without that shift. The US went into Iraq to eliminate one purported threat – and ended up amplifying another.

TheUS intervention in Libya in 2011, as part of a NATO force, looked cleaner. The air campaign was short, Libyan leader and longtime thorn in the side of WashingtonMoammar Gadhafi was deadwithin eight months – killed by his own countrymen. NATO had set out to protect civilians and remove a regime, and it did both.

The problem waswhat came next. Libya was Gadhafi’s state, and there was no real plan for a post-Gadhafi Libya. After he fell,what was left was division: militias, competing governments and an arms stockpile that flooded south into the Sahel region of North Africa and fueled conflicts that rage to this day.

Source: 21st Century Wire