Wars do not always carry the same meaning. At times, they proclaim power at its height; at others, they mark the first clear sign of its limits. Between these two poles lies the essential question: are America and Iran waging this war to preserve their role, or to stave off decline?
In moments of ascent, great powers use force to consolidate their standing and draw the boundaries. That was how the 1991 liberation of Kuwait was understood. It was far more than a military operation; it was a declaration of a new international order led by the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The pattern resurfaced in the Balkans during the 1990s, when Washington assumed the role of arbiter, capable of redrawing the balance on the ruins of Eastern Europe. Even the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq after September 11, 2001 were launched in this spirit of supremacy, before gradually becoming two experiences that exposed the cost of hegemony and the limits of power.
History, however, offers lessons of the opposite kind. In the mid‑1950s, Britain and France, together with Israel, achieved rapid military superiority in the Suez War, yet lost something far greater: their place in the international order. The same paradox appeared elsewhere whenever empires fought their last wars in their final years—from the Ottoman Empire to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and later the Russian Federation in Ukraine.
