Chapotraphouse

I think it is valuable to recontextualize the parties. US victory does not require an outright military victory at all, just achieving strategic goals for itself as the primary seat of global capital. As global hegemon under neoliberalism, positioning in this way is less about conquering and annexing or explicitly colonizing a country and is more about ensuring the order itself remains in place and opening up new profit sources. If a state steps outside that order, a win is forcing them back into it, ideally in a way that does a new round of primitive accumulation, turning nationalized industries into imperialist profit centers.

I think we can say that Iraq and Afghanistan are not outright victories for this neoliberal order, though. But I think most other "interventions" have been.