{"id":59856,"date":"2026-06-24T06:47:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T14:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=59856"},"modified":"2026-06-24T06:47:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T14:47:59","slug":"michael-vlahos-trump-needs-to-embrace-the-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/24\/michael-vlahos-trump-needs-to-embrace-the-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Vlahos: Trump Needs To Embrace the Defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are plenty of dramatic examples of mighty nations \u2014 even empires \u2014 accepting defeat and actually finding longterm strategic success in loss. Japan in 1945. Nixon going to China amid U.S. failure in the Vietnam War. President Trump is approaching that very moment now and he needs to seize it, says our guest this week <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelvlahos.substack.com\/\">Michael Vlahos<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Vlahos, <a href=\"https:\/\/peacediplomacy.org\/michael-vlahos\/\">a military strategist and historian<\/a>, says the cult of military power has never been stronger but has been dealt a serious blow in the Iran War. The U.S. military has dominated the planet in capability, wealth, and technology for generations, but in the last four months was bested by a much less equipped, smaller, and under-resourced Iran. How? Why?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NRFQVd_2GDk?si=n_-YF-zyW8Rh5wiZ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Vlahos explains how Washington has never learned the lesson \u2014 that military might alone doesn\u2019t win wars. Trump\u2019s move now is to accept defeat and turn it into something that not only stabilizes the region, but helps to accept that sustaining American empire only destroys our national interest and like empires before it, is doomed to ultimate failure.<\/p>\n<p>Lots of learning here on Trip the Beltway Fantastic this week, check it out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are plenty of dramatic examples of mighty nations \u2014 even empires \u2014 accepting defeat and actually finding longterm strategic success in loss. Japan in 1945. Nixon going to China amid U.S. failure in the Vietnam War. President Trump is approaching that very moment now and he needs to seize it, says our guest this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_social_image_id":59858,"_social_image_url":"","_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1297],"class_list":["post-59856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","_social_image_id":"59858","subtitle":"Only when the US finally recognizes all wars are not won militarily will it resign itself to an empire lost and a better future gained"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59856"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59860,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59856\/revisions\/59860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59856"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=59856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}