How Nations Sleepwalk Into War: A Short History

A fragile April 2026 ceasefire has done little to stop rising violence in the Persian Gulf. After an Iranian strike on U.S. forces at the end of July, Washington responded with heavy airstrikes targeting Iran’s military command and missile sites, deepening a conflict that has already caused large-scale damage and thousands of casualties. Despite substantial U.S. spending and damage to American assets, the fighting has produced limited public mobilization at home: life in the United States has remained largely normal, even as the war drags on.

That detachment — the ability to wage war without fundamentally disrupting daily life — is a modern phenomenon. Separated by oceans and backed by overwhelming military force, Americans have been able to insulate themselves and their political leaders from many of the visible costs of conflict. Official U.S. troop deaths in this round of fighting remain comparatively low, and major public events have continued uninterrupted during the campaign. But the longer the war lasts, the greater the risk that distant decisions will produce large, unforeseen consequences.

To understand how societies can blithely drift into protracted bloodletting, it helps to look back at moments when optimism about war’s scope and cost was brutally disproved.

The Civil War ended the era of the romantic, quickly decisive conflict. Before 1861, many Americans — shaped by earlier, smaller-scale wars and by literary images of honor and heroism — assumed that battles would be short and glorious. Southern leaders, in particular, boasted that economic power would deter conflict and that any fighting would be brief and light. The First Battle of Bull Run shattered those illusions: civilians came to watch what they expected to be a neat, decisive encounter and instead witnessed chaotic retreat and mass slaughter. The United States then entered one of the first truly industrial wars: railways, mass production of weapons, and disease produced devastation on a scale that far exceeded contemporary expectations. Hundreds of thousands died, many from illness, and the societal trauma and political fallout endured long after the fighting ended.

Europe’s slide into World War I offers another lesson. In 1914, political and military elites across the continent embraced plans and rhetoric that assumed a swift resolution. Officers promised swift victories, and many civilians greeted mobilization with enthusiasm or a fatalistic sense of duty. That initial optimism — ‘‘home by Christmas’’ — collapsed into years of grinding trench warfare, mass casualties, and social upheaval. Even leaders who warned of catastrophe underestimated how total and transformative modern industrial war would be. When the United States finally entered the conflict in 1917, Washington mounted a vast propaganda effort to persuade citizens that intervention was both necessary and morally justified — a reminder that democratic governments often must manufacture public consent for costly wars.

World War II again changed the scale but confirmed a pattern: wars became total, expensive, and reshaped societies. After 1945, however, the U.S. emerged as a preeminent military power and took on a global role in containing rivals. The Korean and Vietnam wars showed that large, sustained losses at mid-century could become politically unacceptable. By the late 20th century, that reality helped drive a shift toward lower-cost, high-technology interventions.

From the 1980s onward, U.S. military strategy often favored short, decisive operations that avoided mass mobilization at home. Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, and interventions in the Balkans suggested that overwhelming firepower and precision technology could achieve objectives with limited American casualties. The occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq briefly revived large expeditionary campaigns in the 2000s, but those conflicts highlighted another consequence of an all-volunteer force: the burdens of protracted war fell disproportionately on a small professional military. Without conscription, rationing, or the shared sacrifices that once drew broader public attention, wars could expand and linger with only intermittent public scrutiny.

By the 2010s and 2020s, U.S. strategy increasingly relied on airpower, special operations, proxies, and contractors — a lighter approach that minimized immediate American costs but often exported instability to others. Libya’s 2011 intervention is a case in point: limited direct U.S. involvement avoided heavy domestic costs while producing wider regional consequences, including state collapse and refugee flows.

The current Iran conflict tests that model. Many Americans express opposition to the war in polls, yet few feel its effects directly. That distance can be mistaken for progress: subdued patriotic fervor and skepticism toward intervention look preferable to the jingoism that once propelled nations into catastrophic wars. But insulation also reduces scrutiny. When citizens are removed from the pain and disruption of war, they are less likely to challenge the aims, duration, or definition of success. That complacency can allow conflicts to metastasize in ways leaders and publics did not plan for — from regional escalation to disruptions of vital shipping lanes, to accelerated nuclear pursuits, to attacks that reach beyond the original theater.

History shows that leaders and societies routinely underestimate how wars unfold. Hopes for short conflicts, confidence in technological fixes, and assumptions that costs will be borne elsewhere have all proven unreliable. The lessons of the Civil War and World War I are especially stark: romantic expectations and bureaucratic hubris gave way to protracted suffering and political consequences that lasted generations.

A society shielded from the immediate costs of conflict is less likely to ask hard questions about why it is fighting, how long it should last, and what victory actually means. Distance can delay costs, but it does not eliminate them. Even when daily life goes on at home, the effects of war — economic, strategic, and moral — often reverberate long after the last shot.

John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist based in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute. He contributes to several foreign affairs outlets and is the author of Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas. Follow him on X @john_ruehl.