Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Victory in war is sometimes easy to define. World War II ended with Allied troops in control of Berlin and Tokyo, and with the German and Japanese leadership removed. The Vietnam War, on the other hand, ended in a clear defeat for the United States: North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam despite the futile expenditure of 58,000 American lives. The Korean War is sometimes called a stalemate because it never formally ended.
But such definitions can be deceiving. In Iraq, the US removed Saddam Hussein but neither found weapons of mass destruction (the justification for their deployment) nor turned that country into a functioning democracy. Worse, some cynics would argue that the true victor was Iran, which became the most influential political force in Iraq.
On the other hand, though the demilitarised zone remains in place in Korea, the southern half of the peninsula has evolved into a vibrant, prosperous democracy with an annual per capita income of US$35,000, whereas North Korea is a dangerous dictatorship with an estimated annual per capita income of US$1,200 and recurrent food crises. Who won the stalemated war?
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