There are many types and levels of war. Some are rather mild while others are quite severe. The main ones are as follows:
1) Firstly, one nation can seize or “nationalize” some of the resources of another. This theft includes major fines against giant foreign companies. When dictatorships like Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba and other countries engage in egregious evil and attacks against America or their own citizens, the United States will frequently freeze or seize some or all of their bank assets for a time, perhaps even permanently.
2) A nation can fund the opponents of an enemy nation, which is a kind of proxy war. China and Russia frequently fund enemies of America, such as Cuba and Venezuela recently. Iran also funds and guides Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis to engage in low-level war against Israel or the West.
3) A nation can secretly sabotage, or stage terror attacks, against its enemies. Iran routinely attacks Western computers in cyber warfare, and plants hidden roadside bombs, as well as blows up cafes, restaurants, hotels, airports, and embassies of Western nations. Israel, in turn, selectively assassinates the terror leaders and scientists of its enemies.
4) A nation can openly decapitate the leaders of its enemies by capturing or killing them, as America recently did to Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro, or Israel did to many political, military, police, and religious leaders in Iran.
5) A nation can disarm its enemy by targeting its military bases, planes, ships, vehicles, missiles, weapons, soldiers, etc. as Israel and America did to Iran in early 2026. Going to level 4 or 5 alone may be enough to overthrow an evil slave state and spare the suffering population, altho it hasn’t worked so far in Iran.
6) A nation can impoverish or devastate its enemy by attacking its industry and infrastructure, as both sides did to each other in World War II. This can be described as obliteration, “flattening them”, or “bombing them back into the Stone Age”.
7) A nation can slaughter the general population and “innocent civilians” of its enemy by killing a large number of them. This can harm them economically, weaken them militarily, and break their spirit and will to fight. Both sides did this in WW II. Russia is currently doing this to Ukraine, but not the reverse.
8) A nation can conquer some or all of another nation’s territory and then annex it to its own. China did this to East Turkestan and Tibet in the 1950s.
9) A nation can annihilate its enemy by killing an extreme amount of its people and not allowing its government to remain in existence. The Babylonians, Medes, Scythians, and others did this to their enemy Assyria in 612-609 BC, as did Rome to Carthage in 146 BC. This level of war is rare today, altho tribal societies with minimal contact with the West still did this a century or two ago. The defeated enemy tribe usually still had some people left, but it was essentially erased from history. The modern tendency is to fully terminate them by seizing the enemy population and forcibly integrating them into their nation as a kind of war prize.
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Each selected type of warfare tends to involve most or all of those levels above it. If a certain strategy of attack doesn’t achieve the desired result, the war can be escalated until the proper outcome or victory is secured.
War is never really serious until you get to level 6 or 7. Less than that is just a kind of punishment, reproof, or skirmish. Ever since World War II, America and the West haven’t really gone to level 6 or 7. They lack the intellectual understanding and moral confidence to do so. Hence, they never really try to win their wars. So they don’t.
America and Britain conquered Germany and Japan in 1945, and then rewrote their constitutions, and thus converted them to Western liberalism and semi-freedom. This was a true victory.
But this strategy and technique hasn’t been used since then. It wasn’t used with 1950s Korea, 1960s Vietnam, 1990s Kuwait, 2000s Iraq, 2000s Afghanistan, or 2026 Iran. Hence, America lost all those wars. The most that can be said is half of Korea, on its own, struggled its way to Western liberalism and semi-freedom by the 1980s or so. All the other nations are still savage tyrannies and America’s enemy. Despite immense military, civilizational, and moral superiority, America didn’t think it had the right to win, and it didn’t.
To protect itself and live safely, American wars need to go to at least levels 6 or 7. This generates a good possibility of winning, and of converting of its enemies to Western liberal philosophy and political semi-liberty. Or America needs to go to level 8, and take some or all of the enemy's territory as a legitimate and worthy war prize. This practice also vastly discourages future enemies from emerging.
But America is a hugely self-hating and self-destroying nation which mostly opposes its own philosophy and culture of Western liberalism and political freedom. This lack of intellectual understanding and moral self-confidence stymies escalation to levels 6, 7, or 8, and thus prevents all future American victories in war.









