UNPREDICTABLE ENDSâIMPERIAL WARS IN AFGHANISTAN, CHINA, AND NOW IRAN
âReasons for going to war are continually being made available to great nations⊠Vigorous, self-confident, prideful, determined and opinionated peoples, such as the British were in the last century and the Americans in this century, will always provide themselves with armies, and the temptation to use them to enforce national desires is seemingly irresistible.â[i]
Until, oh, say a few weeks ago, wisdom in the modern era was that a nation that starts a war âownsâ that warâthat is, it will be held responsible for the results, including unpredictable consequences and collateral damage.
But, according to The Wall Street Journal, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, persuaded President Donald Trump to trash that silly, outmoded idea and go into Iran guns a-blazing, consequences be damned. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ride again!
âSitting in his Senate office this week with canisters of Planters peanuts and hundreds of scattered papers on his desk and signed MAGA hats on his shelves, Graham was almost giddy about persuading Trump to bomb Iran. One of the newer hats reads âMake Iran Great Again.â âWhat are they going to do to me?â he said of critics who opposed his efforts.â
âThey say if you break it, you own it. I donât buy that. You break it when itâs a threat,â Graham said in the Journal interview.â[ii]
See, Dorothy, Iran was a THREAT TO SOUTH CAROLINA!
(By the way, I love Planterâs peanuts and am never without a supply. But I digress.)
Not only that. Graham bragged about how he had gotten top secrets from Israel, coached Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on how to lobby Trump for war, and sealed the deal with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Gee, this guy has connections! Heâs a contender!
Well, as some of us multi-ethnics say (when ICEâs masked thugs are not around), âVamos a ver.â Weâll see how all this works out.
Anyone who says they know how the Graham-Trump war on Iran will end militarily orâmore importantlyâthe impact of whatever fractured version of peace follows the fighting is either a liar or a dammed fool.
That said, although history never repeats itself, it does offer the opportunity to learn from  instructive examples. Among relevant examples today are two wars that turned out much differently than the imperialists who started them thought they would.
These are, in the early nineteenth century, the British Empireâs wars on Afghanistan, and in the twentieth century, the Japanese Empireâs war in China.
In this post, we will examine the Victorian British invasions of Afghanistanânone of which went well and which foretold modern Russian and American humiliations in the twentieth century. In the next post, weâll look at Imperial Japanâs ambitions in China.
Tired of WinningâBritain in Afghanistan
Britainâs several wars in Afghanistan grew out of âits obsession with the vulnerability of the Indian subcontinentâits greatest imperial possessionâto possible invasion by Russia via Afghanistan.â[iii] Â History Byron Farwell summed up the situation in his survey, Queen Victoriaâs Little Wars:
âIt is difficult for anyone to understand the reasoning behind the extraordinary attitude of the British towards Afghanistan; the Afghans must have found it impossible. While always professing friendship, the British repeatedly invaded the country and shot at its inhabitants. Although unable to subdue the proud, fiercely independent Afghans, they always feared that Russia or Persia would, and this frequently served as an excuse for meddling in Afghan affairs.â[iv]
So, in 1839âthe second year of young Queen Victoriaâs reignâthe British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, decided that the âbest way to foil Russian designs âŠwas to counter a pro-Russian ruler in Persia with a pro-British ruler in Afghanistan.â[v] Among other problems with the plan was that the British candidate for regime change was detested by the Afghans themselves.
âThe plan sounds fantastic today, and so it sounded to many in London when it was explained: the Afghans were to be persuaded that the British would save them from the clutches of the Persians and Russians by invading their country with Anglo-Indian and Sikh armiesâthe Sikhs being the most hated enemies of the Afghansâand deposing their ruler, replacing him with the man whom they distrusted and detested!â[vi]
Or, as another historian, David Saul, puts the matter two key questions remained open: âHow would the fiercely independent Afghan tribes react to the imposition by British bayonets of a former ruler of doubtful popularity? And how would the British, even if they succeeded in conquering Afghanistan, be able to hold on to it?â[vii]
The British invasion began in March 1839. Afghan warriorsâwho âwere natural fighters who knew instinctively how to make the best use of cover, and who could move from rock to rock with the nimbleness of a mountain goatâ[viii]âinflicted many casualties and frequent frustrations, but the British managed to reach Kabul in August.
The British garrison âsettled down to the life of a typical Indian hill station, with concerts, horse races, wrestling and cricket matches. They even felt confident enough to send for their wives and families.â[ix]
Trouble was brewing. Especially after the bookkeepers in London and India decided to cut back on the graft they had been paying Afghan tribal leaders to keep the peace. The leaders wereâŠwellâŠthey were pissed.[x]
âThe Afghans openly expressed their contempt for their new rulers, even in Kabul: British officers were insulted by shopkeepers, sentries were killed in the night, lone soldiers had their throats cut, and once an Afghan coolly walked into a tent in the British camp and shot a sleeping soldier.â[xi]
Eventually, in the dead of winter, the Brits were forced to cut and run. On January 8, 1842, the British force of 4,500 troops (only about 700 of whom were Britons, the rest Indian sepoys), some officersâ wives and their children, and about 10,000 camp followers, left Kabul and headed for Jalalabad, where there was a strong British force.
Seven days later, the only British survivor of that entire armyâa surgeon named William Brydonâshowed up wounded, riding a dying pony. âA handful of sepoys struggled in later; There were a few other survivors, including a number of the wives and children, who had been given as hostages or were taken prisoner; but most of the army had been slaughtered in the passes.â[xii]
An entire army had been wiped out.
The British managed a face-saving foray, but eventually got the hell out of there. Until the next foolish Afghanistan War toward the end of the nineteenth century, which ended up with just as embarrassing results.
If you break it, watch out for shards of glass underfoot.
[i] Farwell, Byron. Queen Victoriaâs Little Wars. New York: W.W. Norton & Company (1972), xvii.
[ii] Josh Dawsey, âLindsey Grahamâs Quest to Sell Trump on Striking Iran,â The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2026, https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-war-news-updates-2026/card/lindsey-graham-s-quest-to-sell-trump-on-striking-iran-DQiOgLFxxxR4tcKYGlGA?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqcXvnrxjtoEl2EFUCbiLzm4sFzIlk69GYvubg8KOcbCN6coGVr7sPSJUYMTusY%3D&gaa_ts=69aeedde&gaa_sig=Xv1oWTM9KSqYNwuXz5mIPbl094SyuKXsvweuZEU5YSf3rBvC0ZXxeH_OzMAv-UaLgTuYewynzusquk2l7CvNCA%3D%3D.
[iii] Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. The Anglo-Afghan Wars 1839-1919. New York: Osprey Publishing (2009), 8-9.
[iv] Farwell. Queen Victoriaâs Little Wars, 4-5
[v] David, Saul. Victoriaâs Wars: The Rise of Empire. New York: Penguin Books (2007), 17.
[vi] Farwell. Queen Victoriaâs Little Wars, 5.
[vii] David. Victoriaâs Wars, 21.
[viii] David. Victoriaâs Wars, 26.
[ix] David. Victoriaâs Wars, 41.
[x] David. Victoriaâs Wars, 43.
[xi]Â Farwell. Queen Victoriaâs Little Wars, 8.
[xii] Farwell. Queen Victoriaâs Little Wars, 9.
Source: UNPREDICTABLE ENDSâIMPERIAL WARS IN AFGHANISTAN, CHINA, AND NOW IRAN
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