Who benefits when conflicts never end?

When the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, US President Donald Trump projected that the war would last four or five weeks. More than seven months later, there is still no clear resolution.

Recent reports in The Wall Street Journal indicate that senior Trump advisers have privately warned that the conflict might continue through the remainder of Trump's presidency, possibly beyond January 2029. These reports have made the situation even more striking. Similarly, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta has warned that the conflict could continue for another six months, heightening fears of another "forever war" for the US.

This raises a broader question that goes beyond Iran: what if the strategic value of a war no longer depends on a quick victory? No publicly available US intelligence document establishes a deliberate strategy to exhaust both allies and adversaries. Such a claim would be unfounded.

Yet, there is an increasingly apparent trend of US strategic thinking focused on attrition, cost imposition, burden shifting and economic coercion, making this question difficult to ignore.

The US and Israeli strikes against Iran are a revealing example. The longer a conflict continues without a decisive outcome, the more it becomes a war of resources, resilience and political endurance.

A protracted stalemate can weaken an adversary's military-industrial base, drain financial resources, disrupt trade and force a country to devote more of its resources to survival. This is the logic of strategic exhaustion.

Exhaustion is not simply military attrition. It is the cumulative weakening of a state's economic resilience, military readiness, technological capacity, political cohesion and diplomatic freedom.

The US has exceptionally powerful instruments to exert such pressure, many of which are not military. Sanctions, financial restrictions, export controls and technological denial can serve as instruments of strategic attrition without requiring US soldiers to occupy territory.

The conflict in Ukraine offers another illustration. US strategic thinking has openly discussed attrition as a means to weaken Russia while avoiding a direct Russia-US conflict. Washington provides weapons, intelligence, technology and financial support, while the battlefield burden falls on Ukraine.

Russia pays in soldiers, weapons and economic resources. Europe pays through higher defense spending and the economic consequences of prolonged confrontation.

Ukraine pays the greatest price of all. The US pays too, but comparatively less in terms of human lives. This asymmetry is strategically important. It suggests that one of the most sophisticated forms of US power today could be its ability to distribute the costs of conflict.

The same logic applies to US allies. A 2025 analysis by the Stimson Center, a US think tank, highlighted a shift in US policy toward pushing European allies to assume greater responsibility for their conventional security by increasing contributions for defense.

While burden-sharing is a legitimate argument, urging wealthy allies to contribute more to their own security has significant strategic consequences.

If Europe spends heavily to rebuild its military capacity while remaining dependent on US intelligence, advanced weapons, logistics and strategic technologies, Washington can reduce part of its conventional burden without relinquishing its central position.

The objective may not be to destroy every adversary, nor to keep every war going on forever. It may instead be to manage conflicts at a level that weakens competitors, encourages allies to carry more of the burden, preserves US leverage and avoids the catastrophic costs of direct great-power conflict.

The result is neither peace nor total war, but rather permanent strategic pressure. Yet, there is a paradox. A strategy designed to exhaust others can eventually exhaust the strategist as well. The prolonged Iran conflict is already raising questions about US military resources.

The longer Washington remains engaged in multiple theaters, the greater the pressure on weapons stocks, military readiness, budgets and political support.

US power is not infinite. Missiles must be manufactured, aircraft need maintenance, ships require crews, and alliances demand political capital.

Every additional conflict competes for resources with other strategic theaters.

In other words, the weaponization of interdependence can lead to the creation of alternative networks. The attempt to preserve US primacy through permanent pressure may inadvertently accelerate the emergence of a world designed to escape that pressure.

Thus, the most important question emerging from the Iran war is not when the fighting will end, but who benefits when wars never end.

If prolonged conflicts systematically weaken US adversaries, compel its allies to spend more, strengthen the US defense-industrial base and preserve Washington's central role at comparatively lower direct cost, then the world may be witnessing something more consequential: the evolution of US power from a strategy of decisive victory toward a strategy of managed exhaustion.

This does not require a conspiracy; it requires only incentives. And incentives can sometimes be more powerful than doctrines. For decades, the central question was whether the US could win wars.

The more relevant question today may be whether Washington can make others bear a greater share of the costs of strategic competition.

That is a very different form of power. The solution to chronic exhaustion is not simply to endure longer, but to reduce strategic dependence, diversify economic and technological partnerships, strengthen national resilience, and build credible diplomatic channels that can prevent prolonged conflicts from becoming permanent traps.

But the strategy has a built-in danger: exhaustion is sustainable only if there is an exit route. A world in which wars are won is dangerous.

But a world in which wars no longer need to be won to be strategically useful may be even more dangerous.

The author is an expert on international affairs and Middle East issues based in Cairo, Egypt.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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