Has anyone “won” a war in the recent past? In the old fashioned sense that they conquered something and used the newly acquired resources to make their own citizens lives better?

The problem with the post ww2 world is that the old definition of winning a war no longer holds. You just don’t see wars of conquest very often and they don’t seem to work when they happen.

The closest I can think to winning off hand is a few of the colonial civil wars. Vietnam for instance won in the sense that they outlasted the US and have a nominally communist government but it is not an outpost of the Soviet Union and it’s a major trading and tourist partner of the US.

Iraq is not led by a belligerent to the US dictator and Afghanistan isn’t home to training camps for terrorists dedicated to attacking the US (yet).

These were all extremely stupid, expensive and inhumane military actions. But the US never went into them to hold territory. So “there until we got tired of it” is as close to winning as it was ever going to be.

It hasn’t. There hasn’t been a war in centuries where America didn’t obliterate its opponent. It loses politically because its people don’t want war, but it’s defeated militarily everyone it’s engaged with.