Was there ever a war where a poor country (economically speaking) was able to beat a more wealthy...

The insanity that was the Iran-Iraq war.

>Afghanistan
>Vietnam
Should proxy wars count? Both of these wars involved heavy support from a rival superpower.

What ship is that?

Sure they didn't win, but there was definitely victory in defeat as they managed to preserve their independence and get about the best deal they realistically could have hoped for. Consider that they didn't have to host soviet military bases like the baltic states, which were then used to annex those countries.

Suez but that is mostly the fault of greater forces at hand and Dulles/Eisenhower being shits.

Pretty sure that's the USS Baltimore.

Finland was defeated and Stalin had full choice - from full annexion to retreat and capitulation.

Beat? No.

Drag shit out until people realize there's nothing worth fighting for in said shit country?

Happens all the time.

I'm looking for a decisive win. Not a drawn out guerilla war.

Italy getting BTFO by Ethiopia

Weren't the Italians using outdated rifles while the Ethiopians were using tons of modern Russian equipment?

The Great Siege of Malta, where the crusaders held off an enourmous Turkish invasion.

then why didn't he

1st anglo afghan war

WE WUZ ZULU
Mongolians
Attila

Official pre-war pretensions and after-war actions were the same, so most obvious and probable case - Stalin hadnt planned anything else.

Any proxy war really, when you can not prevent your enemies from producing arms you can not force them to surrender as easily.
Just look at the American war of independence, without foreign aid it most likely would have failed, but the union did not have to produce practically anything and was given lots of equipment and money by other nations.

unlikely when you look at what they did to the baltic states

>without foreign aid it most likely would have failed
t. Pierre

Not even established communistic regimes: North Norway, North Iran, in Finland nobody was punished for alliance with nazi.
Not annexed: Mongolia, Manchuria, North Korea.

Korean War: PRC vs. USA
Vietnam War: NVA/VC vs. USA
Second Lebanon War: Hezbollah vs. Israel

>Korean War: PRC vs. USA

PRC lost that war. Badly. They just like to focus on the first few months of their involvement because it contained their only victories, and ignore the next two years as well as their own explicitly stated war goals.

>Vietnam War: NVA/VC vs. USA

The NVA was largely no less advanced than the Americans were thanks to massive aid from China and the USSR. They just had less materiel, but the materiel they had was as good or sometimes better than the American counterpart. And the VC didn't win at all, they were pretty much done and gone after Tet.

OP was asking about instances where rich countries fought and lost to poor countries. I think China and Vietnam are good examples of extremely poor nations, at least during the 50's and 60's. Both of these countries managed to block the wealthier nation from achieving their war goals.

>PRC lost that war. Badly. They just like to focus on the first few months of their involvement because it contained their only victories, and ignore the next two years as well as their own explicitly stated war goals.

The war was a stalemate, but an embarrassing stalemate for the US. Yes, the US got involved in Korea to protect SK. But they experienced classic American mission creep and the end goal was to unify the peninsula under SK (read: American) administration. The UN offensive failed due to the Chinese intervention. Ultimately yes, the Chinese failed in their pushes south of the 38th parallel. However, it doesn't take a genius to see that such an event was unprecedented. Colonials and uncivilized yellow people weren't supposed to be able to hinder the grand strategic plans of the primary Western countries, especially not when they had bugles instead of radios and not even enough weapons or food to supply all their troops.

>The NVA was largely no less advanced than the Americans were thanks to massive aid from China and the USSR. They just had less materiel, but the materiel they had was as good or sometimes better than the American counterpart. And the VC didn't win at all, they were pretty much done and gone after Tet.

Assistance in the form of military advisors or hardware from great powers doesn't diminish the fact that the average Vietnamese NVA soldier or VC guerilla probably came from a dirt-poor background. In terms of overall material superiority, the US wins, hands down. I'm not even sure if there should be a debate about this. The sheer amount of munitions dropped on Vietnam boggles the mind.

Finland is the only one of those which had been annexed into imperial russia

Mongols vs pretty much everyone else.
Initial wave of islam vs persia and byzantium.

>vietnam
Lol my man ur rong

Perfect example, america v britai. 1776

>OP was asking about instances where rich countries fought and lost to poor countries.

No one lost to China.

>The war was a stalemate, but an embarrassing stalemate for the US. Yes, the US got involved in Korea to protect SK. But they experienced classic American mission creep and the end goal was to unify the peninsula under SK (read: American) administration.

The war was explicitly initiated by the Communists (North Koreans with Soviet air support and weapons with like 1/4 of their army being PLA soldiers in different uniforms) to conquer the South. They failed at this, their primary goal, miserably. Meanwhile, in Korea the US/UN side totally achieved their original war aims while the communist side utterly failed in theirs - even after the initial attempt, Maoist China sent in the PVA with the explicit goal of pushing the Allies off the peninsula. They failed, and the war ended not only with disproportionately heavy losses for the communists relative to the US, but China's proxy being totally destroyed as an economic entity. They did not "win" shit. They started a war and lost it.

>Assistance in the form of military advisors or hardware from great powers doesn't diminish the fact that the average Vietnamese NVA soldier or VC guerilla probably came from a dirt-poor background. In terms of overall material superiority, the US wins, hands down. I'm not even sure if there should be a debate about this. The sheer amount of munitions dropped on Vietnam boggles the mind.

The Americans had MORE materiel. They did not have more technologically advanced materiel. It's that simple.

The great emu war against the australians?

You quoted yourself, user. I was really confused for a second.

>No one lost to China.

I know, I'm stretching here a little bit because nobody explicitly lost. But I think you're stretching a bit as well by focusing too much on the failure of the initial DPRK surprise offensive. By the time the Inchon landing caused the NK rout, the mission changed - the UN was to roll up to the Yalu River and unify Korea. The Chinese were fresh out of WWII, why would they let anybody take the same invasion route that the Japanese had took? This was before decolonization, so the Chinese had the real fear that the US would try and attack and subjugate China proper. Securing a buffer zone and some strategic depth remained the primary objective of the CCP.

Random sidenote: DPRK was bombed to dust, but later Soviet investment left the Norks much wealthier than the ROK up until like the 80's or some shit.

The truth is that the political objectives shifted constantly. The war itself was a huge shitshow but was important for the CCP in showing that they could fend off a Western power unlike the incompetent Qing and KMT administrations. In my opinion, the real "winner" of the Korean War was the USSR.

>The Americans had MORE materiel. They did not have more technologically advanced materiel. It's that simple.

The existence of a few weapons systems the Americans did not have doesn't negate the fact that the Americans were way more technologically advanced than the Vietnamese on almost all fronts. The US supplied their troops with the most advanced logistics systems known to man while the Vietnamese were running supplies into the south by pure legwork.

If a couple of NVA platoons have radios while the rest don't, and every US infantry squad has effective radio communications, is the level of technology the same because they both have the same specs? I don't really think so. Wealth provides the capacity to exploit technology in a way that can't be matched by a poor nation.

Technically correct I guess but I don't think pre-modern barbarians are what OP is looking for

Winter War
Polish-Soviet war

>Managed to absolutely obliterate Russian shit
>Preserved their independence when most small countries would've just capitulated
I'd call it a victory

The Greco-Persian Wars

What makes the twin Greek victories at Marathon and Salamis so special and enduring is that they not only solidified the concept of western culture but also pulled off a stunning upset against what was then the strongest empire that the world had yet seen.

NOBODY thought that the Greeks had a prayer of a chance at Marathon, which is why it is still a household name thousands of years later and considered the exact moment of conception for western civilization.

And as if the fact that these defensive wars were victorious was not enough insanity, the campaign of Alexander the Great is one of the great David vs Goliath stories in history, going up against armies many times the size of his on their own home turf and pulling off stunning upset victories again and again and again. Gaugemela was his masterpiece, the coup de grace that flattened the wavering but still mighty giant.

>Maoist China sent in the PVA with the explicit goal of pushing the Allies off the peninsula.
Their primary goal was to keep a buffer state to protect the industrial heartland of Manchuria. They achieved that goal.

countless

Love the Baltimores.

That doesn't really work in the real world. Guerilla warefare is the only way to beat a more powerful army.

Yeah but if your "victory" requires you to hide out in a jungle for 10 years then that's not really a victory.

Egypt got curb stomped wtf?

Six Day War

Oy vey

The only metric that matters in determining a 'victory' is whether and the degree to which one or another party accomplished their objectives.

If they consider 10 years of junglefucking a worthwhile expenditure compared to their achieved goals then your personal definition of victory is irrelevant.

Yeah, sure you "won" but at what cost?

dictionary.com/browse/pyrrhic-victory

>dictionary.com/browse/pyrrhic-victory
pyrrhic victories are still victories

And how do you determine how much of a cost is "too much" without resorting to political realities and what you're willing to bear?

...

> Was there ever a war where a poor country (economically speaking) was able to beat a more wealthy, technologically "advanced" nation?
This was what started the thread. By the definitions we tend to use for 'beat' in a colloquial context (i.e., 'emerged as the victors over,' not 'brutally ass devastated on an open field of combat') this question has been answered several times over.

If you want to be a persnickety asshole about the validity of Pyrrhic victories that's honestly your prerogative and I'm not willing to stop you, but the question's been fucking answered.

There are alot of good answer and most of them focus around guerilla warfare bit I think another example is the finstructions stages of WW2 were Germany the weaker power beata France and Britain on the continent. From this I will make the statement a power country can also win a conflict as long as it able to strike decisively early in the waright prior to build up. So a rich technological nation can lose in the early stage of war to a poorer country.

1884

French "intervention" in Mexico

the French had mexico beat in every aspect

richer nation, better weapons, better trained soldiers, international recognition of Imperial puppet government, and more victories

yet Mexico fought and won that war all by it'self

people would say the French left the imperial government to it's fate after the U.S. Civil war ended, but they fail to realize an entire year passed before they began leaving Mexico

>all by it'self
It was completely armed, funded, and supported by the U.S., even during the Civil War.

>but they fail to realize an entire year passed before they began leaving Mexico
Completely irrelevant. It's common historiography that the French retreated because the U.S. was threatening overt intervention as covert intervention had already begun. Hell, Austria threatened to intervene on behalf of Maximilian and stopped after being rebuffed by the U.S.

Vietnam was not 'heavily' supported. Supported yes, but mostly in middling numbers of Soviet weaponry and some token Chinese and Nork regiments. Chinese also supplied some food and such, but on the whole, they had less support than the south did.

>and ignore the next two years as well as their own explicitly stated war goals

Care to tell me what exactly their original war goal was?

>with like 1/4 of their army being PLA soldiers in different uniforms)
[Mutiple peer-reviewed citations needed]

> Vietnam was not 'heavily' supported.