>I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war.

The stock market did, which is amazing if you're the top 10% of asset owners who own 50% of the country's wealth.

>except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them

Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike, since its biggest customers, China and India, have long term contracts that Russia can't just rip and renegotiate to charge spot prices, since they're in a pickle right now and depend on imports to keep the war going while not being able to sell to too many nations so they're stuck watching potential earnings go past them.

> Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike,

No? https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/11/iran-war-russia-putin-t...

  > Data suggests that Moscow has already made billions of dollars of additional 
  > revenue from oil sales because of higher crude prices, as well as the fact 
  > that the United States temporarily rescinded sanctions on Russia to rein in 
  > global costs

At this point I doubt anything could make stock market go down... It seems that there is no connection to anything but itself.

Did the stock market come out ahead? The Dow is about where it was when this started.