Note that the Taliban and ISIS have success, and great success at times. All countries have success of being established and winning some wars at some times. Any country (or individual) can have success if the people realize a handful of things.
1. Our whole body and mind has been built to be peaceful and do good. You can see this in infants, who have not been trained to do evil yet. And we all were infants at one time if we are alive. So, our basic, inner nature is filled with good, even though we are learning evil more and more.
2. When we do evil, we are going against our natural programming. We are going against ourselves. But if we don't realize it outwardly, our subconscious mind realizes it. This contradiction in ourselves destroys our ability to enact our lives the way we might want. It stifles us, and ultimately produces death in us.
3. Since all this has to do with the metaphysically spirituality of all of us, to be winners and have a winner country, we need to truly blank out and neutralize the subconscious fight that we have.
4. There is only one way to truly do this. It is through the powerful work that Jesus did on the cross, where He cancelled out evil that we all have done throughout all time. Now we have a relationship with the Father, with Jesus as the Bridge. However, since the spirit of all of us is involved, there has to be faith in what Jesus did for us to access the relationship with the Father.
5. Since having a relationship with the Father is available for all, if we believe, we subconsciously start to recognize that our subconscious fight between good and evil that we have done is-being/ nullified by Jesus work.
6. Because the recognition of the nullification takes a while to penetrate to the depths of our spirituality, our success is limited. As we realize it more and more, our success grows.
7. Nations without vast numbers of people having this knowledge of and faith in Jesus-salvation, naturally do not have the success provided by the gradual nullification of the battle of good against evil in the subconscious minds of their people. Their success, while still is powerful at times, is not as good as it would have been if they had faith in Jesus-salvation.
All of the above means that the peoples and nations that maintain faith in Jesus in the minds of their peoples, these nations will be winners. There is a lot more to talk about, like why nations with Jesus sometimes lose rather than win against those that don't have Jesus. But if you start here, you will gradually be able to find the reasons for this.
Btw. This is part of the reason why God directs things as He does.
