What is war good for in the twenty-first century?

What exactly is war good for in the twenty-first century? The US should have asked itself this before embarking on decades of aimless occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel and Russia — very different countries, morally and otherwise — should be asking themselves today.

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza both began with changes in an uncomfortable but previously stable status quo.

Sometimes Westerners who try to imagine a peace deal for Ukraine invoke Finland’s strategic neutrality during the Cold War. But Ukraine was Finlandized for nearly twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, precariously balanced between Russia and the West but fully committed to neither. No one was entirely happy with that — yet there was peace from 1991 until 2014.

As Ukraine drew closer to the West, Russia responded with a series of attempts at intimidation. Each time intimidation failed, Russia tried more of the same. This meant annexing Crimea and stoking secession in Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014; when that too failed, Russia escalated to the full-scale invasion of 2022.

Hamas likewise resorted to murderous violence to stop a threat to the strategic status quo, in this case the accelerating rapprochement between Muslim states and Israel. By massacring Israelis on October 7, Hamas expected to provoke massive retaliation which would inflict so much suffering on the Palestinians of Gaza that Arab opinion would turn sharply against the spirit of the Abraham Accords.

But Hamas miscalculated: Israel’s military response to the October 7 atrocities and the appalling plight of Gaza’s civilians have not changed the underlying logic behind the thawing of Arab-Israeli relations. Nowadays wealthier Arab states see permanent hostility toward Israel as needlessly bad for business — and they share Israel’s interest in containing Iran. No amount of Palestinian suffering is likely to change Arab calculations about Iran. Israel is a useful partner against a common enemy.

Israel’s war against Hamas is defensive; Russia’s war against Ukraine is offensive. Whatever fears Vladimir Putin might have about a Westernized Ukraine joining NATO, the fact remains that Russia invaded its neighbor. But Israel and Russia will both face the same quandary the US confronted in Iraq and Afghanistan: Superior military power suffices to win a war, but the more durable side wins the peace. The Taliban proved more durable in Afghanistan. How durable will Israel be in Gaza? How plausible is it that Russian power will prove more lasting in Ukraine than the Ukrainians’ desire not to be ruled by Russians?

There are realities that neither dictatorships nor democracies can evade. One is that war simply does not deliver the results that a winner wants. American strength, wealth and righteousness could not transform Afghanistan or even Iraq into an ally, let alone a stable liberal democracy. Soviet power, enormous and ruthlessly wielded as it was, failed to stamp out hatred of Russian rule in Eastern Europe and the USSR itself. Israel knows from bitter experience what direct occupation and control over Palestinian territories feels like. In none of these cases does a successful war alter the basic hostility of a people to their occupiers. Time after time, the “natives” tend to prevail.

Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden lost their wars and paid with their lives. Hamas is losing its war, too, on the ground and in the power centers of the Arab world. A grim irony for the Israelis, however, is that what failed to turn Arab states against them is succeeding with progressive Westerners and international institutions. A prolonged Israeli occupation of Gaza, or sponsorship of a puppet regime there, will be unsustainable not only locally but also in the court of public opinion (to say nothing of international law). Israel faces grave dangers in losing the peace.

Russia is fated to find that this latest and worst violence is as unavailing as earlier attempts to extort Ukrainian obedience. Its brutalization of Ukraine has only strengthened anti-Russian sentiment there and across Europe’s eastern frontier, with the result of further NATO enlargement. Whatever the end of the war looks like, what remains of Ukraine will be all the more insistent upon Western protection. Russia has military strength, but it is morally weak — far weaker than the Soviet Union was. Americans may exaggerate the degree to which people all over the world wish to be Americanized, but virtually no one aspires to live in a Russian-made future, least of all Russia’s neighbors. The war on Ukraine is an attempt to use force as a substitute for political attraction. It only highlights how unloved Russia is and how unlovable the Russian regime knows itself to be.

In centuries past, ordinary people had less reason to care whether one prince or another, one set of conquerors or some other held sway over their land. All rulers were categorically remote from those they governed; they were practically a separate people unto themselves. Today it’s hard for any foreign administration to find acceptance among a ruled-over people — indeed, it’s hard enough for native governments to sustain their legitimacy. Wars can still be won by strong powers, but victory confers little authority, or none. Seeming exceptions — such as the acquiescence by Japan and West Germany to American tutelage after World War Two — only prove the point: the period of direct American rule was brief, and afterward the Japanese and Germans had reasons aplenty for cooperation with America to facing a then-rising communism on their own.

War is brutal as ever, but successful conquest is now nigh impossible.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.