Winnable Wars

People fight wars. Always have and always will.

They will fight them when they think they can win—and even when they know they can’t. That is precisely why, if wars must be fought, they must be winnable. Decisively so.

When wars are won decisively, peace—or at least stability—tends to follow. When wars drag on or end inconclusively, instability festers and new wars soon follow. If there has to be war, the best war is a short one.

One of the defining failures of the modern international system is that it has made decisive victory almost impossible. Global institutions meant to limit suffering often end up prolonging it. They place a finger on the scale for weaker or illegitimate actors, turning short wars into long ones and amplifying the human toll.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Gaza.

A non-state actor—Hamas—launched a war against a vastly superior military power, Israel. It had no legal authority to do so and no chance of winning. Its leadership knew this. Their real goal was to trigger a wider regional war. When that failed, they pivoted to Plan B: a propaganda war waged through global media and sympathetic international institutions. That plan succeeded.

By manipulating public opinion and exploiting humanitarian outrage, Hamas transformed what should have been a swift military defeat into a prolonged, grinding conflict. Instead of isolating Hamas for committing atrocities and taking hostages, much of the international community attacked Israel for defending itself. The result: tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths and no decisive conclusion.

Israel, acted as any state would that has an obligation to defend its citizens and territory. But its efforts were hamstrung by international hesitation and moral confusion. The United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and countless global commentators blurred the line between the aggressor and the defender. In doing so, they gave legitimacy to a terrorist organization and eroded the very principles they claim to uphold.

The international community should have acted unanimously to condemn Hamas and support Israel in dismantling it quickly and completely. A decisive end to the conflict would have saved countless lives, not cost them. The longer the fighting dragged on, the more civilians suffered, and continue to suffer.

History shows that clear victories produce clearer peace. The stability of postwar Germany and Japan came not from negotiation but from decisive defeat and reconstruction. By contrast, the world’s most unstable regions—Syria, Yemen, Gaza—are defined by wars that never quite end.

The purpose of quick, decisive victory is not revenge. It is order, and ultimately spares lives and reduces destruction. 

Decisive victory also serves as a deterrent, making the next war less likely, not more. Indecision and moral equivalence invite more bloodshed. Terrorists learn that they can survive by hiding behind civilians and global sympathy. 

Peace built on ambiguity never lasts. The world’s democracies need to recover the moral clarity that built the postwar order: terror cannot be excused. When a terrorist group launches a war, the international community’s duty is not to balance sympathy between the opposing sides—it is to ensure the aggressor loses quickly and decisively.

Because wars that are won end. Wars that are managed never do.