Sun Tzu says: “Therefore to win a hundred battles is not the height of excellence; the height of excellence is to break the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
Kings, emperors, satraps, presidents and others did not read this core sentence of perhaps the most important work on war, to win without war. If they have read it, as a rule, they ignore it, convinced of the superiority of their forces. History is replete with evidence of how disastrous such a belief is for the people and the state.
Carl von Clausewitzanother brilliant theorist, cites a “breakdown of will” among the reasons for the end of the war. His basic thesis that “war is the continuation of politics by other means” leads to the conclusion that war ends with a political act of peace that reflects the new balance of power.
Modern theories cite four reasons that lead to the end of a war: when one side runs out of material to continue; when the morale of one side is depleted, soldiers and civilians are simply unwilling to bear the burden of war, even if victory is possible (Clausewitz); when there is no hope for a radical increase in military power and foreign intervention is not possible; when the consequences of defeat become bearable to civilians.
History knows wars that lasted for decades, but ultimately, even after 30 years, ended with a “political act of peace”. So the Great War, the First World War, then the Second World War.
Ukrainian historian Vitalij Dribnica in conversation with Vlad Vurušića journalist for Jutarnji list, says: “One could say that they (Russians) have a territorial, not a national identity, that is, territory is what makes them a nation more than ethnos, culture or history. Territory is the idea of everything… Today the situation is somewhat different because Putin it does not have an ideology, but it does have a mythology… Until there is some kind of military defeat and the breakdown of such Russian policy, it is unlikely that the Russians will reconsider their historical experience. And I’m not sure that they will reconsider it even after the collapse.”
The thesis on Russia’s territorial identity is as insightful as Putin, a mythologist, not an ideologue. But “some kind of military defeat and collapse,” as much as it seems possible these days because the dynamics on the battlefield have changed in favor of Ukraine, is not possible because Russia is a nuclear power. Moscow does not intend to agree to a political act of peace if its conditions are not met – the Ukrainian surrender of unoccupied territory. Ukraine will not agree to this because none of the four conditions for the end of the war have been met.
Because of this, Russian aggression has already entered its fifth year, and there is no end in sight. If the Kremlin were to try to end the war with nuclear means, without using them for existential defense, it would encounter strong opposition from China. There is a possibility of the end of the war if a critical mass is formed inside the Kremlin, concerned about the future and survival of Russia as a state-civilization, and they overthrow Putin and agree on some agreement. But Dribnica is right, Russia cannot be imagined without Ukraine and will renew the war.
And so we come to the problem that, it seems to me, is becoming an increasingly characteristic of our age: wars do not stop. A new international order is emerging with the hallmark of permanent wars.
The American-Israeli aggression against Iran shows all the characteristics of a future permanent war, the political will in Tehran is not letting up, “they concluded that conflict is preferable to diplomacy. War, after all, seems to help Tehran increase its international power”, he explains Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar in Foreign Affairs magazine. The US, on the other hand, is asking for capitulation even though it cannot topple the regime. If there is some form of truce, the cessation of war in a kinetic form, it will remain latently present as during the current truce, because Iran holds the keys to the Strait of Hormuz, which it does not intend to hand over to anyone.
In this connection, the question arises whether the reason for not stopping the wars lies in their deviation from Clausewitz’s thesis that war is the conduct of politics by other means because there is no clear political goal or if it is unrealistic. In the case of the American entry into the war with Iran, this is one of the motives, in Russia it is an unexpected evolution of the war that led to a reduction of the goals. Are we facing external actors who want war as a state, not as an instrument? For example, China announced that it must not allow the defeat of Russia. A prominent element of permanent war is the lack of trust in the political act of peace, Kiev does not trust Moscow to adhere to any agreement, neither does Iran to Trump: the aggressors acted contrary to what was previously agreed and signed.
A romantic view would say that since the Great War we have been living in a permanent conflict because it quickly melted into the Second, this one into a cold one, the collapse of the USSR was a blow of war power that shook the transatlantic and Eurasia, only to end with a global financial crisis, after which wars begin to erupt like mushrooms after the rain. The old order is disappearing, and with it international law, which did not limit the great powers, but offered a certain level of protection to the small ones. The great powers thought that space was opening up for them to achieve their goals militarily, but they are collapsing, the USA in Iraq after the invasion in 2003, Russia in Ukraine, where it has intervened militarily since 2014. Israel is unable to defeat Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon. Wars continue and there is no end in sight.
Welcome to the age of eternal wars.
