Are these two existential wars causing their participants to take leave of their senses to such an extent that they have forgotten strategy and so are now just indulging in bellicose tactics? This article reminds us that the way out of a crisis is always political and that war only makes sense if it seeks to produce a state of peace that is better than the previous one. The article, written by a high-ranking military expert, helps us fully grasp these issues – and that is not its only merit.
The unbridled violence of the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine conflicts is causing a public outcry. These conflicts give the impression that relations between States are in serious decline and that civilisation is also therefore in decline if we define civilisation as a refusal to butcher one another and as a control of violence, with the latter contained legally and morally for the sake of political dialogue. These conflicts can teach us many lessons, regardless of your analytical perspective. My approach here is that of a strategist observing bellicose behaviour, its relation to the psychology of peoples, and perception of the law of war, which influences the protagonists.
Regarding strategy, what immediately strikes us is, in fact, its strange absence. Both conflicts are pitting against each other leaders who have mastered, to varying degrees, the art of military operations (the art of achieving military effectiveness through weapons), but who have largely neglected the art of strategy, which is about achieving political effectiveness: a state of peace that is better than the previous one. These leaders seem to believe that brute force and power struggles produce a political result on their own, with no real need to consider or define that result. They just want to take whatever comes and see what happens. This is actually a negation of strategy, which is always about looking beyond the battle for an outcome, then choosing courses of action and coordinating the means.
Russia-Ukraine: an absence of strategists
On 24 February 2022, the Russians’ contempt for Ukrainians prompted them to launch a vast encircling attack on Ukraine. Without prioritising anything, this attack ignored the basic rules of the art of military operations. It was meant to crush, within three days, a nation that they had failed to understand it already existed. The objectives were defined vaguely and, above all, ideologically. Confusion set in after the first setbacks. The Russian army was soon put on the defensive, redefining its aims on a daily basis in accordance with circumstances on the ground. In this situation, brute force prevailed over intelligence and respect for law. Strategy was subordinated to tactics, which defined the objectives.
In the face of the Russian onslaught, Ukraine, initially cornered, reacted brilliantly. Yet Ukraine was quickly blinded by its remarkable success: it forgot that hope alone cannot be a strategy. It launched a counterattack that was doomed to fail, trapping it in a tough defensive manoeuvre. That is because strategy – the art of the possible – cannot disregard the balance of power. The Ukrainian government dismissed the constraints (including reciprocal strategic depth, international interests, and short-term, medium-term and long-term availability of resources). It clung to absolutist rhetoric, disregarding reality and setting itself unachievable goals, which gradually forced it into retreat. Nonetheless, in early August 2024, Ukraine launched a bold offensive into Russian territory, seizing a significant part of the Kursk Oblast. At the time of writing, Ukraine is holding its bridgehead without managing to bring down Russian pressure on the Donetsk front.
The situation is hardly better in the United States (US), where military aid is confused with global strategy. American strategy could have moved to a higher logic by accepting, from the outset, the way in which the world is changing (the rise of the Global South and a rejection of the West, of United Nations universalism and of the world order established by the victors in 1945). It could have helped build a new global system based on a fresh architecture of security that included Russia. By taking into account the perceptions and legitimate interests of all sides, the leading world power could have aspired to the role of referee and drafted the strategic solution to this tragedy in Eastern Europe. Incidentally, the US would have been the solution’s main beneficiary too.
In Europe, the blindness is even worse. Strategy means having a common vision. Yet such a vision is lacking among the various State players involved: their interests, aims and perceptions are different, if not conflicting. A strategy cannot be built around a divided understanding of conditions for peace. So it has become impossible to imagine a solid European security system that ensures the balance of stakeholders’ fundamental interests in a radically transformed world order. Failing to know what they ultimately wanted, Western States are now clashing – whilst cheating with numbers – in a sort of beauty contest for weapons supplies. Not strategy, whose very essence is anticipation: the scale of the West’s support is determined by immediate satisfaction of the demands of a battle underway, with military considerations of a given moment overshadowing any long-term political interests.
“Europe, despite seeing itself as a model of civilisation and reason, is adopting a stance that is purely reactive, rather than asserting itself and imposing joint strategic planning, shared between Ukraine and Europe (or even the US).”
Ukraine is therefore receiving, haphazardly, a whole mix of hardware that it is forced to commit à la Curiatii, in other words without strategy, in a fight where ad-hoc contributions lose their effectiveness. Subsequent delivery of more sophisticated equipment does nothing to change a cast-iron rule: being a strategist means being proactive. Yet Europe, despite seeing itself as a model of civilisation and reason, is adopting a stance that is purely reactive, rather than asserting itself and imposing joint strategic planning, shared between Ukraine and Europe (or even the US). It is undergoing choices made by others: its responses are always one step behind Russian machinations and American decisions – or ill-advised decisions made by players in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). In short, the West has infinitely greater wealth, potential and global means, but it is Russia that is calling the shots.
Middle East: a strategy to make things worse
In the Middle East, the lack of strategy is even more grotesque. For each side, the conflict is about their very existence, so it is causing each one to take leave of their senses. In political terms, Hamas is coming out on top. It has one aim: to smash the dynamic of the Abraham Accords (2020), the main victims of which are the Gaza Strip’s two million open-air prisoners and, of course, Hamas itself. The aim has been reached for this terrorist group, which has no mercy for its own people or for any others because, for Hamas, the end justifies the means: the Israel-Palestine issue is firmly back at the top of the agenda and will not leave it until a comprehensive, lasting solution is found.
Israel, on the other hand, is traumatised by the horrors of 7 October 2023, stiffened by internal political difficulties and, worse still, restricted by its Prime Minister’s personal interests, so it has abandoned any form of strategic vision and is letting itself be blindly led by an ultra-nationalist, supremacist and messianic current that has been undermining it for decades. Its war aim has shifted from a strategic goal to a purely technical one: to destroy, once and for all, the terrorist viper and to think tactically without worrying about the future, and so to not consider any possible exit from the crisis underway – an exit that will inevitably be political.
“Protecting the Palestinians is as much a moral responsibility as a strategic imperative, but the massive collateral damage that is outraging the entire world has been written off.”
The war objectives are legitimate but unrealistic. Destruction of the other side is becoming the sole purpose, even though that is impossible, regardless of the human cost on both sides. Protecting the Palestinians is as much a moral responsibility as a strategic imperative, but the massive collateral damage that is outraging the entire world has been written off. This contempt for long-term consequences prompted General Gadi Eisenkot, former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, to say that “the war is being waged based on tactical objectives, without significant measures to achieve strategic objectives”.[1]Amelia Hankins, « Le sentiment grandit qu’Israël n’avance pas à Gaza », L’Orient-Le Jour, 21 février 2024, … Continue reading This war is turning into a wilful, systematic, deliberate demolition, becoming, in the eyes of the world, an indefensible collective punishment that is as brutal as it is futile. It is seen as a humanitarian and moral disaster – and therefore a strategic disaster too.
The idea that Israel can survive and prosper without resolving the Palestinian issue, therefore hiding it without tackling the root causes of Palestinian grievances, blocks the development of any long-term strategy. Israel is convinced of its overwhelming military superiority, so it is getting lost in the Gaza campaign by unconditionally applying an illusory strategy that has become nothing more than a modus operandi. Yet a tit-for-tat approach is no military strategy. By forgetting to keep its war legitimate by balancing military considerations with humanitarian ones and by damaging its image through a policy of aggressive settlement expansion in the West Bank, Israel is becoming “its own worst enemy”,[2]Jean-Philippe Rémy et Kerem Maharal, « Ami Ayalon, ancien chef du Shin Bet : “Si nous refusons la paix, ce qui nous attend sera pire que le 7 octobre” », Le Monde, 24 janvier 2024. as Israeli admiral Ami Ayalon has said. The worldwide emotion sparked by the massacres on 7 October 2023 immediately brought Israel sympathy and gave it permission to retaliate. Yet in the manner in which it has responded, Israel has forgotten that the right to war – jus ad bellum – is judged retrospectively and is justified or discredited in light of the way in which a war is conducted and the results it produces. The world is discovering, appalled, that collateral victims do not seem to matter any more to Israel than they do to Hamas. Both sides are now seen as culprits.
A state of lasting peace, better than the previous one, could have been sought resolutely with respect for the interests and perceptions of all concerned, but now this is less and less possible. It would have made a virtuous exit plan easier – an exit plan worthy of the great nation of Israel – by ensuring the long-term survival of a country that is increasingly threatened, not by weapons but by demographic trends and the arithmetic of rebellion: Israel’s military operations are surely now producing more terrorists than they destroy.
Strategy: winning the war, therefore peace, rather than a battle
These two confrontations clearly show that when civilisation, and therefore strategy, fades away behind bellicose logic, when war is no longer conceived as a tool of communication but as a machine of destruction, conflicts get bogged down in unbridled violence as they are no longer waged with the driving force of reasonable political purpose. As a war gradually becomes an end in itself, it becomes a war without an end.
“As a war gradually becomes an end in itself, it becomes a war without an end.”
Through the horrors of these two conflicts, we are witnessing a return of History and the world’s historical mode of regulation, which was put to sleep for a while by the intelligent spirit of the San Francisco Conference in 1945[3]The San Francisco Conference, which took place between 25 April and 26 June 1945, marked the founding of the United Nations and concluded with the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations [ed.].: a mode of regulation in which the balance of power forgets what Hegel rightly called “the powerlessness of victory”. Now the old psychology of peoples, contained by civilisation for some time, is resurfacing and reasserting itself. Russia has a siege mentality – ingrained in its conscious and unconscious mind since the Mongols invaded from the east, the Swedes from the north, and the Poles, Napoleon and Hitler from the west – and a sense of oppression since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, which made Russia the centre of the Orthodox world. In Russia, grand strategy has melted into ideology as it fades behind fears that have haunted it for centuries: a fear of being surrounded and a fear of threats at its borders. Israel has felt, since the first Jews settled there, that it lives on borrowed time in a hostile world, surrounded by enemies that resolutely seek nothing but its demise. Israel is convinced that shows of force, more than strategy, can ensure its survival. It pushes this logic to the limits of absurdity by waging wars with no regard for the basic rules of jus in bello – international humanitarian law – established over the centuries by the West, to which Israel claims to belong.
It is irresponsible to forget the need for strategic thinking and approaches and to let a war be waged for the sake of political popularity. Indeed, war, ever more subordinate to its very nature and inclined to extremes, can produce nothing on its own apart from destruction, death and desolation. Yet when war is unavoidable, a strategist must be certain that, even if war runs counter to reason, reason must regulate strategic conception and conduct, despite the emotion and passion that bellicose violence sparks. A strategist should never stop thinking about the future, should know how to get beyond the illusion of military victory, and should never forget that the aim of war is to create – through strategy – the conditions for tomorrow’s peace.
Translated from the French by Derek Scoins
