You can defeat an enemy on the battlefield, but that doesn’t mean you’ve won the war.
That’s because most wars just aren’t winnable. In the cases of America’s allies Israel and Ukraine, no matter who walks away the victor in the wars they’re fighting, it won’t be a happy ending for any side. It will be hard for anyone to claim a win.
With Israel, if it achieves its goals and destroys the leadership of Hamas and degrades its capacity to launch another attack like October 7th, the terrorist organization in its present form might be history, but there will be Palestinians, some bred in the rubble of the war, waiting to take their revenge. What’s more, there will be broken bonds with newly-minted Arab partners that will be hard to mend. Now, with the headlines generated by the war, even the United States is loosening its embrace.
If the improbable outcome of the war is an independent Palestinian state, there will be Palestinians who try hard to live in peace with their neighbors, but for generations at least, as surely as the sun rises in the east, Israel will not be able to rest. Nor will the Palestinians. On the West Bank, extremist Israelis who believe they have God on their side will continue to agitate, sometimes violently, to expel them, and for the people of Gaza, their world pummeled, it will be many years before they can see normal life again on the horizon.
So maybe one side or the other, maybe even both sides win some spoils, but with the monstrous loss of innocent life on both sides, no one really wins the war.
With Ukraine, even if it fights off the Russians and regains the territory that was taken, which is looking less likely than what we hoped for six months ago, it too will have a world to rebuild. Much of its economy, much of its infrastructure lies in ruins. Jobs have evaporated, families are separated, children are traumatized, parents are dead. Just physically rebuilding from the rubble, no matter what the outcome of the war, will take money which Ukraine doesn’t have and which allies, after the billions already sunk into the war effort, might be hesitant to contribute.
And if Russia brings Ukraine to its knees? Russia’s economy is not wholly destroyed but its military is partly decimated. In a society like Russia’s, rebuilding the army means draining money from almost everything else in the nation’s budget. On top of that, Vladimir Putin has gone from disciplinarian to dictator, and just as Soviet oppression endured for decades, so too might Putin’s kind of authoritarianism endure in modern Russia. That is so is sad for its citizens, who once thought all of that was behind them.
No one really wins.
Wars weren’t always like this. World War II, for the allies, ended well. Many lives were sacrificed and many dollars given, but fascism was crushed in Europe, imperialism was defeated in the Pacific. The Allies were battered but they smoothly returned to normal, and the vanquished Axis nations of Germany and Japan, where cities were razed, came out stronger than they possibly could have hoped, rebuilding better than before to become prosperous powers in the free world.
Since then, there have been few wars with happy endings for the side that came out on top, few wars where one side could genuinely say, “we won.” The one that stands out is the first Gulf War, which I covered. When Saddam Hussein’s troops invaded Kuwait, America assembled a coalition to expel them. I remember thinking when it was over, our side clearly won. Otherwise, even when good triumphs over evil, there are stupendous losses in the wake of a war and in other U.S. wars, at least through the American lens, evil has triumphed over good. Communist Vietnam, militia-dominated Iraq, Taliban-run Afghanistan.
Of course the definition of victory depends on the root cause of the conflict. In almost every war I covered, whether a high grade battle or a slow simmering struggle, the root cause was different. In Afghanistan, the Soviet atheists invaded, the Islamic mujahideen fought to evict them. They did, but the stage was set for what followed. In Iran, the western-backed Shah abused his opposition, the opposition fought to force him into exile. They succeeded, but the curse of Iran-funded terrorism followed. In Uganda, the dictator Idi Amin killed a million people, his neighbor Tanzania fought to end the slaughter. In Northern Ireland, the Protestant majority had the jobs, the money, and the firepower, the Catholic terrorists fought to win their share. In Rhodesia it was a fight by the black majority to end white minority rule. In Lebanon it was about political rivalries. In the war between Iran and Iraq, it was over historical claims for territory.
Wars are fought for fortune, for land, for power. They are fought between rival tribes and religions, they are fought in self-defense. But they have one thing in common: no matter how they end, people die and societies are uprooted. Someone usually comes out on top, but in most cases, no one really wins. The wars in Ukraine and Israel will be no different.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
As the song goes,”When will they ever learn….”
What a tragic, analytical, accurate analysis. What a dreadful waste of human life and for what? Greater power for and the recreation of a lost empire for Putin? Temporary political safety for Netanyahu but the very real risk that he is creating a future stronger, coalition of terrorist organisations arising from the ashes of Gaza?