When the wealthy Lydian1 king Croesus asked the oracle at Delphi whether he should go to war against Persia, he was told that, if he did, he would destroy a great empire. Confident in his superior numbers and ability to win, Croesus went to war. But the empire he destroyed was his own. Cyrus the Great of Persia used pack camels to frighten the Lydian horses, and the Persians won.2
The story is from a very long time ago, but the warning is still relevant: the outcome of war is inevitably unpredictable. War relies on violence, creates violent change and destruction, thereby unleashing consequences that no leader can fully control. For this reason, the suggestion that war can be considered a “solution” to political problems is deeply flawed and does not hold up. Even when they stagnate, wars may produce change, but change is not the same as resolution. The relationships that existed before the war are unlikely to remain the same after power has been violently asserted or violently challenged. But while war may alter relationships, borders, balances of power, and public feeling, it nevertheless offers no guarantee that what follows will be better, safer, or more just.
The False Logic of War as a Solution
It is sometimes assumed that wars can solve problems by eliminating them: by defeating an enemy, destroying its capacity to act, or taking control of its territory. In extreme cases, this way of thinking can be used towards justifying total obliteration: towards destroying infrastructure, homes, institutions, memory, and perhaps even a people’s future. Yet, while total obliteration (even if possible) might seem to be the solution of choice for some, such levels of destruction do not in fact remove the problem so much as transform it. They create grief, resentment, trauma, and new demands for revenge or protection or (yet) more security.
Beyond its unpredictability, which we are witnessing in the current war on Iran, war’s destructiveness means that it cannot bring an end to hostility; at most, it can suppress it through fear. Short of total annihilation, the more death and destruction war brings about, the more resentment and hostility grow, creating greater — not lesser — demands for military security. This can lead to an endless cycle of violence, repeated wars, and the invocation of a doctrine of “permanent security” used to keep enemies and potential enemies constantly suppressed.
The doctrine of “permanent security”3 is the belief that not only current enemies but also potential enemies must be constantly suppressed, pushed back, contained, or pre-emptively attacked.
In relation to the Israeli Palestinian situation: “Under this doctrine, international law no longer exists, political compromise is gone, and ceasefires do not bind Israel, neither in Gaza nor in Lebanon. This is perpetual war….”4 This doctrine can produce claims to the need to protect the state’s right to “permanent security,” even when that means violating civilised norms in circumstances of perceived existential danger by engaging in military campaigns against entire populations. Such an approach may benefit those who gain materially or politically from war, but it offers little real safety to ordinary people. It confuses domination with security, and fear with peace.
The Limits of Military Security
War is often defended as necessary for national security: to protect borders, keep enemies at bay, preserve sovereignty, and create the conditions in which ordinary people can live safely. But this raises a basic contradiction. Security is not only a matter of borders and military strength. For most people, security means being able to live without fear — without sirens, bombardment, displacement, arbitrary violence, or the need for “safe rooms” (which are designed for use during war, since war is unsafe): war does not make people feel safe. It makes them vulnerable and afraid.
People can, of course, be driven out by war. Land can be taken, populations displaced, and new realities created by force, even in defiance of international law and international humanitarian law. Refugee camps can become long-term facts, even generational facts. People can be kept in camps, or kept out through visa systems, walls, borders, surveillance, and increasingly sophisticated systems of control. But they will still be waiting and wanting to go home. They will still carry memory, grievance, loss, and the desire for return over decades, perhaps centuries, and generations. This is not peace. It is, at best, an extended ceasefire: a frozen condition of vigilance rather than a lasting resolution.5
The question then becomes: what kind of vision could such a security project actually offer? Would it not inevitably require constant vigilance to keep the former enemy at bay? Would it not produce, not security, but permanent insecurity? Could there ever be enough buffer zones around the central sovereign country? Or would each buffer zone require another beyond it, and then another beyond that, ad infinitum? Again, in relation to permanent security ...” here, in fact is where this logic is revealed as an illusion. Even if one threat is addressed, another one is immediately produced, thereby exposing the paradox of the entire project: not achieving “permanent security” by ending conflict, but rather its continuous perpetuation through the ever-expanding horizon of threats.”6
What is more, in the age of drones, missiles, cyberattacks, and regional interdependence, added territory cannot guarantee safety. Security pursued through endless distance and control becomes unattainable.
Nor is war a reliable way to make people do what one wants. It may coerce, punish, displace, silence, or temporarily suppress, but it does not create consent, trust, legitimacy, reconciliation, or peace. A population may be crushed for a time, but wounds and grievances do not disappear because they are forced underground. It is far more likely that they will simply wait for another moment, another generation, another form of resistance.7
The Myth of Inevitability
War is often presented as inevitable: something that must be “gone through” because no alternative is realistic. But inevitability is usually constructed. Political leaders, media narratives, military institutions, and economic interests can all help create the impression that war is unavoidable. Once that idea takes hold, and with it, the conviction that alternatives are unrealistic, the question of whether war should happen is replaced by the question of how quickly it can be got over with.
Thucydides8 described fear and greed as forces that made the Peloponnesian War seem inevitable, especially Sparta’s fear of rising Athenian power. He hoped that people would take this lesson (with his detailed account of the war between democratic Athens and militaristic Sparta) about human nature, as a warning and a way to prevent future wars. But he wrote in a world without modern international law, collective security institutions, or the accumulated historical knowledge of the devastation war can cause. If fear once made war appear unavoidable, experience should now teach the opposite: war is a choice, and its consequences are rarely controllable. What is more, with the horrific power of modern weapons of mass destruction able to wipe out humanity in minutes, it should be clear that this is not a choice to be taken lightly, and that if we are to be afraid, we should be most afraid of war itself.
A state should not behave like a mafia. It should not rely on violence, intimidation, and pre-emptive force as the ordinary language of politics. Realism should not mean surrendering to fear or accepting violence as the only possible response to danger. It should
mean beginning with awareness of the desired end: a society in which people can flourish; where they can live safely, freely, and without constant threat. If the goal is peace, then the means must be judged by whether they bring that goal closer. Terror, trauma, humiliation, destruction, and the deliberate demoralisation of populations are poor foundations for lasting peace.
War is no more predictable now than it was nearly 2,600 years ago. It may bring about the change one wants, but it may also bring about precisely the change one fears. Part of the essence of security is predictability. War may give people some forms of grim predictability — the expectation of sirens, bombs, shortages, checkpoints, funerals — but it does not help anyone predict the outcome. It cannot guarantee that the post-war order will be more secure, more just, or more peaceful than the one it destroyed.
There are, of course, those who profit from war: through weapons, market fluctuations, oil, food insecurity, reconstruction contracts, political mobilisation, or the power and ease of control that come from keeping a population afraid. This is one of the characteristics of the so-called “new wars”: they are fought not only to win, or even not so much as to win, as much as to continue. Winning, if it means stopping, can become unappealing to those who gain financially or politically from the continuation of conflict. This appetite for continuation can lead to an increase in human rights abuses and disrespect for the international laws of war as these will create more anger lust for revenge which may then prolong the hostilities (at whatever intensity) and profits even further.
Human Security as the Realistic Alternative
If military security has failed to produce safety, then the more realistic approach is human security: security centred on people rather than territory, or national borders, alone. Human security begins with “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want,” and with the ability to live in dignity. It asks not only whether a state is defended, but whether people can go to school, harvest their land, work, speak, move, disagree, and build a future without fear of attack or humiliation.
This is not naïve. It is common sense: a society cannot be secure if it is permanently mobilised against those around it, permanently afraid, and permanently dependent on force. Real security requires law, accountability, negotiated agreements, equality and reciprocal obligations. It requires “security with” others, not only “security from” them.
Military security is a mindset that perceives (or portrays) threats all around and is willing to go to war to bring about “security from,” whatever it takes. Human security, by contrast, focuses on shared human needs. It is a form of security “with.” In an increasingly interdependent and interconnected world, where wars have regional and global consequences almost immediately, this is not simply an ethical preference: it is the only reasonable way forward.
In the Israel-Palestine context, this is especially clear. The ongoing destruction in Gaza, and the occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, do not allow human security for Palestinians. However, despite the vast asymmetry of power and Israel’s effective control over so much of Palestinian life, many Israelis would also say that they do not have human security, especially since the attacks of October 7. Fear exists on both sides, though not symmetrically, and not under equal conditions of power.
If Israelis want to live lives free from fear of rebellion and resistance by Palestinians, then they have to address the causes of that resistance. With an end to occupation, siege, and attacks on Gaza and the West Bank, and with energies directed toward state-building, dignity, freedom, and the future, the vast majority of Palestinians would have reason to abandon resistance9 and focus on building a future where they could live a relatively normal life. There is therefore an urgent need for structural change: for an end to occupation and the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in all the occupied Palestinian territory as a first step toward security for all.
Peace as Political Imagination
In the Israel-Palestine context, peace may look frightening to many people. It may seem to mean giving up something one does not want to give up; adapting to another people one does not want to adapt to; recognising the humanity or equality of those whom one has been taught to fear, despise, or dominate. These “sacrifices” may seem too great, especially if there is no trust that peace will hold.
This is why peace has to be made imaginable in concrete terms. It is not enough to say “peace” as though everyone already knows what it would mean. People need to be able to see it, feel it, and understand how daily life would improve. What would it mean for a child to travel safely to school? For families to harvest their olives without fear? For people to move freely, work, study, travel abroad, visit, build, and disagree without being threatened? What would it mean for both peoples to gain more from justice, security and equality than from domination and revenge?
A lot depends on the vision of peace, and on whether it can be shown to be genuinely beneficial for the vast majority of both peoples: it must include opportunity, dignity, safety, equality, recognition, and law. This requires, in addition to the exercise in imagination, also some imaginative reverse engineering: beginning with the description of the desired future (in say, 2031) and asking what steps would have to be taken to get there. How did we arrive at peace? How did we deal with wounds and anger? How did we make accountability possible without making humiliation permanent? How did we build institutions, protections, and habits of trust?
In an article in Foreign Policy on “The Alternative to War,” David Rothkopf from the Carnegie Endowment for peace sums it up:
“Finally, we need to change the way we talk about peace. Peace is not just the cessation of hostilities. Rather it must be viewed, if it is to be sustainable, as the achievement of conditions that promote the kind of opportunities that drive people to work within, rather than against, the economic and political systems in the countries in which they live. Peace is, as it happens, much bigger than it is often characterized as being, and this contributes to the fact that we so often fail to achieve lasting peace in zones of chronic conflict.
“If we approached the achievement of peace with the same seriousness, time, resources, and realism with which we approach preparation for war, it would become far less easy to dismiss peace as naïve.”10
From Fear to Curiosity
Moving away from war therefore requires more than a ceasefire. It requires a change in mindsets and understanding, and a freeing up of the imagination. Since, as the UNESCO Constitution puts it, “wars begin in the minds of men,” it is also in the minds of men and women that a different approach needs to begin. People need to be freed from the (erroneous) belief that war is the only language of safety, that military force is the only realistic way forward, and that permanent insecurity (disguised as permanent security) is normal.
Perceived security needs may also tend to distort morality. Dehumanisation, part of a securitised mentality, does this too. Fear can make people accept what they would otherwise find unacceptable. It can shut down sympathy, imagination, and curiosity. It can make disconnection seem desirable, and preferable at all costs to any connection. Therefore, work towards a peaceful future depends partly on breaking through the mental barriers that fear has built.11
This means educating away from fear and toward curiosity: curiosity about the other, about possible shared futures, about the systems of law and accountability that can protect everyone, as well as what peace would actually look and feel like. Instead of fear, there could be curiosity. Instead of rigidity, there could be imagination. Instead of expanding territory, people could expand their understanding, their world, and their own humanity.
The work of peace has to begin during war, not after it; work for civil society, policy makers, activists both local and international, both separately and together. A war-torn society is already torn, and as such living with the evidence that militarised solutions have failed. The misery of war can and should provoke different questions: not how to win the next round of destruction, but how to build conditions in which the next war becomes less likely or will not happen at all.
This also means addressing trauma. Both sides need to be able to acknowledge themselves not only as victims but also, where necessary, as perpetrators. By admitting that we are human, and that human beings can commit terrible acts, we allow our humanity back even after inhumanity. Trauma cannot be allowed to become an endless excuse for dehumanisation. It has to become part of the work of healing, accountability, and change.
Conclusion: Realistic Security Through Law, Justice, and Connection
We are witnessing a massive failure of military security. The hope must be that this failure can lead to a paradigm shift: away from militarisation and the misguided belief that war can solve political problems, and towards people-centred security rooted in law, justice, accountability, mutual recognition, and respect for the rights of all.
It comes down partly to how one sees power and safety. Is it safer to have more power and inspire so much fear that one cannot be challenged? Or is it safer to work within a framework of laws and mutual obligations? Is security achieved by separation from a dehumanised other, or by creating conditions in which the other no longer has reason to threaten, resist, or fear?
Security through connection and proximity may seem less dramatic than security pursued through force, but it is more durable. Distance can feed hostile fantasies. Proximity, when protected by law and equality, can create recognition, responsibility, and even interest in understanding. Fear closes possibilities down. Curiosity opens them.
Croesus learned too late that war can take away more than it bestows, but he had the wisdom to agree to stop fighting once it was clear that war would get him nowhere. Another saying attributed to him in Herodotus12 reminds us of one of the most basic distinctions between war and peace: “No man is so foolish as to desire war more than peace: for in peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons.” This remains true. And if the aim is security, then the logic of going to war — relying on violence, destruction, fear, and unpredictability — rather than exploring possibilities centred on shared human needs, law, justice, and safety for all, does not seem logical at all.
War may produce change. But change is not the same as resolution. If what we want is real security, then the rational path is not domination, permanent vigilance, or the endless preparation for the next war. It is law, justice, equality, accountability, human connection, and the patient work of making peace imaginable and therefore eventually, real.
------------------------------------------------------------------------