Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

But it Does. Eventually.

In an earlier post I pointed out the difference between the point at which it was clear who would eventually lose, and the actual end of the war. I cited our own war of 1861-1865 as an example. By early July of 1863, with Grant’s success at Vicksburg and Lee’s failure at Gettysburg, it was clear the South wasn’t going to win, but not only did the war continue for close to two years (July 1863 to April 1865), but some of the worst fighting lay ahead.

The Battle of Breitenfeld in September 1631 is an even better example, or anyway a more disturbing one. The war had been going on for nearly thirteen years, and the Protestant forces had been steadily losing, but the entry of Sweden into the war, and the subsequent victory at Breitenfeld meant the end of Habsburg dreams—about seventeen years later. Yikes.

But mentioning the Thirty Years War is not a bad introduction to an important and often ignored point: the extent to which the losing/winning bipolarity is a very poor model when it comes to describing the outcomes of wars. As Samuel Rawlinson Gardiner pointed out in his his history of the conflict, at the end, very little territory had changed hands, and the shifts in the religious disputes were minor. Although both the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg empires were a little weaker, and insofar as Ferdinand of Austria wanted a Catholic and Habsburg supremacy over all the German states, his cause had failed. But not only were both branches still intact, but the great expansion of Spain and Austria lay ahead of them. But the same could be said of on the other side as well.

A good many notions about war and politics are like that: models that have a high degree of persistence even though they don’t don’t describe actual outcomes very well. Moreover, even in antiquity there was an awareness of that.

For example, the Romans had even coined a phrase to describe one: a Pyrhic victory. The phrase stemmed from the victory of King Pyrrhus of Epirus over the Romans at Asculum in 279 BC. He won, but his losses were so severe that he couldn’t continue, and, like all of Rome’s opponents for a long time, was eventually absorbed into their empire. And if you stop and consider the matter, Virgil referred to another when he wrote the Aeneid. More recently (!), Machiavelli referred to that when he observed that it was better to lose a war than to be neutral.

So in what follows, as I summarize the trajectories of the major conflicts, my basic point is that since we’re dealing with two different types of conflicts we actually have two different models. Russia and Iran are actual states, and historically speaking, states can lose wars and still maintain their essential identity, however long we quibble over how that’s defined.

Iran’s allies in the war against Israel aren’t. Early on, I characterized them as gangs, although perhaps tribe would be a better word.

But I don’t propose to get lost in endless wrangling over definitions. I agree with the anonymous with who observed that it’s all very well to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin—until someone gets his eye put out.

Carthago delenda est

This handy Latin phrase is attributed to the Roman statesman, Cato the Elder, who supposedly ended every speech he made with an extended version of this sentiment, regardless of the subject at hand: Carthage must be destroyed. As I’m sure you know, at the end of the Third Punic War (146 BC), the Romans did just that. By that point they had conquered most of Carthage’s colonies, laid siege to the city itself. In legend they not only destroyed the city but sowed the site with salt so nothing would grow there. But the actual event was much bloodier: the Romans stormed the city, killing a good many of the inhabitants, and the survivors were sold into slavery, while what remained eventually became a Roman port.

A perfect example of the bi-polar model, which probably explains it’s the one we all turn to instinctively.

Now if you consider the matter, Cato didn’t say “exterminate the Carthaginians,” he said destroy Carthage. And since the majority of the tribes (or peoples or nations) Rome conquered in the west (England, Gaul, Spain, and so forth) didn’t live in great cities, Rome clearly only defeated them to the extent that the survivors either surrendered or gave up, were then incorporated into the empire in various ways. And in case you’re confused (wasn’t Carthage a state?), I’m simply following Polybius in the first paragraph of his Histories, when he listed the three empires that existed before Rome’s—and Carthage was conspicuous by its absence. (Ebook #44128 for the first volume, and #44126 for the second).

As to why, the best I can do is recommend slogging through The Peloponnesian War of 431-401 BC by Thucydides (ebook # 7142). And if you’re curious about Gardiner’s conclusion, read his account (ebook #40082).

So Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—simply to name the most significant—are pretty much like the tribes the Romans encountered, and at this point, their situation is basically similar.

Israel’s War

Hezbollah, the largest and allegedly the most powerful, has now been cut off from Iranian support, its forces dwindling, most of its weaponry destroyed, and the Lebanese are increasingly fed up with their presence. Lebanon unfortunately has a long history of failing to rise to the occasion, but at this point, as Mrs. Clinton once remarked, what difference does it make? Whether the country degenerates into its traditional tribal factions or manages to create an actual nation, Hezbollah will no longer be able to assert control over the country.

And whenever remnants try to start up the fight, the IDF eliminates them. Just as the United States recently (25 July 2025) eliminated Diva ZawaMustapha al Haradam, a leader of ISIS,

As far as Hamas goes, at this point, as an (allegedly) senior Hamas official told the BBC, 95 percent of its leadership is dead, it controls only 20 percent of Gaza, and in the last ten days the IDF is moving in on that part, which is where the remaining hostages are held. Like Hezbollah, Hamas isn’t going to quit, as evidenced by the near collapse of the latest round of “negotiations.” But when their remaining forces in Gaza are eliminated, Hamas will be destroyed.

The Houthi are in a somewhat different category; that is, they’re rather akin to the hostile tribes in what the Romans called Germania, or the tribes north of Hadrian’s wall in England. Unlike Hamas and Hezbollah, they have no way to get to Israel, nor do have sufficient military force to damage it from afar. Like the other two, they’ll remain hostile, but so what? American and IDF air strikes have largely crippled them, just as the adopted step son of Tiberius had done with the German tribal leader Arminius—why he has has come down to us in Roman history as Germanicus.

And although the friends and allies of Hamas abroad absolutely don’t grasp any of this (or anything much), the reality is that there isn’t anything anyone can do to stop Israel from destroying all three. They can claim Hamas is a “state,” but there’s nothing they can do to make it one. As Stalin supposedly once remarked when asked if he was worried about the Pope, how many divisions does he have?

Iran

Modern Iran sees itself as a state, the lineal descendant of the ancient Persian empire. Interestingly, Polybius not only pointed that out in his opening paragraph, but observed they’d never been able to expand into the west. Sound familiar? It should, because here we are in 2025, and their situation is the same. Israel and the United States have destroyed their military power—and thus their ability to expand through threats and infiltrations, chief of which was their drive to become a state possessing atomic bombs.

Iran’s years of cheating, scheming, and plotting have either blown up in their face like their vast stockpile of missiles and their supposedly powerful air defenses, or lie buried deep in rubble (their nuclear sites).

Their most important ally, the Assad regime in Syria, is gone, has been replaced by a government that is (a) firmly in the Arab camp, (b) hostile to Iran, and (c), trying to grapple with the various tribes that exist with its national borders.

So that they’ll still continue to make threats, to rant and bluster, is irrelevant. Their notion of creating a Sufi caliphate in the Middle East is over.

Russia and Ukraine

Not much has changed since my last post. Moscow is launching large scale drone and missile attacks on cities, accompanied by ground attacks that mostly result in heavy Russian losses, while Kiev blows up every military asset behind the lines they can find.

Since we’re more than halfway through the summer, there are a good many observers who think that when the current Russian offensive fails—and it’s pretty clear that it is—Moscow will be in the same situation as Tehran.

Of course, currently the only news with any circulation is all about Moscow’s large-scale drone and missile attacks on Ukraine. So there’s speculation that if Russia can just increase the size of those, Ukraine will be in serious difficulties.

But this idea has two fatal flaws. It’s not how many drones are launched, it’s how many hit any sort of target, and second, and more seriously, as I’ve pointed out before, the numbers don’t work. If a drone carries 5 pounds of explosives and one solitary World War Two era bomber carries 5,000 pounds . . . . You can fiddle with the numbers any way you want, substitute missiles for drones, but the numbers will never work.

And that’s leaving aside the fact that missiles only have one of two purposes: to carry nuclear warheads or to deliver a precision hit.

The other difficulty is that Moscow has apparently used the same Stalinist principle of centralized control with drones as with its economy and ifs military. I add this because recently the Ukrainian air force destroyed one of those centers with a guided missile fired from a low flying Mig29.

So I’m dubious as to the success of Moscow’s endeavor, especially since Kiev is now getting more air defense systems from the United States via Europe.

The reports of the handful of informed observers covering the ground war are largely ignored, but their reports all speak to a continuation of the same futile pattern: minuscule gains in territory with heavy losses. There are only two changes. Moscow is getting close to being out of the equipment, munitions, and support systems required in warfare. At the same time we’re seeing reports of incidents in which Russian ground forces are not simply being blocked from any real gains, but are actually being thrown back.

And Kiev’s precisely targeted strikes continue to destroy Moscow’s vital assets in the three categories above. This is an aspect of the war that is still largely ignored, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening—and having a major impact.

So we’re back to the possibilities I’ve already outlined in an earlier post. The recent American withdrawal from the Hamas “negotiations,” coupled with the ultimatum to Moscow about ending the war, may well bring about a resolution.

What’s left of the Russian economy, like Iran’s, is heavily—perhaps exclusively—based on exporting oil (and in Russia’s case, natural gas as well). So threatening heavy economic sanctions (500 percent tariffs) on their remaining customers is a potent threat.

While I’m dubious both about the relevance of many of standard indicators economists use and the conclusions they draw from them, all the ones I’ve seen are pointing in the same direction. Down. But no matter how Moscow’s dream of conquering Ukraine ends, Russia, like Iran, will continue to exist, although possibly it may not be the same size.

An Unsatisfactory Conclusion and an Explanation of Sorts

The basic point I’ve attempted to make is that winning/losing is a deeply flawed model, and once that is grasped it follows that we shouldn’t be surprised to see radically different conclusions for the three conflicts. Of the various possibilities, the one that seems the most likely to me is an internal collapse. But as far as a specific time, my best guess is it it will be different in each case, and it’s not going to happen quickly, despite all the steadily accumulating evidence to the contrary.

Here’s my explanation as to why. The leaders of Hamas, Iran, and Russia (and so forth) all believe in alternative reality that gives them a wonderful explanation for the world around them, but is totally contradicted by reality. But since their fantasies make them impervious to facts, they’re not going to change.

For that matter, the same could be said of the leaders of France and Great Britain, and their decision to recognize the “Palestinians” as a state, as though that will resolve this part of the conflict. After all, it worked perfectly in the case of Czecho-Slovakia, right?

Jacques Audiberti put it perfectly in L'effet Glapion (1959).

Life is made of illusions. Among those illusions, certain ones reappear. It is those that constitute reality.

In other words, the real world is formed by observations and logical deductions, but a surprising number of its inhabitants prefer their illusions, to the extent that they believe those really do constitute reality. The always—just-around-the-corner allure of Marxism-Leninism.

And here’s the perfect example of that. In 2017, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan made the following prediction. Interestingly, he brushed away his translator, spoke in English, as he wanted to be clearly understood

There will come a day that we will see far more extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe, because of the lack of decision making, trying to be politically correct, assuming that they know the Middle East and Islam far better than we do.

The foreign minister paused, and then said carefully:

I’m sorry, but that’s pure ignorance.