Anthony Koch: Sometimes, war is the answer

National Post

24-06-2025

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The American Civil War was not the result of insufficient compromise. It was the inevitable clash between two incompatible moral orders. No committee could reconcile slavery with freedom. The matter had to be settled by force.
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And the 20th century speaks even louder. The Second World War resulted from the failure to confront aggression when it was in its infancy. Peace in our time gave us war in our streets. Hitler was not appeased, he was emboldened. And when the reckoning finally came, it did not arrive through dialogue. It arrived through tanks, fleets and firebombs. It arrived because it had to.
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Diplomacy, in truth, does not substitute for war. It follows it. Negotiation is not what ends conflict. Victory is. The treaties of Westphalia, Versailles and Camp David did not avert war, they formalized its outcome. Even today, peace agreements only work when enforced by the fear of what happens if they collapse. As Machiavelli warned, 'War cannot be avoided; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.'
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We may prefer the language of compromise, but the world often speaks another tongue. As Thucydides wrote, 'The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.' That is not an endorsement, it's a warning. Those who forget it do not abolish war, they only ensure that when it comes, it comes on someone else's terms.
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Even now, the pattern repeats. The rise of revanchist powers — Russia, Iran, China — was not provoked by the West being too forceful. It was enabled by the West being too timid. Russia did not invade Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine because NATO expanded. It did so because the West shrank.
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Iran did not radicalize because it was cornered, but because we left its ambitions unchecked. And China threatens Taiwan not because it's afraid of war, but because it no longer believes the West is willing to fight one.
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Israel's recent campaigns against Iran and Hezbollah offers a current, unmistakable example. For years, western commentators wrung their hands about the risks of escalation. But a low-intensity, perpetual and asymmetric war was already being fought. Iran had been waging it with drones, rockets and proxies.
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It was only when Israel struck back with precision and force, eliminating key Iranian military leaders and humiliating Hezbollah's command structure, that the region began to shift.
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Suddenly, even hostile actors started co-operating, allowing Israel to use their airspace and shooting down Iranian missiles, to contain further escalation. Why? Because war, judiciously applied, imposed clarity where diplomacy had only bought delay.
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War, in such cases, is not madness. It is realism. It is not cruelty. It is consequence. And those who think it's obsolete are not pacifists — they are amateurs.
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The anti-war camp today is full of high-minded rhetoric and low-grade intellect. Its adherents conflate comfort with virtue, safety with wisdom. But the iron law of history is simple: peace must be secured, not assumed. And where irreconcilable visions of power and order collide, war is not a detour, it is the road itself.
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