The liberal-left reaction to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent trip to Washington was negative for a simple reason: he is pursuing victory in the existential war against Hamas in Gaza amidst the larger regional confrontation with Iran. Victory is a concept rejected by progressives as outmoded in the 21st century, but there are nuances to this rejection as one moves across the spectrum.

Radical leftists burning American flags while hoisting Palestinian flags want an Israeli defeat. Their genocidal “from the river to the sea” chant advocates a total Hamas/Iran victory that would wipe the Jewish state off the map (as depicted in an endless barrage of social media posts). The motive is not just anti-Semitism. While Muslim students are prominent in these demonstrations, the protest numbers come from others bred on “anti-imperialist” academic rants. They see Israel as a “crusader state” outpost of western civilization, their central enemy which must be swept into the dustbin of history. Military defeat is the ultimate sign of weakness and failure, guaranteeing decline and extinction. When they paint “Hamas is coming” on a monument across the street from the White House, they are expressing an existential threat to us all, not just Israel.

In the White House, the thinking is different but risks the same catastrophic outcome. Classical liberalism as an ideology binds the intellect just as thoroughly as Islam or Marxism, while being further removed from the real world it hopes to transform. Eminent historian Sir Michael Howard has argued that liberals since the Enlightenment believed that with material and democratic progress “the necessity for war would evaporate, and peace would become ubiquitous and eternal. Like famine, disease, and poverty, war could be abolished by rational planning. The next two centuries did little to justify these assumptions.” The post-Cold War period revived this notion, but like all post-war periods, it has become an interwar period, not just in peripheries like the Middle East and Africa, but with a major war in Ukraine and an even larger threat of Great Power conflict in Asia as China (like Russia) cites past empires as their basis for current rational planning.

Another prominent military historian, Hew Strachan, has noted “Military vulnerability and even catastrophic defeat have proven to be remarkedly effective prods to innovative thinking about war.” We have seen this tactically in Ukraine’s clever and cost-effective blunting of Russian attacks and in the high-tech U.S. and allied response to Houthi and Iranian missile and drone attacks. Israel, of course, is the prime example of how war can concentrate the mind and produce impressive results. Yet, this is not so much the case at the strategic level in Washington when ideology dictates aims felt to be superior to victory or even survival.

Since the Enlightenment, there has been a push to limit the impact of war on civilians. Liberals went beyond protecting lives to protecting commerce, hoping that business ties would promote cooperation. What this really did was give traders the right to operate for their own profit regardless of the impact on wider events, to act irresponsibility as “men without a country” even providing enemies of the nations of which they were supposedly citizens the means to wage war. Yet, the balance of economic strength had always been a vital factor. The Industrial Revolution boosted it by orders of magnitude to make it both the means and the object of conflict. Thus, the doctrine of “free trade” discredited itself.

The claim that Israeli operations to root out Hamas is causing unacceptable civilian losses has led the Biden administration to curtail arms shipments to Jerusalem and call for a cease-fire. President Joe Biden tried this same approach in Yemen. In 2014, the Houthi (a Shiite minority in Sunni Yemen) captured the capital city. Saudi Arabia could not tolerate an Iranian satrap on its border and led an Arab coalition in a counterattack. The Obama administration supported Riyadh with logistics, weapons, and intelligence, which was continued by President Donald Trump. Biden cut off all aid as soon as he took office and pushed for a ceasefire because the war had turned the country into a “humanitarian disaster” particularly for the Houthis who were blockaded by sea and attacked from the sky. A UN ceasefire took effect in 2022, leaving the Houthis in control of territory and ports. They built up their army with plundered foreign aid and Iranian weapons, including the advanced drones and missiles now used against shipping in the Red Sea in support of Hamas in Gaza.

Does anyone believe that a ceasefire to spare Gaza civilians will not result in the same outcome; a rebuilt Hamas backed by a resolute and aggressive Iran planning the next round of aggression? Forever wars are the result of ambitious regimes that have not been defeated. And they are not deterred because they do not fear defeat as they do not believe their enemies have a will to win that can match their own.

Civilian casualties are inevitable in war, particularly in urban combat when human shields are used by combatants, often willingly when the population supports the local fighters as is the case in Gaza. In contrast to Biden, Trump has called on Israel to speed up their operations to get the job done. Yet, Israel has slowed its operations to avoid civilian casualties, putting its strategic objectives at risk under liberal pressure. Israel’s top priority, however, is to protect its own people, and that requires victory.

Biden’s other limiting factor has been fear of escalation. This was seen when after helping Israel defend against Iran’s direct attack with drones and missiles on April 13, Biden threatened to cut aid if Israel retaliated in kind. The liberal canon is to defend, not attack, hoping that the enemy will tire of the war (due to sanctions as well as casualties) and negotiate peace as any rational actor is supposed to desire. This approach has also been on display in Ukraine, where Biden originally opened the door to Russia by proclaiming Ukraine was not a NATO concern despite decades of it being so. He retreated and Putin advanced. Biden finally recognized his error but has been behind the curve compared to other NATO allies in providing advanced weapons and, worse, he has limited Kyiv’s ability to attack Russian targets while its own land is being ravaged end to end.

Vladimir Putin has played on Biden’s fear of escalation from the start, jumping to nuclear threats as soon as his troops invaded Ukraine. This was not rational behavior, but too many liberals (and even some putative conservatives) fell for it -- though not so much in Europe where it is seen as the bluff it is. Putin is claiming escalation dominance, jumping to the highest rung on the ladder because he is at a disadvantage at the lower rungs. NATO can (and should) do more to claim those rungs and impose a strategic defeat on Moscow. The balance of power overwhelmingly favors the West. Russia is much smaller than the USSR while NATO has expanded and enjoyed decades of material growth. The economic balance of the U.S. and NATO today is $46 trillion to under $3 trillion for Russia. Only by breaking the will of the West to use this advantage gives Putin any hope of prevailing in Ukraine or anywhere else.

The U.S. and its allies must act like they understand what they are saying about the strategic importance and moral imperative of Ukraine’s survival. NATO must convince Putin that NATO will do whatever is necessary (including direct military intervention) not only to prevent a Russian victory but to inflict a Russian defeat that could topple Putin from power. Only then will Moscow shift to the diplomatic track that liberals keep hoping for.

What liberals (and others) need to learn from history is that diplomacy is a facet of war, not a substitute. Diplomacy cannot provide a victory leaders are not committed to gaining by “other means” to cite the military theorist Clausewitz. It is doubtful that Biden or Kamala Harris can break out of their liberal fantasy world, so the hope for “peace through strength” depends on the return of a President Trump who can instill the same fear of defeat in Putin in 2025 that he did in 2017. Only then can a war that should have been prevented be ended on favorable terms.

William R. Hawkins is a former economics professor who has worked for conservative think tanks and on the professional staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has written widely on international economics and national security issues for both professional and popular publications including for the Army War College, the U.S. Naval Institute, and Joint Force Quarterly among others. 

Image: Ted Eytan/Wikipedia