Military Problems in Ukraine and Israel Are Caused by Politics

The absence of a comprehensive strategy is often worse than military inferiority. The biggest problems appear when politics play into the hands of the enemy.

When wars are lost or go badly, it is not always because the military was inferior. Political and military strategies often just don’t align if there is no “grand strategy.” There is no other way to explain, for example, the how the superpower United States failed in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan against much weaker opponents. In each of these conflicts, Washington lacked decisive plans for how to use its massive military superiority to achieve sustainable political solutions. The consequences were that billions of dollars were squandered and countless lives were lost without the U.S. achieving its objectives.

Today, we are experiencing two conflicts in which nations supported by the United States are struggling with serious problems. In Ukraine, after two years of war, the tide has turned in favor of Russia, and in the Gaza Strip, Israel cannot manage to disarm a terrorist militia like Hamas without inflicting intolerably high civilian casualties. In both cases, one has to ask whether political and military decisions, some of which were made years ago, were sufficiently aligned with each other.

The two foundational principles of a good overall strategy should be that military action is not an end in and of itself but needs to be in pursuit of realistic political goals and that politics should never help the enemy grow stronger militarily. The greatest failure of the Munich Agreement was that Czechoslovakia turned over the Sudetenland in 1938 without protest and that the military balance of power shifted in favor of Adolf Hitler’s army.

The Long Hesitation of Western Politicians

In Ukraine, the West’s explicit goal after Feb. 24, 202 to retake Russian-occupied territory would only have been possible with massive weapons shipments. But that is precisely what everyone avoided during the first year of the war because the governing parties in the U.S. and Europe feared it would provoke Vladimir Putin into attacking NATO states or even detonating a nuclear weapon. The window of time in which the Russian army was vulnerable passed without the West taking advantage because it lacked of tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles. This chance is unlikely to come again. Russia’s lines of defense are strong, and the army has been reorganized. The long hesitation of Western politicians may now endanger the survival of an independent, democratic Ukraine.

In the Gaza Strip, in turn, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration, with its misguided decision-making, allowed Hamas to embed itself more deeply and to arm itself more robustly for years. Hamas should never have been able to build the massive tunnel system under the watch of the Israeli military. With Qatari funding, Israel pursued a policy of appeasement that has now left the Israeli army to face almost insuperable military challenges.

No matter what happens in Gaza, Israel’s survival is not in danger. But for Ukraine, the looming collapse of U.S. military aid in Congress is putting everything at risk. A superpower that can no longer deliver weapons becomes a paper tiger, and its allies become easy prey for aggressors. No loud political declarations of support can do anything to change that.