Can a warrior make peace? Those who know no way to manage crises except through force, and see their opponents only as targets, may be able to stop the shooting—but they do not necessarily know how to build a peace that can be trusted.

Prepared and analyzed by | Strategic Media Department – BETH Agency
Supervised by: Abdullah Al-Omairah

Ever since human beings first carried weapons, they have believed that force offers the shortest path.

There is no need to persuade an opponent if that opponent can be subdued, no need to understand their fears if their voice can be silenced, and no time to build a lasting agreement when a short battle can redraw the map.

Yet history—from ancient Athens to the wars of the modern age—keeps repeating a lesson that many have failed to learn:

War may win territory, but it cannot guarantee that territory will be retained. It may bring down an adversary, but it does not eliminate the causes of conflict. And it may give a leader a swift victory, only to leave the state paying the price for generations.

The question, therefore, is not simply one of military strength. It concerns three minds that shape decisions of war and peace:

The mind of the state, the mind of the leader, and the collective mind.

A state may possess a powerful army, but it also needs a mind that knows when to use it and when to stop.

A leader may excel at reading the battlefield, yet fail to understand the societies they seek to subdue.

A collective, meanwhile, may become intoxicated by the thrill of power, reject every question, and treat every warning against war as weakness or betrayal.

That is where defeat begins—before the battle itself has even started.

Athens, Seduced by Its Glory

In the fifth century BCE, Athens was not a weak city struggling to survive. It was a major naval power, rich in money, ships, and influence, and at the height of its political and cultural presence.

But its strength created the illusion that its reach could be extended every time it dispatched another fleet.

In 415 BCE, Athens decided to send a massive expedition to Sicily, far from the main front of its war with Sparta. What began as a limited intervention developed into a vast campaign of conquest, driven by ambition, excessive confidence, and the belief that Athenian power could crush any resistance.

The campaign ended in catastrophe. The fleet was destroyed, most of the army was killed or captured, and the defeat became a turning point that helped pave the way for Athens’ eventual fall to Sparta.

Athens did not lose because it lacked strength. It lost because it allowed strength to take the place of wisdom.

This is history’s first lesson: Having the power to wage war does not mean that going to war is the right decision.

Napoleon, for Whom Europe Became Too Small

More than two thousand years later, Napoleon Bonaparte emerged as one of history’s greatest military commanders.

He won battles, expanded his reach, redrew maps, and brought kingdoms under his influence. But his repeated military successes convinced him that the next battle would always resolve what the previous one had left unfinished.

Every victory opened the way to another war, and every expansion created a larger alliance against him, until war became the means by which he sought to preserve what war itself had created.

At Waterloo in 1815, the final attempt came to an end. Napoleon was defeated, abdicated the throne, and saw his imperial project collapse for good.

Napoleon was no stranger to war. He may have understood it better than most of his opponents.

But he did not know when to stop.

A leader who does not know when the weapon’s role has ended may find that their greatest victory becomes the road to their ultimate defeat.

Hitler: War as a Creed

Adolf Hitler was the most horrific example of a leader who saw the world only through the lenses of force, race, extermination, and expansion.

For him, war was not an emergency instrument used to achieve a political objective. It was part of an entire worldview: some peoples deserved to rule, while others were meant to submit or disappear.

He initially secured rapid victories, brought down states, and terrorized an entire continent. But every victory expanded the war, every conquest multiplied the number of his enemies, and every crime made a return to genuine peace more impossible.

In the end, he did not build the Reich he had promised would last a thousand years. He reduced Germany to ruins and Europe to a graveyard, then took his own life in his bunker on April 30, 1945, as Soviet forces approached the heart of Berlin.

He believed that war could solve problems. He ended by making himself one of the greatest problems in the history of his country.

When War Becomes an Escape

This way of thinking did not end with the empires of the past.

In 1990, Iraq emerged from a long war with Iran burdened by losses and debt. Yet instead of rebuilding its economy and society, it entered another war by invading Kuwait.

In its first hours, the decision appeared to deliver a swift military victory. It soon turned into defeat, withdrawal, severe sanctions, and prolonged isolation. Iraq then entered a period of attrition whose effects did not end even with the fall of the regime itself.

At that point, war is no longer a solution. It becomes an escape from one domestic crisis into a greater one.

A leader who cannot repair the economy may search for an enemy.

A regime that fails to persuade its people may try to unite them through fear.

And a state without a project for the future may invoke military glories to compensate for the failures of the present.

But artillery cannot repay debts, missiles cannot build schools, and occupying new territory cannot repair a state already eroding from within.

A Warrior Who Saw the Blood and Changed

History, however, does not suggest that every warrior is condemned to remain a prisoner of war.

Emperor Ashoka, one of the greatest rulers of ancient India, fought and won the Kalinga War in the third century BCE. But the sight of the dead and displaced brought him no victor’s comfort. According to his inscriptions, it led him to reconsider the very meaning of victory.

He could have continued his expansion, but he chose another path. He reduced his reliance on conquest by force and adopted an approach to government founded on tolerance, welfare, and moral values.

Ashoka achieved his military objective, then discovered that its cost had made victory resemble a human defeat.

That was where his true strength lay: he did not merely change his rhetoric; he changed his philosophy of government.

A warrior can make peace—but only after acknowledging that the skills mastered on the battlefield are not enough to manage what comes afterward.

Sadat: From the Canal Crossing to Peace

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was both a leader of war and a leader of peace.

He made the decision to launch the October War of 1973 and achieved the crossing that restored Egypt’s ability to negotiate from a different position. But he understood that war, whatever it achieved, would neither restore all the occupied territory nor give the region lasting stability.

He moved from the battlefield to politics, visited Jerusalem, entered the Camp David negotiations, and signed the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty in 1979, establishing a framework for the restoration of Sinai and an end to the war between the two countries.

Sadat did not abandon the results of the war; he carried them to the negotiating table.

He understood that a weapon’s role is not to remain active forever, but—when all other avenues narrow—to open a path toward a political solution that protects the state and restores its rights.

But he paid for that transformation with his life. On October 6, 1981, he was assassinated by extremists who opposed his policies, with peace with Israel among the reasons for their hostility.

He survived a war against an external adversary, only to fall before those who regarded peace as betrayal.

Rabin: When the General Changed His Language

Yitzhak Rabin was a soldier, a military commander, and the Israeli army’s chief of staff during the June 1967 war.

He later moved onto a different path, participated in the Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization, and shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres.

Rabin did not become an idealistic pacifist, nor did he abandon his security calculations. But he understood that force can protect borders, while it cannot, by itself, end a conflict rooted in memory, identity, and fear.

In 1995, after attending a rally in support of peace, he was assassinated by an Israeli extremist who opposed the Oslo Accords.

Rabin, too, knew how to lead in war. He then tried to lead his people toward peace—and paid for that transformation with his life.

Why Are Peacemakers Killed?

For all its brutality, war offers simple answers.

There is a clear enemy, a clear front, and slogans that allow no room for debate. Peace, by contrast, raises more difficult questions:

What can be conceded?

How can those who have lost their children be persuaded that a handshake is not an act of betrayal?

How does an adversary cease to be a target in a rifle sight and become a partner at the same table?

And how can a leader explain to the public that compromise does not mean that the blood already shed was meaningless?

A leader may therefore succeed in defeating an army, yet fail to persuade their own collective to accept peace.

The collective mind may remain in the trench long after the soldiers have left it. It may continue to manufacture an enemy because that enemy gives the group a sense of unity and identity—and a permanent justification for anger.

Peace requires not only the courage to confront an adversary, but also the courage to confront extremists within one’s own ranks.

Such extremists may forgive a leader for a military defeat, yet never forgive that leader for shaking the hand of someone they were taught for years was an enemy with whom coexistence was impossible.

Can a Warrior Be Trusted?

The answer is neither a simple yes nor a simple no.

In politics, trust is not granted because of a stirring speech or the signing of an agreement before the cameras. Those whose record has been defined by subversion and threats must offer evidence stronger than words.

Have they truly shut down the instruments of war?

Has their conduct changed, or only their language?

Have they accepted monitoring and guarantees?

Have they honored the agreement when violating it became possible?

Have they begun to repair what they destroyed?

And do they regard peace as a mutual right—or merely as a pause in which to reload their weapons?

Not everyone who stops the shooting is a peacemaker, and not everyone who sits at the negotiating table deserves to be trusted.

For some, peace may represent a genuine change of conviction. For others, it may be a postponed weapon. The difference cannot be determined through rhetoric; it is revealed by time, conduct, and guarantees.

A New Mind for Peace

War requires the identification of an objective, the mobilization of force, the surprise of an opponent, and the infliction of losses.

Peace requires different capabilities: understanding the fears of the other side, accepting compromise without treating it as defeat, honoring commitments after the pressure has lifted, and persuading society that coexistence is not surrender.

Those who understand war may learn peace.

But they must first abandon the belief that everything that refuses to submit must be destroyed. They must understand that true strength lies not only in the ability to open fire, but also in the ability to restrain the weapon once it is possessed.

Sometimes it is easy to start a war. It takes only one decision.

Peace, however, requires courageous decisions every day.

Trust therefore does not begin when the guns fall silent. It begins when those who fired them prove that they no longer see calm as an opportunity to reload.

War may be the warrior’s most famous battle, but peace will always remain the hardest.