{"id":91499,"date":"2026-06-04T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=91499"},"modified":"2026-06-02T16:52:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T20:52:21","slug":"the-limits-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2026\/06\/the-limits-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Limits of War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019d like us to think about war.\u00a0 Let\u2019s set aside for now the moral issues, requirements for a just war, the particulars of our current war in Iran, as important as those are.\u00a0 I\u2019d like us to consider what a war can and cannot accomplish.<\/p>\n

My questions arise from something that\u00a0President Trump said<\/a>: \u201cI don\u2019t think about American financial situation \u2014 I don\u2019t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

His answer may have been impolitic, but he states a worthy goal.\u00a0 It would indeed be terrible if Iran\u2013an authoritarian state governed by Islamic extremists from an apocalyptic\u00a0 sect that glorifies martyrdom and promotes death to infidels\u2013gets nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

But can a war prevent that from happening, at least in the long term?\u00a0 We can destroy labs, manufacturing facilities, and uranium stores, but those can be replaced.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t prevent an Iranian engineer from figuring out how to make a nuclear weapon.\u00a0 Israel has reportedly assassinated a number of Iranian engineers to slow that process.\u00a0 But more will always arise, even if they keep quiet about it.\u00a0 And if they haven\u2019t quite figured it out, they can always just ask AI how to make a nuclear weapon.\u00a0 (I know that the mainline AI companies have put in safeguards to prevent access to that kind of information, but other AI systems, including those built in China, don\u2019t have those.\u00a0 And a freely-acquired software program has been developed to remove the safeguards<\/a> from the mainline products.)<\/p>\n

War can take over other countries or defend a country from takeover.\u00a0 War can subjugate a people and make them comply with the victors\u2019 decrees.\u00a0 But it can\u2019t change what is going on inside those people\u2019s minds.\u00a0 It can\u2019t change think how or what they think.\u00a0 It cannot change what they believe and what they know.<\/p>\n

This principle was put forward by Martin Luther, no less, in his important treatise Temporal Authority:\u00a0 To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The thoughts and inclinations of the soul can be known to no one but God. Therefore, it is futile and impossible to command or compel anyone by force to believe this or that. The matter must be approached in a different way. Force will not accomplish it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ideas can be changed only by persuasion<\/em>.\u00a0 Religious beliefs can be changed only by conversion<\/em>.<\/p>\n

John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers took Luther\u2019s point about religious liberty and developed its broader implications for other human freedoms from government control, ideas that would profoundly influence the American founders.<\/p>\n

Luther had in mind the Inquisitions of the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Emperor\u2019s project of trying to squelch the Reformation by laws, punishments, and executions.\u00a0 Locke had in mind the futility of religious wars, such as the Thirty Years\u2019 War, in which the Emperor tried to eliminate the Lutherans and the Reformed by conquering their territories.<\/p>\n

Today we think that religious wars are things of the past, though the wars in the Mideast are indeed religious wars as far as the jihadists are concerned.\u00a0 But, more broadly, most of our modern conflicts have been wars over ideology.\u00a0 These are little different from wars of religion.\u00a0 The wars between Western democracy and Fascism, Communism, and Jihadist Islam have all involved conflicts of ideas, of worldviews.\u00a0 To be sure, they also became fights for national and personal survival. But they were still ideological wars.\u00a0 Military victories were not enough.\u00a0 There needed to be a victory in the battle of ideas.<\/p>\n

The Nazis conquered most of mainline Europe, putting into power native Fascist parties such as the French Vichy and the Norwegian Quislings and controlling the populations\u00a0 with brutal oppression.\u00a0 But their military occupation did not win over the hearts and minds of the populations they were controlling.\u00a0 Once Germany and Japan were defeated\u2013a necessary first step\u2013in the process of rebuilding, they learned the value of economic and political freedom and adopted Western-style democracy mostly of their own volition and remade themselves into capitalist power houses.\u00a0 They were, in effect, converted.<\/p>\n

Communism, an ideology that professes liberation of the working classes, fared somewhat better, but in practice also descended into brutal oppression of those it professed to liberate.\u00a0 Western democracies worked to contain communism\u2013again, a necessary effort\u2013but communism collapsed due to its own economic and political failures.\u00a0 The Soviet Union came apart not because it was defeated militarily but because its people, including its leaders, stopped believing in the controlling ideology.\u00a0 They were, in effect, persuaded.<\/p>\n

To be sure, both Fascism and Communism remain and are even having a resurgence today.\u00a0 Ideas cannot be eliminated by military power, even by killing everyone who holds them, since they can come back, often taking new forms, such as China\u2019s hybrid brand of communism, which keeps the authoritarianism but adds enough free market economics to be successful.<\/p>\n

The United States\u2019 more recent wars have been especially frustrating.\u00a0 Conservative pundit Rich Lowry<\/a> surveys America\u2019s conflicts over the last seventy years and takes up the question of\u00a0why \u201cwe win battles, but we lose war.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the current war with Iran is not like Vietnam, which involved thousands of U.S. troops on the ground fighting and dying, Lowry says that war had its lessons:<\/p>\n

Vietnam demonstrated that military\u00a0superiority doesn\u2019t equal success, and neither does sheer ordnance or technical proficiency, especially in a limited war against a foe with a fanatical political will alien to American sensibilities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We \u201cwon\u201d every battle in Vietnam with our overwhelming airpower, technological superiority, and military prowess.\u00a0 Yet we were eventually driven out, with our people hanging onto helicopters to escape the communist victors.<\/p>\n

Lowry doesn\u2019t get into our more recent wars in detail, but we can see something similar in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.\u00a0 Our military superiority led to quick takeovers of those countries.\u00a0 We assumed that our ideology of Western democracy would be gratefully embraced by the people we conquered.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t happen.\u00a0 We sort of declared \u201cmission accomplished\u201d in Iraq and mostly pulled out without accomplishing our mission, while in Afghanistan we were reduced to hanging onto the helicopters again.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the way it\u2019s going in Iran.\u00a0 Overwhelming military success!\u00a0 We\u2019ve destroyed their navy!\u00a0 We\u2019ve destroyed their missiles!\u00a0 We\u2019ve destroyed their nuclear facilities!\u00a0 But Iran is not capitulating.<\/p>\n

There is another problem with trying to change what people believe by war and coercion.\u00a0 Not only does that not usually change their minds, it usually reinforces the ideas you are trying to change!\u00a0 Punishing people for their thoughts makes those thoughts more<\/em> attractive.\u00a0 And it breeds personal resistance<\/em> to the ideology that the conquerors are trying to impose.<\/p>\n

So how do we prevent Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons?\u00a0 Not by bombing them into the stone age and killing their children.\u00a0 That will make them want<\/em> nuclear weapons.\u00a0 That will also make them want<\/em> to use them.\u00a0 This is true especially in dealing with honor cultures like those of the Middle East, which tend to be fixated on revenge<\/em>, often pursuing vendettas that last for generations and centuries.<\/p>\n

Rather, we need to persuade them.\u00a0 During the Cold War, neither side resorted to using atomic weapons because of the threat of \u201cmutually assured destruction.\u201d\u00a0 That showed\u00a0 logical reasoning on both sides.\u00a0 That would be an example of persuasion<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Iran does not seem to be as amendable to reason.\u00a0 The Shi\u2019ite sect of Islam glories in apocalyptic fire and revels in martyrdom.\u00a0 But perhaps in time the pendulum will swing the other way, with Iran adopting the more secular brand of Islam and the chance for the\u00a0 material prosperity that peace can bring.\u00a0 Perhaps they will grow tired of the rule of the Mullahs and overthrow them.\u00a0 There were signs that was starting to happen, with demonstrations against the Islamic theocracy just before the war, until the Islamic Guard slaughtered the protesters.\u00a0 But maybe the families of the victims will aim their revenge against their rulers\u00a0 who themselves have been trying to control what their people think.\u00a0 That could very well happen.<\/p>\n

The other option is conversion<\/em>.\u00a0 In Europe, Muslim refugees from Iran and other repressive countries, have been turning to Christianity in large numbers.\u00a0 Right now, though, Muslims call the Christians who are bombing them \u201cCrusaders,\u201d keeping alive that lust for vengeance that dates from the Middle Ages.\u00a0 We would do well to present Christianity as something different from what it was in those days and from the violent religion that they currently have and are suffering under.\u00a0 Namely, a religion of peace.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0 The Fall of Saigon<\/a> by Hubert van Es\u00a0 (April 29, 1975),\u00a0 https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/05\/16\/business\/media\/16vanes.html, Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=190591880<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

War can take over other countries or defend a country from takeover.\u00a0 War can subjugate a people and make them comply with the victors’ decrees.\u00a0 But it can’t change what is going on inside those people’s minds.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":91829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,20,24,37,46,49],"tags":[15405,2804,3742,18554,2328,18037],"class_list":["post-91499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-history","category-islam","category-psychology","category-terrorism","category-war-2","tag-freedom-of-thought","tag-ideology","tag-irans-nuclear-program","tag-luther-on-liberty-of-conscience","tag-war","tag-war-in-iran"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Limits of War<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"War can take over other countries or defend a country from 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