Scott Atran
Contemporary warfare’s emphasis on destruction capacity and cost imposition rests on a fundamental misreading of what sustains the will to fight. Drawing on behavioral and brain research and historical cases, it shows that “devoted actors” whose personal and collective identity is fused with sacred values will sustain extreme sacrifice and mobilize broader populations. As a result, they can blunt coercion and sometimes reverse asymmetries of power. The Revolutionary Guard’s cohesion, forged in the Iran–Iraq War, and Hamas’s sustained popular base despite military attrition, both illustrate why strategies of overwhelming force tend to fortify rather than fracture resistance; and why the decisive variable in protracted conflict often is not the scale of violence applied but—similar to Britain and Russia in the early stages of World War II and later with Vietnam and Afghanistan—the depth of commitment sustained and the tactical and strategic creativity that commitment engenders.
The early course of the U.S.–Israeli war with Iran reflects a recurring strategic illusion: that superiority in destructive capacity can be converted into rapid political collapse. Instead, initial operational success widened the conflict, hardened resistance, and drawn the attackers into a longer and more uncertain struggle.
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