The first question anyone planning to start a war, or to respond with force to an act of aggression, should ask is not whether his nation's forces can prevail in battle. That is indeed a vital question. In addition, he should ask what objectives, once achieved, would justify ending the war, and why anyone on the other side should regard these changes in the status quo as either temporarily or permanently acceptable. How will the fighting be ended? On what terms? Negotiated by and with whom? What happens after the conflict is over? Will the seeds of future military actions be planted in the terms of the peace? If there is no clear answers to these questions, the better course may well be to refrain from threatening or initiating military action.

Although every war is fought in the name of peace, there is a tendency to define victory as the absence of war and to confuse it with military victory. To discuss conditions of peace during wartime seems almost indecent, as if the admission that the war might end could cause a relaxation of the effort. This is no accident. The logic of war is power, and power has no inherent limit. The logic of peace is proportion, and proportion implies limitation. The success of war is victory; the success of peace is stability. The conditions of victory are commitment, the condition of stability is self-restraint. The motivation of war is extrinsic: the fear of an enemy. The motivation of peace is intrinsic: the balance of forces and the acceptance of its legitimacy. A war without an enemy is inconceivable; a peace built on the myth of an enemy is an armistice. It is the temptation of war to punish; it is the task of peace to construct. Power can sit in judgement, but statemanship must look to the future.

 

Henry A. Kissinger, 1964