We’ll End the War by Escalating It?
JUL 18, 2026
War is too easy in America today. We’ve come to accept it as normal. Peace is now aberrant. As war grows ever easier, peace becomes ever harder.
“Escalation,” not diplomacy, is touted as the smart way to end wars. Logic doesn’t seem to matter. How do you end a war by launching more damaging and deadly strikes? How is killing even more people a way to peace?
President Trump now seems to believe that climbing the “escalation ladder” in the Iran War and in the Russia-Ukraine War is the best way to resolve these deadly conflicts. It reminds me of that Vietnam-era quip that waging war for peace is like screwing for virginity.
Journalist Aaron Maté’s piece today also cites Washington’s belief in escalation:
Shortly before returning to the White House for a second term, Donald Trump criticized the exiting president, Joe Biden, for letting Ukraine fire long-range US missiles into Russia. “Why are we doing that?” Trump complained. “We’re just escalating this war and making it worse.”
Just as his campaign pledge of “no new wars” gave way to a regime-change war on Iran, Trump’s professed aversion to a US-fueled escalation in Ukraine is no more. At this month’s NATO summit in Turkey, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio endorsed Ukraine’s drone attacks deep inside Russia. With the Russians “finding it more difficult to defend their own airspace,” Rubio explained, this will “create the space now to negotiate the end of this war.” Added Trump: “It’s an escalation, but it’s also an escalation that could help lead to an end.”
How often do “escalations” help to end wars? Does anyone remember how escalation in Vietnam turned out?
Maybe if we truly seek to end a war, we should deescalate attacks, then engage in diplomacy. No, that makes too much sense.
There’s a great line in an old Star Trek episode, “Journey to Babel,” where Spock is advised he’d do well to “forget logic and devote yourself to motivations of passion and gain,” for “those are the reasons for murder” — and often for war as well.
Of course, these aren’t the only reasons for war, but logic often has little to do with how and why wars are waged. That much is obvious as “climbing the escalation ladder” is seen or sold by Washington as the best way to deescalate in Iran and in Russia and Ukraine.
Bracing Views 
“War is peace” is a piece of doublespeak (and doublethink) coined by George Orwell in his dystopian novel 1984 (which can now be read as “current events”). It’s how the ruling Party manipulates language to force citizens to simultaneously accept two contradictory beliefs as truth. We see this constantly in terms like “Peace Through Strength” and “Peacekeeper” missiles, as well as banners like “Operation Enduring Freedom” when we enslave an entire country by capturing their economy and resources. The same confusing dynamic is present in Trump’s rants about “fake news” when any truth dare be uttered by a reporter (which is now rare). This is not the “fog of war”. It is the fog of propaganda.
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Yes.
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Tread carefully now…which is the worse, “doublethink” or “groupthink” ?” One views simultaneously incompatible assessments as truths and the other sees these same assessments as absolutely incompatible with the agreed thinking of a unit as a whole… lots of weeds to wade but still…
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Robert McNamara made the same discovery (far too late) in the Vietnam era, namely, that escalation feeds the beast but doesn’t rarely leads to desirable outcomes. The Fog of War documentary exposes the insanity. History repeats.
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Tangentially related… “The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” — Malcolm X, 13 Dec 1964
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Added Trump: “It’s an escalation, but it’s also an escalation that could help lead to an end.”
Yup, and if applied to the Cuban Missile Crisis, just change to “that could help lead to THE end.” But as noted, we skip over those jaunty “thirteen days,” as well as Korea, as well as Vietnam, when the use of nuclear weapons was also considered, as to this day we view WWII as central to our identity, our moral virtue, our superiority. World War II was a war of production (think of the mile-long Willow Run factory turning out B-24 Liberator bombers at the rate of one every 63 minutes) and technology (radar, the proximity fuse, the atomic bomb, the V-2 too late). So we think we won the war single-handedly (Kursk, anyone? 22-27 million Soviet dead?), so let’s just reapply the formula, updated with drones and AI on the battlefield and whatnot. Why bother with diplomacy, which pretty much by definition means we don’t get everything we want, except for a reasonable chance at peace, which we profess but aren’t really all that interested in?
Quips: The motto of SAC (Strategic Air Command) during the Cold War, until the command was ended and recast to others, was “Peace Is Our Profession.” Insiders had these takes on it: “War is Our Hobby”; “Peace Through Strength – Victory Through Devastation.”
Some other Air Force mottos: “Mors Ab Alto” (“Death From Above”); “Aut Vincere Aut Mors” (“Win or Die”); “Attaquez et Conquerez” (“Attack and Conquer”): “Combat Ready Combat Proven”; “We were going by there anyway”; “Death on call”; “Defensor Fortis” (“Defenders of the Force”); “War is our Profession Peace is our Product”; “The Force Behind the Force”; “The world’s most lethal war fighting team”; “Fire From the Clouds”; “Attack to Defend”; and in closing, “SEEK, ATTACK, DESTROY.”
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Reminds me of the song “Over There”. Written to encourage American enlistment during WWI.
Or was that called “the war to end all wars”… another oxymoron.
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WAR IS PEACE – IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
CLIMBING THE ESCALATION LADDER
Climbing the escalation ladder seems to work best IF you are; or work for; or are invested in; or are lobbying for even a small segment of the Military, Industrial, Congressional, Academic COMPLEX. And Yes, I guess that there are also a few more self-serving entities that could easily qualify and make the list too. AIPAC? YUP; SLIC yes, and many, many more. Seems everyone is skirting the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA); but also seems that nobody wants to BITE the HAND that FEEDS them – DOLLARS, that is.
Universally though, A touch of GREED and a lack of concern for the rest of humanity goes a long ways too to advocate skipping a few rungs on the Escalation Ladder.
Only Congress can fix this; but 99.9% of them are on the gravy train. Supreme Court…?Ha Ha Ha Ha! SCOTUS is a BAD uber-conservative joke without even a prayer of redemption! I keep wondering where the heck our wonderful representative form of government with its infallible Checks and Balances system has GONE; but GONE it has, with precious little hope of returning. Just a Damned Shame!
It took me a quite a long while to finally figure out that Congressmen & women are NOT ACTUALLY ELECTED by VOTERS. They are elected through advertising dollars and funded by the billionaires that can afford to install them; But the guaranteed repayment system, in the form of $FAVORS$; is the real clincher. OUR VOTING SYSTEM seems to be not much more than a DELUSIONAL SCORECARD.
When I was young and television was relatively new; I was always quite amazed at how many adults claimed and truly believed that they were absolutely and totally unaffected by advertising. It did not take me too long to learn that NOTHING could be further from the truth.
Meanwhile, keep a lookout for that very brief and intense FLASH of LIGHT – Sure as hell; It’s coming! Likely sooner than Later.
HEY – ANYTHING FOR A BUCK!
Jerry King
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War is a peculiar thing. There have been wars where the people need restraint they are so eager to fight against a hated enemy. And there are wars where the people are whipped into a frenzy by leaders that lie to them, this was tried with the Iraq War but the frenzy was in the administration and never took hold of the people.
Now we have wars of choice that do not have to be fought but without the draft the resistance is minimal and incredible amounts of money are to be made.
What makes this Iran War doubly strange is that Trump started it for Israel and at the moment Israel is standing aside while we do the killing and destruction and bear the risks and expense. This is a do-someone-a-favor war that only further angers Americans. It astounds me that this of all things has not resulted in any move to impeach Trump. It proves that he truly can do anything he wants and get away with it.
We have yet to see who will run for President in 2028 but even after the outrages Trump has committed, I would be willing to bet that like all his predecessors he will be able to get away with everything he has done in office and will not be held responsible by the next occupant of the White House. The Supreme Court has effectively declared this will be the rule.
PS – Trump has been able to keep the scaffolding up hiding the name of the Kennedy Center because Trump’s name was removed…so the public must not see that. We have an 8 year old in office free to be an 8 year old.
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