The current leader-to-leader Trump-Netanyahu contact was projected in American media as similar to the one that existed between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill of Britain during World War II. Like Churchill, who demonised Nazi Germany, Netanyahu also frames Iran as an existential threat and directly appeals to the American president to join in a civilisational struggle to counter this threat. However, the key difference in this analogy is structural. Churchill’s Britain was a victim, fighting an invasion, and it stood up alone against a continental superpower. Netanyahu’s Israel is the dominant power and the aggressor. Netanyahu uses Churchillian rhetoric, but the geopolitical structure doesn’t put the leader-to-leader contact between Trump and Netanyahu in the same Roosevelt-Churchillian league.
Netanyahu is not the only leader in a ‘Churchillian mode’ in the world today. President Zelensky of Ukraine is also someone who has already copied Churchill’s famous 4 June 1940 speech in which he explained to the British people how he would expel the Nazi invader. Back in March 2022, President Zelensky addressed the British Parliament via video link and used Churchillian language to explain his deep resolve to fight the Russian invader. He said, “Ukrainians will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets… We will fight till the end. At Sea. In the air. We will continue to fight for our land, whatever the cost.” This was Zelensky, whom journalist Jonathan Freedland describes as present-day Churchill with an iPhone.
Both PM Netanyahu and President Zelensky face a similar problem: how to force Trump’s hand and convince him to do their bidding. Using Churchillian rhetoric is one thing, but dragging the US to join fighting an endless war is another. World War II analogies were formed in a pre-nuclear age. Today, the US, Russia and Israel are nuclear states, and Iran’s nuclear programme itself is at the centre of the ongoing geopolitical tension. Becoming Churchill was easy in a non-nuclear age; doing that now is preparing nation-states to fight endless wars and giving little chance for diplomacy to succeed.
The hardest question to answer in war studies is not always how to start the war but how to end it. Warfare has evolved since the days of Blitzkrieg, and the wars fought in the 21st Century already show how the advantage has clearly shifted from offence to defence. Even in both the wars in which Russia did well, against Napoleon and Hitler, Russia was defending against an existential threat and acting as a defender of its motherland. Today, Russia finds itself fighting a protracted war as it is no longer a defender but an aggressor. The Ukraine War today has become an endless war, a big proxy, seen so often during the Cold War. The European Union and NATO continue to assist Ukraine, and Ukraine’s international legion has been joined by thousands of volunteers from over fifty countries in the world to fight against Russia.
Churchill taught the world that national unity becomes a crucial factor in any existential struggle. That has been a great post-WWII lesson. However, given what PM Netanyahu and President Zelensky want from the US and given they succeed in pushing President Trump to do their bidding, in years to come their actions may be taught in the war courses and staff colleges around the world as what not to do to prevent fighting the forever wars. Total war thinking, as it comes from both Netanyahu and Zelensky in a nuclear age, is flawed. Joseph Stalin is famous for having said that “in the end quantity becomes quality”; and if we look at both Russia and Iran, they both demonstrate how they retain the ability to turn quantity into quality. Both Israel and Ukraine are locked in wars where they don’t have either the ability or the guarantee to produce a decisive victory against their adversaries.
So, while a powerful initial strike could degrade parts of Iran’s offensive capabilities, completely defeating Iran militarily would be impossible and very costly. Both Israel and Ukraine must recognise that the strategic “victory” is not limited to only battlefield success, but it also means the achievement of the end goal of political outcomes that should reduce any future potential threat emanating from the same adversary. No doubt, the US and Israel can conduct powerful initial strikes against key Iranian military sites, but military force alone is unlikely to fully eliminate Iran’s capacity to resist – especially considering missiles, proxies, geography and Iran’s political resilience. President Trump is reluctant to engage in fighting any forever war – a lesson that is grounded in historical patterns from US interventions in the last several decades.
Wars fought in the 21st Century show that military campaigns are often split into two phases: first, military invasion or major strikes; second, post-war commitments – occupation, nation-building, counter-insurgency or sanctions enforcement. In Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, the US spent decades on the second phase because the initial goals (stopping terrorism, removing regimes) didn’t end the underlying conflicts. President Trump would not like to spend the rest of his time in office thinking about how to end a war that he, in the first place, doesn’t want to start. The best way forward for the US is to strike a deal with Iran.
The US may destroy the Iranian enrichment facilities, but what it cannot do is bomb away the Iranian nuclear knowledge. Facilities can be rebuilt, and scientists cannot be ‘uneducated’. Iran is not Iraq (2003) or Afghanistan (2001); it is a strong, centralised state with a large conventional military and missile capability. Iran is also supported by deep proxy networks (Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi militias, Houthis), a strategic geography (Strait of Hormuz) and a nation that gels together when externally aggressed.
For PM Netanyahu and President Zelensky, two leaders who seek to fight ‘forever wars’, the message from President Trump is perhaps clear: this is not the time or age to sound or behave like Churchill.