People Grow Weary of War, Even in Victory

Abstract

The three parts of this essay attempt to understand why humanity, despite its intelligence and technological progress, repeatedly finds itself on the brink of self-annihilation. The author examines the duality of human nature, demonstrates how the logic of deterrence turns the world into a trap in which an enemy is necessary even if one does not exist, and poses the central question: can trust become not a utopia, but a working strategy? This is not a manifesto or an appeal, but a sober look at our weariness of war—a weariness that might be our only chance not to perish by our own logic.

Part 1. Duality as Humanity’s Gift and Curse

“The history of humanity is a history of wars with brief intervals between them.” This is not merely a quote from a textbook. It is a fact confirmed by any calendar: over 3,400 years of recorded history, humanity has known only 268 years of absolute peace. The rest is gunfire, marches, ashes, and tears. We have grown accustomed to considering this the norm. Moreover, we increasingly accept it as an inevitability.

But if it is inevitable, then each of us is merely a cog in a meat grinder set in motion by someone before us. Then history has no subject, only a victim accepting its fate. What if this is the result of a flaw “immanently inherent to man”? Then the answer is even more terrifying: we cannot fix it, because the flaw is us. But are things really so bad? Our human affairs.

We do not claim to answer this question definitively. As Kozma Prutkov astutely observed, one cannot grasp the ungraspable. But in searching for a concrete answer, we can narrow our focus. Let us take a segment from 1945 to 2026. Eight decades during which, after a brutal world war, people joyfully embraced peace and achieved astonishing results in their development, relying primarily on technological progress. Yet, during this same time, and for the same reason, humanity for the first time gained the technical capacity to annihilate itself completely. This is true, but for some reason, it has not yet done so. And now, as the world once again smells of thunder, we want to understand: is this an old disease in a new guise, or are we on the threshold of something fundamentally different?

People are tired. Tired of waiting for something unknown and terrifying. And not only those on the front lines. But weariness is a poor advisor. It pushes one either toward apathy or rage. Our task is to allow neither. To do this, let us simply try to make sense of it all. Without illusions, but also without despair.

We are accustomed to taking pride in the fact that man is a rational being. But reason is merely a tool. Like a knife: it can slice bread or slit a throat. The question is not about reason, but about the will that reason serves.

Here is a paradox we stubbornly refuse to see.

Over the last 100 years, humanity has made an incredible leap in creation. We conquered plague, smallpox, and polio. We learned to fly to other planets and converse across the ocean in fractions of a second. We created artificial intelligence that defeats world champions in games designed to train the mind. It would seem we are the pinnacle of creation, capable of building paradise on Earth.

Yet, in that very same period, we created weapons capable of destroying that paradise, along with the planet, forty times over. We invented gas used to poison entire peoples. We devised bombs that melt stone. We learned to kill remotely, without even seeing the face of our victim. It’s easier that way.

This is not a system malfunction. These are two sides of the same coin. The inherent flaw we mentioned lies not in cruelty itself. Cruelty exists in any predator. The flaw lies in the ability to justify it.

Man is the only being who can sincerely, deeply believe that he kills in the name of good. That he destroys in order to create. That the victims are an unavoidable payment for a bright future. That by killing, we are moving toward peace. This capacity for self-deception, for creating sacred texts for any act of violence, is our true “inborn pathology.”

A beast kills to survive. A man kills to prove he is right. And as weapons become more perfect, our self-justification also becomes more perfect. As a result, we find ourselves on the edge of the abyss, staring into it not with horror but with a fatal certainty: “We cannot do otherwise. We must!” We leave unaddressed the rhetorical question: what is the price of such a stance and such actions?

So, we have recognized the fundamental duality of human nature: the ingenious builder and the ingenious destroyer, standing at the precipice. History confirms this. But after 1945, something occurred that had rarely happened before. The planet was caught in the grip of two superpowers, each with enough atomic potential to turn the other into radioactive glass. And it was here that our “inherent flaw”—the ability to justify any violence—reached its logical limit.

The Cold War became a unique phenomenon. It was a war without a single shot fired between the main adversaries, yet with hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide—in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola. We fought by proxy, on foreign soil, with the same sacred justification: “We are defending the world from a threat.” And both sides were utterly sincere in this self-justification. Here was our inborn flaw elevated to the rank of state policy.

It would seem that in 1991, this logic should have collapsed. The USSR disintegrated. The ideological battle ended with the victory of one political project. The world became unipolar. A moment arrived that many called the “end of history”—when old contradictions were supposed to fade into the past, ushering in an era of stable reason and cooperation.

But history is a mocker. Instead of disappearing, that very flaw simply changed its clothes. Former adversaries did not become friends. Moreover, the victor—the West—did not even notice how it began to grow weary of its victory. The weariness of war did not vanish with victory. It merely changed form: from fear of the enemy, it transformed into a weariness of responsibility for a unipolar world.

Russia, weakened, humiliated, stripped of its satellites, found itself in a situation of existential humiliation. And this humiliation—for a country that has considered itself an empire for a thousand years—became a new flashpoint where our “flaw of self-justification” ignited with renewed force.

The reasons for the USSR’s collapse are a separate discussion. Economic inefficiency, the arms race that drained the budget, the growing gap between ideology and real life. But there is one deeper, existential reason less often discussed: the empire grew tired of being an empire. The Soviet project exhausted its resource of self-justification. People grew tired of waiting for a bright future that never came and began building their own small, personal futures. It was a victory of the person over the system. Whether this is good or not—everyone has their own answer.

But time has shown that the consequences of this collapse were tragic. After 1991, the winning side—the West—behaved not as a victor building a common world, but as a triumphant power dictating terms to the vanquished. NATO’s eastward expansion, the disregard for Russia’s interests, treating it as a defeated nation rather than a partner. This was not just a political mistake. It was the reproduction of the same flaw by the winner: we justified our dominance as “bringing the light of democracy,” not noticing that we were creating a new abyss. Ecstatic from the feeling of victory and omnipotence, the West, perhaps unknowingly, began to construct an anti-democracy.

And now, in 2026, we are reaping the fruits. We are on the brink again. But this time, with far more terrible toys in our hands.

This was the path that led us here. A path on which human reason, armed with technology but unable to master its own duality, crept closer to the line beyond which there is no return. We have reached it—and now we must understand why we are here and what we intend to do with this knowledge.

This is what the next part will discuss: the present day, the nature of the new confrontation, and whether we have a chance to avoid repeating past mistakes.

Part 2. Deterrence as a Trap

So, 1991. Two superpowers standing against each other with nuclear weapons never crossed the line. The fear of mutual annihilation proved stronger than any ambition. This was the logic of the 20th century—a logic that seemed to work from 1949 onward. The logic of deterring the enemy.

In this logic, the enemy always exists. In our minds, certainly. If the enemy does not exist, they can be designated. Deterrence does not work without an enemy. It loses its meaning. You cannot deter someone who does not threaten you. You cannot prepare for war against someone who is not an adversary. Therefore, the enemy must always exist. Even if they do not, they must be imagined, constructed, and declared.

We tend to think of deterrence as a great human invention—a mechanism that prevented a third world war. But this mechanism has a fundamental flaw rarely discussed aloud: deterrence inherently presupposes an enemy. Furthermore, it requires their creation. Because without an image of a threat, the whole construct collapses.

And this is not just a logical subtlety. It is a fundamental defect in the idea itself. Another projection of the duality discussed in the first part.

The enemy is needed not only to justify military budgets. The enemy is needed for internal consolidation. For self-identification. So the people know against whom they are uniting. The enemy is the glue that holds society together. Without an enemy, a society risks questioning its own structure. Therefore, even in peacetime, the system creates an image of a threat and calls it “strategic planning.”

But if deterrence rests on the fiction of an enemy, what does it actually prevent? War—or merely preparation for it, postponing the war itself until sufficient strength is accumulated and fear weakens or yields to another, stronger emotion?

After the collapse of the USSR, it seemed the logic of deterrence should have become a thing of the past. The enemy is no more. The ideological confrontation is over. One can build a common home. One can demilitarize consciousness. One can move from a balance of fear to a balance of interests. This was a historically unique chance—and humanity missed it.

The West did not integrate Russia into a new security system. It still saw Russia as an enemy—the image was too deeply embedded in institutional memory. NATO expanded. The infrastructure of deterrence moved ever closer to Russian borders. Western elites acted as if the enemy still existed. And by doing so, they brought it back to life.

Russia, observing this, could not stand idle. It responded symmetrically—building up its military potential and restoring the image of the West as a force seeking to deprive it of sovereignty. So the enemy returned. It became more real than it was in 1991. Deterrence started working again.

This was not someone’s malicious intent. It was an inevitability. Because deterrence cannot exist without an enemy. Therefore, the enemy had to be brought back.

Thus, we restored the old world. A world where war is not an exception but a backdrop. A world where we do not prepare for peace—we prepare for war. And if we prepare, the question of war becomes purely rhetorical: not “if” but “when.”

Today, in 2026, this logic has led us into a dead end. The enemy is no longer just a state with missiles. The enemy is now a value system, a cultural code, a digital reality, algorithms shaping consciousness. Against such an enemy, deterrence in the old sense does not work. It cannot be destroyed by a nuclear strike. It cannot be deterred by tanks. It lives in minds, in social networks, in neural networks.

We try to create ever more sophisticated lethal weapons, spending colossal sums, but we are treating a new disease with old medicines. And the old medicines only maintain the symptoms. They do not address the cause.

The reason is that the very strategy of deterrence is a projection of our duality. We have externalized what we cannot accept within ourselves. We created an enemy to avoid confronting our own shadow. We deter them from attacking, but we refuse to admit: war is not a failure of the deterrence system. It is its continuation.

So, is it a dead end?

Yes. If we remain within this logic, we are doomed to endless conflict. To permanent confrontation. To a world always on the brink. Deterrence is not a path to peace, but a path to postponed war.

Perhaps the way out is not to deter better. Perhaps the way out is to stop constructing the enemy. But to do that, we must admit an unpleasant thing.

The enemy is not an external force. The enemy is our inability to live without the image of an enemy.

We create it ourselves in our minds. And if it is not there, we search for it and find it. And we project this image onto someone or something.

But how to break this cycle? One of the main reasons for the priority of deterrence strategy has been and remains the high level of mistrust between countries. This is true. But mistrust does not arise from nothing. First, mistrust breeds deterrence, then deterrence reproduces mistrust. A vicious circle.

History knows examples when this circle was broken. And today we have the opportunity to follow that path.

But more on that in the next part.

Part 3. Trust. Can It Be a Strategy?

A vicious circle: mistrust—deterrence—mistrust—deterrence. And so on. What comes next? War? When everyone is ready. Breaking out of this circle is our existential task. But does it have any sane and real solution? Let us look for an answer.

Searching blindly is pointless. Mistrust between countries and peoples does not arise from a vacuum. It is based on experience—on the memory of wars, broken treaties, betrayals, real and imagined. Mistrust is rational. It is a defense mechanism. Therefore, a simple call to “just trust each other” sounds either naive or cynical.

But mistrust comes in different forms. On one hand, there is caution based on knowledge of history. On the other, there is mistrust as a way of life, a constant need for the image of an enemy. The first is normal. The second is pathology. And it is the second that breeds deterrence.

What is trust in politics? It is not an emotion. Not sympathy. Not naive faith in good intentions. Trust is institutionalized predictability. It is when I may not like my partner and may not even believe their words, but I know how they will behave in a critical situation. And I know that breaking agreements will cost them more than keeping them.

This is how the best examples of breaking the cycle were built.

After World War II, France and Germany did not just “forgive each other.” They created a common market, common steel, common coal. They intertwined their economies so deeply that war between them became not just immoral—it became pointless. This was not trust. This was architecture where mistrust became too expensive.

The Helsinki Accords of 1975 did not end the standoff between the USSR and the West. But they created a system of confidence-building measures: observers, notifications, inspections. The sides remained adversaries but began to better understand each other’s behavior. This reduced not the threat, but uncertainty. And uncertainty is scarier than a threat.

Arms control treaties did not eliminate nuclear weapons. But they created rules for how these weapons exist. And the main rule is predictability.

In all these cases, there was no love. There was mutual weariness of uncertainty. People were tired of fighting—even those who formally won. Victors also grow tired. And in this weariness lies a chance.

But today we see the old architecture of trust destroyed. Treaties are being torn up. Communication channels are closing. The image of the enemy is in demand again—not as a military necessity but as a tool for internal consolidation. We have returned to deterrence in its most primitive form: not as a system of rules, but as a state of permanent threat.

And here is the hardest question.

Can trust be restored without common institutions, a common ideology, or a common worldview? In the past, the cycle was broken either after a common catastrophe, under pressure from a common enemy, or through the presence of a dominant power that imposed the rules.

Today, there is no common enemy to unite us, nor a power to dictate to everyone. A catastrophe that might sober everyone up is not a solution. That is the very thing we seek a solution to avoid.

Therefore, a different path is needed.

It begins with recognizing a simple fact: trust is not built between states. It is built between people who make decisions. And people get tired. People are capable of self-deception, but they are also capable of insight. And sometimes—only sometimes—the fear of the abyss proves stronger than the fear of concession.

Therefore, trust as a strategy is not a call for world peace. It is a set of concrete steps to reduce uncertainty.

The first step is restoring communication channels. Not to embrace, but to rule out accidents. Dialogue is needed not only between national leaders but between peoples. Televised bridges, joint educational and cultural projects, open discussions—anything that prevents the image of the enemy from being the sole source of knowledge about one another.

The second step is common rules in areas where even adversaries are objectively interested in stability: climate, pandemics, space, cyberspace. Many understand this today. But understanding is not enough—it must be institutionalized.

The third step is refusing to use the construction of an enemy as a domestic political tool. This is the hardest step. There is no universal solution here: countries are too different, and each may have its own path. But the search must begin now.

This does not erase contradictions. It does not cancel competition. It does not turn adversaries into friends. But it removes the main poison from the system of relations—the assumption that the enemy always exists, even if we do not see them, and that war with them is inevitable.

Because war only becomes inevitable when we stop searching for an alternative.

A skeptic will say: it all sounds nice, but it doesn’t work. History is a graveyard of peace initiatives. Perhaps. But history also knows moments when weariness of war proved stronger than the thirst for revenge. And this happened not because people became better. But because they became too tired to keep fighting, even in their own minds.

Perhaps this is what is happening now. Slowly. Unevenly. Without guarantees.

We cannot abolish human duality. We cannot abolish fear. We cannot abolish competition. But we can stop making a cult of them.

The enemy is not a necessity. It is a choice. And until we admit this, we will live in a world where deterrence is the only form of existence. A form leading to a dead end.

But if we admit it—then a chance appears. Not for paradise. Not for eternal peace. But for not dying from our own logic.

War does not begin with a shot. It begins when we refuse to see the human being in another person. Deterrence is institutionalized refusal. And trust is a risk. But it is the only risk that can relieve us of the weariness that tires people even in victory.

August 2026.