The Country That Starts the War Is Wrong

That's us.

Tehran, February 28, 2026. (Photo: Getty)

In a world of sovereign nations, the method for determining where justice lies in war is pretty straightforward: The nation that started it is wrong. This is the spirit of international law. Nations may disagree, and nations may have severe disputes, but one nation cannot militarily attack another nation. That is the first and most fundamental rule for a world at peace. The speed with which this central fact gets lost in discussions of our own wars is remarkable.

It is possible, in theory, for wars to be justified by humanitarian reasons—preventing a genocide, for example. In the real world, apart from some beleaguered UN missions, these morally motivated wars are almost impossible to find. The utter insincerity that powerful nations drip when deploying this justification in their rhetoric is easy to see by reflecting on the fact that if humanitarian wars were common, the nations who most often claim their motives are pure, like America and Israel, would in fact be the first targets of the humanitarians.

The simple prohibition on attacking other countries is a product of wisdom that has been repeatedly won via the blood of millions of deceased people. Two world wars in the 20th century demonstrated clearly enough that war is a counterproductive way to conduct international affairs. We lost 100 million people proving to ourselves that, overall, a hard rule against starting wars produces a world preferable to a world in which that rule is not respected. It will always be tempting for a stronger nation to use war against a weaker nation that displeases it in some way. It will always be the case that a nation that starts a war believes that its reasons this time are sound. What we have learned, in the most destructive possible ways, is that we are all better off with a hard and fast rule against making exceptions to the rule.

Opening the door to things like “preemptive wars” to head off some form of (real or concocted) threat has the same effect as saying it is okay to shoot someone if they make you nervous. It causes a lot of people to get shot unnecessarily. As a rule, it produces more bad consequences than good. The judge will explain this to you when he sentences you to prison for murder, after you shot someone who made you nervous. The only difference between nations and individuals in this respect is that there is no judge who can hold nations responsible for their murders.

The childish appeals to emotion used to justify each violation of this rule are always laughably insufficient. Whatever particular outrage—some attack or atrocity or act of oppression—that is waved around to prove that war is necessary will inevitably be far less harmful to humanity than the war itself. Starting a war to rectify some infraction against justice is like burning your house down when you see a roach. There are better ways to address it. Your response is infinitely worse than the thing that you are purporting to avenge.

It is not difficult to understand the implications of this simple framework. A nation that attacks another is wrong. The leaders that order such an attack are doing something bad. They bear the moral responsibility for all of the suffering, death, and destruction that follows. And the military that carries out such a war is acting unjustly. Its soldiers cannot claim to be on the honorable side. Their deaths are a tragic waste. The deaths that they inflict are shameful. The nation that succumbs to the lure of patriotism in order to cheer them on is complicit in a crime against humanity.

Such conclusions seem simple and uncontroversial in cases where we are viewing the situation from some distance. When it involves us, it suddenly becomes difficult to find things stated so plainly. All of the rhetorical contortions start. The flags wave and the soldiers must be respected and so on. This doesn’t make much sense. The urge to fall in line—to rally behind the government, to support the troops, to dwell on the bad things that the subject of our attack may have done to make us angry—is omnipresent, but always misleading. When we’re wrong, we’re wrong. To wait for thousands of deaths and years of self-indulgent reflection before being willing to state this is pretty cowardly.

---

More

• Related reading: We Are the Bad Guys; Nations Are People; The Patriotism Trap; Leave the Military Now.

• The publication you are reading, How Things Work, is 100% funded by readers just like you who choose to become paid subscribers. This is the support that allows me to keep the site free for everyone to read, regardless of income. If you enjoy reading this site, and you are not broke, I would appreciate it if you chip in to keep us rolling on. We can have independent media in America if we all do our part. Thank you for being here.