Victory, Deterrence, and the Logic of War
On many occasions in the period leading to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Hamas had been deterred. Since Operation Guardian of the Walls, he noted, not a single rocket had been fired from Gaza into Israel. The conclusion seemed straightforward: Israel’s combination of denial and punishment—epitomized by Iron Dome and periodic air campaigns—had restored stability.
October 7 shattered that assumption.
The belief that cumulative deterrence—repeated rounds of degrading enemy capabilities and imposing costs—could produce long-term stability reflected a deeper misunderstanding of how deterrence actually works. Tactical quiet is not the same as strategic restraint. A ceasefire is not the same as a defeated enemy.
In the years leading up to October 7, Israel lacked a credible deterrent threat. Deterrence requires more than the ability to intercept rockets or assassinate commanders. It requires a believable signal that continued aggression will provoke consequences so severe that the adversary’s entire strategy collapses. In Hamas’s case, that would have meant convincing its leadership that another war would trigger a ground invasion designed not merely to punish, but to destroy its governing and military capabilities.
Israel never made that signal credible. Instead, it relied on containment: short campaigns, limited aims, and a steady expansion of defensive technologies. Iron Dome became a symbol of security—but also of strategic complacency. Paradoxically, Israel’s extraordinary denial capability reduced the urgency of decisive action. Rockets could be intercepted; life could resume; the conflict could be managed.
But conflicts driven by ideology are rarely “managed.” They are endured.
Recent scholarship on deterrence against terrorist organizations underscores this point. Attrition-based strategies—denial and punishment designed to shape the enemy’s cost-benefit calculus—are rarely sufficient against actors who define victory in symbolic or ideological terms. In asymmetric warfare, attrition often favors the weaker side. Terrorist organizations seek to drag stronger states into prolonged struggles, shifting the contest from military capability to political resolve.
The October 7 attack exposed the limits of cumulative deterrence. Hamas was not deterred because its strategy was not to win militarily in a conventional sense. Its strategy was endurance, disruption, and psychological shock.
So has Israel now achieved decisive victory?
The question echoes a deeper debate within Israeli strategic thought. Zeev Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” doctrine argued that Israel, lacking demographic and geographic depth, must win repeated wars until its enemies recognize the futility of resistance. But what constitutes “winning” in each round? Physical destruction? Regime change? Temporary quiet?
Uri Bar-Joseph long emphasized that decisive defeat—destroying the enemy’s ability to continue fighting—has been central to Israel’s security doctrine. Because Israel relies on a reserve army and a dynamic economy, wars must be short and conclusive. The offensive must transfer the battlefield into enemy territory, dismantle its forces, and restore deterrence swiftly enough to allow demobilization and recovery.
Yet modern conflicts with non-state actors complicate this model.
Political scientist John Mearsheimer distinguishes between strategies of attrition, blitzkrieg, and limited aims. Wars of attrition are slow and costly, seeking to grind down the opponent. Blitzkrieg seeks rapid, decisive victory. But in conflicts between states and terrorist organizations, blitzkrieg is rarely clean or final. Non-state actors disperse, embed within civilian populations, and reframe military defeat as moral victory. They attempt to transform the state’s offensive into a prolonged war of attrition—precisely the terrain on which they thrive.
How, then, does a state escape the attrition trap?
The answer may lie in combining attrition with maneuver—not in the classical armored sense alone, but in targeting what strategist B. H. Liddell Hart called the enemy’s “central nervous system”: its command structures, morale, and governing capacity. Intelligence-driven operations, imaginative strikes on critical nodes, and ground maneuvers that force militants into direct confrontation can strip away the advantages of evasion and civilian embedding. The objective is not just to kill fighters, but to demonstrate the bankruptcy of their strategy.
From this perspective, decisive victory is not merely about destroying weapons stockpiles. It is about teaching. Deterrence is a pedagogical process: it clarifies both capability and will while undermining the adversary’s confidence in its chosen path.
Israel’s recent campaign achieved substantial military successes. Much of Hamas’s infrastructure was dismantled. Senior commanders were eliminated. The organization’s operational capacity was severely degraded.
Yet military success has been accompanied by diplomatic and reputational costs. In global public opinion, Hamas has sought to transform battlefield losses into symbolic gains. For ideologically driven actors, survival itself can be reframed as victory.
This is the paradox of modern deterrence. Destruction alone does not guarantee strategic stability. If the adversary’s ideology sanctifies sacrifice and defeat can be recast as martyrdom, military blows may degrade capability without breaking resolve.
Can Israel therefore claim decisive victory?
If decisive victory means eliminating Hamas’s ability to govern and rearm, the answer remains uncertain. If it means restoring short-term deterrence, perhaps yes. But short-term deterrence was precisely what existed before October 7.
True strategic success may require more than force. It may require ensuring that Hamas is not only weakened militarily but excluded politically. Conditioning Gaza’s reconstruction on disarmament and alternative governance arrangements could achieve what bombs alone cannot: separating the population’s future from Hamas’s continued rule.
In that sense, diplomacy may become the ultimate instrument of deterrence. Military maneuver can destroy capabilities and restore credibility. But only political outcomes can close the cycle of repeated wars.
The lesson of October 7 is not that deterrence is obsolete. It is that deterrence without decisiveness—and decisiveness without political follow-through—produces only temporary quiet. In conflicts where the enemy fights for narrative endurance as much as territorial control, victory must be both military and political.
Otherwise, the next round is only a matter of time.
