A few words of advice on Iran and Gaza

OPINION:

“Carthago delenda est!”

In case your Latin is rusty, that means “Carthage must be destroyed!” Cato the Elder would repeat this demand in every speech he gave in the Roman Senate.

This was between the Second and Third Punic Wars in the 150s B.C. In case your history is rusty too, the Punic Wars were between Rome (you know where that is) and Carthage (on the coast of what is now Tunisia).

The conflict spanned 118 years, from 264 to 146 B.C. Talk about your “endless wars.” As a matter of fact, I intend to — after subjecting you to just three more paragraphs of ancient history.

In the Second Punic War, Carthage was stripped of its navy and many of its territories, including several Mediterranean islands and parts of Spain.

Through trade, however, Carthage became prosperous again. Old man Cato — perhaps remembering the Battle of Cannae in 216 B.C., in which Hannibal killed as many as 70,000 Roman soldiers in a single day — was determined that Carthage never again become a threat.

Around 150 B.C., the Romans found a pretext to demand that the Carthaginians abandon their city and rebuild inland, which would have meant they would no longer be a maritime power. When the Carthaginians refused, Rome laid siege to the city for three years, killing or enslaving the population and leaving behind only ruins.

Fast-forward to 1919, when British economist John Maynard Keynes denounced the Treaty of Versailles as a “Carthaginian peace.” After what would become known as World War I, crushing reparations and territorial losses reduced “Germany to servitude,” he said, and planted the seeds of “vengeance.” These, he predicted, would inevitably sprout into a future conflict.

World War II followed less than a generation later.

“Study history, study history,” Winston Churchill advised. “In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that. He could have ended World War II earlier if he had pursued a ceasefire, a truce or a cessation of hostilities with the Axis powers. Yet, as Cato might have advised, he insisted and announced at the Casablanca Conference in 1943 that the war would end only after America’s enemies accepted “unconditional surrender.”

In a Feb. 12, 1943, radio address, he explained: “In our uncompromising policy, we mean no harm to the common people of the Axis nations. But we do mean to impose punishment and retribution in full upon their guilty, barbaric leaders.”

After the decisive conclusion of the war, the Allies disarmed and occupied Germany and Japan. They then applied not a Carthaginian peace but the Churchillian principle of “In Victory: Magnanimity.”

They rebuilt institutions, implemented the Marshall Plan, and helped transform former enemies into prosperous democracies and security partners while maintaining a military presence to deter Soviet expansion.

Compare that with the subsequent Korean War, which ended with an armistice rather than a resolution. That may have been the least-bad alternative at the time, but the result is that 73 years later, roughly 28,000 American troops remain in South Korea — not as partners in an integrated alliance like NATO but as guardians of a militarized border frozen in time.

Over those decades, North Korea has acquired nuclear weapons. It’s now receiving advanced military technology from Moscow in exchange for supporting Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine with troops and munitions. It is ruled by a dynastic dictator who sounds more bellicose than ever.

In other words, in Korea, the ceasefire established an “endless war.”

Despite that and other abundant evidence, conventional wisdom has held for years that peace can be “processed,” that “conflict resolution” is a science that can be taught in universities, that a policy of “de-escalation” shortens rather than prolongs wars and that an “exit strategy” is as good as a victory.

I’m not arguing against diplomacy. I am arguing that negotiations are only a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

I’m also not saying that studying history and applying it to the world’s current conflicts leads to obvious policy decisions. Statecraft is not so simple.

A few conclusions strike me as self-evident.

Iran’s rulers are self-proclaimed jihadis who for 47 years have stated their genocidal goals with exquisite clarity: “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!”

They are also the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism, and, lately, they have been massacring tens of thousands of unarmed Iranians.

What would Cato advise regarding this theocracy? I think he would say: “Delenda est!”

Similarly, the Hamasniks in the Gaza Strip, also self-proclaimed jihadis despite being seriously battered in the barbaric war they launched, are sticking to their guns — literally and figuratively.

An Israel Defense Forces spokesman told Fox News last week: “Hamas has returned to schools, hospitals and kindergartens and is turning them into military bases. A Hamas commander is in charge of each school in Jabalia in northern Gaza.”

I think Churchill would advise that the “day after” a ceasefire is not the same as “the day after” a victory. So, the time for magnanimity has not arrived.

President Trump and other Western leaders also might want to hear a few words of wisdom from Niccolo Machiavelli, the 16th-century Florentine political and military theorist. A relevant insight from “The Prince”: Delaying a conflict doesn’t make it go away; it only gives your enemy time to get stronger while you lose the advantage of initiative.

• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.