... even when such violence serves a strategic purpose. When that strategic purpose does not exist, however, the moral case evaporates altogether. Israel now finds itself in a morally untenable situation. Rather than incur the world’s growing wrath, increased economic pressure, and the greater likelihood of future violence, Israel must reverse course and pursue alternatives to its campaign of mass death in Gaza.
—Robert A. Pape, "The Unparalleled Devastation of Gaza: Why Punishing Civilians Has Not Yielded Strategic Success." Foreign Affairs, August 7, 2025.
Robert Pape's article is behind a paywall, unfortunately. (It might almost be worth subscribing to Foreign Affairs for just this article, but I've seen consistently good argumentation in this periodical, even when I disagree.) Briefly, the author draws on his studies of previous wars that included mass destruction of civilian populations to conclude that, even setting morality aside (which he doesn't), such destruction rarely serves the claimed strategic goals.
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I thought to myself, "Robert Pape...why does that name sound familiar?" Here's why: I'd just come across a reference to his book, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, in an article that was very timely in a completely different way, because it referred to the bombing of Hiroshima 80 years ago this past week.
(A personal aside: I've written before on this blog about how the Grinch stole Hiroshima, so I don't intend to repeat those points here. But Judy and I just celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary, and, not by coincidence, our wedding took place on August 9, the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. Several of the guests at our wedding had been taking part in the annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki peace vigil in Boston. I now reflect that we were married on the 35th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and our latest wedding anniversary last week coincided with the 80th anniversary of that bombing. At the actual time of those bombings, my mother was a resident of Kobe, Japan.)
Pape's book was cited in an article by Graham Parsons on the Lawfare site, "The World Learned the Wrong Lesson from Hiroshima." Parsons takes on the arguments for the strategic usefulness of bombing civilian populations, in the face of the popularity of such arguments.
Teaching ethics at West Point for 13 years, I faced this view on a daily basis. Many of my students assumed that ethics is a kind of luxury. It helps service members defend their actions to themselves and to others. But it doesn’t help them win. I remember one student concluding, “Just war theory is a great way to lose a war.”
Parsons refers to the USA's current secretary of defense Pete Hegseth as an extreme proponent of the utter irrelevance of ethics in warfare. So, in the context of the atomic bombings, "Hegseth has chosen his side in the conflict between strategy and morality that Hiroshima supposedly reveals."
Parsons continues,
But Hiroshima reveals no such conflict. Contrary to the conventional discourse, many historians have concluded that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not cause Japan to surrender.
...
What was most consequential in the eyes of Japanese authorities was not the vulnerability of the civilian population to U.S. bombs, but the entrance of the Soviet Union into the war against them. The Soviets surprised the Japanese by declaring war and invading Manchuria on the same day as the bombing of Nagasaki. The Japanese leadership, who knew that their war was unwinnable for some time, was hoping the Soviets would act as a neutral arbiter of negotiations between Japan and the U.S. so that Japan could end the war while avoiding unconditional surrender. When the Soviets declared war, that possibility was off the table and Japanese leaders saw no better option than unconditional surrender.
Honestly, I've never thought about the similarities between the atomic bombings of Japan and the rubbishing of the Gaza Strip. Whether we can draw a parallel between Japanese motives and those of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, I'm struck by a very telling similarity: the apparent assumption that the greatest possible amount of death and destruction serves any kind of defensible goal, even within the logic of warfare. Graham Parsons is right, we've not learned the lessons of Hiroshima, and we're certainly not applying them to today's daily slaughter of Palestinians.
Reality check: drawing from research published in The Lancet, Robert Pape writes,
In sum, the authors of the study suggested that Israel’s campaign has caused at least an additional 26,000 Palestinian deaths and perhaps over 120,000 additional deaths, with the true death toll possibly exceeding 186,000. Taking that into account, as of late July 2025, Israel’s war in Gaza has led to the deaths of between five to ten percent of the prewar population of about 2.2 million. This represents an unprecedented slaughter. Israel’s campaign in Gaza is the most lethal case of a Western democracy using the punishment of civilians as a tactic of war.
Present tense: yesterday's compiled "impact snapshot" from the Gaza Strip.
Omer Bartov: Genocide is the only term that fits.
Another case study of refusals to learn: Timothy Snyder on "Ultima Thule" in Anchorage, Alaska.
The 80th anniversary and Nagasaki's twin bells. (Also see my Nagasaki shorts post.)
While on the trail of my mother's life in Japan, we made a brief visit to Hiroshima.
The Friends Incubator for Public Ministry and Tom Hamm on John Woolman and the "ministry of making uncomfortable connections...."
Elderchaplain Greg Morgan and the unmet needs of caregivers.
The Bullet Blues Band, Dnipro, Ukraine. "Telephone Blues."
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