In March 2004, four U.S. private contractors were killed, burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah, Iraq. Marine officers on the ground recommended cordoning off the town - there was no tactical need to capture or administer it. But senior Army officials and the Bush administration decided Fallujah had to be taught a lesson because American honor had been offended. The subsequent assault produced dozens of Marine casualties and led to many more in a second battle that November.
Robert D. Kaplan, writing in Foreign Affairs, has used the Fallujah episode to illustrate a pattern that stretches back to antiquity, as "Hvylya" reports. The Greek historian Thucydides identified honor as a cause for conflict between states. Kaplan argued that the impulse to react violently to injured pride - what he calls "false honor" - has been propelling great and small powers into unnecessary wars since the dawn of history.
The lesson, Kaplan wrote, is that "the greater the power, the more it has to discipline itself." Restraint is not weakness; it is the precondition for avoiding the kind of escalatory spiral that turns a small military action into a grinding, open-ended conflict. Avoiding small and even middle-sized wars - conflicts Kaplan defines as big enough to cause immense damage but too small to rally the nation - "starts with this kind of restraint."
Kaplan flagged this as a particular risk with the current president. "Trump has a dangerous tendency to react to personal insults, which could lead to military overreaction," he wrote. In a world where states' honor is regularly offended - through hostage-taking, embassy sieges, or provocative statements - the temptation to respond with force is constant. Escalatory, emotional rhetoric can propel small wars into becoming middle-sized ones.
The Fallujah case is especially instructive because it was entirely avoidable. Local commanders understood the situation and recommended the correct course of action. The decision to override them came from officials operating on pride rather than strategy. Kaplan's argument is that this dynamic - leaders choosing vengeance over restraint, ignoring the professionals closest to the ground - is one of the most reliable predictors of how small wars grow into catastrophes.
Also read: Trump Reveals What Role He Wants in Choosing Iran's Next Leader