Imagine the ancient strategist, scroll in hand, peering over a map of the modern Levant and West Asia. Sun Tzu would not be impressed by satellite imagery or precision-guided munitions. He would be horrified by the calendar. In his view, time is the deadliest weapon—and it is the one currently being wielded against every major player in this conflict.
Consider the Iranian theater. What began as a gambit for “decapitation”—the coordinated strikes on nuclear infrastructure and the elimination of Supreme Leader Khamenei—was meant to be a thunderbolt. Yet five months later, nearly 30,000 sorties have failed to deliver the knockout blow. Instead, Iran’s missile production has mysteriously rebounded, and the closure of the Hormuz Strait is impacting a global economy already gasping for air. The strategic objective has quietly morphed from “regime change” to the far more modest goal of merely “reopening the strait.” This is the classic pathology of prolonged war: when the price of victory doubles, the definition of victory halves. America and Israel are no longer fighting to win; they are fighting to stop losing worse.
Then we turn to Gaza, where the quicksand is deepest. On paper, the IDF has accomplished what militaries are supposed to do—tunnels destroyed, commanders eliminated. But insurgencies do not obey paper. Every fallen militant is replaced by a brother or a son, radicalized not by ideology, but by the rubble of his own home. The deeper wound, however, lies outside the battlefield. Israel is bleeding diplomatic capital at a rate that no ally can replenish. Global public opinion has shifted seismically, and the very alliances that guarantee Israel’s long-term survival are fraying. Sun Tzu taught that the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting—not out of mercy, but out of pragmatism. A victory that costs you your international legitimacy and drains your reserves is not a victory; it is a pyrrhic lease on temporary security.
But it is the latest front—the West Bank—that troubles me most. Opening a second internal front while the IDF is already overstretched is not a military move; it is a strategic confession. The West Bank is not Gaza. It is a densely woven tapestry of civilian life and fragile governance, where people are watching their neighbors in the strip and drawing their own conclusions. By expanding operations there, Israel risks converting passive non-combatants into active fighters, extending the conflict indefinitely. Sun Tzu explicitly warned against besieging walled cities without a clear exit strategy; doing so while simultaneously fighting in Gaza and monitoring a volatile Iran is the strategic equivalent of bleeding out from a dozen small cuts.
What haunts me about this moment is the collective refusal to admit the arithmetic. No nation—not the United States, not Israel, not Iran—is emerging from this triangle stronger than when it entered. Treasuries are emptier, arsenals are thinner, reputations are tarnished, and the next generation of adversaries is being forged in the very fires meant to destroy the current one.
Sun Tzu’s greatest lesson was never about how to fight well—it was about knowing when not to. Victory is only valuable if you have a kingdom left to rule when the dust settles. Today, in Gaza, the West Bank, and across the Persian Gulf, everyone is winning the tactical battles. But step back, look at the horizon, and ask honestly: who is winning the war?
The silence, me thinks, is the answer.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 