The Sting Doctrine

(JNS) — “There’s no such thing as a winnable war

It’s a lie we don’t believe anymore …

“We share the same biology, regardless of ideology

But what might save us, me and you

Is if the Russians love their children, too.”

So sang Sting.

He was, and I think he still is, a marvelous singer. But the naïve notions expressed in that 1985 song are long past their sell-by date.

Start with the Russians.

President Vladimir Putin firmly believes his war of conquest against Ukraine is winnable. Russians who love their children have no say in the matter. As for Ukrainian parents, roughly 20,000 of their children have been abducted into Russia to be raised as Russians.

Moving on to China. President Xi Jinping has told his military to be prepared to wage war by 2027. His goal is to conquer Taiwan, a democratic society that doesn’t want to be crushed under a Communist jackboot. Do Chinese parents love their children—including those serving in the People’s Liberation Army? I’m sure they do, but brutal rulers don’t take direction from those they rule.

Iran’s dictator, Ali Khamenei, has been fighting a war against Israel for years—primarily using Arab militias in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. He aims to eradicate Israel and establish a modern Muslim empire that will end the global pre-eminence of the United States. At home, his thugs have been murdering, beating and blinding Iranian children—parental love notwithstanding.

I’ll note, too, that the ideologies of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas’s Yahyah Sinwar trumped their biologies until warfighters from free nations terminated their biological functions.

It’s disappointing that so many Western political and thought leaders subscribe to the Sting Doctrine, telling themselves that our enemies just have “grievances” that we must “address.”

They think that peace, like cheese, can be processed.

The quaint notion that there are “no military solutions,” only “diplomatic solutions” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It’s after the military defeat of an enemy that diplomats can be most useful, building political structures atop the rubble. That’s how World War II ended.

The mistake too many diplomats make is to regard negotiations as an end rather than a means. That inclination is reinforced when they are rewarded for concluding flawed agreements based on attempts to appease sworn enemies.

I mentioned World War II. Now consider the next war the United States fought 71 years ago on the Korean peninsula. It culminated in a ceasefire, an armistice, a stalemate.

After that came decades of negotiations intended to prevent the dynastic dictatorship in Pyongyang from acquiring nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. Deals were cut. Those deals all failed.

Yet the congressionally funded United States Institute of Peace continues to argue that “political-military dialogue with North Korea is key to defusing military tensions and reducing nuclear risks.”

Last week, Kim Jong-un test-fired a new and improved ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) with the range to strike anywhere on the U.S. mainland. That elicited a statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken “strongly urging” Kim to “cease” his “destabilizing actions that threaten peace and security.” You think he took that to heart?

Kim has sent 10,000 troops to help Putin conquer Ukraine. The munitions he’s providing, including more than 9 million artillery shells, will be even more impactful.

In return for that favor, there is a “high chance,” according to South Korea’s defense minister, that Kim will ask Putin for technology useful for making tactical nukes and/or improving ICBMs.

Putin also may be giving such technology to Khamenei as a quid pro quo for the hundreds of Iranian drones and ballistic missiles he’s received from Tehran. 

A few days ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Tehran and Moscow will sign a defense cooperation treaty “in the near future.”

Another example: The love that Gazan parents feel for their children did not prevent Hamas from invading Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and carrying out a barbaric pogrom, thereby initiating a brutal war in which Gazan children have been forced to serve as Hamas’s human shields.

On Oct. 8, 2023, Hezbollah began firing missiles at northern Israel from Lebanon, initiating a second front in the same war.

Israeli troops are now in Southern Lebanon, where they’ve found an extensive, elaborate and expensive system of tunnels that were intended to be used in Hezbollah’s “Conquer the Galilee” plan—an attack on Israel that would have been similar to that carried out by Hamas.

This underground fortress—containing command centers, thousands of missiles, drones and explosive devices—“would not exist were it not for the expertise, engineering, equipment, advisers and technicians provided by North Korea,” according to Bruce E. Bechtol, president of the International Council on Korean Studies.

Twice this year, Khamenei also has attacked Israel directly. First, on April 13, a barrage of more than 300 drones and ballistic missiles. Then, on Oct. 1, he launched from Iranian soil some 200 ballistic missiles at Israeli population centers. Thanks to Israel’s high-technology air-defense system and assistance from the United States, most were intercepted.

On Oct. 25, Israel struck back against Tehran, hitting only military targets and knocking out the S-300 air defense systems supplied by Putin.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters: “We don’t think that Iran should or needs to respond.” She added that opportunities now exist “to use diplomacy to dial down tensions in the region.”

But that’s not on Khamenei’s to-do list. On Saturday, he threatened a “crushing response” to the “enemies, both the USA and the Zionist regime.

Contra Sting, Khamenei thinks his war is winnable. The lesson he needs to be taught is that it’s also losable.

This originally appeared in The Washington Times.