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Believe it or not, when you experience diminishing returns, no matter how much time, talent, and treasure you invest, you will receive progressively less in return.
When you experience unsustainable returns, no matter how much time, talent, and treasure you invest, you will receive less than nothing in return, leading to inevitable collapse and ruin.
Delusional and abusive aggressors may believe that eliminating the opposition will resolve irrecoverable losses, but doing so does nothing to address unsustainable problems.
As in Syria, such a system will inevitably implode, resulting in catastrophic failures and social and economic collapse.
Unfortunately, the survival of some societies depends on ignorant and highly abusive aggressors recognizing the problem of unsustainability, leaving only a slim hope of repairing the broken system.
Again, pyrrhic victories in unsustainable systems draw more people into wasting additional time, talent, and treasure on what will ultimately result in greater, inevitable, and catastrophic failures (the more people deceived, the greater the apocalyptic possibilities)—and an inability to retain those victories, gains, or conquests amid total socioeconomic devastation, ultimately leading to even greater losses and consequences.
Does it matter how many territories are initially conquered if they cannot be held?
Believe it or not, victories that cannot be sustained are, in essence, pyrrhic and grandiose, as they lead to greater overextension and overestimation of temporary power, particularly when resources are stretched beyond sustainable and reasonable limits.
Battles continue until the war ends in victory or defeat, and the losing side must ultimately cede the territories it initially won.
For example, after World War I, Germany ceded about 13 percent of its European territory and 100 percent of its colonial empire in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
During World War II, although France, Poland, and surrounding territories were initially conquered, Germany could not retain control of them. After the war, it lost roughly 25 percent (about one-quarter) of its pre-1937 landmass, and Germany was divided into East and West.
Did the aggressors in Germany learn their lesson after the First World War?
No, because the Leipzig War Crimes Trials were a joke—a slap on the wrist. It enabled the aggressors to start another world war.
Were the Nuremberg Trials any better?
That remains to be seen. Although the trials successfully held the aggressors who started the war accountable for crimes against humanity, resulting in death sentences, life imprisonment, and prison terms, they did not fully address the root causes of aggression or its aftermath.
The problem is that aggressors seldom learn from past mistakes or history, and they often fail to recognize their wrongdoing when committing acts of aggression, abusing their power, or harming others to achieve selfish gains.
Tragically, the greater the pyrrhic victories in unsustainable systems, the greater the catastrophic losses, economic devastation, dystopian nightmares, and crimes against humanity.
If the world wishes to avoid another world war, we must all work together to ensure that the darkest chapters of history do not repeat themselves through aggressors who cause harm and initiate hostilities, thereby creating unsustainable systems with unimaginable and irrecoverable losses.
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