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When is a win not a win?
When the victory is flawed and pyrrhic. It is not considered a win because the conflict was so costly, protracted, and devastating in its costs and loss of life that it amounts to a defeat.
Sun Tzu rated this type of win as the worst-case outcome. His best-case win is “to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill," by attacking strategy and alliances. However, is his best strategy a supreme victory or the opening salvo of a pyrrhic win and devastating loss?
How do you know from the beginning which kind of win or loss it will be, or how it will end?
Though Sun Tzu's book, The Art of War, is famous for its war strategies and assumption of victories, victory—no matter the kind—is not guaranteed, especially not in his time of never-ending wars, the Warring States period.
What's my point?
Sun Tzu was a general from ancient China, not a diplomat. During his time, everyone was constantly at war, engaged in never-ending conflicts.
However, in times of peace, any kind of attack against strategies and alliances is aggression and opens the door to war.
Even if you win by destabilizing your chosen enemy because you decided to attack, there is no guarantee that what rises in its place will be better, especially if peace is replaced by aggressors who are ruthless in their determination to win at any cost.
Furthermore, if human history is any indication, the aggressor must bear the consequences of the conflict as the one who started the aggression.
For example, during World War II, Imperial Japan was the aggressor, and its attacks on China and neighboring territories made it responsible for the consequences of those attacks, including harm and crimes against humanity.
Ask China today if all is forgiven and the Imperial Japanese are no longer infamous for their atrocities. See what happens.
My point is that the consequences of war do not end with the signing of concessions; the scars linger for the victims, while the aggressors remain infamous.
So, what was won? Honor? Prosperity? Peace?
Aggressors, no matter what kind of victory they achieve, will always live in infamy, and any victory they claim will always be pyrrhic and flawed.
No matter what happens, the aggressor will lose more than honor and face. What is truly lost is their humanity, through harm, atrocities, and callous disregard for life. Thus, the aggressors will lose the respect and standing of the world and be remembered with horror and disgrace.
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Note: Any wins in unsustainable systems will be apocalyptic, especially when the system inevitably implodes.
At best, such wins are temporarily pyrrhic victories; and in the end, the pyrrhic wins will lead unavoidably to catastrophic outcomes and dystopian nightmares.
Believe it or not, the more pyrrhic wins in unsustainable systems will inevitably cause greater catastrophic losses.
For example, Ponzi schemes are not sustainable. The bigger it gets, the more idiots you need to maintain the mirage. Much like subprime mortgages, the bigger the bubble, the greater the wipeout.
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