For citation, please use:
Lukyanov, F.A., 2026. Necessity by Choice. Russia in Global Affairs, 24(3), pp. 5–8. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2026-24-3-5-8
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, American commentator Charles Krauthammer juxtaposed ‘wars of necessity’ (defense of territory and national survival) to ‘wars of choice.’ Richard Haas classified the 2003 invasion in Iraq as a war of choice, launched by the U.S. administration not to eliminate real threats, but for political and ideological reasons. By definition, wars of necessity were responses to attacks, while wars of choice were preventive.
The discussion was a product of its time, reflecting internal U.S. political struggles. Broader discussions of ‘just war’ have accompanied social science for centuries. But until the UN Charter declared aggressive wars illegal, judgement of wars was largely a theoretical exercise. Just or unjust, they were widely used tools, ‘the continuation of politics by other means.’
The destruction wrought by the two World Wars, and the development of nuclear weapons, prompted the post-1945 liberal world order to make military force a matter of morality and ideology and minimize its use. The erosion of this intention is one cause of the liberal order’s crisis.
When the balance of power disappeared along with the USSR, the West’s sense of complete moral and political righteousness drove it to remold humanity in its own (allegedly, uniquely valid) image—by any means necessary, including military ones. Within the liberal paradigm, military force became legitimate when used by those ‘on the right side of history.’
The liberal order’s exhaustion has eliminated this ideological-normative framework, but left military force once again in its classical function—as a tool for positioning states in a disorderly international environment. This environment erases the choice/necessity dichotomy: the decision to launch a war is based on the government’s assessment of the ever-changing situation and respective political choice—or on the perception that it has no choice.
The formation of the new international order is a long and chaotic process. Nuclear weapons are prolonging it, as they prevent (at least so far) a decisive showdown. And as long as the process continues, the use of military force will be predicated on ever-changing calculations of what will provide advantages in the present and (still unknowable) future order. The accuracy of these calculations—and whether a war was ‘of necessity’ or ‘of choice’—is revealed only by a campaign’s outcome.
This status quo may be quite stable and even enduring, but rarely resolves the contradictions that have caused the conflict. The ability and willingness to wage a long war of attrition are a rarity, even an exception, since in the absence of obvious victory such wars entail rapidly growing costs without achievement of the declared objective.
This is a product of today’s realities. The versatility of power—new methods of warfare, ‘weaponization’ of economic ties, the inability to impose a total embargo, flexible concentration of resources for asymmetric response, and state resilience—complicate the balance of power and often benefit the weaker party.
This is also a return to the pre-liberal world order, in which preventive actions were considered a natural part of military strategy.
External threats impose the necessity of choice upon a state. And the choice of necessity is based not only on external circumstances, but on the state’s various baggage: its capabilities, strategic traditions, history, and culture. In this sense, the choice of imperative truly is a civilizational choice, a test of a civilization’s strength and ability to cope with the global situation.
