We can no longer fight wars by rules our enemies reject.

The West’s moral high ground is a death trap. Restraint against ruthless adversaries only cedes advantage, costs lives, and undermines long-term security.

IDF forces reviewing battle plans (photo: IDF/X)

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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Baseball fans vividly remember the so-called “Steroid Era,” a period marked by widespread, largely unchecked use of performance-enhancing drugs that inflated player performance and distorted the game.

Not every player used these drugs, but those who stayed clean were automatically at a disadvantage, forced to compete against opponents who took shortcuts that gave them superhuman power, ignored the rules entirely, and benefited from the league’s inaction to monitor and discipline. Every hesitation, every commitment to fairness, became an advantage for the cheaters. The playing field was no longer level — and continuing to play as though it were only guaranteed defeat.

This dynamic is not limited to sports. In modern conflict, the West faces adversaries who play by a similarly skewed set of rules, exploiting restraint while flouting norms. Fighting as though the battlefield were fair, while enemies deliberately violate every standard, is the strategic equivalent of stepping onto the field against steroid-enhanced opponents while bound by rules they do not follow.

From insurgent groups in the Middle East to state-backed militias and terror networks, the dominant model of conflict facing Western powers today is asymmetrical by design. It is not a bug of modern warfare; it is the strategy. These adversaries do not seek parity on the battlefield. They seek advantage everywhere else: in moral confusion, in media narratives, in legal gray zones, and most of all, in the West’s own restraint.

They hide behind civilians. They embed military assets in hospitals, schools, and residential neighborhoods. They deliberately blur the line between combatant and non-combatant. And when the inevitable response comes, they weaponize the consequences — turning civilian suffering into a strategic asset.

This is not incidental; it is the entire playbook. Iraq and Afghanistan offered grim proof: Despite superior technology, training, and firepower, Western forces were repeatedly hamstrung by adversaries blending into civilian populations, exploiting rules of engagement designed for symmetric wars. Israel’s campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza further illustrate the operational dilemmas posed when adversaries treat hospitals, homes, and schools as battlegrounds, knowing the IDF will hesitate to strike. These are not anomalies; they are the modern rules of war.

The Iranian regime is no different. As the chief patron of Hezbollah, Hamas, and a network of other state-sponsored terror proxies, it operates by the same rules — or rather, the same lack of rules — as these groups. We should not expect restraint, fairness, or adherence to international norms from a regime that has made asymmetry and deception central to its strategy, using proxies and civilian populations alike to achieve its objectives while exploiting the West’s self-imposed limits.

The West, currently led by the U.S. and Israel, continues to fight as though maintaining a moral high ground — defined in increasingly absolutist terms — will somehow compensate for a structural disadvantage. We hold ourselves to standards our enemies explicitly reject. We conduct operations with layers of legal review, public scrutiny, and political hesitation that our adversaries neither recognize nor respect. This is not moral superiority; it is strategic asymmetry, and it is being exploited.

There is a term for this dynamic: suicidal empathy. It is the belief that one side can indefinitely absorb the costs of restraint while the other side weaponizes that restraint without consequence. It assumes that values can substitute for victory, that intentions can outweigh outcomes, and that adhering to rules unilaterally will eventually compel reciprocity.

History offers little evidence for any of this. In asymmetrical conflicts, the side that imposes constraints on itself while facing an unconstrained opponent is not demonstrating strength; it is ceding initiative. Every hesitation becomes an opportunity. Every delayed response becomes a signal. Every self-imposed limitation becomes a tactical advantage for the other side.

This does not mean abandoning morality. It means redefining it within the reality of the conflict. Western morality and international law, including the Geneva Conventions, were crafted for symmetric warfare between states. Modern adversaries exploit the gap between law and reality. Treating them as if they will follow rules is not moral; it is operational self-sabotage.

The primary moral obligation of any state is to protect its citizens. When adversaries deliberately target civilians and use their own populations as shields, the ethical equation changes. Civilian harm does not disappear, but it cannot be assigned in a vacuum that ignores intent, strategy, and causality. If one side systematically embeds military operations within civilian infrastructure, that infrastructure is no longer purely civilian in function. If one side deliberately attacks population centers, the expectation of immunity for its own assets becomes untenable. War does not become clean, but pretending it can remain clean under such conditions is a dangerous illusion.

So too is the notion that it is our responsibility to safeguard the civilians of an enemy who deliberately places them in harm’s way. When adversaries hide behind hospitals, schools, and residential neighborhoods, they make a calculated choice: to use their own population as a shield, turning human life into a strategic asset. The ethical obligation of the West lies first with our own citizens, not with those who are being exploited as instruments of war. Attempting to protect enemy civilians at the cost of strategic effectiveness is not morality; it is self-inflicted vulnerability.

The West must also demand more from its own media. In asymmetrical conflicts, images and stories are powerful weapons, and adversaries know it. Photos of destroyed buildings, injured civilians, or suffering children are carefully curated and circulated to manipulate perception, erode public will, and constrain military options.

Western media cannot simply publish these images carte blanche, as if context, intent, and strategy are irrelevant. Ethical journalism must include scrutiny: questioning the source, the circumstances, and the purpose behind what is being shown. Failing to do so hands narrative control to the enemy and amplifies the very advantages they have engineered. In this war of perception, discernment is as essential as firepower.

The West must adapt — not by descending into lawlessness, but by aligning our conduct with the realities of the battlefield we actually face, not the one we wish existed. This requires clarity: The West must explicitly declare that the use of human shields and civilian infrastructure for military purposes fundamentally alters the rules of engagement.

Ambiguity only benefits those who exploit it.

It requires consistency. If certain tactics are deemed unacceptable, the consequences for using them must be credible and enforced. Selective outrage and uneven application of standards erode deterrence.

It requires resilience. Western societies must be prepared to withstand the informational and psychological dimensions of asymmetrical warfare. Adversaries are not just fighting on the ground; they are fighting for perception, legitimacy, and narrative dominance.

And it requires resolve. The greatest advantage asymmetrical actors have is the assumption that the West will eventually lose the will to fight on terms that are uncomfortable, complex, and morally fraught. That assumption must be proven wrong.

There is also the economic dimension to asymmetrical conflict, where adversaries exploit restraint not just on the battlefield but in markets, energy, and supply chains to gain leverage over the West. A conflict might spike oil and gas prices, disrupt trade, or create inflationary pressure; these shocks are part of the adversary’s strategy, designed to make Western societies flinch.

We must recognize that tolerating temporary economic pain is far preferable to ceding permanent strategic advantage. Three months of hardship is a small price to pay for 15 years (or more) of security, deterrence, and stability. Economies can recover; an enemy that survives can rebuild and exploit restraint indefinitely. The moral and economic calculus must align: Short-term discomfort is not failure, it is investment in long-term survival and freedom.

The uncomfortable truth is that wars are not won by the side that feels the most righteous. They are won by the side that best understands the nature of the conflict and adapts accordingly.

The West is not facing enemies who accidentally violate norms. It is facing enemies who have built their entire strategy around those violations. Continuing to fight as though this asymmetry does not exist is not principled; it is self-defeating.

In a world where others fight without conscience, conscience alone is a weapon that cannot win. And in the long run, this failure to adapt is far more dangerous — to both Western societies and the very civilians those principles are meant to protect.

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