Pyrrhus, Petraeus, Putin and the Pitfalls of Ending a War
Most wars end badly – and commanders who ignore history’s warnings risk repeating its worst mistakes.
Source: Lowy Institute · September 21, 2026 at 3:32 PM · AI-assisted report
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ROME, 21 SEPTEMBER 2026 —
Lowy Institute analysis published on Saturday warns that historical precedents offer few clean templates for ending modern conflicts, citing a pattern of messy, protracted conclusions that often sow seeds for future instability.
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The Sydney-based think tank’s examination of war terminations from ancient Greece to Vietnam argues that commanders and political leaders consistently underestimate the difficulty of translating battlefield outcomes into durable political settlements, a dynamic directly relevant to current conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Mark Pierce, a former diplomat and the article’s author, writes that the “Platonic form” of a clean surrender — exemplified by Japan aboard the USS Missouri in 1945 — is the exception rather than the rule.
More common are outcomes like the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War but only after three decades of devastation, or the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which resolved few of the geopolitical tensions that caused the First World War while creating borders, reparations schedules and grievances that contributed to the second.
The analysis draws a direct line to the present through the experience of former US General David Petraeus, who during the Iraq war famously asked: “tell me how this ends.” Pierce suggests the same question confronts leadership in Kyiv and Moscow today.
The piece recounts how King Pyrrhus of Epirus won two major battles against Rome in 280 and 279 BCE only to recognise he could not sustain the losses, giving rise to the term “Pyrrhic victory” — a fate Pierce compares to Britain’s exhaustion in 1945 and France’s financial collapse after funding the American War of Independence.
Historical failures of strategic imagination feature prominently. Athens lost the Peloponnesian War in a single afternoon in 405 BCE when its generals beached their fleet, allowing Sparta to destroy it — a blunder Pierce likens to the British navy’s near-catastrophe at Jutland in 1916 and Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg in 1863.
The War of Jenkins’ Ear, triggered in 1739 by the exhibition of a severed ear in the British parliament, escalated into the Europe-wide War of the Austrian Succession and concluded with no territorial or material gains for any participant.
The 1956 Suez crisis illustrates the peril of misaligned alliances: Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt without US backing, forcing a humiliating withdrawal. Pierce offers an earlier parallel in 18th-century North American Indigenous nations who allied with either British or American forces without recognising that both adversaries ultimately sought their lands.
On the question of exit strategies, the analysis revisits US Senator George Aiken’s 1966 prescription for Vietnam: “declare victory and go home.” Aiken acknowledged the proposal was “far-fetched” but argued “nothing else has worked.” Pierce notes that acknowledging the absence of viable alternatives would be “chastening for any leader — certainly one as proud and anxious as Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam,” and observes that the temptation to frame withdrawal as victory resurfaced during the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions.
The piece concludes by suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin might eventually confront the same calculus in Ukraine, where the historical record indicates that wars rarely end on the terms or timelines their instigators envision.