To Way To Defeat The West: Turn Us Against Ourselves
by
Our enemies have figured out that the best way to defeat us is to let our stringent application of our own values destroy us.
The West possesses extraordinary military, economic, and technological power that our adversaries increasingly realize they can’t confront directly. Paradoxically, we live in a moment when we are forced to choose which of our principles matter most, pitting ourselves against one another instead of focusing with laser precision on our threats, playing our opponents’ game rather than our own.
Notice a recurrent pattern: Israel’s right to defend itself versus concern for Palestinian civilians; Ukraine’s sovereignty versus the desire to avoid escalation and endless war; America’s obligations to Israel and the requirement to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power versus yet another Middle Eastern war.
History has a name for a dilemma in which every choice seems to lead somewhere undesirable: Morton’s Fork. Our adversaries have adapted that logic into something more insidious—not by trapping us with bad choices, but by forcing collisions between the principles that define us. When every option requires sacrificing one value to uphold another, they don’t need to defeat our power; they only need to make our very identity the battleground. Adversaries create circumstances in which our principles collide, forcing us to make difficult, sometimes impossible choices.
For instance: Defend Israel, and you’re abandoning humanitarian principles. Stand with Ukraine, and you risk endless war. Strike Iran, and you are accused of pursuing another Middle Eastern conflict; refuse to strike, and you stand accused of abandoning an ally.
This is how adversaries attempt to freeze us in place—afraid to do nothing yet just as afraid to win.
Israel:
Israel may be the clearest example. Israel was attacked in a heinous and cowardly manner. It has a legitimate right to defend itself. Hamas is not a conventional army and purposely embeds within a civilian population, creating the impossibility of upholding norms with an enemy that makes civilian suffering part of its strategy. International law prohibits using civilians as shields and requires distinguishing combatants from civilians — a standard Hamas intentionally ignores. Its strategy is to force Israel into situations where Israel, not Hamas, appears to be the outlaw.
The conflict creates a political trap. Support Israel’s military campaign, and you will be accused of indifference to Palestinian suffering. Demand restrictions on Israel’s conduct, and you give the win to Hamas, effectively denying Israel the right to defend itself, and ultimately, its right to exist.
The Israeli government has become the boogeyman, in a deliberate attempt to nullify Hamas’s October 7th atrocity, claiming an unequal response: all to create a false equivalence excusing the massacre. The argument transforms the conflict from a question about Israel’s security into a proxy battle over Western values.