Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition… // Praise the Lord and swing into position // Can’t afford to be a politician” Frank Loesser, 1942 classic WWII song

Our article, “Welfare, Lawfare, and Western Military Superiority Decline: The Case of Israel’s October 7 War,” has just been published. In it, we ask a simple but painful question:

How is it that a strong, wealthy Israel in 2023–24 struggles to turn military achievements into a clear victory, while a much poorer Israel in 1967 won quickly and decisively?

We look for the “wrong rules”: laws, court doctrines, and enforcement habits that create bad, even dangerous, incentives for politicians, generals, and soldiers.

You’ve surely heard the cliché: “There is no military solution”—for Gaza, for Putin’s aggression, for the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions, for Islamist terror, and so on. Our argument is the opposite: very often, a decisive military victory is the only real solution. It was true against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan; it is even more true against cruel but relatively weak Islamist gangs in Gaza.

Once you say “no” to a military solution, you quietly cancel the idea of decisive victory itself. Then you “no longer need” tough, winning generals. In their place, you promote uniformed bureaucrats and TV‑friendly politicians. In Israel, that means you get polite, media‑safe figures instead of commanders in the tradition of Rafael Eitan (Raful) or Ariel Sharon. This is how a system slowly selects the wrong kind of military leaders.

Why, in Israel and the US, are military lawyers so eager to go after officers and soldiers for supposed violations of “proportionality” in combat—especially when this concept comes from treaties their own countries never ratified? Because enforcing “proportionality” lets them decide who may attack, when, and how, without taking any personal risk. Lawyers with zero combat experience can veto plans drawn up by those who actually fight.

But how moral is it to threaten and prosecute the very people who are risking their lives to protect ours?

Our study, based on a wide range of documents, cases, and reports, leads to practical recommendations: how to rebuild real deterrence, restore security, and protect the freedoms our parents and grandparents fought for.

If you want to understand how a powerful army can be weakened from within—by welfare‑state habits, legal activism, and bad incentives—this article is part of a broader research program in “military economics.” For a deeper dive into these issues, you may also be interested in our course: “How Butter Beats the Guns: National Defense under a Welfare State.”