Why do wars sometimes end with the winning side “settling” for a peace treaty or money instead of simply capturing the opposing country?
An example of this could be the The Treaty of Versailles
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Wars happen when two or more groups of people want conflicting things and are willing to use violence to try to force what they want.
Wars end when one or both groups decide that fighting is no longer worth it. Maybe that’s because one side has been completely wiped out or subjugated. More frequently, it’s because one or both sides decide to concede enough of what the other wants that the cost of continuing to fight outweighs any benefit the other could obtain from doing so.
And ultimately, not every war is about trying to take over another country. The victor is the one who gets all or most of what they want in the end, and what they want varies from war to war. Sometimes it’s taking over more territory. Frequently it’s something else entirely.
Well, I think one of the biggest factors would be dealing with the populace that lives in the newly gained territory. The locale would be hostile and resistant to your government and citizens. This can also spark the beginning of resistance / separatist movements that would cause instability (very bad for investors) and extending the violence, further degrading your country’s international image.
Often wars do end with the winning country taking territory. The whole purpose behind WW II for Germany was “Lebensraum” or “living space”, they were taking more territory for their citizens.
This issue with taking territory is the people living there. Either they are killed, expelled or become citizens. The first two options aren’t really acceptable in todays world. The people aren’t generally welcomed as new citizens, and don’t want to be citizens of the new country either, so you get continued fighting.
In the past the new territory could be taken as a colony, and then the winning country would get the economic benefits but not have to take on new citizens. This is also no longer seen as ‘ok’.
Have you been playing Total War?
Capturing a country is not usually the goal of a war. Occupations and annexations are costly and unpopular both with citizens and in international politics. Then you have a rebellious population to deal with. Not to mention a nation will fight back a lot harder when the conflict is existential.
Wars are usually fought for a strategic objective. You think the Russians have too much influence in Syria so you fight or fund a war to put your preferred regime in place and get them to back down.
Wars take a huge toll on both sides. WW 1 has an estimated 8 million losses on one side (Central Powers) and 9 million on the other, for example.
Armies get weaker, both numerically and psychologically, logistics becomes more complicated and expensive, economies suffer a lot from all the expenses (and, often, supply decreases), civilians protest, maybe even politicians start to back down. At some point a peace treaty is the only way out.
Or maybe the winning party doesn’t want to burn the country to the ground, but the opposing force fights so hard that the winning army tries to get an armistice to get out of this in reasonable terms.
The winning side doesn’t always want to absorb the losing side. Maybe they want the other side to stop stealing their goats. No need to take over an entire other country just for that.
Additionally, some wars don’t have a winner and loser, so the treaty lets the conflict end with terms that both sides can live with.
Because often times conquering an entire nation is just not desirable. France would have no desire to conquer all of Germany in 1919. It would add 60 million Germans to France, which at the time only had a population of 40 million. Why would the French people want to add Germans to their country only to be outnumbered by them? There wouldn’t have been a difference between France conquering Germany and Germany conquering France. Furthermore, France would have to administer all these German territories they just occupied. Integrating Alsace-Lorraine into Germany in 1871 took almost 15 years, and the only reason it didn’t take France that long was because they filled the state with troops after 1918.
Same with America and Japan. America already had issues administering the Philippines, how would they have been able to administer an annexed Japan?
What about when there aren’t just two sides to a conflict? In 1945, Germany was at war with almost every country in the world. Would each country get a slice of Germany? Would one country chosen at random get all of Germany?
The administrative reason was the main reason in ancient times. It was just too much work and too much hassle to administer that much territory. The only times such large amounts of land were conquered in such a short amount of time was when the land was empty of people, such as Caesar’s conquest of Gaul or the Russian conquest of Siberia.
Ever since the ukrainian war started, Perun, a youtuber with some military background has been making weekly videos about different military topics.
Corruption, acquisition of new weapons, strategy, propaganda etc.
In his latest video, he was talking exactly about why wars end the way they do.
[this is the video](https://youtu.be/PnvJzup8i-c)
The powerpoint presentations are always around 1h or a little longer, but they are absolutely worth it
What do you mean by “capturing” the opposing country? Like conquering it permanently? Annexing it and making it your own territory?
Because conquest is a lot of work, and it may not even be possible as a long-term solution. You may not even be able to capture the country in the first place, you’ve merely exhausted the enemy and gotten them to agree to just stop fighting. Like in the current Ukraine War. If Ukraine gets very lucky, they may be able to push the Russians entirely out of their country. But there’s no scenario where Ukraine would be able to turn it around and go *conquer Russia*. They’re just not that big and powerful. Nor do they really want to, because again, conquest is a lot of work.
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