New Delhi, Nov. 6 -- In Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning novel, Wolf Hall, Thomas Cromwell says: "No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.' You enter into one and it uses up all the money you've got, and then it breaks you and bankrupts you."
Although wars are one of the best ways for a leader to shore up his sagging popularity, there are numerous examples of leaders who have gone to war at the peril of ordinary people. Benjamin Netanyahu has used it to remain in power for 17 years, totally disregarding Israel's international isolation and its adverse impact on the economy. Or consider Donald Trump, who vowed to decimate Iran.
Wars can provide short-term relief, but then the law of diminishing returns sets in when they are prolonged, as is evident from the recent US midterm elections and Israeli parliamentary polls. The results show that people in the US and Israel have rejected senseless wars. Both Trump and Netanyahu have been so completely out of touch with reality that there was speculation that they might reignite the Iran war to win elections.
The recent blue wave in the US midterm elections and the electoral setback suffered by Netanyahu both demonstrate the growing difficulty of sustaining prolonged military campaigns without making ordinary citizens bear their economic consequences.
Inflation and the cost of living were overwhelmingly the defining issues for voters in the midterm elections. Both Vice-President JD Vance and Trump publicly acknowledged the severe impact these economic issues had on the Republican Party's defeat.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz captured this predicament in an interview with the Italian news agency ANSA in March 2026. "The United States already had a cost-of-living crisis, and now it's even more severe," he observed. He warned that rising oil and gas prices could spread through supply chains, eventually making food, aluminium and other raw materials more expensive. The conflict, in his assessment, was making an existing economic problem considerably worse.
The war with Iran added another dimension to voters' frustrations. According to Vance, voters who had supported Trump in 2024 but switched to the Democrats in 2026 wanted the administration to end the war, focus on the cost of living and inflation, put America first and reconsider its relationship with Israel.
In Israel, however, the circumstances were very different. The continuous three-year military campaign has pushed Israeli society to a breaking point, sparking unprecedented domestic resistance.
Ordinary Israelis were frustrated with Netanyahu's perceived strategy of using endless conflict to prolong his political survival. Massive street protests led by hostage families have openly accused the prime minister of prioritising his coalition over a ceasefire, while a severe "quiet revolt" has fractured the military, as exhausted reservists increasingly skip call-ups, crippled by continuous tours of duty, economic ruin and the total absence of a post-war diplomatic exit strategy.
This domestic rage culminated in a historic political rebuke during the October 2026 general election, shattering Netanyahu's hold on the government. Voters decisively denied his right-wing bloc a Knesset majority, shifting their support to opposition figures such as former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, who campaigned explicitly on restoring government accountability and ending the permanent state of emergency. By rejecting Netanyahu's vision of perpetual war at the ballot box, the Israeli electorate sent an unmistakable message: the human, social and democratic toll of an open-ended conflict has become entirely unsustainable for the nation.
History reminds us that using war as an instrument of foreign policy has rarely worked. More importantly, neither the US nor Israel had a clear post-war diplomatic framework or exit strategy. The Iran war and the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan serve as a striking example.
The American midterm results and the electoral setback suffered by Netanyahu underline an uncomfortable reality for leaders who wage prolonged wars: the battlefield may be thousands of miles away, but the economic consequences eventually arrive at the doorstep of ordinary people. And when they do, voters have a way of making their displeasure felt at the ballot box, as seen in the US and Israel.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is a senior journalist
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.