There is a point on every battlefield — physical or diplomatic — where the piece you were playing stops being a piece and starts being meat. Sometimes it’s a trench line in Donbas. Sometimes it’s a music festival tent near Gaza. Sometimes it’s a village in the Don River basin you thought you could hold forever with an AK and a prayer.
We talk a lot these days about war crimes and genocide — words that do mean something, but whose meaning is getting thinner the longer they’re deployed as hashtags and not as final judgments. People forget that all war is atrocity by design. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be war — it would be chess with tea and biscuits. But once you pick up the rifle or the rocket or the diplomatic saber, you’ve agreed to the ancient contract: you break it, you buy it. You swing, you get swung at.
What most modern states forget — or pretend to — is that the law of war, that old family of Geneva and Hague conventions, only fully binds the other side when you drop the knife. That’s why in chess, a resignation is sacred. You see your king cornered, you tip it over. Good game. No blood, no broken teeth. In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you tap before the arm snaps or the choke closes the trachea. You live to fight again.
But in the global theater, we’ve built a weird moral mutation: the belief that you can throw a punch, take a punch back, realize you’re losing — and then freeze the game by screaming “GENOCIDE!” or “WAR CRIME!” at the ceiling while your other hand reloads the rifle behind your back.
It doesn’t work that way. Once you escalate, you live in the domain of force. The moment to wave the white flag is always there — but you have to wave it. If you keep swinging, the other side is not only permitted but compelled to swing until you stop moving or yield.
Proportionality is Not a Shield — It’s a Clock
People want to believe there’s a referee who appears mid-battle to enforce proportionality. There isn’t. The referee comes after. The West wrings its hands about “disproportionate response” — but in chess, you don’t stop your queen from taking a pawn just because the pawn’s smaller. You don’t tell the bear to bite less hard because the cub poked it first. You do it until the threat is gone or your appetite is satisfied — and you own the moral and material cost afterward.
This is why Russia played the long, quiet game for thirty years: it watched its buffer states slip under NATO’s umbrella, built BRICS with China, seeded pipelines and oil deals from Germany to India, and said the same quiet sentence every time: Don’t take Ukraine. When the cheese wire was nearly closed, the bear lunged. Fair? Legal? Ugly? Yes to all three. But inevitable once the chess clock ran out.
It’s why Israel wore the muzzle, let the world’s cameras watch every checkpoint and stone thrown, but kept its claws dry. Hamas — whether baited or genuine — tore the lock off that muzzle on October 7th. The contract flipped: respond to lethal force with overwhelming force. You can’t unspring that trap once you hand the wolf the moral permission slip.
Backers Don’t Bleed Forever
Another grim truth: fair-weather allies don’t die for your last pawn. The American Revolution didn’t win because ragtag farmers out-shot redcoats. It won because France saw Britain’s throat exposed and handed the colonists a navy and cash. If France had bailed when Yorktown turned, we’d be saluting the Union Jack.
Ukraine is relearning this. NATO is not a forever battery pack for a fight that looks unwinnable. Hamas lives and dies by how long Iran’s drip feed of cash and weapons stays open. When your patron shrugs and says “good money after bad,” the shell dries up — and the knife you hid up your sleeve is suddenly just a piece of scrap metal.
The Cold Chessboard: There Is Always Resignation
So here’s the detached reality. If you are cornered — if your rook is gone, your bishop snapped, your king exposed — you have two paths:
You tap out. You accept the humiliations: a lopsided treaty, loss of land, occupation, blockades, sanctions. You seed your children’s future in the soil of your surrender. It’s ugly, but it’s survival.
You keep pretending you can win by crying victim while your gun hand stays loaded. This only drags the game out. The bear is not fooled. The wolf is not fooled. The referee watches, but won’t step in until you admit you’re done playing.
It’s not romantic. It’s not moral. It’s just game theory and blood. The mistake is confusing the moral high ground with high ground on the map. One will not save you from the other.
War is chess with live ammunition.
The best player resigns when checkmate is inevitable.
The best fighter taps before the arm breaks.
The best statesman cuts losses early enough to salvage a future — not stand defiant for the cameras while bodies pile up.
Until you learn that, you’re just a pawn who refuses to lie down — wondering why the queen keeps coming.
“Good game.”
Now go sign the armistice — or accept what the board demands when you don’t.
tl;dr
The provided text, "Editing When the Board Turns Red - Substack.pdf," presents a stark and unsentimental view of warfare and international conflict, likening them to games like chess or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The author argues that war is inherently brutal, designed to inflict maximum damage, and that notions of "war crimes" or "genocide" are often misused to halt conflicts when one side is losing, rather than serving as genuine legal judgments. A central theme is that "proportionality" is a post-facto judgment, not an in-battle referee, and that once force is used, the only options are to yield or be destroyed. The text also highlights the fickle nature of international alliances, asserting that backers will withdraw support if victory seems unattainable. Ultimately, the author posits that true strength lies in knowing when to surrender and accept terms to survive, rather than prolonging a losing fight under the guise of victimhood.
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