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In this episode, the guest is Amar Dank, a researcher of war termination, for a conversation about how leaders make decisions on continuing or ending a military conflict. The discussion focuses on the concept of the “gambler’s dilemma,” taken from Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory, and examines how loss aversion can lead leaders to continue and escalate wars in the hope of erasing prior losses, even at the cost of taking greater risks. The model is applied to the Russia-Ukraine war, the “Swords of Iron” war, and the conflict with Iran.
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The gambler’s dilemma for leaders
According to Amar Dank, his analysis of wars is realistic and does not address moral aspects or the righteousness of the cause, but rather tries to understand the interests and considerations of all sides. The central theoretical framework he presents is the “gambler’s dilemma.” According to this principle, taken from the world of behavioral economics, human beings are loss-averse. As a result, they are willing to take greater risks to avoid a loss or to recoup losses already incurred than the risks they are willing to take to achieve a gain.
At any given moment in a war, a leader faces the decision of whether to continue fighting or to work toward ending it. According to Dank, when a leader perceives the situation as a loss, he may prefer to continue the war, even if the expected utility is doubtful, in the hope that continued fighting will bring an achievement that will allow him to erase the loss.
Putin and the Ukraine war
To demonstrate the model, Boris Gorelik asks to apply it to the Russia-Ukraine war. Amar Dank explains that dictatorial rulers like Putin have a different set of considerations than leaders in democracies. Their main goal is not the welfare of the citizens, but survival in power. Putin, in Dank’s assessment, started the war on the assumption that he would achieve a quick victory and restore a puppet regime in Ukraine. When this gamble failed, he faced a clear loss. Instead of “cutting his losses” and ending the war, he chose to continue gambling. He increased the risk, for example through a large-scale mobilization in September 2022, hoping to change the situation and avoid admitting a failure that could have endangered his rule.
A war of choice in Gaza and Netanyahu’s dilemma
Dank applies the same logic to the war in Gaza. He argues that after the initial and “automatic” phase of the war, which ended around January 2024 with the capture of Khan Yunis and the release of reserve forces, the war became a “war of choice” for Israel. At this stage, the chief decision-maker, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, faced a dilemma. In Dank’s assessment, Netanyahu perceives the events of October 7th as a huge political and personal loss. Out of this loss aversion, and for fear that elections after the war would lead to his defeat, he prefers to continue the war and take additional risks, hoping to achieve a total victory that would allow him to erase the stain of failure.
Boris Gorelik challenges the analysis and asks if the decision to continue does not stem from a substantive security consideration, namely the fear of leaving Hamas in power. Dank replies that the central question in his model is not the objective loss, but the way the leader subjectively frames the situation. In his assessment, Netanyahu frames the situation as a personal political loss, and therefore he acts to avoid it.
The conflict with Iran
The conversation moves to the Israeli-American conflict with Iran. Dank explains how here too, the decision to expand the conflict into an all-out war stemmed from the same dilemma. He thought that an Israeli success in a limited conflict with Iran would be a good opportunity for Netanyahu to “realize gains” and go to elections, but this did not happen. According to his interpretation, the polls showed that the achievement was not enough to guarantee a victory, so Netanyahu chose to raise the stakes and continue the war.
On the other hand, the Iranian regime’s ultimate goal is survival. After the United States withdrew from the nuclear deal, Iran lost faith in agreements. Therefore, its strategy in the war is not to achieve a direct military victory, but a war of economic attrition. By closing the Strait of Hormuz and harming the Gulf states, Iran is putting pressure on the global economy and on the United States’ allies, aiming to force Washington to end the war.
The options for ending the war in Gaza
At the end of the discussion, Dank analyzes the options facing Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Israel has three main alternatives: a full occupation of the Strip and control over two million Palestinians, a move he says is not practical; continuation of the current situation of constant friction; or a unilateral withdrawal to the border line.
For Hamas, the options are to continue ruling the population under the current conditions, while exploiting the humanitarian aid that Israel is forced to let in, or to advance a political process that would lead to an Israeli withdrawal. Finally, Dank explains that the October 7th attack was, from Hamas’s realistic point of view, a rational move designed to shake up the status quo and disrupt the trend of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which had pushed the Palestinian issue to the margins.
The original episode, in Hebrew: מהמרים על סוף המלחמה