The past two years have made one truth unmistakable: international politics remains a contest of power. Israelis, Palestinians, and Iranians stand where they do at the end of the war because of asymmetries of strength and skill. International courts and NGOs roared from the sidelines, but the game was decided on the field.
Yet there is also a second truth: power alone is not enough.
The Christian realist practices a limited realism—one bounded by awareness of the unseen realm and God’s hidden purposes in history. Unlike the pacifist, he respects the use of power to restrain evil. But unlike other realists, he remembers that invisible forces are always shaping history and driving it toward an appointed end. In an age obsessed with winning and losing, he knows that political victories often coexist with spiritual defeats, and that the sons of Adam are never simply winning or losing—they are always doing both at once.
The recent war offers no shortage of paradoxes. Under President Trump’s mediation, the fighting has apparently ended. Optimists await a new dawn of peace; pessimists warn of renewed conflict. Both are right. The war is over for now but will reappear in new forms, and perhaps soon. Every solution contains the seeds of the next conflict.
The war’s outcomes remain mixed across the board. Twenty hostages returned home amid joy and tears, yet Hamas refuses to disarm and still holds the bodies of several captives in defiance of the deal. The motives of at least two of the deal’s four guarantors—Turkey and Qatar—are suspect to say the least, and would-be members of the International Stabilizing Force are less than forthcoming. The Palestinian Authority, which hopes to govern Gaza, remains illegitimate and unpopular. Meanwhile, 90 percent of Palestinians believe the atrocities of October 7 were fabricated to make them look bad.
Or consider the Abraham Accords, poised for renewal. Trump officials insist several Arab and Muslim states are ready to normalize ties with Israel. Yet public opinion in those countries is more hostile to Israel than ever, and the dam restraining that hostility may not hold forever.
The United States’ role is equally complex. American weapons and intelligence helped turn the tide in Israel’s favor. In brokering a ceasefire, Trump accomplished what no other leader could do. But what if Kamala Harris had won the presidency, or Trump had heeded the restrainers in his party rather than the hawks? America is still the world’s dominant power, but its internal fractures are more apparent than ever. Power without unity breeds unpredictability and distrust; and distrust breeds instability.
Israel, for its part, transformed a near-catastrophe into a stunning victory. It defeated its enemies on multiple fronts with audacity and innovation—yet it could not have done so alone. Without the United States, Israel might have drowned beneath the flood. More troubling still are the long-term effects of the war on Israeli society—divided before October 7, 2023, and perhaps more so now. Military triumph does not equal civic strength.
Beyond the battlefield, Israel’s adversaries are more numerous and emboldened than ever. In the UN, in international courts, in the parliaments of Europe and the streets of Western capitals, the chorus of hostility grows louder. And yet Israel’s allies, though fewer, are more committed and fervent than before.
Such contradictions are to be expected. The philosopher Jacques Maritain called it the “double movement of history”—the simultaneous advance of good and evil, progress and decay. He took the idea from Augustine, who in turn took it from the prophet Daniel, who was the first to describe history as a story of rising and falling empires under the ever-moving hand of God.
Christian realism is not a foreign-policy doctrine but a way of seeing the world. The Christian realist honors the prudence of the statesman and the courage of the soldier, yet never forgets that both serve within a drama directed by unseen hands. He knows that the world’s conflicts are neither final defeats nor final victories, only new turns in the same long story.
The Christian realist acts decisively, but never absolutizes his cause. He wields power responsibly, but remembers that spiritual realities—not just material ones—determine whether nations stand or fall. He welcomes peace agreement, but does not mistake them for peace itself.
The Christian realist’s response to the Gaza deal is both gratitude and grief—gratitude for a fragile peace, and grief for the invisible wounds it leaves behind. Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians are now wrestling with painful questions that politics alone cannot answer. And now we have to answer them.
