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The Cost of Winning: How Humiliation Creates the Next Fight
Winning a conflict and securing a durable victory are not necessarily the same thing.
Defeat an opponent too weakly and they may believe they can simply try again. Humiliate them too thoroughly, however, and overturning the new order can become more important than their own self-interest.
This week on The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis explores the strategic cost of humiliation—from locker-room material and the Ender's Game problem to Reconstruction, postwar Germany, political identity, and the need to give defeated groups an off-ramp into a new social order.
The question isn't simply how to…
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