How the Forever War Doctrine Is Devouring the Nation From Within

By Andrew Klein 

10^th April 2026

Dedicated to my wife, who sees the pattern before the pieces fall.

I. The Confession

They have finally said it out loud. The mask is off.

On February 20, 2026, Mike Huckabee — the United States Ambassador to Israel, appointed by Donald Trump, a man who speaks with the authority of the world’s most powerful nation — sat down with journalist Tucker Carlson and confessed.

Carlson asked him about the biblical passage in which God promises Abraham’s descendants the land “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.” Huckabee did not deny it. He did not retreat. He did not hedge.

He answered with chilling calm: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

Let us translate what he said. The American ambassador just told the world that it is “fine” — indeed, that it would be “a good thing” — for Israel to conquer and annex Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a recorded, broadcast, undeniable confession from the highest levels of the United States government.

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Finance Minister, responded publicly: “I ❤️ Huckabee.” No ambiguity. No subtext. Pure confirmation.

The map they discussed is not new. It is the same map Netanyahu carries in his pocket, the same map Smotrich has displayed in the Knesset. The so-called “Promised Land” includes all of historical Palestine; the entire territory of Jordan; Lebanon up to the Litani River; Syria, including the occupied Golan Heights; vast parts of Egypt (Sinai and the Nile Delta); Iraq to the Euphrates River; and northwestern Saudi Arabia.

This is not a fringe position. It is the official policy of the Netanyahu government. And it is being executed.

II. The Strategy: Forever War

Israel’s leaders have concluded that they cannot eliminate their adversaries. So they have chosen a different path: permanent war.

The doctrine is called “buffer zones.” In Gaza: more than half the Strip’s territory seized. In Syria: from Mount Hermon to the Yarmuch River. In Lebanon: a vast zone up to the Litani River — approximately 8% of Lebanese territory, affecting nearly 1,400 square kilometres, displacing over one million people.

As Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said: “Israel no longer waits for the attack to come. It sees an emerging threat and it attacks it preemptively”.

This is not defence. This is pre-emptive occupation.

Smotrich has been explicit: the goal is to make Beirut’s southern suburbs “a new Khan Younis” — to replicate the destruction of Gaza in Lebanon. Defence Minister Israel Katz has promised to “demolish all houses in Lebanese villages near the border, like in Rafah and Beit Hanoun”.

The same model. The same devastation. The same rubble.

III. The Economic Collapse: The Math Does Not Work

Israel cannot afford this war. The numbers are stark.

Each Arrow 2 interceptor costs an estimated $1.5 million. Each Arrow 3 interceptor costs approximately $2 million. According to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Israel has already used approximately 80 percent of its Arrow interceptor stockpile. The think tank predicted that the remaining stockpiles would likely “be completely expended by the end of March”.

Iran’s drones cost as little as $20,000. Its missiles cost a fraction of what Israel spends to intercept them.

The cost-exchange ratio is not sustainable. The cheap weapons are winning the economic battle. The state is bleeding out — not from a single wound, but from a thousand cuts.

IV. The Internal Collapse: The State Is Eating Itself

This is the part the world does not see. The rot is inside.

The military is stretched to the breaking point. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has warned that the army is “stretched to the limit and beyond”. The army’s Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, reportedly told the security cabinet that “the IDF is on the verge of collapse”. He said: “I am raising 10 red flags. The reservists will not hold”.

Tzipi Livni — former foreign minister, former Mossad head — has said it plainly: “Netanyahu is dismantling the State of Israel”.

She explains: a sovereign state has recognised borders, a single law for all, and the monopoly on arms. Israel has none of these. No recognised borders. No single law — a parallel religious legal system is emerging. No monopoly on arms — violent militias operate at will.

The state is not being attacked from outside. It is collapsing from within.

V. The Silence of the West

The most damning evidence is the silence.

When fourteen nations — including Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the UAE — along with the OIC (57 member states), the Arab League (22 members), and the GCC (6 members), condemned Huckabee’s statements, the White House said nothing. The State Department said nothing. Europe said nothing.

Silence, in diplomacy, is not neutrality. It is consent.

The United States has used its veto power to protect Israel from international accountability more than 45 times since 1945. This guaranteed impunity has not been beneficial to the state. A state, to survive, learns to compromise, to make friends and alliances among its neighbours. The forever conflict model has never worked.

VI. The Historical Pattern: When Ideology Captures the State

What we are witnessing in Israel is not unique. It is the same pattern that has repeated throughout history: when a state is captured by a single political or religious ideology, it loses the ability to learn from its mistakes.

The European Wars of Religion (1524-1648): For over a century, the principle of cuius regio, eius religio — “whose realm, his religion” — tore Europe apart. The Thirty Years’ War alone killed an estimated 8 million people. The conflict did not end until the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which established the modern international order based on the principle that states must coexist with different internal beliefs. The alternative — perpetual war — was unsustainable.

The Soviet Union (1917-1991): The Bolshevik Revolution captured the Russian state with an ideology that promised the withering away of the state. Instead, it created the most repressive state apparatus in modern history. The ideology prevented learning. It prevented adaptation. It prevented survival. The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions — not because of external enemies.

Nazi Germany (1933-1945): The Nazi regime was captured by an ideology that combined racial supremacy with territorial expansion — Lebensraum. The result was not strength but a “permanent state of exception” that required constant war. The regime collapsed not because its enemies were stronger, but because its ideology made compromise, peace, and sustainable statecraft impossible.

The same pattern is now playing out in Israel. The “Greater Israel” ideology, rooted in religious claims to land stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, has captured the state. Compromise is impossible because the ideology demands the entire territory. Peace is impossible because peace requires recognised borders. Survival is threatened because the resources required to maintain the forever war are finite.

VII. The Military Reality: Air Power Does Not Control Ground

How can a small country fight on so many fronts at once? The answer is: it cannot. Not sustainably.

The fronts are multiplying — Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen — but the resources are finite.

The model of air power does not guarantee control of the ground. You can bomb a city into rubble, but you cannot hold it without troops. And the troops are exhausted. The reservists are depleted. The economy is bleeding.

The “forever war” is not a strategy. It is a death spiral.

VIII. The West Will Follow

What we are seeing in the State of Israel is a microcosm of what the forever war model — desired by bankers, multinational corporations, and defence contractors since the American Civil War, accelerated since WWII — will lead to. The west will follow the decline of Israel and, in essence, eat itself.

The Global South is waking up. The young see the hypocrisy of the political class. The daily stream of death and destruction presented on social media is a wake-up call to anyone who has time to see facts for what they are.

The message of “Never again” was meant to have global post-WWII application, not provide a carte blanche for political opportunists who have good reasons to maintain the forever wars.

It will not be able to blame China, Russia, or the Muslim world. The west managed to cannibalise itself all on its own.

IX. A Final Word

The State of Israel is not being destroyed by its enemies. It is being destroyed by its own leadership. By the vision of “Greater Israel.” By the doctrine of “forever war.” By the refusal to accept borders, to make peace, to stop.

The collapse will not be dramatic. It will be bureaucratic. The economy will contract. The allies will defect. The public will turn. The reservists will refuse. The militias will fight each other.

And the small gods will keep chanting: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

They are wrong. It will not be fine. It will be rubble.

Andrew Klein 

April 10, 2026

Sources:

· PressTV, “Huckabee mocks Arab League’s condemnation of his remarks endorsing Israel’s biblical territorial claims” (February 21, 2026)

· Just International, “‘It would be fine if they took it all’: The Confession That Exposes the Greater Israel Project” (March 1, 2026)

· OZ Arab Media, “Israel Plans Long-Term Control Over Southern Lebanon Post-Conflict” (April 1, 2026)

· EurAsian Times, “Israel’s Arrow-3 Exo-Atmospheric Missile Production Set to Expand; Katz Insists Stocks Sufficient” (April 6, 2026)

· Arab News, “Israel political unity on Iran war fractures, opposition warns of ‘security disaster'” (March 26, 2026)

· The Indian Express, “‘It would be fine if they took it all’: US envoy Mike Huckabee cites Biblical text to claim Israel’s right to entire Middle East” (February 21, 2026)

· Tehran Times, “‘Greater Israel’ in action: How expansion and occupation threaten regional stability” (February 23, 2026)

· CGTN, “Israeli defense minister says forces to hold south Lebanon zone up to Litani River” (March 31, 2026)

· 新浪财经, “以色列：将加速生产’箭’式拦截导弹” (April 7, 2026)

· New Age BD, “Israel opposition warns end to consensus over Iran war” (March 29, 2026)