“The wiser of the two equally matched opponents will give up first.”
This is a Romanian proverb oftentimes interpreted as a justification/rationalization for cowardly behavior.
It’s anything but!
In a protracted conflict, where none of the opponents has a clear advantage or when the price of wining would be so huge that no one is willing to underwrite it, it is essential that at least one of the interested parties comes up with something new that might defuse the situation. Otherwise the whole thing drags on, people get bitter and calloused and what might have started as a misadventure or as a badly calculated move eventually becomes a festering wound that changes, for the worse, the life of many generations to come.
Think of what happens when two families become embroiled in a ‘vendetta’.
Or about the outcome of the WWI when the people of Germany were punished for the…
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