In the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won around 44% of the vote, more than twice that of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which received around 18%.
There are many reasons for this result. Immigration, economic dissatisfaction, frustration with the federal government and the growing rejection of Germany’s traditional political parties all played important roles. It would therefore be misleading to interpret the election simply as a referendum on war and peace.
But one element deserves particular attention. Russia and the war in Ukraine were explicitly part of the political choice presented to voters.
The AfD has called for an end to German support for Ukraine and for renewed economic and cultural relations with Russia. This position has particular resonance in Saxony-Anhalt, part of the former East Germany, where historical and cultural attitudes toward Russia differ in important ways from those found elsewhere in Germany.
None of this means that 44% of voters supported the AfD because they wanted peace with Russia. But the magnitude of the result makes one question increasingly difficult to ignore:
Are voters beginning to distinguish between the pursuit of victory and the pursuit of peace?
Peace and victory are not the same
The distinction is fundamental. Victory requires someone to prevail. Peace requires people who have been fighting each other to find some way of living together.
Sometimes victory produces peace. But history also provides countless examples in which victory creates humiliation, resentment, territorial disputes or desires for revenge that prepare the next conflict.
And as wars continue year after year, the distinction becomes increasingly important.
At what point does the objective cease to be ending the violence and become achieving victory?
And at what point does the price of victory become greater than the price of compromise?
We constantly hear the question: What price are we prepared to pay for peace?
Perhaps we should also ask: What price are we prepared to pay for victory?
Are voters beginning to answer?
Saxony-Anhalt is not the first electoral result to raise this question.
In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine after placing an end to the war in Donbas at the center of his political project. Shortly after taking office, he declared that his primary task was achieving a ceasefire. Later that year, he described his mandate even more explicitly: Ukrainians had elected a president who would end the war.
Five years later, Donald Trump campaigned for the U.S. presidency repeatedly promising that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war, famously claiming that he could settle it within 24 hours.
Today, the circumstances are dramatically different. The war in Ukraine continues. The United States is engaged in another war with Iran. And Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 33%, according to a late-August Reuters/Ipsos poll, while only 36% approve of the war with Iran.
These elections and polling numbers cannot be reduced to war. Economic conditions, immigration, political identity, dissatisfaction with established institutions and numerous domestic concerns can be decisive. But perhaps something deeper is becoming visible across very different political landscapes.
People may not necessarily be voting for a particular ideology of peace. They may simply be becoming exhausted by war.
And that is something quite different.
Palestine and the political cost of war
The transformation of international attitudes toward Israel provides another indication that prolonged warfare can alter political landscapes far beyond the battlefield.
A 2026 Pew Research Center survey covering 36 countries found a median of 67% expressing an unfavorable view of Israel. In Germany the figure reached 73%, in Spain and Sweden 78%, and in the United States 60%.
This does not mean that people have become hostile toward the Israeli people. There is an important distinction between attitudes toward Israel, its government and Israelis themselves. But it does indicate a significant political change.
Palestine has also moved from the margins of American foreign-policy debate into electoral politics. Candidates openly critical of U.S. policy toward Israel have won races and primaries, particularly within the Democratic Party.
Palestine cannot by itself explain those electoral victories. Housing, inequality, healthcare, immigration, affordability and many other questions remain important to voters. Nevertheless, something that only a few years ago could be politically dangerous for a candidate to emphasize has become, for parts of the electorate, an important consideration in choosing one.
War is acquiring an electoral cost.
Peace is not left or right
Perhaps this is the most important point. Peace cannot ultimately be reduced to a political party.
The people voting for the AfD in eastern Germany are certainly not politically equivalent to progressive voters supporting pro-Palestinian candidates in New York. Trump, Zelensky and those candidates belong to completely different political traditions.
Trying to place all these developments into a conventional left-right framework may therefore miss something happening underneath them.
A person exhausted by confrontation can desire peace whether that person considers himself or herself conservative, progressive, nationalist, socialist, religious or secular. Before peace becomes a treaty, a government policy or a diplomatic negotiation, there must be people who want the violence to end.
And when that internal aspiration begins expressing itself through millions of individual decisions, it can become a social and political force.
But moving away from war requires more than recognizing its costs. It also requires us to think differently about what creates power in the first place.
China and the power of attraction
China offers another interesting example.
Whatever one thinks of its political system or geopolitical ambitions, China has increasingly become a magnet. Political leaders, business executives, scientists and delegations from around the world are going there. Countries that may disagree with Beijing nevertheless want access to its markets, technology, manufacturing, infrastructure and investment.
China’s growing influence therefore comes not only from its military or economic strength, but also from attraction. People go there because something is happening there and they want to participate in it.
A country can increase its influence not only by making others fear what it can do, but by making others interested in what it can offer.
Power can impose, but power can also attract.
And peace creates a far better environment for attraction than war.
War itself is changing
There is another reason to reconsider our traditional understanding of power and security.
War itself is changing extraordinarily quickly. The wars involving Ukraine and Iran have demonstrated that military power today cannot be measured simply by the number of soldiers, tanks, aircraft carriers, fighter jets or missiles a country possesses. Drones, satellites, artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, electronic warfare, intelligence systems and communication networks are transforming the battlefield.
Most of the world’s military institutions were constructed around another conception of war: large armies, centralized command structures, expensive weapons platforms, air superiority, naval power and enormous logistical systems. These capabilities remain important, but they now coexist with forms of warfare evolving at extraordinary speed.
A drone can be modified in weeks. Software can change overnight. Commercial satellite imagery can provide information that once belonged exclusively to major intelligence agencies. Civilian communication networks can become part of military operations. Relatively inexpensive remotely controlled or increasingly autonomous systems can threaten equipment costing millions of dollars.
Some of the most powerful military structures humanity has ever created are therefore confronting forms of warfare that can evolve faster than the institutions themselves.
And this produces a profound paradox.
Every technological innovation intended to increase the security of one side encourages another innovation intended to overcome it. The stronger one side becomes, the stronger the other tries to become.
The search for security through superiority can therefore produce another round of insecurity.
Peace as a route to security
For generations, our basic security logic has been relatively simple:
Power → Security → Peace
Accumulate sufficient military power to deter an adversary. Deterrence creates security. And once security has been achieved, peace becomes possible.
But what if we have part of the equation backwards?
What if peace itself can create security?
Peace creates the possibility of relationships. Relationships can create trust and interdependence. Interdependence can reduce incentives for conflict. Resources directed toward confrontation can instead be invested in development, science, infrastructure, education and human well-being.
This does not mean ignoring aggression, abandoning defense or pretending that conflicts of interest do not exist. Peace requires work: diplomacy, institutions, agreements, verification, dialogue and mechanisms capable of resolving conflicts before they become wars.
But it does mean reconsidering where security ultimately comes from.
No accumulation of weapons can completely eliminate insecurity when another side can always develop another weapon. No technological superiority can remain permanent when knowledge and technology spread so rapidly.
Security based exclusively on superiority therefore contains a fundamental contradiction: To remain secure, one must remain permanently more powerful than someone else.
Peace offers another possibility. Security does not have to come only from our capacity to defeat the other. It can also come from creating conditions in which neither side needs to defeat the other.
Perhaps we should begin considering a different sequence:
Peace → Security → Power
Not power over others, but the power generated by stability, cooperation, development, relationships and the possibility of building a future.
From “Give Peace a Chance” to “Peace Is Power”
In 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, John Lennon asked the world to Give Peace a Chance.
It remains a beautiful and necessary appeal.
But more than half a century later, perhaps humanity needs to go further.
For generations, peace movements have appealed to those possessing power to stop using it for war. Peace has therefore often appeared almost as the opposite of power: governments, armies and weapons possessed power; citizens could only demand that they exercise restraint.
But perhaps the world now emerging is beginning to reveal something different.
Peace can generate economic power because societies can build instead of rebuild.
It can generate diplomatic power because cooperation creates relationships.
It can generate cultural power because people are attracted to societies that offer possibilities rather than threats.
It can generate political power when citizens begin demanding that governments find alternatives to endless confrontation.
And it can generate human power by allowing enormous amounts of intelligence, creativity, technology and resources presently devoted to defeating others to be directed toward improving human life.
This is where Germany, Ukraine, Palestine, Iran, China and the transformation of warfare begin to intersect—not because these situations are equivalent, and not because they have the same political causes, but because each raises a fundamental question about the direction humanity is taking.
For centuries, we assumed that power would produce security and security would eventually produce peace.
Perhaps the relationship can also work in the opposite direction.
Peace does not have to wait for victory. Peace does not have to be the reward that comes after someone has defeated someone else. And peace does not mean weakness.
Perhaps the great strategic discovery of our time will be that the most durable form of security does not come from our capacity to destroy the other, but from creating a world in which destroying the other becomes increasingly unnecessary.
John Lennon asked us to give peace a chance.
Today, perhaps we need to recognize something more.
Peace is our route to security.
Peace is power.
