The immediate answers are familiar. Wars are fought for territory, resources, influence, ideology, deterrence and, at times, prestige. Empires marched for wealth. Kingdoms expanded for glory. The Cold War was sustained by competing visions of world order. Even today, conflicts are justified in the language of national security, alliance obligations and strategic necessity. Yet these explanations, while true, remain incomplete.

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Wars endure not merely because nations covet land or resources, but because conflict often becomes the chosen instrument through which states attempt to reorder uncertainty. What appears on the surface as military confrontation is, at a deeper level, a structured response to perceived threats, ambitions and shifting balances of power.

It is here that war moves from the realm of history into the realm of policy. In the modern state, war is not merely an emotional impulse or a historical inevitability. It is also a public policy choice, and like every major policy decision, it moves through a cycle.

The first stage is agenda setting.

A threat must first be defined. It may be a hostile neighbour, nuclear capability, maritime insecurity, ideological expansion, or a perceived challenge to regional influence. At this stage, political leadership decides what must be treated as urgent and what can still be managed through diplomacy. This is where wars truly begin, long before the first missile is launched.

The second stage is policy formulation, the point at which a state begins to weigh its choices. Before conflict becomes visible, governments move through a quieter but decisive process of considering alternatives. Diplomacy may still be possible. Economic sanctions may alter behaviour without direct confrontation. Back-channel negotiations test whether adversaries are willing to recalibrate without public loss of face. Military signalling serves as a language of pressure, intended less to fight than to warn. War, at this stage, remains one option among several.

It is still a policy choice, not an inevitability.

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Only when leadership moves from deliberation to action does the third stage, decision and implementation, begin. This is the phase the world most readily recognises. Missiles are launched, alliances are activated, public opinion is mobilised and narratives are built to justify the decision at home and abroad.

Yet this visible moment should not be mistaken for the whole of statecraft.

In many ways, the real test begins only after the first decision has been executed.

Ancient Indian political thought offers a strikingly modern lens on conflict. In the Tirukkural (Book II, Porul), Thiruvalluvar treats war not as spectacle, but as an instrument of prudence, timing and statecraft. He places equal emphasis on wise alliances, intelligence gathering and just rule. The ruler's strength, in this view, lies as much in legitimacy and public trust as in military power. Even war, therefore, must remain aligned to purpose and proportion.

This brings us to the most neglected phase of war: monitoring and evaluation.

Are the original objectives being met?

Has deterrence been achieved?

Has the adversary's behaviour changed?

Are allies still aligned?

Most importantly, does the strategy remain proportionate to the stated objective?

It is precisely at this stage that wars often cease to remain aligned with their founding purpose.

A more enduring way to understand this loss of coherence is through the idea of policy drift.

Policy drift occurs when a strategy, while continuing in form, gradually moves away from the objective that originally justified it. This does not always happen through a formal change in policy. More often, it emerges through accumulation: new pressures, altered ground realities, shifting alliances, leadership psychology and the momentum of events begin to redefine action without a corresponding redefinition of purpose.

In such situations, means begin to overtake ends.

The instruments of policy intensify, but the clarity of the original goal begins to fade.

Without disciplined review, strategy risks becoming self-referential, sustained less by purpose than by its own continuation.

If drift explains how strategy loses its centre, public policy traditionally turns to feedback, reformulation and, where necessary, termination.

It is within this phase that what we may call an exit strategy acquires significance.

Strictly speaking, exit strategy is not a classical stage in the public policy cycle. Rather, it is an interpretive extension of the feedback and reformulation phase, where strategy is reassessed in light of outcomes.

Seen this way, exit strategy is not merely about withdrawal. It is about restoring alignment between purpose, instrument and outcome.

This complexity becomes even sharper in the age of democratically elected governments. Unlike hereditary rulers or authoritarian regimes, elected leadership must continuously sustain legitimacy not only in the conduct of war, but in the very decision to initiate it.

Public consent, legislative backing, alliance confidence and media credibility all become part of the policy environment.

In democracies, wars are fought simultaneously on two fronts: the visible battlefield and the less visible terrain of public legitimacy.

This makes narrative-building not a matter of rhetoric alone, but a core component of policy design.

For wars are not judged only by outcomes, but by how societies remember them. Not who wins, but who controlled the story.

Military success does not automatically translate into legitimacy. A State may secure tactical advantage and yet begin to lose the larger battle if it surrenders the moral and political narrative to the visibly aggrieved.

Few texts capture this distinction more profoundly than the Mahabharata.

The Pandavas won.

But what did they inherit?

A kingdom of ashes.

A throne burdened by grief.

Yudhishthira's anguish after Kurukshetra remains one of the most enduring questions in political thought: was the cost proportionate to the objective?

Did victory justify the destruction?

Wars are lost not only when armies are defeated, but when the purpose that began them and the narrative that sustained them are both lost.

Uttam Prakash is Regional Provident Fund Commissioner (Kochi & Lakshadweep), with experiences across India and Afghanistan. Views expressed are personal.