War & Peace Quote by Douglas Hurd

War, in Hurd's framing, is less a tragic necessity than a bureaucratic habit: something that can happen because calendars demand it, not because facts do. The key word is "timetable" - a cold, managerial term that recasts invasion as a logistical rollout. By rejecting that premise, he punctures the idea that momentum equals legitimacy. The line reads like an intervention aimed at colleagues already slipping into inevitability talk: once you accept the schedule, you stop debating the premise.

The phrase "successful outcome" is doing quiet rhetorical work. Hurd doesn't lead with morality or legality; he leads with results. That choice signals his audience: ministers, MPs, and swing skeptics who might not be moved by pacifism but can be moved by the prospect of an avoidable, messy operation. He offers a concrete alternative - "more time" for UN inspectors - not as a utopian detour, but as a practical off-ramp.

The subtext is a critique of the post-9/11 posture that treated speed as strength and deliberation as weakness. By specifying "a disarmed Iraq", he concedes the stated security objective while questioning the chosen method, a classic establishment dissent: loyal to the goal, rebellious about the means. In the early-2000s Iraq debate, that was the tightrope. Hurd is warning that war sold as unavoidable is often war chosen in advance, then justified retroactively by the ticking clock.