War & Peace Quote by Natan Sharansky

Sharansky’s line doesn’t flatter your desire for stability; it treats it as a weakness a dictator can smell. The phrasing is deliberately unsentimental: “peace” is possible, but only the grim kind built on deterrence, not trust, not “engagement,” not the comforting story that economic ties or diplomatic rituals will civilize a regime built on coercion. He’s not arguing that dictators are uniquely evil in some abstract way. He’s arguing they are structurally unreliable, because their survival depends on manufacturing threats and managing fear.

The pivot from “friend” to “enemy” is the quote’s knife. It implies that authoritarian alliances are not relationships; they’re tactical pauses. A dictator can cooperate when it buys time, money, legitimacy, or sanctions relief. Then, when domestic legitimacy frays or elites wobble, the same dictator may need a villain to rally the public, purge rivals, or justify repression. In that logic, your “friendship” becomes raw material for tomorrow’s propaganda: the external adversary who explains why shortages persist and why dissent must be crushed.

Sharansky’s own biography as a Soviet dissident and political prisoner sits behind the warning. He’s seen a regime for whom “peace” with the West was often an instrument: a way to extract concessions while keeping the internal machinery of control intact. The intent is to shift the reader from moral outrage to strategic clarity: if you want fewer wars, fewer hostage crises, fewer betrayals, you don’t bargain on goodwill. You bargain on costs.