Great powers have more to lose. Everybody expects big countries with huge, supposedly well-equipped militaries to win when they go to war against smaller, weaker forces. That expectation can be an Achilles’ heel. “In war, the weaker side has many disadvantages: Fewer troops, fewer vehicles, less advanced equipment, less ability to decide where fighting takes place,” writes Nicholas Grossman, an international relations professor at the University of Illinois. “But there’s one big advantage: a tie is a victory. Russia has to win. Ukraine has to not lose. And it’s looking like they can.”

Powerful countries have to win the fights they pick, and decisively. If they don’t — and often, they don’t — the perception problem kicks in with a vengeance. That makes it wise to be very careful about picking the fight in the first place.

Set aside the legal and moral questions that come with launching unprovoked wars of aggression, and consider the matter in cost-benefit terms. Wars are costly. Wars are full of unintended consequences. And the results of a war depend on more than just your own country’s will and capabilities (as well as its leaders’ ability to accurately assess them) but also the will and capabilities of the opponent. What’s more, even if you win a war, and even if that war is righteous, the effort can be exhausting: The British Empire was a nominal victor in two world wars, but it declined quite quickly in the aftermath. Losing a war — or failing to win one — usually has much worse consequences. All of these things can be true even if you don’t have much of the developed world arrayed against you.

It seems smarter, then, to avoid warmaking entirely.