This attitude leads to generals sabotaging the Christmas Truce and way more deaths than necessary. Very very few wars are against invaders who want to kill everybody.
That's an insanely naive form of pacifism justifying acceptable genocide. If killing 0.99% of the population for geopolitical goals is acceptable, then 0.99% of the population of all states will get will get killed, currently roughly 80 million people. Because any country has at least one enemy with some geopolitical goal.
I cannot put into words how revolting this idea of yours is, and it's exactly people like you that need to be silenced in times of war for any chance of durable peace.
War is always and everywhere a result of insufficient deterrence - the enemy will only be dissuaded if they are guaranteed a response that far outweighs any potential wins.
Your speculation is baseless. Basically no countries and states want to kill under a percent of another country. I can't think of a single example.
World War 1 killed a lot more than 1% of the involved population.
Honestly, just giving up and "losing" WW1 would have been way less bad for the commoners than actually fighting was.
The problem with wanting to fight wars is that deterrence doesn't work (e.g. see the past 10 wars). The incentives leaders are subject to often makes starting a war the best option for them personally, even if its bad for the population.
Btw: its exactly warmongers like you who need to be silenced to have any chance of a durable peace that doesn't kill a million Iraqis ;)
The fact that you lump together invasions and wars of choice, like the Iraq war, with wars of necessity like the Ukrainian resistance against such an invasion, and prescribe that same cure against "warmongers" - when I was clearly talking in context only about the second case - should probably be a cue I need to stop entertaining this conversation.
I know you are well intentioned and believe in the things you say, but you should probably think this stance more thoroughly.
