Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza for nearly a year. Ukraine has been fending off Russia for more than 2 1/2 years. But despite horrific civilian and military losses and the catastrophic destruction of civilian infrastructure, none of the parties seem willing to settle for anything less than total victory. Or in the case of Hamas, political survival.

The two wars are different in myriad ways well beyond who is David and who is Goliath, but all four sides seem impervious to diplomatic solutions for the same reason — their leaders hold to mutually exclusive demands and deeply believe compromise would be tantamount to defeat.