The Political Ends of the Current Wars
Ukraine, Hormuz, and the battlefield that is not on the map
The fronts that hold the West in tension reactivate continuously, at a rhythm that has itself become the message: a sudden hope of peace, an agreement announced, a truce signed — and then the relapse into war. It happens in Ukraine, where negotiations open and close while the front moves by a few dozen metres a day. It happens in the Gulf, where a memorandum of understanding was meant to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and tankers continue to be struck. Yet if one examines the military situation, a single circumstance dominates: neither belligerent appears any longer capable of achieving by arms the political objectives it originally set. Russia cannot obtain the conquest or the vassalage of Ukraine. Iran cannot impose its hegemony over the Gulf. Why, then, do these wars continue? If — as Clausewitz teaches — war is the continuation of political struggle by other means, then a war that persists must serve some politics: which? And if that politics is no longer legible when one fixes one’s gaze on Moscow or on Tehran, where must one look to find it? Is it possible that the true battlefield is not the one we are watching, and that the stake is not a territory at all?