{"id":17555,"date":"2026-07-03T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/holistic.news\/en\/?p=17555"},"modified":"2026-07-03T13:10:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:10:58","slug":"modern-conflicts-old-words-fail-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/holistic.news\/en\/modern-conflicts-old-words-fail-us\/","title":{"rendered":"The War of Old Words: Why Modern Conflicts Escape Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

May 2026. The Strait of Hormuz is once again on the front pages of the world\u2019s media. Experts count tankers, commentators analyze the movements of warships, and one question returns to television studios: is Iran winning?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first glance, the answer seems obvious. Tehran is blocking one of the world\u2019s most important sea routes, unsettling markets, and forcing its opponents to respond. Yet a question framed this way often leads us astray. At the same time as the world follows each new incident at sea, the blockade is also hitting Iran itself, limiting its own oil exports and increasing economic pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trap of ignorance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The very structure of the question hides another assumption. We assume that we are dealing with a conflict that has just begun and that will end in a clear victory for one side. Yet both assumptions may be wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both supporters of U.S. actions and their loudest critics often assume that the present conflict began with the latest escalation in early 2026. But assigning decisive meaning to a single date is like trying to point to the exact day when a cliff began to slide. We see the moment of fracture, but we ignore the process that spent years washing away its foundations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his essay \u201cWords of War,\u201d the political scientist Eliot A. Cohen argues that modern societies are becoming worse at understanding long conflicts. The 24\/7 information cycle has trained us to expect instant answers, clear turning points, and quick resolutions. War has been reduced to a series of events. The process that develops over years, sometimes over entire decades, has disappeared from view. No wonder, then, that we increasingly struggle to answer a seemingly simple question: when does a war really begin?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern conflicts and the fetish of beginnings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Western strategic imagination has long been fond of clear dates. A war is supposed to begin when tanks cross a border and the first missiles fall on cities. Only such an image do we recognize as the birth of a conflict. But modern states less and less often wage wars in this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before soldiers appear, a struggle over influence, the economy, infrastructure, and the opponent\u2019s public consciousness may continue for years. Cyberattacks, intelligence operations, disinformation campaigns, and actions carried out by armed organizations acting on behalf of states do not fit the classical image of war, even though they increasingly form an integral part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran is a good example of such a process. It is difficult to claim that the present confrontation began only in 2026. Its roots reach back to the Islamic Revolution of 1979<\/strong> and to decades of rivalry conducted both openly and through methods that remain below the threshold of full-scale conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History regularly undermines our attachment to rigid dates. World War II did not begin for everyone at the same time. For Europeans, September 1939 remains the symbolic beginning. In American collective memory, Pearl Harbor is the dominant point of reference. From the perspective of Asia, however, the war had already been under way since Japan\u2019s aggression against China in 1937.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same was true of Vietnam. The conflict that most people associate with American helicopters hovering over the jungle had its origins many years earlier. Wars do not always begin with a bang. Sometimes they begin with a murmur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

War without a starting line<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Attachment to dates leads to another error. We keep asking when the next war will break out, as if it were located somewhere in the future. Meanwhile, many contemporary conflicts have already been going on for a long time.<\/strong> Rivalry among powers increasingly resembles a permanent state of tension. The front line runs through energy grids, server rooms, seaports, and trade routes. Under such conditions, war becomes a process of continuous pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This changes the way we think about security. The point is no longer only to prepare the army for the day when the first shots are fired. Just as important is the ability of societies to function in a reality where conflict can continue for years without a formal declaration of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new face of war: the scoreboard illusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The second habit inherited from the 20th century is the obsessive search for a winner<\/a><\/strong>. Every day, the media try to answer the same question: who is winning today? How many kilometers have been taken? How many ships have been sunk? Who has inflicted greater losses on the opponent? This way of seeing works well in sports. It works far less well in geopolitics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cohen, a former adviser to the U.S. secretary of state, notes that contemporary conflicts very rarely end in the unambiguous triumph of one side. Far more often, opponents achieve some of their goals while also bearing some of the costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The War of 1812 remains a textbook example of this ambiguity. The British were convinced that they had succeeded because they retained control over Canada. The Americans also considered themselves victorious, pointing to the growth of their own importance and the strengthening of the state\u2019s position. Both interpretations can be true at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan offers an even more interesting case. In 1945, it suffered total military defeat. Its cities were destroyed, and the state was forced into unconditional surrender. Even so, the war accelerated the collapse of European colonial empires in Asia, a process consistent with one of Tokyo\u2019s long-term goals. History shows that war rarely fits into a simple balance sheet of victories and defeats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ghost of Vietnam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There is one more word that regularly returns in Western strategic debates: \u201cquagmire.\u201d Mention an increase in military involvement, and comparisons to Vietnam<\/a>, Afghanistan, or Iraq appear almost immediately. Every new conflict begins to be interpreted through the prism of old failures.<\/strong> There is something understandable in this. History should be a teacher. The trouble begins when it becomes the only point of reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz does not resemble the Vietnam War. There is no jungle, no vast expeditionary army, no long guerrilla war fought against hundreds of thousands of soldiers on land. Here, the key roles belong to naval forces, air power, technology, and control over strategic trade routes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet public debate keeps using the same metaphors. It is as if we were trying to describe a smartphone in the language of a landline telephone manual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

21st-century conflicts and democratic fatigue<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The greatest consequences of these errors, however, do not concern language alone. Words shape the way societies perceive reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When every conflict is presented as an endless quagmire, reluctance to engage grows. Portraying all sides as equally responsible for violence makes it harder to understand who is the aggressor and who is responding to aggression.<\/strong> And when war appears only as a series of spectacular events, we lose the ability to perceive the slower processes unfolding in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, democratic societies begin responding not to reality itself, but to its simplified media versions. Polarization appears, along with information fatigue and a loss of trust. Debate increasingly turns into a clash of ready-made narratives that exclude one another but rarely help anyone understand the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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