Pratap Bhanu Mehta on conflicts across the world: Dangerous new thresholds

Indian Express

5 hours ago

Global geopolitics is in the fatal grip of supremacism, impunity and nihilism. Rarely in recent history has there been such a glaring absence of global leadership that is both competent and morally serious. Consider supremacism first. Even if we grant the casuistry behind distinguishing the US from Israel strategically, there is no doubt that the wars in Gaza and now Iran have taken on the character of Western supremacy. In the short term, Israel's unchecked aggression in both Gaza and Iran represents a reassertion of a Western hegemonic project. The much-touted idea of a multipolar world has proved illusory.
While local contexts remain varied, recent conflicts reveal a global order with no meaningful checks and balances. The fall of Iran would further erode Russian and Chinese abilities to challenge Western dominance outside their limited spheres. Key West Asian powers, including Saudi Arabia, have chosen not to let Palestine or Iran derail their rapprochement with the West. These wars, viewed through a longer historical lens, are attempts to rearticulate American hegemony.
Donald Trump will likely exploit this war to assert a supremacist narrative. If regime change in Iran or the destruction of its nuclear capabilities appears achievable, he will support the war. If not, he may pose as a dishonourable peacemaker. Either way, the message he wishes to convey is clear: American indispensability, the power to remake the world, and an effort to avenge the humiliations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The West has never truly reconciled itself ideologically to the shifting dynamics of global power. In Benjamin Netanyahu, it finds a tool to reassert supremacy by eliminating regional adversaries.
The impunity and nihilism of this moment are glaring. Amidst mass devastation and suffering, our moral faculties have been paralysed by tribalism. Pre-existing group loyalties allow us to rationalise atrocities and ignore risk. Whatever modest progress had been made towards a more cosmopolitan sensibility has now been undone. In the realm of international relations, even the analytical ability to step outside tribal loyalties has withered. A basic decency that once sought to humanise adversaries has been smothered by renewed forms of dehumanisation of the other.
War has always relied on deceit. But today, language itself has become so debased that words no longer aim at truth. They have become weapons, not tools for understanding or reconciliation. The goal is not merely to lie, but to render the very notion of truth irrelevant. Discourse is used to suffocate, to anchor reality solely in tribal identities.
Consider the paradox of Gaza: It is the most reported conflict in the world, yet Palestinians have been rendered invisible — not through neglect, but through the very nature of coverage. Consider also the twisted logic of nuclear deterrence. First, the exaggerated claim that Iran was weeks away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. In Iraq, Colin Powell at least paid lip service to truth via institutional validation. Now, institutions like the IAEA are dismissed entirely in favour of unilateral assertions. No validation of truth is required.
Nuclear weapons are supposed to deter existential threats. Israel has them; it enjoys the West's nuclear umbrella. How, then, can Iran pose an existential threat to Israel? The incoherence is staggering. If nuclear-armed states can still claim existential peril, what is the point of deterrence at all? The issue is not nuclear doctrine, but the brazen mendacity underlying current strategy. Iran's attacks on Israeli civilians are rightly condemned, but Israel's reciprocal actions are conveniently excluded from that same moral frame. This is nihilism. It is to break language to the point that no truth can be articulated. Even the meaning of 'civilian' is inflected by tribal loyalty.
The global leadership vacuum reflects this deadly combination of supremacism and nihilism. Trump is a supremacist opportunist who tests the moral bottom line. European leadership, especially Britain, France and Germany, has never looked more inept or morally bankrupt. The Holocaust was supposed to teach the universality of human rights and the immorality of targeting people for their identity. Yet now, Europe has reduced that universal principle into making Israel a 'reason of state', even as it violates those very principles. Their rhetoric recasts victims as aggressors with a moral alchemy that is less racist than it is senseless. On the other side, those part of the so-called 'axis of resistance' — Hamas and Iran — exhibit their own death wish, bringing devastation upon the people they claim to defend.
India's nationalist narcissism limits its role to symbolic gestures. Russia and Turkey are caught between claims of victimhood and ambitions of regional dominance. China, bewildered or calculating, prioritises narrow self-interest while letting the world unravel. There is no meaningful Global South coalition willing or able to engage with real stakes. Most social movements are ineffective. And these wars come at a time when so many countries are battling their own political systems. In this toxic mix of supremacism, narcissism and self-delusion, we are expected to imagine a new global order.
Even if the West emerges victorious in the short run, the long-term consequences of war are unpredictable and often corrosive. How this war will metastasize only time will tell. There is something about this moment that cannot be captured simply by invoking familiar tropes of strategic logic or realism, which can often produce their own conflicts. There is a much deeper loss of moral bearing that is unhinging humanity: A casualness about risk, a yearning for an easy machismo, an aesthetic videogaming of real war, and the idea that the critique of liberalism or cosmopolitanism or humanism, must stand on the ground of throwing out any form of decency. Three recent conflicts — Ukraine-Russia, India-Pakistan, and Israel-Gaza/Iran — have pushed us across dangerous new thresholds.
First, the global nuclear order is destabilising. Even if Iran is disarmed, it is evident that the current nuclear framework cannot ensure stability. The direct targeting of nuclear facilities was clearly outlawed by international law. But by testing the logic of escalation, these wars make security more precarious. Second, the technological advancements in drones and precision missiles are democratising the instruments of war.
They will become more pervasive. They will change our understanding of who poses a threat, and what is strategically relevant. Everyday objects — a trash bin, a parked car — could become vectors of destruction. This pervasive threat will feed paranoia and justify further authoritarianism.
Geopolitics is becoming dangerously unhinged. And there are no adults left in the room.
The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express