The Iran–U.S. War and the Crisis of Political Imagination
War appears here not as an event but as a durable condition: a sign of suspended historical time, collapsing horizons, and a growing incapacity to imagine political alternatives.
Perhaps the fundamental mistake in almost all analyses written about the Iran–U.S.–Israel conflict is that they still define it as an event. What is unfolding, however, is not of the nature of an event but rather a condition, one with no clear beginning and no definite end, and therefore not properly grasped through conventional analytical tools. We stand within a time and a history in which historical time itself has become dislocated. It is as if one can no longer easily speak of a past that leads into a future. One might call this a dangerous interim—not merely a distance between two global orders, but a void in which not only power structures but meaning itself has been suspended.
We have become accustomed to imagining history in a linear way: one order collapses and another takes its place. But this image is overly simplistic and no longer works today. What we are facing now is not a transition from one order to another, but a suspension of the very possibility of order itself. The signs of the collapse of the old world are visible everywhere—from the erosion of international institutions to the loss of credibility of agreements, and the unapologetic return of the logic of force in global relations and the governance of countries. Yet what is less visible is that the new world has not only not yet been born, but cannot even be clearly imagined on the horizon of political thought. This is precisely the point at which war acquires meaning, not as a deviation from the course of history, but as a sign of its halt.
When a historical system is no longer capable of producing a future, it inevitably replaces it with something else—and that substitute, paradoxically, is crisis itself. In the absence of a horizon, in the absence of the possibility of imagining a future, war becomes the only force capable of simulating movement and pushing time forward, even if that movement is in fact a kind of standing still. In this sense, war is no longer a means to an end; rather, it takes the place of the end itself, a kind of filler for the void that gives the world a temporary yet unstable form. Under such conditions, powers go to war not merely for concrete interests, but to escape a deeper question: if there is no war, what remains? And because there is no answer to this question, the war continues.
At the level of official discourse, this condition is typically framed in terms of mutual threats, deterrence, and defense. Yet at a deeper level, the primary driving force must be sought in a kind of fear that is rarely articulated: the fear of decline, or more precisely, the fear of becoming irrelevant. Powers fear not so much one another as they fear losing their decisive role in shaping the world or governing themselves. Decline here is not merely a reduction in resources or influence, but a collapse of meaning. It is the loss of the sense that “we are still at the center of gravity.” In such a situation, even actions that appear costly or irrational from the perspective of instrumental rationality take on a new meaning; they can be understood as attempts to prove continued existence. At this level, war is no longer a strategic choice but an existential response to the anxiety of disappearance.
Yet perhaps the most fundamental crisis lies even deeper: in the growing incapacity for political imagination.
The models of governance that dominate the world today are largely products of conditions that no longer exist, yet they continue to be applied as if the world had not changed. Meanwhile, technology, communication networks, and social structures have transformed, meaning that the language of politics remains stuck in the past. This mismatch between reality and the tools used to understand it has created a gap that cannot easily be bridged. Under such conditions, the issue is no longer that politicians are unwilling to offer new solutions, but that they often cannot, because they are thinking within frameworks that no longer have the capacity to address new problems. When political imagination breaks down, what remains is repetition: the reproduction of old patterns in a world that no longer responds to them. Among these patterns, war is one of the most accessible, yet also one of the most destructive and costly.
If we place these three elements side by side—competition over defining the global order, fear of decline and irrelevance, and the inability to produce new forms of governance—a picture emerges in which war appears not as a tool, but as a structure for filling a void of meaning. In a world where the future is uncertain and shared horizons have collapsed, war creates a kind of temporary cohesion, even if that cohesion is based on destruction. In this sense, war becomes something like a substitute framework: one that gives meaning to actions, urgency to decisions, and an external direction to time, without truly opening a path out of crisis.
In such a situation, one might speak of what could be called a “durable suspension,” a condition in which we are no longer facing a temporary transition, but the stabilization of suspension itself. The order that has collapsed does not return, and the order that should replace it has not yet taken shape, but this interval is no longer short-term; it has become a relatively permanent condition. Within this framework, instability is no longer the exception but the rule, and war is understood not as a sudden event but as part of that rule.
Yet perhaps the most dangerous consequence of this condition is not war itself, but the normalization of this suspension. Societies have a high capacity for adaptation, even to conditions that initially seem unbearable. When living amid continuous crises becomes normal, when the absence of a future is no longer shocking, and when the question of alternative possibilities gives way to a kind of silent acceptance, we are faced with a form of collapse that is neither explosive nor sudden, but gradual and almost invisible. This is the point at which the main danger no longer lies at the level of events, but at the level of human perception and expectation.
Now, a question emerges, one that may be more unsettling than we can easily confront: if we truly live in a world that is no longer capable of producing a conceivable future, if crisis has taken the place of horizon and war determines direction instead of collective projects, then we must ask whether what we are experiencing is merely a series of transient crises, or a sign of entry into a new historical condition in which the very possibility of exiting crisis has come into question. And if so, are wars merely reflections of this incapacity, or do they gradually stabilize and reproduce it? And finally, if politics in its current form is no longer capable of creating a future, what will take its place? Will this void be filled by economic and technological forces, or are we facing a kind of fragmentation and disorder for which we do not yet even have a name?
These questions do not have simple answers. But perhaps their importance lies precisely in this: they compel us to step outside familiar horizons and confront the possibility that what we once understood as a “temporary condition” prior to the Iran–U.S.–Israel conflict is now turning into a new form of reality.
The Iran–U.S. War and the Crisis of Political Imagination #IranUSWar #PoliticalImagination
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