Lorenzo Maria Pacini
We live in a world where war no longer knows boundaries or truces.
Endless and almost unrelenting
We live in a world where war no longer knows boundaries or truces. It is no longer an isolated event, delimited by fronts and armistices, but a perpetual and widespread state, an endless war that permeates every domain of contemporary life - from the digital trenches of cyberspace, to economic and information conflicts, to wars of narrative and influence. This condition did not arise out of nowhere: it is the result of an exhausted international system, an order that was based on assumptions that are now fragile and inadequate for the multipolar reality of the 21st century.
Contemporary warfare, as we know, is no longer fought with conventional weapons alone. It is a hybrid war, consisting of propaganda, information manipulation, supply chain control, financial pressure, and technological dominance. Every crisis-from Ukraine to the Middle East, from Africa to the Pacific-is a reflection of a broader battle for control of spheres of influence and strategic resources. But what makes it "endless" is the absence of a clear goal, of a point at which a winner can prevail over a loser. Everything is fluid, everything is reversible.
Hybrid warfare, with its pervasive nature, destroys the distinction between peace and conflict. Economic sanctions, cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, currency wars, the strategic use of energy or food - everything becomes a weapon. There is no longer time for diplomacy, because competition is continuous. In this permanent state, even citizens, consumers, and public opinion have become unwitting targets and combatants.
One of the typical tools with which the West has attempted to maintain control of the international system is sanctions. Their logic was based on the concept of economic pressure as a substitute for war. Punish to deter. Weaken to obtain political concessions. But sanctions, as we well know, no longer work.
And one of the most atrocious things, if we can say so, is that there seems to be no respite in all this. Perception is the key, just as in torture, which is intensified or relaxed depending on the effects on the tortured. It is a sadistic game of global violence, where a few cannibalize the peace of many and the balance of the world is sacrificed on the altar of the interests of hidden oligarchies.
Roads that work, roads that fail
In a globalized world fragmented into power blocs, economies find alternative paths. Russia trades with China, Iran strengthens itself through parallel networks, and so-called "non-aligned" countries exploit tensions between powers to gain autonomy. Sanctions, rather than isolating, often push sanctioned countries to develop new internal capabilities, new alliances, and alternative supply chains. This is proof that there are no longer any universal levers of coercion: there is no way, or perhaps no will, to truly resolve conflicts through defeat or surrender.
This failure is also that of deterrence. For decades, peace in the Western world has been based on the principle of mutual fear: nuclear war as a taboo, military intervention as a last resort. Today, deterrence no longer commands respect, but calculation, with global actors continually testing limits and red lines, knowing that the superpowers hesitate, fearing the political, economic, and human cost of any radical decision. The messages of "firmness" from Western leaders are lost in the void of an order that is no longer shared.
The 'rules-based order' that the United States and Europe talk about has been reduced to an empty rhetorical formula. Born in the aftermath of World War II, when Western domination of the world was total, that system presupposed implicit consent to American leadership and its values: liberal democracy, free trade, 'humanitarian' interventionism, and the supremacy of multilateral institutions under Western influence. But that time is over, and the trouble is that none of them had thought about an "after," so they are desperately trying to keep alive the rotting carcass of that old world, which they continue to tell us is the best of all possible worlds but which, in reality, looks more like a monster.
The rules that were supposed to guarantee stability are now perceived by many nations as tools of convenience, applied selectively. When the West breaks the very rules it invokes-bombing countries without a UN mandate, supporting coups, imposing unilateral sanctions, manipulating entire generations-the legitimacy of that order evaporates. The system is slowly dying, buried under its own contradictions.
Meanwhile, while the West discusses "values" and "defending democracy," the rest of the world is pragmatically organizing itself around new axes of cooperation, speaking the language of economic realism, technological autonomy, and the sovereignty of civilizations. New financial institutions, new military alliances, and new energy and trade corridors are forming. It is a profound realignment in which Western criteria and means of power no longer hold sway.
Of course, this new multipolar world is not yet stable: it is turbulent and full of contradictions, but it represents the end of one era and the beginning of another, a transition that requires time and patience. No single state has the power to dictate global rules on its own anymore. Power relations are expressed in localized balances, whose rules are still being worked out. The corpses of old empires need to be transformed into new ground on which to build something else.
Multipolarism also means that there is no longer one geopolitical truth, but that each pole of power has its own narrative, its own political and economic model to propose. China presents itself as an alternative to Western liberalism; Russia claims to defend values and spaces; India, Latin America, and Africa seek a place that is no longer one of subordination but of protagonism in their own histories. In this context, Europe appears lost: too small to impose itself alone, too dependent on the United States to represent an independent front, too stuck in its own convictions, struggling as it tries to save itself by turning to the wrong side.
The multipolar order does not automatically bring justice or peace, it is true, but it represents a response to the world's weariness with the West's universal pretensions. It is the return of politics, in the most realistic sense of the term: the struggle for survival and influence within a system without armed referees, ready to change the rules at will and falsify the results. The world is tired of all this.
Ours is an age in which there are no longer any clear winners. Every conflict creates new dependencies, new wounds, new vulnerabilities, which is why endless war is also a war of exhaustion, of the inability to imagine alternatives. Sanctions, alliances, and solemn declarations are no longer enough and will become increasingly ineffective, because there is no room in the new world for those who still want to impose the remnants of the old one.
What will remain of Europe, of the collective West ? It is no longer a question of establishing who is right, but who will be able to endure.