Neither War, nor Peace: Toward a Brutal World

“War”: behind this word lies a series of concepts, norms, constitutional and international rules regarding who can declare war, and under what rules of engagement, as well as descriptions of good and bad practices listed in manuals about lawful acts on land, at sea, in the air, or in space — all of which, taken together, are supposed to strictly define the use of this term. Yet, in contrast to the clarity that the law is supposed to provide on this issue, current events present us with a disconcerting lack of transparency.

To describe its invasion of Ukraine and the war of position that followed the invasion, Russia uses the term “special military operation”. This term seems inappropriate to many European commentators, who see two armies — and their allies, whether directly or indirectly involved — facing off on a battlefield: this “special operation” presents a pattern that is ultimately quite typical of warfare, with allegations of war crimes as often found in armed conflicts.

The United States, for its part, refers to its recent military actions against the Islamic Republic of Iran as a “war” — and the US Congress confirms this by demanding a say in President Trump’s decisions. By this term, it describes the strikes it carried out in two waves within a year, first by striking Iran’s nuclear facilities and assassinating certain scientists and political leaders in 2025, then by launching the most expansive and high-level campaign of political assassinations that contemporary history has ever seen. Indeed, from late February to April 2026, US and Israeli military strikes decimated the top of the Islamic Republic’s political, military, and civilian elite, beginning with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei together with a large portion of his family and continuing with Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, the highly influential head of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani and many others.

These strikes against Ukraine (in 2014 and 2022) and Iran (in 2025 and 2026) form a strange chasmus: a seemingly conventional war of position in Ukraine (albeit an illegal one) that does not call itself by that name but is described in terms of a “special operation”, and a special operation led by the United States and Israel against Iran that deviates from international norms governing military engagement on the battlefield. Although legal commentators have recalled that there are no treaties or customary rules of international law prohibiting the assassination of state leaders — except when they travel abroad to represent their country — in practice, restraint has been observed by most state leaders; such limits on their public use of power have led them to favour covert operatives when trying to produce regime change through political assassination.

To go beyond just pointing toward this ironic chiasmus, I believe that we need to place these conflicts within the historical context of struggles between former empires and their former vassals, in which references to the distinction between “war” and “peace” are blurred. Indeed, empires have long described colonial wars as “policing” and responses to “incidents”, and have evaded the language of law that takes the distinction between war and peace as a pillar of its foundations. The escalation in Iran of March 2026 is a good illustration of this neocolonial mindset: the latest operation will certainly have reminded Iranian citizens of the earlier decision by the imperialist powers of the time, Great Britain and the United States, to remove Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh from power in response to his decision to nationalise the oil industry in 1951. But the brutality of the methods chosen — targeted assassination rather than a trial or banishment from public life — is more reminiscent of the neocolonial “special operations” carried out by Western intelligence agencies in Africa, aimed at changing the nature of a regime by decapitating it in order to secure access to its raw materials — the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba serving as the archetype. Russia’s ambitions to keep its access to Ukrainian raw materials and maritime routes thanks to its “special operation” and occupation of Crimea serve as a mirror image of imperial aggressions previously decided by Western powers when they led similar military adventures while denying being at war. Recall the Suez crisis of 1956: Israel attacked Egypt as  of a secret plan with the UK and France, which used the Israeli military action as a pretext to intervene as supposed peacemakers, occupy the Canal Zone and weaken Egypt — and thus diminish the prospects of Algerian independence from French rule.

In all these cases, a common thread emerges: the overt determination of political leaders of imperial states to brutalise international relations by imposing the use of violence as a legitimate means of international policy — despite its condemnation in the UN Charter —, which they can do legally only by denying the fundamental legal distinction between war and peace.  In all these cases, a common thread emerges: the overt determination of political leaders of imperial states to brutalise international relations by imposing the use of violence as a legitimate means of international policy — despite its condemnation in the UN Charter —, something they can do legally only by denying the fundamental legal distinction between war and peace. Describing the resurgence of the colonial mindset driven over the centuries by major extractive multinationals and neo-mercantilist states, Arnaud Orain writes, for example, that “violence” in such a system “does not mean open war but rather that state of ‘neither war nor peace’ that characterises capitalism of finitude: the ever-increasing closure and privatisation of the seas through a ‘trade’ in militarised convoys, the formation of imperial silos in armed rivalry with one another to appropriate physical and cyberspaces, and a proliferation of sovereignty conflicts between states and corporate-states.”

It is difficult to understand how our world has come to this, and what the consequences of these actions will be for what the advocates of international law have built over nearly a century: a multilateral system based on trust among states, good faith in negotiations, respect for the sovereignty of peoples in choosing their political leaders, as well as the independence of international organisations tasked with verifying the commitments of all parties. This essay explores a few avenues — which are more hypotheses than conclusions — drawing more on the case of the US-Israeli “war” against Iran than on the Russian aggression against Ukraine.

At the Intersection of Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation: The Origins of the Transformation of the Concept of “War” in the Context of the War against Iran

In an introduction to the Winter 2022 issue of Global Challenges, we had already identified a few lines of analysis to explain the increasing brutality of international relations and the rise of violence as a legitimate means of resolving issues ranging from trade to investment and the flow of capital, as well as access to raw materials — what is sometimes called “neo-mercantilism”, a term that, however, obscures the brutality at work in the process. These included underlying trends, such as the loss of legitimacy and effectiveness of multilateral institutions in managing financial crises following the 2008 crisis, and contingent events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the restructuring of value chains in its wake, which accelerated the abandonment of the practices and codes of multilateral organisations. With regard to the issue at hand — namely, the dissolution of the distinction between war and peace and the rise of a state of “neither war nor peace” associated with imperial neo-mercantilism — two further factors played a predominant role.

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First, since the end of the Cold War, there has been, above all, the use of the word “war” to refer to counterterrorism operations: their legitimacy has become so self-evident after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the adoption of the Patriot Act that political leaders have increasingly disregarded rule-of-law issues when fighting terrorists. In the so-called “war on terror”, the word “war” was used to justify a whole series of practices that are unthinkable and unlawful under the laws of war. “Terrorists” were captured, designated as “enemy combatants” and transfered to secret detention centres where torture was practised on a massive scale. Others were assassinate in third countries. Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011 in a US special forces raid in Pakistan, a precedent for the drone strike that later killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani at the Baghdad airport in January 2020, followed in February 2026 by the airstrike that kill Ayatollah Khamenei and his close associates. From one assassination to the next, there is a continuity, although with one significant difference: bin Laden was a terrorist with no official role within a state, while the others were military, religious, and political leaders in a UN member state recognised by the international community. Now, if any “enemy” is an active “terrorist”, independent of his state functions, the door is open to targeted preventive assassinations. This justification is by no means new: the French Republic made extensive use of it during its “war” in Algeria — long referred to as “incidents” — by claiming a duty to eliminate “terrorists” without always going through the ordinary courts. These counter-terrorism techniques were widely emulated by authoritarian states across the globe in the context of the “war on terror”, and their increased acceptability partly explains the emergence of a state of “neither war, nor peace” since 9/11: in the years since 9/11, the United States has continued to attack Taliban positions in Afghanistan using drones, as well as Houthi positions in Yemen, making extensive drone warfare — of the kind that Russia is now following against Ukrainians — a common tactic of counterterrorism. The terrorist attacks of 7 October 2023 led by Hamas against Israeli civilians largely account for the escalation witnessed in the 2026 US-Israeli waves of assassinations against the political leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, from top to lower levels of command, and now Iranian state representatives have been treated in the same way as the leadership of such armed groups. Russian propagandists have urged the Russian president to draw on the US-Israeli precedent and escalate drone attacks against new targets in the Ukrainian theatre of war, which President Putin has now expanded to many locations in the Ukrainian capital that had not previously been hit.

Second, since the revelation in 2003 of the existence of a network exporting centrifuges and dual-use nuclear equipment capable of enriching uranium from Pakistan to customers  in Iraq, Libya and Iran, “war” has surreptitiously established itself as a remedy to address the real or imagined shortcomings of the multilateral institutions that have long been tasked with controlling the risks of proliferation. The United States, as the only hegemonic power in the aftermath of the Cold War, first arrogated that right to itself, while seeking (in vain) the support of the UN Security Council, before declaring a preventive war on Iraq in 2003. Then, having negotiated with the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, to get him to renounce all Pakistani nuclear technology after a shipment of centrifuge parts was seized in 2003, the United States ultimately declared war on Libya in 2011 using a different rationale — to prevent the massacre of its civilian insurgent population —, this time relying on a coalition of volunteers led by France.

This year, it was the turn of Iran, the third country that had imported Pakistani centrifuges, to face the ravages of war. Ultimately, in all three cases — Saddam Hussein being executed in 2006 following a trial, Muammar Gaddafi being captured and killed in 2011 by a mob during the promised liberation of the country from his despotic rule, and Ali Khamenei being killed in 2026 by US-Israeli strikes —, the elimination of all the highest-ranking political figures who decided at some point to adopt policies of nuclear ambiguity if not nuclear proliferation in the Middle East has become a historical fact. Nearly thirty years after the revelation of the Pakistani network’s existence, the three countries that were its clients have experienced more or less the same treatment: a preemptive war and the execution of their leaders — even though the resistance to this treatment varied from case to case. And in each case, the end of the conflict did not lead to a state of “peace”, but rather to a state of “neither war nor peace”, characterised by the continuation of unilateral sanctions against these countries, the resurgence of strikes to protect economic interests threatened by internal conflicts, and shifts in the ruling coalitions.

Regional and Global Implications of Current “Wars” FOR the Nonproliferation Regime Inherited from Détente and the End of the Cold War

Many commentators emphasise that this state of “neither war nor peace”, which is spreading throughout the world, precedes increasing fragmentation. Given the convergence of these developments, which are by no means the only reasons why the United States and Israel went to war against the Islamic Republic in 2026, we must consider the consequences that might derive from this war waged in the name of the fight against terrorism, proliferation and human rights violations — the three threats combined in the US rhetoric that blurs the distinction between war and peace in a coordinated effort to normalise imperial aggression. Many commentators emphasise that this state of “neither war nor peace”, which is spreading throughout the world, precedes increasing fragmentation, and it is at this level that I aim to sketch a few developments emerging from the latest waves of conflict. The issue here is not to predict what will become of the domestic situation in Iran, Iraq, or Libya in the future, but rather to ask what this state of “neither war nor peace” is already doing to the multilateral system that has been in place since the end of European colonialism in the 1960s, with special regimes — notably that of nuclear nonproliferation — designed to prevent global “policing” from being left to a single hegemonic power and its armed forces. In this regard, we can identify two types of consequences, at the regional and global levels, related to the accelerating fragmentation of the multilateral nuclear system.

At the regional level, the upheavals caused by the US-Israeli war against Iran are likely to be significant in terms of the reconfiguration of regional military alliances, with a possible split in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): this process of reformatting alliances was made manifest with the new alliance strategy forged by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which announced first a security pact with Pakistan, and then its extension to include Türkiye.

Another important effect of these conflicts at the regional level is also felt in the market for mediation and conflict resolution, which confirms the European Union’s now-negligible role in nuclear diplomacy in the Middle East and the rise of new regional brokers. While the European Union had played a key role in the negotiations held with Iran from 2013 to 2025 on Iran’s nuclear programme, the activation in late August 2025 by France, the United Kingdom and Germany of the “snapback” clause reinstating sanctions previously lifted by the 2015 nuclear agreement only served to demonstrate — if proof were needed — the lack of strategic autonomy of the European Union and its three main powers toward the United States on Iran. The “snapback” decision only accelerated their international relegation in the realm of nuclear mediation, which, paradoxically, marked the rise of Pakistani diplomacy. It is indeed ironical but significant that Pakistan played a key role in the June 2026 agreement that was meant to end the US-Israeli “war” against Iran through the signing of a two-month ceasefire — which lasted less than a month and is now null and void. In this case, it is paradoxical indeed to see that it is ultimately Pakistan, the country that initially exported dual-use nuclear technology to the region in the 1990s and early 2000s, that has ultimately become the guarantor — albeit a fleeting and often powerless one — of the interests of all parties in maintaining the nonproliferation regime – a regime that it has consistently denounced as unjust and to which it has never fully adhered.

More broadly, at the global level, the credibility of the multilateral nonproliferation regime risks being permanently undermined in the region as a result of the US-Israeli actions. Consider at the recent trends that followed the spike of attacks. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia has obtained an agreement with Türkiye — the country with the second-largest army in NATO, under whose nuclear umbrella it operates — and with Pakistan — whose government expenditures Saudi Arabia financed in the 1980s and 1990s, when Pakistan was simultaneously helping Afghans fight the Soviet Union and striving to acquire nuclear weapons. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia is also turning to its American ally to obtain civilian nuclear technologies — and possibly dual-use technologies — under a bilateral verification framework that, according to some critics, could undermine the oversight of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), insofar as it does not provide for accession to the Additional Protocol. This is in contrast to what Iran had accepted in 2015 as part of its nuclear deal; furthermore, it allows for the possibility that Saudi Arabia could participate in a uranium enrichment consortium.

As for Israel, which has never signed the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, its “preventive attacks” demonstrate how little regard its government has had for the functioning of the multilateral system. As for Israel, which has never signed the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), its “preventive attacks” demonstrate how little regard its government has had for the functioning of the multilateral system since the signing of the 2025 nuclear agreement — an agreement Israel has consistently criticised and sought to undermine since its signing although it was key to restoring trust in the global nonproliferation regime. While this agreement was a powerful demonstration of the resilience of the nonproliferation regime by addressing the risks posed by the Pakistani network and its clients, Israel has relentlessly advocated for a direct attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites since their existence was revealed. By taking law enforcement privileges into its own hands with the United States without seeking authorisation from the UN Security Council, this time, Israel convinced the US government to abandon its support for multilateralism applied to nuclear nonproliferation. This represents a dramatic shift in US policy: previously, any Israeli act of unilateral aggression against nuclear facilities, including Israel’s destruction of the Iraqi Osirak reactor in the early 1980s, had provoked an indignant reaction from the United States, the guardian of the nonproliferation regime. The fact that the European Union, far from criticising this 2025 attack, looked the other way demonstrates the little faith that not only the United States, but also most NATO countries have in the functioning of the multilateral system — and their acceptance of a new modus vivendi with Iran characterised by a state of “neither war nor peace.”

Under these circumstances, it is indeed the NPT, the initial “deal” struck by the international community, that is being called into question: Israel’s status as a “de facto” nuclear-armed power could remain a taboo as long as Israel did not weaken the NPT regime with its action threatening the balance of the global nuclear order. For instance, when the indefinite extension of the NPT (initially a 25-year moratorium) was negotiated in 1995, Arab League member-states negotiated their consent in exchange for the promise that the international community represented by the United States and the European Union would lobby for Israel’s gradual acceptance of the denuclearisation of the Middle East. Considering Israel’s lack of progress in this direction, and its ambition to maintain its nuclear supremacy in the region with US and EU support, one might wonder whether the Arab states will feel cheated and, if so, whether they will continue to support, the NPT in the future.

Events since 2025 have moved in the opposite direction. Many states have expressed concern that the next NPT review session may once again fall — after the 2026 conference ended without a final document for the third time running — which would inevitably push the region and the world away from the long-established multilateral framework. As for the disarmament promises made under the NPT, the nuclear-armed powers, starting with Russia and the United States, have withdrawn in recent years from the majority of nuclear arms control treaties and agreements, many of which concern weapons deployed in Europe, even though they had committed to working toward nuclear disarmament by signing the NPT. Add to this the proliferation of implicit or explicit threats to use nuclear weapons in the event of an escalation of the conflict, made by President Trump against Iran and by President Putin against Ukraine and its EU arms suppliers — and it becomes clear just how much these two wars have undermined the credibility of the commitments made by the supposed guarantors of the global nuclear order.

In a world now undergoing profound fragmentation, some predict that the era of imperial powers and neocolonial governance is returning. In a world now undergoing profound fragmentation, some predict that the era of imperial powers and neocolonial governance is returning. With regard to civil nuclear power, rather than relying on the IAEA, Russia could be tempted to ensure that the nuclear programmes in countries where its technologies are exported, such as Iran, Türkiye or Egypt, are unproblematic for Russia, based on geopolitical rather than legal criteria. Other countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which import such technologies from the United States, could equally be accountable only to the United States, according to a logic of neocolonial bilateralism in which the technology exporter controls the importer’s use of the technology, without resorting to global rules and institutions intended to apply to all, and to stand above the logic of blocs. Such a future for the nonproliferation regime would set it back sixty years, to a time when bloc-based thinking prevailed in the early postwar years, from the end of World War II to the mid-1950s.

Toward the End of Universal Multilateralism and the Resurgence of Neocolonial Bilateralism by the Great Powers?

As I wrote a year ago, the trends I described above can be seen as “a symptom of a more general problem, namely the impoverishment of our legal imagination and the lack of collective will to move toward the necessary decolonisation of the categorisations driven by an imperialist worldview”, in which only “great powers” and their “vassals” define different categories of statehood. Far from being exhaustive, this pessimistic scenario only traces on possible path: from an ordered multilateralism with universal aspirations that emerged from détente, toward a neocolonial bilateralism of power and dependence. Nothing is set in stone, and the acceleration of fragmentation processes under the influence of practical and theoretical redefinitions of the concept of “war” and the diffusion of a state of “neither war nor peace” is merely one hypothesis among many. We must hope that surprises will emerge from the often confusing and multifaceted initiatives of peacemakers, who tirelessly strive to transcend these divisions and propose universal solutions based on good faith and respect for one’s word. Yet we are still far from that goal.