If the world was controlled by a secret group of people who plan and plot behind the scenes how events unfold, it would be too easy. All we’d have to do is find out who these people are and get rid of them. Unfortunately, it is not that simple.
The Iran war is a good example that this is not the case, despite what some would want us to believe. The fact that the U.S. initiated this war without a clear achievable goal, without a plan for contingencies or an exit strategy, only adds to the conjecture. Some even argue that this is actually the point—not an actual objective, but chaos.
However, given the global effects of this war and its significance, there might not be a single motive. Which, in turn, begs the question:
“What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people burn houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these events? What force made men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it encounters the monuments and tradition of that period.”
Those are Tolstoy’s words in the second epilogue of his masterpiece War and Peace. Throughout the novel, Tolstoy shows the myriad of decisions and events that contribute to these circumstances and how they affect individuals and society at large. In the second epilogue, he makes that theory explicit.
Since we rejected God and His decree over the world, we have failed to sufficiently account for the force that moves peoples and nations to act, Tolstoy posits. Speaking of Napoleon, he states:
“He had the power, and so what he ordered was done. This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was given to him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes essential to determine what this power of one man over others is.”
Tolstoy argues for historical necessity. There is no single will that moves events, but rather the confluence of thousands of small decisions taken by countless people, some known and some unknown, as well as colliding circumstances.
It would be futile, Tolstoy would argue, to attribute the war on Iran to Trump’s haughtiness, Netanyahu’s ambition, or Iranian stubbornness. It would be equally insufficient to attribute it only to oil, dollar dominance, or a planned multipolar transition—though all of these factors count.
Tolstoy was not alone in this approach. Marx, Durkheim, and Foucault would have agreed with some of his arguments. Nor was he arguing that individuals are not relevant. He was asking a more essential question: what drives millions of individuals, from the general to the foot soldier, to act in accord?
“In each action we examine, we see a certain measure of freedom and a certain measure of necessity,” he writes. “The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends in this respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the performance of the action and our judgment of it.”
When we are in close proximity to the events happening, we see more clearly the individual decision and its freedom—perceived or real. Trump can stop the war, as he initiated it. But as time passes, we might begin to discern all the elements that at first were confusing and that seem to inexorably precipitate it. Maybe Trump did not have much of a choice; there were other forces pushing for it too—for example, Israel.
However, we can also recognize previous patterns that help contextualize the current event. If we consider the Russian foreign minister’s words that the U.S. is after energy dominance, then this war fits into a wider pattern. Similarly, if we consider Netanyahu’s words that Israel is fighting a war of survival—or expansion.
Part of this wider pattern emerges if we understand the U.S. as an empire, which previous examples have shown to have a cyclical nature. Even if we are to accept that history is progressive in a linear manner, we would have to recognize that social entities, such as empires, have a lifespan. The U.S., when viewed in the light of other empires, seems to have passed its apex.
The idea of history as a progressive, linear process is itself a particular framing. The Hindus maintain that we are in the midst of the fourth and last Yuga cycle, the Kali Yuga. Some say that we are at the end of this cycle. For them, the characteristics of the Kali Yuga are constant strife and the loss of virtue. To them, our world shows exactly that. After that, a new Yuga cycle begins.
Abrahamic religions share an understanding—though with notable theological differences—about eschatology. The world is moving towards a certain succession of events—the coming of the Antichrist and the savior—which will precede the end of times.
One might judge any of those conceptions of history as wrong or fantastical, but they have a real bearing on the current conflict. Netanyahu—whom some Jews believe to be the last prime minister of Israel before the coming of the Messiah—has just declared that Israel has to become “feared and revered.”
Russian thinker Alexandre Dugin interprets this in the Jewish tradition as inverting the archetype of the Messiah Ben Yosef, a suffering messiah who sacrifices himself, for Ben David, the triumphant messiah who establishes the kingdom of God on earth.
Many of the evangelical Christians who support Israel and pray for Trump share that story. Those who align with dispensationalist end-times theology believe a Third Temple must be built where the Al-Aqsa Mosque stands to fulfill prophecy. This event is viewed as a necessary precursor to the return of Jesus.
It’s difficult to dismiss the influence of this on the war when a group of evangelical pastors, led by Paula White-Cain, White House faith advisor, and other members of the Faith Office, have prayed for Trump and the U.S. to succeed in this war. Pete Hegseth, the self-designated Secretary of War, has also made explicit remarks about the religious nature of this war, and the U.S. military has framed it as “all part of God’s divine plan.”
Some of these Christian nationalists also defend the “great replacement theory,” which claims that globalist actors are intentionally diluting the cultural and political status of white populations through shifts in demographics and immigration policy. They see this and other wars as a way of reestablishing Western—white—dominance.
Peter Thiel and other technologists also espouse part of these theories, although with significant variations. They defend what is known as accelerationism: the pushing forward of capitalism, technological change, and social disruption in order to unchain technology and usher in a new era. Not coincidentally, Thiel has been speaking of the Antichrist.
This perspective would fit the Iran war as a necessary step in a planned transition towards a multipolar, surveillance- and CBDC-denominated world—a world to which we seem inexorably led by Western and non-Western elites. European leaders, the bastion of social welfare, liberalism, and secularism, are also pressing to accelerate its implementation.
It would be incorrect to restrict this view to the West alone, as most developed nations, including China and Russia, function within a similar social pattern of state structure, financial economy through banks, and surveillance. We seem to have accepted that this is the only possible form of social life, all in the name of continual material progress. But what are we progressing toward, and to what end?
That question seems difficult to answer—but perhaps necessary if we want to find some sense in so much war and destruction driven by control over energy and resources, nationalism and ethno-nationalism, surveillance, and technology.
Perhaps there is none.
