By Lamino Lang Komma
The current conflict in the Middle East seems to be perceived with distant uneasiness, as being transient news headlines, yet it more closely resembles an unstable bushfire – dangerous and potentially uncontrollable with an unpredictable trajectory.
What has begun with unwavering confidence in a swift and decisive victory by a militarily mighty power is now unfolding into a prolonged and impulsive war. It underscores a deeper reality – the “might and technology” of an established power pitted against the “faith and firepower” of its adversary.
These powers rely on overwhelming military strength, believing that technological superiority guarantees victory. Yet again and again, these advanced powers are drawn into long wars of attrition, because the real danger lies not only in the destruction they can cause but also in the unexpected resilience and retaliatory capacity of their opponents.
Technology can deliver overwhelming initial offensives, but it is “faith” – a broader ideological conviction, existential resilience, and a deeply rooted sense of purpose – that sustains a much longer resistance.
Such conflicts are generally ignited by three overlapping motives – containing perceived threats and insecurity, in defence of or an assertion of sovereignty, and the pursuit of hegemony and economic gains.
More often, it is a political gamble based on assumptions of a swift victory. Yet history shows that such expectations are often wrong. There is no reliable forecast in war, and miscalculations frequently cause prolonged instability and rising costs, with outcomes as uncertain as they are dangerous.
The key lesson from conflicts is clear – force can destroy structures but rarely breaks faith, especially when such conviction has been built on decades, if not centuries, of a shared belief.
As a result, the traditional hardware metrics of victory – gaining territory, defeating the enemies and destroying infrastructure – are increasingly obsolete. The outcome is more subtle and overarching, being more political and economic, that reshapes global dynamics and challenges existing orders by destroying the rules-based order.
We often view history with emotional distance, but for those who pay attention to it, the consequences are indelible – repeatedly illustrating a pattern.
In the Vietnam War, overwhelming air power and technological superiority could not break the ideological resolve of a people determined to maintain their sovereignty and establish national reunification.
Similarly, the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan exposed the limitation of military power when it confronted a resilient, locally rooted resistance, driven by conviction and knowledge of the terrain. Decades later, a comparable pattern appeared during the prolonged US involvement in Afghanistan, as the initial goals expanded into an open-ended conflict.
The Italians in Ethiopia showed how a technologically advanced colonial power could be decisively defeated by a unified force, mobilised by an emperor under a common banner of sovereignty and religious identity.
The 1973 oil embargo showed that power can be challenged through economic and resource-based strategies, revealing vulnerabilities in even the most dominant systems.
Across these examples, a clear pattern emerges – strength often exposes its own vulnerabilities when confronted with unconventional resistance, an asymmetric warfare.
These moments reveal the limits of multilateral organisations and global institutions, the UN specifically, which have struggled to provide effective checks and balances or prevent escalations.
The situation also undermines the credibility of a rules-based international order, especially when enforcement is uneven and appears to be driven more by power than by principle.
Smaller and less powerful nations increasingly recognise that active participation in global decision-making is essential and that “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu” – a reflection of a growing demand for inclusion and representation in multilateral systems. This shift in the political landscape demands a re-configuration of the global order.
Stability can no longer rest on dominance alone. Stability depends on adaptability, mutual recognition, and a willingness to embrace change. Yet resistance to change often stems less from fear of failure than from an unwillingness to give up familiar narratives and entrenched positions which mostly override issues of sovereignty and rule-based order.
For meaningful progress, world leaders must move beyond competition and intimidation toward tolerance and understanding. Genuine tolerance invites dialogue, and dialogue fosters empathy.
In other words, a sustainable path to peace requires powerful nations to accept ideological and political diversity, allowing different systems of governance to coexist without constant confrontation. Victory and dominance should no longer mean erasing the ideology of an opponent but creating shared sovereignty and mutual respect. After all, no governance system is perfect.
Neutral mediators bold enough to specifically condemn disruptors of peace could be a catalyst for stability. These would be countries that act not out of self-interest but as facilitators of dialogue.
Countries such as Canada, South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, and Norway serve as third-party mediators, not primary actors – to act as bridge-builders and corridors for communication, being among the few that could be able to extinguish the bushfires of conflict because they do not seek to own the hunting ground.
We should keep in mind that new power centres are quietly emerging. If international rule-breaking becomes a recognised habit without consequence, it risks becoming an uncontrollable and harmful example for the emerging strongmen.
As new centres emerge, the existing ones fade or are severely reduced in influence. The waning power of empires can have cataclysmic global consequences. Similarly the emergence of new centres of power can reshape the world dynamics of governance.
The noise arising from the disturbing moments of the clash of faith and might in the Middle East will have an everlasting global consequence – a natural and irreversible evolution into a new world order.
Qur’an (Al-Imran) 3:173-174 (…Habunal-lah wa ne’mal wakeel…) Just thinking aloud.
