The invisible cost of the wars we pretend not to see… and what they will truly cost us…

There is something deeply unsettling about the selective silence of the international community. While the United States mobilizes more than 30,000 troops to the Persian Gulf region, maintaining the narrative that there is no intention of a ground offensive, the world accepts this claim with an almost childish complacency. Because any minimally attentive analyst knows: moving troops, equipment, logistics, and supply chains into a region like the Gulf is not a symbolic gesture — it is a concrete, costly, and strategically calculated preparation. The cost is far too high to simply believe that nothing will happen or that everything will remain confined to Hormuz…

And yet, we pretend to believe it.

At the same time, Gaza and the West Bank continue to be territories marked by occupation and everyday violence. Even after the approval of peace plans that, in theory, should usher in a new political cycle, the bombings persist. Not in secrecy, but far enough from the global media spotlight so as not to cause too much discomfort. Because now, all eyes are on the missiles over Tel Aviv. Pain, when distant, becomes tolerable. Or rather: ignorable.

What is most disturbing is not only the continuity of violence, but the implicit hierarchy that seems to govern the value of human lives. Some deaths mobilize the world. Others are absorbed as statistics. Depending on ethnicity, religion, or geography, mourning is amplified or silenced. And so, under a carefully constructed narrative, we continue to allow the advance of a conflict whose consequences have already crossed borders.

In Europe, political leaders reiterate a discourse of neutrality, as if war were a distant phenomenon. But that neutrality is, at the very least, illusory. The conflict in the Middle East holds the potential to generate the largest wave of migration on the planet — or perhaps it already is. And not by coincidence, the European Council has moved in the opposite direction of solidarity: more restrictions, more walls, more containment mechanisms. A kind of “European ICE,” adapted to the rhetoric of security, but rooted in fear.

Lebanon, in turn, becomes yet another board of tensions, where actions justified as self-defense by Israel fuel continuous cycles of instability. The rhetoric of security often conceals logics of expansion and domination. And the result is always the same: entire populations trapped in decisions they never made.

But perhaps the most dangerous element of this scenario is not confined to the battlefield, but lies in the global political sphere. Contemporary geopolitics often seems to orbit around the statements and impulses of figures such as Donald Trump, whose relationship with institutional predictability has always been, at best, fragile. When decisions with global impact are made without coordination, without consultation, or even in contradiction with specialists — such as his former counterterrorism chief — the international system ceases to operate on rules and begins to react to impulses.

And that should be far more frightening than it is.

Because the problem has never been only the existence of unpredictable leaders. The real risk lies in the resonance of their ideas. The rise of the far right in different parts of the world is not an isolated phenomenon; it is a symptom. A symptom of societies that have begun to normalize conflict as a political language, hatred as a tool of mobilization, and simplification as a strategy of power.

We are witnessing, almost without resistance, the transformation of democracies into arenas of permanent confrontation. There are no longer political debates, but duels, where one no longer sees an opponent of ideas, but an enemy to be defeated. There is no longer collective construction, but narrative imposition. Leaders from different countries show deference to powers as if they were vassals in an informal hierarchical order, where sovereignty becomes confused with automatic alignment.

And, in the midst of all this, incoherence reaches almost surreal levels. Political figures who present themselves as nationalists offer their countries and resources on a silver platter, while their supporters applaud in the name of a sovereignty that, in practice, is being diluted.

We have lost our compass… And perhaps that is the greatest tragedy.

Because while we debate the price of fuel or food inflation — legitimate concerns, without a doubt — we ignore the real cost of this scenario. A cost that is not measured only in dollars, euros, or barrels of oil. It is measured in the erosion of international coexistence, in the fragility of institutions, and in the progressive degradation of democracy itself.

What is at stake is not just a regional conflict.

It is the kind of world we are willing to accept.

And so far, we have accepted far too much.

References:

BAUMAN, Zygmunt. Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

MBEMBE, Achille. Necropolitics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.

HARVEY, David. The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

KALDOR, Mary. New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. 3. ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.

BECK, Ulrich. World at Risk. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009.

Wesley S.T Guerra

Wesley Sá Teles Guerra is a specialist in international cooperation and paradiplomacy, with a solid academic background from internationally recognized institutions. He is the founder of the Center for International Relations Studies (CERES) in Brazil and currently works as Manager of the Triangular Cooperation Fund between Europe, Latin America, and Africa at the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), based in Madrid.

Throughout his career, he has studied at institutions such as CPE Barcelona (International Negotiations), FESPSP (International Relations and Political Science), the University of A Coruña – UDC (Master’s in Social Policies and Migration), MIB Massachusetts (MBA in International Marketing), the University of Andorra (Master’s in Smart Cities), and is currently a PhD candidate in Sociology at UNED (Spain).

He is the author of the books Cadernos de Paradiplomacia, Paradiplomacy Reviews, and Manual de sobrevivência das Relações Internacionais. He regularly participates in international forums on smart cities, global governance, and paradiplomacy, and has been a guest commentator on CBN Recife radio. He was also a finalist for the ABANCA Award for Academic Research. In addition, he is part of networks and platforms such as CEDEPEM, ECP, Smart Cities Council, and REPIT, with active international engagement.