While armed conflicts are breaking out all over the world, how do we get out of a war?
This process begins before the end of hostilities, from the moment someone imagines that they will survive the conflict. It can therefore be a few months or years before the end of said conflict, when an individual says to himself: “What is happening is monstrous, it will be difficult, but I will perhaps see the moment when the weapons will fall silent.” In other words, the end of the war begins as soon as someone begins to consider their life afterward. Furthermore, on a more global level, in order to emerge from a war, the different actors must be willing to reach an agreement.
We can clearly see today that many belligerents only want it to the extent that it serves them. Some leaders are therefore following an unreasonable logic consisting of triggering a conflict, Putin in Ukraine, Donald Trump in different places, without really worrying about the immediate consequences and the possibility of one day putting an end to the war. Hence a sort of permanent tinkering which gives a high level of conflict in the world.
That said, this level of conflict is not new. For example, the Cold War was only cold in Europe, but hot everywhere else. The big difference now is that certain actors, like Russia and now the United States, are allowing themselves to act, if I dare say, as they please. It is a logic of great powers who want to impose their will there and where they deem it good for them, without worrying about the rest.
Can we say that the United States and Iran are starting to emerge from the war?
Obviously, the difficulty now lies at the diplomatic level: it is a matter of finding an agreement to stop the strikes and restore normal relations between states. In the current state of the situation, the provisional ceasefire cannot be qualified as the beginning of an end to the war. That said, Donald Trump succeeded at least in one thing, showing the Iranians that, even if they do not continue the development of a nuclear arsenal, they have an extremely powerful weapon which it will not be easy to deprive them of and which the American president had obviously not measured. how effective it was, the mastery of the Strait of Hormuz.
What about the situation in Gaza?
Here too, it is difficult to consider that the end of the war has begun. On the other hand, it is reasonable to think that due to the attack of October 7, 2023 and the trauma then suffered by the Israeli population, on the one hand, and what the Israeli army, on the orders of the government led by Benyamin Netanyahu, inflicted on the Palestinian population during its operations in the Strip Gaza, on the other hand, the extreme distrust generated and the capital of hatred accumulated will make the return to peace long and very difficult.
Before we succeed in definitively silencing the weapons, it may take several years. Can the traces of these armed conflicts be erased over time?
If some damage can be repaired, others are likely to last longer, or even never disappear. In eastern France, for example, forests are still suffering the consequences of the burial of chemical munitions at the end of the First World War. Due to corrosion, the highly toxic liquids contained by the shells flow and reach groundwater, join streams and rivers and end up poisoning considerable portions of territory.
Another example: when a person is traumatized in the context of a conflict, they will carry the effects of the trauma within themselves. This is post-traumatic stress. Those who live with this person will suffer the effects of the symptoms of this stress. An intergenerational transmission thus begins, of which it is difficult to predict when it will stop.
The question then arises of the impossible finitude of a conflict.
Comments collected by Élie Hervé.
