The final hours of the Second World War remain a crucible of contested narratives, a tableau upon which Western supremacy meticulously inscribed its enduring mythos.
As the Allies in that War orchestrated the denouement of a cataclysm that reshaped the global order, the deployment of the atomic bomb at two places in Japan was less an act of sheer necessity and more a calculated gesture of geopolitical dominance.
Harry Truman’s curt declaration, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world,” was not merely a lamentation but a harbinger of a new epoch where brute power would eclipse moral scruples.
The harrowing images coming out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki seared themselves into the collective memory of humankind, but beneath the horror lay an unvarnished stratagem: to assert an unassailable hegemony by rewriting the rules of engagement, where truth and justice were the first casualties.
This insidious dialectic of power and obfuscation did not end with the cessation of hostilities in 1945; rather, it metastasised into the subtle architectures of Western dominance that persist in contemporary geopolitics.
Pivotal confrontation
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu
The West, having emerged from the ashes as the unrivalled custodian of the international order, has never countenanced the prospect of humiliation, especially not on terrains it deems vital to its survival. The ongoing confrontation with Iran, therefore, is not simply a regional skirmish but a pivotal confrontation at the crossroads of this entrenched supremacy and the rising aspirations of the Global South.
War, by its very ontology, defies the neat binaries of rationale and law. Clausewitz’s aphorism that “war is the continuation of politics by other means” belies the chaotic reality wherein truth becomes a malleable casualty.
The West’s orchestration of conflicts – whether through overt military engagements or clandestine manipulations – has invariably exploited this malleability to perpetuate its strategic imperatives.
In this grim theatre, Iran’s predicament epitomises the brutal arithmetic of survival: a Sovereign State subjected to relentless pressure, its fate tethered not to the legitimacy of its cause but to the inexorable calculus of power. Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan have been fellow travellers on this perilous road.
It is a bitter irony that the so-called Global South, despite its demographic heft and burgeoning economic potential, remains strategically disarmed in the military domain. Fragmented by historical cleavages, divergent interests, and uneven development, it lacks the unified arsenal and doctrinal coherence needed to challenge the monolithic Western alliance.
China and India emerge as formidable outliers within this constellation, yet even their formidable arsenals and burgeoning capabilities fall short of offsetting the consolidated might of the West. The two countries are “frenimies” at best, beset by border disputes and other strategic concerns over their roles in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).
Thus the Global South’s failure to coalesce around a common strategic vision renders it susceptible to the divisive machinations of established powers, perpetuating a cycle of dependency and subjugation.
Iran’s current crucible must be viewed through this unforgiving prism. Should the Islamic Republic be vanquished – whether through overt military confrontation or protracted attrition – the ramifications will reverberate far beyond its borders. The obliteration of Iran would signify not only the extinguishing of a pivotal bastion of resistance in West Asia but the symbolic capitulation of a wider Global South to Western coercion.
Cynical machinations
Palestinians, whose cause has long been a lodestar for anti-colonial and emancipatory struggles, would find their already tenuous prospects further imperilled. The cynical machinations of administrations such as those of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, which contemplate the relocation or displacement of Palestinians in Gaza to distant enclaves in the Gulf, Africa or elsewhere, highlight the callous calculus underpinning this conflict.
Such displacement would amount to an outrageous commodification of human lives, with erstwhile leaders retreating to the “”Riviera of the Middle East”, a.k.a. an ethnically cleansed Gaza, ensconced in luxury constructed upon the blood and bones of the innocent.
This dystopian vision exposes the Global South’s strategic impotence as a collective entity. Its inability to forge a cohesive front against the Western onslaught betrays not merely a lack of military might but a deeper malaise — an absence of political will and a shared identity that could galvanise resistance. The West, conversely, is girding itself against any semblance of humiliation, especially on land such as Iran’s, where the scars of imperial hubris run deep. Unlike the fragmented theatres of proxy engagements or peripheral skirmishes, Iran represents a symbolic threshold: a test of the West’s resolve to maintain unchallenged hegemony.
The impending resolution of this confrontation, perhaps crystallising by September as the world solemnly commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Second World War’s conclusion, is pregnant with portent.
The victor, in all probability, will be a Western bloc that remains unaccountable, unrepentant, and unmollified — a monstrous web of power prepared to recalibrate its gaze towards the next existential challenge: China.
The crescendo of this unfolding saga reveals a grim truth: Western supremacy, forged in the crucible of brutal conflict and sustained by the ruthless manipulation of truth, will brook no diminution.
Salutary lessons
Israel’s war on Iran is, therefore, not a mere bilateral conflict; it is the demarcation of a luxmanrekha, a threshold beyond which the established order will brook no contestation. Beneath the ostensible strategic calculations lies a more profound struggle for survival — a contest to forestall the ascendance of the Global South as a unified geopolitical actor.
This is a conflict steeped in the dialectics of power and despair, where the instruments of war are wielded not to adjudicate justice but to impose an irreversible hierarchy.
History offers us salutary lessons, albeit ones often ignored or rewritten. The West’s manipulation of narratives at the end of World War II — portraying its victory as the triumph of civilisation over barbarism — was a deliberate fabrication, a smokescreen that concealed the ruthless realpolitik that underpinned the twin atomic strikes and post-war settlements. The victors authored the history books, embedding their perspectives as immutable truths. They even wrote the Constitutions of the defeated nations.
In this light, Iran’s fate may well echo those fraught moments, becoming another chapter in a saga where might dictates right and where the cries of the vanquished are drowned beneath the proclamations of inevitable destiny.
In this theatre of power, truth is often the first casualty, and the Global South’s current incapacity to coalesce militarily or politically only accelerates its subjugation. Yet within this bleak calculus lies a cautionary tale for the West itself.
The hubris that fuels its current supremacy may, in the end, sow the seeds of its own unravelling. The unchallenged might that once guaranteed its dominion is increasingly confronted by a world in flux — a world where new alignments and contestations are emerging beneath the veneer of disorder.
Until then, the grim arithmetic remains: Iran stands at the precipice, as the Global South struggles to mobilise, and the West prepares to defend its prerogatives with an uncompromising resolve. The narrative of supremacy is unyielding, and the theatre of war ruthless. In this crucible, the question is not whether justice will prevail but which power will impose its will, and at what (human) cost.
