Israel Can Still Strike. It Can No Longer Promise Control.

The most dangerous illusion in modern statecraft is not that war is tragic. Everyone knows that. The more dangerous illusion is that a state can still convert violence into order with anything like the confidence it once claimed. That illusion is now breaking in full public view. Israel may still hit targets, eliminate commanders, and display operational reach. But the deeper question is no longer whether it can strike. The deeper question is whether it can still contain what its own escalation releases. Oil has jumped to highs not seen since 2022, shipping risk around the Gulf has widened, and markets are already pricing the conflict less as a contained campaign than as a spreading systemic shock. That is not a side effect. It is the strategic event itself.  

This is why the old language of success has started to sound hollow. A state may win tactically and still fail politically. It may destroy without closing. It may escalate without governing the consequences of escalation. In that case, the issue is no longer a mistaken operation or a flawed intelligence estimate. The issue is that the basic promise of the modern state begins to crack: the promise that the monopoly of force allows chaos to be translated back into order. What happens instead is simpler and uglier. Force returns home as inflation, transport risk, fiscal pressure, and a longer horizon of insecurity than the one it claimed to solve. Reuters’ coverage of energy and European markets already points in exactly that direction.  

That is the point many analysts still refuse to name. What is collapsing is not only a campaign. What is collapsing is the credibility of “controlled escalation” itself. That phrase should now be treated with the contempt it deserves. If each round produces wider economic........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)