Three wars that changed the world. As the event lost three great illusions and how to live on

The collapse of the Soviet Union undermined the old ideas about the world covered by the civilization battle between freedom and totalitarianism - this created a new narrative about the estimated triumph of the liberal order. When the Al-Qaeda terrorists crashed into the twin tower on September 11, this myth was exposed as a false against the backdrop of religious fundamentalism.

Among other things, the invasion of Russia into Ukraine, although catastrophic for the Kremlin, revealed a naivety of the thought that Europe is insured against conflict and that peaceful dividends could be painlessly directed after the Cold War.

Can Hamas terrorist attack on Israel to be an equally transformative moment - a moment that will make us turn upside down everything we thought, we knew and withstand our most inhabited fears? Hamas unprecedented attack, of course, inflicted a deep psychological wound of the Israeli people and the state.

But its consequences may also be finally destroyed by some fundamental assumptions that were at the heart of the perception of the concept of security by the broad West, proclaiming a new geopolitical dark era. Here are three such illusions. First, it is the relevance of the financial and economic leadership of the West and, in particular, the effectiveness of sanctions as a tool for conflict prevention.

Many have the opinion with optimism that the restriction on global trade and finance is a trump card. It was argued that no country would deliberately become poorer only for the sake of achieving any economically irrational goal. The sanctions were to expel our enemies from the solution of wars or other hostile actions. They did nothing like that in Russia, which has undergone a financial equivalent of "shock and tremble" and which still refuses to concede to Ukraine.

The mystical vision of the revival of the lost empire seems to be more important to the Kremlin than money. But Iran's ability to finance terror and ignite a split in the Middle East - despite the fact that it has been under US sanctions since 1979, also found the powerlessness of such a tool. The question of whether sanctions were unsuccessful due to built -in restrictions or due to lack of determination of the West to ensure their compliance remains controversial.

In the case of Russia, some state that we dodge truly effective measures because we are not ready to take a large -scale economic blow. And in the case of Iran's White House, you will have to answer serious questions about whether Joe Biden has ruined his strategy. The US weakened sanctions on Iranian oil, trying to force Tehran to slow down its nuclear program and curb their proxy.

But, given the country's ability to continue trade with non-watery states such as China and Russia, any economic restrictions may always be doomed. Secondly, it is the role of technologies and the illusion that the leadership of the West in many advanced innovations will help prevent harmful threats.

In the end, Hamas's attack showed how a variety of terrorist network, which builds conspiracies in a miserable hinterland with a 2G internet, can undermine one of the most advanced surveillance and protection systems in the world. However, in a broad sense, many Western Armed Forces acted on the assumption that they could distract resources from traditional military power and fire power in industry such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and observation.

Obviously, this opinion is at the heart of the last British integrated review, which is used to support a serious reduction in the army. It is anxious that technological achievements will tend to prefer weak rather than strong. On the one hand, those breakthrough innovations that could decisively shift the asymmetric war in favor of the West.

As it is likely to demonstrate Israeli operations in gas - there is still no high -precision weapons of industrial scale that could affect combatants in a densely populated urban area, without causing huge comorbid damage at the same time. Therefore, Western countries are forced to respond to terrorist attacks, deprived of the opportunity to do so because victims of civilian population and a humanitarian catastrophe are threatened with nourishing the nihilistic ideas of Islamists.

On the other hand, the access of the mass market to elementary technologies, from encrypted messages and kierdic tools to cheap drones, facilitates military outsiders the opportunity to tear off pieces into much more powerful opponents. This may have served a good service in Ukraine, where Kiev used drones to destroy much more expensive Russian equipment. But the same technologies can be easily used against Western armies.

The third illusion is not yet dispelled, but when it happens, it will be the most serious. To the honor of Washington, the United States demonstrated considerable determination in response to Hamas attacks, directing the fleet to the Mediterranean in support of the Israel and as a prevention of Tehran. However, it runs the risk of becoming excessively expanded. In Europe, there is already anxiety that the supply of weapons that are directed to Ukraine will have to be referred to the Gaza Sector.

If the event is stuck in a long-standing Arab-Israeli conflict, Beijing may also have a temptation to take advantage of this by a shock invasion of Taiwan. Does anyone think that the United States will be able to effectively conduct three proxies on three continents at the same time, not least in view of their own unstable policy? America can no longer be a world police. What makes it all the worse pill is the fact that only a few days ago the situation seemed completely different.

In fact, the stars seemed to come to the Western world, as the amazing rapprochement of strategic interests between the deadly enemies of Saudi Arabia and Israel seemed to brought the region closer to the new golden age of stability and trade. At least it seemed so. But in one night the arrogance turned into an enemy. And we only have to wonder how we managed to deceive ourselves, that everything could be different.