The War on the System: The Overflowing of Traditional Control Mechanisms

By: Pablo Rutigliano

From a deep historical perspective, war rarely responds to the true needs of the people. Societies are not born with a vocation for destruction nor with the desire to eliminate those who share their same human condition. Wars, in their rawest essence, do not arise from the collective will of common people, but from power structures that, at certain moments in history, utilize a society's resources to sustain political, strategic, and economic disputes that have little to do with the daily lives of those who end up suffering their consequences.

In this sense, war must be understood as an extreme expression of the relationship between power and control. It is the political class, in its permanent struggle to maintain or expand its influence, that often instrumentalizes the material, financial, and human resources of a nation to lead peoples toward confrontation scenarios that end up generating destruction, displacement, and deep social fractures. Citizens, who under normal conditions would never find reasons to confront one another, end up trapped in dynamics that respond to much broader and structural interests.

The current global situation reflects precisely these types of tensions. We find ourselves facing an international stage that is beginning to overflow traditional control mechanisms. Uncertainty and distrust have become the engines of a global system where strategic alliances, defense systems, and economic policies are permanently reconfigured under the logic of fear. Fear has once again taken a central place in international politics, and with it reappears the permanent threat of war as a tool for geopolitical pressure.

However, behind the ideological or territorial discourses that usually accompany conflicts, a much more structural reality emerges: contemporary war is deeply linked to the dispute over strategic resources. Control over oil, energy routes, international financial systems, and the mechanisms that secure global trade form part of an economic framework that determines much of the tension we observe on the global chessboard today.

One of the clearest examples of this fragility is found in the energy corridors that sustain the global economy. The Strait of Hormuz represents one of the most sensitive points of international energy trade. Any significant alteration in that corridor not only affects the oil supply but also puts at risk multimillion-dollar contracts, international insurance systems, entire logistical chains, and, ultimately, the financial stability of numerous countries. When geopolitical risks increase, the mechanisms that for decades sustained the security of global transactions also begin to crack.

But there is an even deeper dimension that is often not mentioned with sufficient clarity. A war does not only destroy territories or physical infrastructure; a war destroys entire value chains. When a conflict strains or breaks a productive chain—from resource extraction to industrialization, trade, and consumption—the economic consequences multiply in a devastating way.

Companies, which some political discourses consider simply as "market actors" or competitors within an economic system, are, in reality, fundamental pieces of social functioning. They are the ones that produce, generate employment, pay taxes, and sustain, through their activity, a large part of the financial structure of States. When a war destroys these companies or paralyzes their operations, it is not just jobs or investments that disappear; the tax base upon which the political systems themselves depend is also weakened.

In other words, the same political system that often drives or tolerates confrontation scenarios ends up affecting the economic base that sustains its own existence. Without companies, without production, and without stable economic activity, States lose their financing capacity, markets destabilize, and promises of growth or stability simply become impossible to fulfill.

Financial markets are usually the first to reflect these tensions. When conflicts escalate, capital reacts with speed. Million-dollar losses appear in a matter of hours, assets lose value, investments freeze, and investment funds face a problem they can rarely explain clearly to those who entrusted them with their capital: the volatility generated by political decisions that, paradoxically, were presented as mechanisms for protection and stability.

At that point, a structural contradiction becomes evident. The same political systems that assure investors of institutional stability and economic predictability are often the ones that end up generating the conditions of uncertainty that destroy value on a large scale. Banks, consultants, and financial analysts then find themselves trying to explain losses that do not stem from market functioning, but from geopolitical tensions that completely escape traditional economic logic.

But the problem does not end with energy or financial markets. If we broaden our view, we find that the true pillars of human survival are found in much more basic and essential sectors: water and food. These resources constitute the authentic backbone of civilization. Without potable water or stable food production systems, no society can sustain its economic, political, or cultural structure.

If a civilization were to lack water and food—as has already happened in several dramatic moments in history, especially during World War II—the immediate consequence would be an escalation of conflict to much deeper levels. When essential resources disappear or become scarce, social stability breaks down and tensions multiply. However, even before reaching that extreme point, humanity already faces a more silent and structural war today: the war of unemployment, persistent inflation, and the growing social vulnerability that many populations feel toward the States that, in theory, should represent and protect them.

In this scenario, a double war seems to be taking shape. On one hand, the traditional war that political systems build or fuel on the global geopolitical chessboard. On the other hand, a much more everyday and psychological social war taking place within societies themselves. A war marked by economic pressure, job uncertainty, loss of purchasing power, and social fragmentation.

In many cases, that fragmentation manifests through ideological conflicts that divide societies into opposing blocs. Left-wing discourses against right-wing discourses, opposing narratives that transform political debate into permanent confrontation. Societies then begin to behave as if they were inside a football stadium where each group defends its flag with an emotional intensity that often prevents an understanding of the real complexity of the problems we face.

Meanwhile, structural challenges—economic stability, energy security, access to water, food production, and the sustainability of the global system—continue to accumulate silently in the background.

Therefore, the historical moment we are going through demands a much deeper reflection than the simple observation of military events. The true transformation occurring in the world is not limited to the redistribution of power between countries or geopolitical blocs. What is at stake is the balance of the systems that sustain life itself on the planet.

And if those systems begin to break, no power structure—neither political, nor financial, nor economic—will be truly safe. Because when the chain that sustains production, trade, energy, food, and water is broken, what is put at risk is not simply the balance of markets, but the very stability of human civilization.