Why ‘When will the war end?’ is the wrong question 
Three or four years ago, I came across an exceptionally well-structured research paper on nuclear proliferation by Eliza Gheorghe, who teaches international relations at Bilkent University in Turkiye.
“Proliferation and the Logic of the Nuclear Market” explains why nuclear weapons have not spread as widely as many once feared. The key, she argues, is not simply whether key actors want the bomb, but whether the structure of the international system allows them to obtain the most sensitive technologies, especially enrichment and reprocessing, through a competitive “nuclear market.”
This was the case during the early Cold War, when bipolarity and intense US–Soviet rivalry undermined coordination and helped create the conditions under which additional key actors acquired nuclear weapons.
More specifically, what stayed with me most was her warning that when great powers fail to coordinate, especially as the world shifts from unipolarity toward multipolarity, the erosion of trust among the world’s most influential capitals can fragment and destabilize international politics, weakening the mechanisms that once reassured key actors about their security and reduced incentives to pursue alternative means of ensuring their survival.
Reading today’s headlines, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are drifting into the kind of environment she warned about — sharpening great-power competition, a breakdown in international policy coordination, and a waning capacity to uphold shared rules.
In that context, Gheorghe’s framework clarifies why international politics becomes more unstable when coordination among major powers breaks down and how that instability can alter key actors’ security calculations, weakening reassurance and increasing the appeal of independent deterrent options.
However, more than a month into the ongoing conflict, the dominant question is still: “When will the war end?” Yet an equally urgent question is emerging: “What comes after the ceasefire, and is any outcome sustainable?”
As the UAE president’s advisor Anwar Mohammed Gargash wrote on X: “As we confront blatant Iranian aggression and discover our deep-rooted strength to remain steadfast and resilient, our thinking does not stop at a ceasefire. It turns to solutions that ensure sustainable security in the Arabian Gulf, curbing the nuclear threat, missiles and drones, and the bullying of strategic straits. It is unreasonable for aggression to become a permanent condition of threat.”
The current moment seems to be prompting many key actors to think more seriously about new security approaches, not because conflict is inevitable, but because uncertainty is rising and the old assumptions that underpinned stability — reliable coordination, predictable deterrence and shared rules — feel less secure.
As a result, key actors are increasingly looking beyond short-term crisis management toward frameworks that combine deterrence with risk reduction, resilience, and clearer mechanisms for preventing escalation.
Gheorghe’s research paper remains valuable not only for what it says about nuclear technology but for the broader “structural warning” embedded in its argument: When great powers stop coordinating and when mistrust and misperception become the defining dynamic, as we increasingly see among the US, China, and Russia, the rules, reassurance mechanisms, and enforcement tools that once dampened insecurity begin to erode.
International politics then shift from managed competition toward fragmentation, with key actors relying more on ad hoc bargaining than on stable, shared constraints.
That is increasingly the atmosphere suggested by today’s headlines: sharpening rivalries, thinner policy coordination and a weaker capacity to uphold shared constraints, an environment in which key actors reasonably begin to doubt whether ceasefires can translate into durable settlements.
To sum up, in the Arab Gulf, this logic is reflected in the growing insistence that stability cannot rest on a temporary pause in fighting. It must instead be anchored in sustainable security arrangements that reduce risk across the full spectrum of coercion, tools Iran has repeatedly used to shape the regional balance without triggering full-scale war: missiles and drones; pressure and threats around maritime chokepoints; intimidation targeting critical infrastructure.
As global uncertainty continues to rise, particularly among key actors in Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, attention is likely to shift away from debating timelines for the war’s end toward building post-crisis frameworks that combine deterrence with resilience, defense-industrial capacity, maritime coordination, and credible diplomatic channels. Amid intensifying great-power competition and deepening strategic disagreement, security increasingly depends on structures capable of absorbing strategic shocks and escalation risks rather than on the assumption that legacy rules will reliably constrain competition.
• Nasser bin Hamed Al-Ahmad is a political researcher and writer with more than eight years’ experience in political media. He specializes in analyzing political trends in the MENA region and the US.
X: nasseralahmad3
