The Performative Combat of Superman: Agency and Struggle in International Law

Introduction

The role and inherent value of some armed conflicts has altered in recent years. The Clausewitzian^[1] idea that war is politics by other means has started to look less applicable. Armed conflict has changed from being necessarily about inflicting violence to resolve a dispute, to sometimes being used as a substitute for trying to effect political change. This has been described as performative combat and applies to the actions of at least one side in several recent conflicts, sometimes both sides. The performance is often necessary, perhaps essential, in the same way that humans rely on certain traditions to help maintain continuity in their social relations. This could be regarded as a positive development, in that performative combat may be less destructive than non-performative armed conflict. But it still produces casualties, and it tends to leave disputes unresolved because at least one side is unable to act with the full military effects that they wish. Thus, the dispute eventually flares up again into another conflict.

Performative combat is a function of relative military strength at the time of the original dispute and that relative strength may change over time. Thus, a later flare up may lead to a more protracted and intense level of violence. And conflicts that simmer for long periods of time have a habit of becoming more vicious. A dispute that could be resolved today is likely to be more violent if it is resolved ten years from today. Thus, performative combat may be a negative rather than positive phenomenon, if one takes the view that less violence is better than more.

Definition

Performative combat is a relatively new term to describe the actions of one or both parties in an armed conflict, where the parties are not using force to achieve any specific political objective, besides the use of force itself. It effectively changes the use of force from being about the achievement of a higher objective, into a performance. It is thus characterised by more restrained uses of force, since the use of greater levels of force would risk causing large casualties. The more traditional uses of larger targets sets, and greater amounts of firepower tend to have an escalatory effect, whereas performative combat is designed to be de-escalatory. This is also why performative combat seeks to avoid non-combatant casualties, since the moral outrage that these produce can cause the conflict to be extended in time and effects. Performative combat can be practiced by both sides in a conflict but is just as likely to be used by a weaker party in response to a more sustained attack from a stronger party. In this way performative combat is a means by which the weaker party can save face. This often produces a political and legal paradox, whereby the weaker party makes only token efforts to respond to military action at the international level, whilst simultaneously informing its own population that a great military victory has been won. When we think of the word performance, it inevitably suggests co-operation and complicity: professional wrestling is a performance in a way that professional boxing is not. Thus, the weaker party in an armed conflict may cooperate with the party that attacked it in bringing the conflict to an end, whilst never admitting this to its own, outraged, population.

Examples: Iran

Before going any further, it is probably easiest to give some concrete examples of this nebulous term. The first obvious example occurred over five years ago.

On 3 January 2020, Qasem Soleimani, a senior Iranian military figure, was killed by an American drone strike near Baghdad International Airport in Iraq, while travelling to meet then Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi.^[2] This was obviously carried out without the knowledge or consent of the Iraqi government. On 8 January 2020 Iran launched 15 ballistic missiles against US bases in Erbil and Al Asad, both in Iraq.^[3] The attacks caused no US casualties and hardly any damage. The Iranian response can at best be described as half-hearted. Between 3 and 8 January 2020 US forces detected a state of heightened readiness in the Iranian rocket forces. Why did Iran not simply respond on 3 January 2020? Because the response was performative. Iran effectively let the US know that a ballistic missile response was coming, allowing them time to prepare, so as to minimise casualties. Iran did not want to kill Americans, since that would inevitably require a further deadly US response. The US always has to have the last word in any armed conflict. Iran wished to damage US property but not life. The episode had an unfortunate coda. On 8 January 2020, a few hours after Iran launched its missiles towards US bases in Iraq, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down as it took off from Tehran on its way to Kiev.^[4] The Iranian surface to air missile controllers apparently mistook this outgoing flight for incoming US cruise missiles, which they believed were launched in an escalatory response to Iran’s own, limited use of force.

A more recent example of performative combat is the April 2024 exchanges between Israel and Iran. On 1 April 2024, Israel conducted an airstrike on the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, Syria.^[5] The strike killed eight officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Quds Force Commander in Syria and Lebanon Mohammad Reza. Nearly two weeks later, on 13 April 2024, the IGRC, in collaboration with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and the Ansar Allah (Houthis) of Yemen, launched attacks against Israel and Israeli-occupied territory (i.e. parts of Gaza) with loitering munitions, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.^[6] The Iranian attack was a failure in military terms. Almost all the attacking vehicles were intercepted before they reached Israel. 32 people in Israel received relatively minor injuries and one Israeli airbase suffered minor damage. Iran waited nearly two weeks so that Israel could prepare its defences, then used munitions that were easy to intercept. This example is most notable because performative combat is often not temporally delineated: it is not always possible to decide when the music has stopped and the performance is over. Yet in this case, on 14 April 2024 the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations announced that the Iranian operation was ‘deemed concluded’.^[7] Iran had made a point through the performance, even if that point does not chime with any of the usual reasons for using force. The point was not to hurt Israel, but to be seen to be trying to hurt them. This was the first time Iran had directly struck at Israel. Israel had previously struck at Iran multiple times by murdering Iranian nuclear scientists. Performative combat was a way to avoid a direct military confrontation with Israel, which was not in Iran’s interest due to the poor state of its military.

A protracted armed conflict did eventually occur between 13 – 25 June 2025.^[8] Despite the propaganda from Tehran, most objective assessments indicate it did not end well for Iran. Iranian air power was so technologically behind Israel’s that they did not bother to put any aircraft into the air for defence. The episode features yet another interesting example of performative combat. The United States launched a series of strikes at the same time as Israel was doing so.^[9] These were intended to further hammer the Iranian nuclear programme, as part of President Trump’s overall desire to get the Iranians to negotiate a more comprehensive peace deal for the region.^[10] But it is interesting that the strikes by the US were never described as being part of the Israeli operation, although one accepts there must have been sharing of intelligence.

Another example involving Iran was their very limited attack against the US Al-Udeid base in Qatar on June 23 2025.^[11] Between six and nineteen missiles were fired, all apparently intercepted by defensive missile systems. This was in retaliation for the US involvement in bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, supra. Donald Trump described the attack as ‘very weak’ and ‘expected’, which is exactly correct. Its only real achievement seems to have been to anger the Qatari government, who had themselves committed no aggression against Iran. Until recently, Qatar was regarded by other Gulf states as too sympathetic to Iran. It is probably less so now.

Examples: Russia and Ukraine

It is arguable that the Russian invasion of Ukraine takes performative combat to its extreme. Russia regularly launches mass drone and missile attacks against Ukrainian cities. The main targets are electricity generation and distribution systems, but since these are usually in urban areas, people tend to get killed.^[12] Ukraine responds but has fewer resources and is hamstrung by restrictions on how it is allowed to employ some of its Western supplied arms. These attacks provoke anger and outrage, but they do not significantly alter the nature of the conflict. They do not even really kill that many Ukrainians or Russians. The death toll for attacks are usually measured in the dozens, rather than the hundreds. That is not their objective. If Russia wanted to destroy Kiev using air power, it could. Their objective is to cause the maximum amount of publicity possible. This is performative combat taken to its conclusion in extremis: the performance is bloody, but never as bloody as it could be. Russia had no qualms about carpet bombing Syrians but is more restrained about inflicting it on Europeans. There is also the sensible consideration that destroying infrastructure in a territory you eventually expect to control is expensive. This part of the conflict is performative and seems designed to get the attention of President Trump. The grinding attrition on the front lines is traditional warfare. It is striking how similar these attacks are to the German use of terror weapons like the V1 cruise and V2 ballistic missile in World War Two. We have not advanced much in our barbarity in the last 80 years.

Armed Conflict: A Modern History

Modern ideas about the nature of armed conflict can be traced back to the nineteenth century Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz (1 July 1780 – 16 November 1831). Clausewitz’s most famous observation was that armed conflict was the continuation of politics: war is designed to achieve a political objective. It has to logically follow that this objective is well defined and achievable by military means. This is the reason why so many military operations fail: the objectives were simply impossible from the beginning. Worse still, there may be no clear objectives at all. Lawrence Freedman has recently written about this, trying to explain why modern wars seem to drag on for long periods of time and do not produce conclusive outcomes.^[13] 

The first Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991) was a resounding success in that it achieved its very limited objective of freeing Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. But the record since then is patchy. There have been some military successes. For example, Sri Lanka defeated the Tamil insurgency in 2009.^[14] But this conflict had lasted for at least 35 years, so could hardly be held up as an example of rapid success. The last Afghan War (2001-2021) dragged on for twenty years before ending in ignominious defeat for the United States and its allies. The Syrian Civil War (March 2011 – 8 December 2024) was notable not merely because it lasted a long time, but also because nobody outside Syria predicted its sudden end. This indicates that outside observers simply did not understand the nature of the conflict.^[15] Israel’s victory in the Six Day War (5 June 1967 – 10 June 1967) famously took just those six days. But it did not produce a lasting peace and has simply stored up more problems that are now exploding again 58 years later.

Even interventions by Western coalitions and NATO in particular, that could be considered successes, did not resolve underlying conflicts. For example, Operation Allied Force (24 March 1999 – 10 June 1999) succeeded in stopping the persecution of Kosovans by the majority Serb population of Yugoslavia. But it has not produced a lasting peace. It led to the creation of a new state, but Kosovo remains a burden on the same states that helped it to come into existence.^[16] The problem is even worse in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Operation Deliberate Force (30 August – 20 September 1995) led to a messy and ultimately flawed peace deal. In order to achieve an immediate peace, Bosnian Serbs were allowed their own form of political organisation within the State, called Republika Srpska.^[17] The problem is that it was never clear whether Republika Srpska was the end point of Bosnian Serb self-government, the beginnings of a process by which Bosnian Serbs might have their own State, or simply a temporary measure whilst Bosnia-Herzegovina got its act together and created a multi-ethnic, inclusive State.^[18] Recent developments suggest Bosnian Serbs are pushing for independence and this is unlikely to be peaceful.^[19] It is easy to see why the term ‘Forever War’ is so popular.

Most modern leaders still reference the Great War and the Second World War as unconscious intellectual paradigms of what an armed conflict should look like. But these were aberrations. They lasted similar lengths of time (4-6 years) and had similar objectives (total defeat of the enemy). These are not realistic objectives today. Israel has recently engaged in a series of specific operations against its major enemies, both states and non-state actors, which surround it. But the idea that the Israel-Iran conflict is finished is just as absurd as the Israeli government’s assertion that victory in Gaza requires the destruction of Hamas, something which is just not possible. Clausewitz’s ghost still haunts us, but again and again, politicians set objectives for the use of force that cannot be achieved. There is sufficient background noise from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) leadership to suggest that they know the objective of eradicating Hamas is impossible but are beholden to politicians who insist it is.^[20]

Despite this pessimistic outlook, there is some cause for optimism. When Clausewitz was writing, war was regarded as a more normalised tool of international relations. States habitually went to war to resolve disputes, often of a fairly trivial nature. Clausewitz’s genius was to explain the relationship between the conflict and the dispute. But he was not arguing against war, merely against war with undefined objectives. After the disaster of the Great War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), states became motivated to try and stop this from happening again. This produced a trifecta of outcomes: the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928 and the first meaningful attempts at arms control with the International Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament (the London Naval Treaty), 1930.^[21]

The League of Nations (10 January 1920 – 18 April 1946) was a forerunner of the United Nations and sought to achieve many of the same objectives as the organisation that eventually replaced it. It was never able to achieve its goals of a rules based international legal system because the rising powers of the United States of America and the Soviet Union never joined. The Kellogg-Briand Pact formally asserted that states would not use war to resolve ‘disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them’.^[22] It seems naïve now, but it set the groundwork for Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter which provides for a similar rule. The London Naval Treaty collapsed just before the Second World War began. But it was successful in restraining the arms race in shipbuilding for a time. Even if it did not save a lot of lives, it did save a lot of money as warships that would have been obsolete by the time the Second World War started were simply never built.

It is easy to be dismissive of these institutions and agreements. It is easy to be dismissive of the United Nations even today. Yet, as recent scholarship has indicated,^[23] war did become less common as a result. Between 1945 and the present day, the use of war as a means of controlling and even annexing territory has become the exception rather than the norm it had previously been. One can point to several exceptions, but these have not produced much in the way of actual outcomes. For example, Israel has not formally annexed^[24] the territory it took in 1967 and has actually returned some of it in the form of the Sinai.^[25] When Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990, it did not end up with any territorial gains. Russia annexed Crimea on 18 March 2014. Russia further annexed the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia on 30 September 2022.^[26] But it remains to be seen if these will produce any permanent effects, since they have not been accepted as legitimate by many other states.

War as Sexual Imagery

This is not the first time that armed conflict has been characterised as something other than the mere defeat of an enemy. In the 1960s, the burgeoning literature on nuclear deterrence had an infamously sexualised element. The details are beyond this paper but can be found in Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,^[27] a 1987 paper by Carol Cohn. Cohn noted the extensive phallic imagery, words and metaphor in the field. Armed conflict might not just be about inflicting violence, but might involve an element of sexual pride, prowess and above all domination. It is not a coincidence that the antagonist of Dr Strangelove (Dir:Stanley Kubrick, 1964), Jack D Ripper, is essentially starting a nuclear war because he is worried he is becoming impotent. The movie is full of sexual imagery, as well as being quite explicitly sexist and perhaps misogynistic. Sexual assault is a method of warfare as old as war itself. The way nuclear strategists use sexual imagery is invariably violent, the language of rape, not consensual love. Even the term ‘wargasm’, used to describe escalation run out of control by both sides, leading to a full nuclear exchange, is inherently unpleasant.^[28] An example from the US goes even further, beyond mere sex into actual procreation. The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, recently used against Iranian nuclear weapons centres, is generally referred to as the Mother Of All Bombs (MOAB). It is hard not to be slightly disgusted by this, and Pope Francis articulated this in May 2017: ‘I was ashamed when I heard the name,’ the pontiff told an audience of students at the Vatican. ‘A mother gives life and this one gives death, and we call this device a mother. What is going on?’^[29]

War as Metaphor

War also exists as imagery and metaphor. On June 17, 1971 President Nixon officially declared the War on Drugs, telling Congress that drug addiction had become a ‘national emergency’ ‘and that drug abuse was ‘public enemy number one’.^[30] Although state action against drug cartels often involves kinetic violence, it is interesting to note that Nixon himself mixed his metaphors – public enemy number one is a law enforcement term. Kinetic violence on a large scale would only be used outside the USA. This is not really a war: it is a metaphor. It is a way for politicians to claim they are serious about something. War on Want^[31] is a charity dedicated to the elimination of poverty, not poor people, who generally suffer the most in real armed conflicts.

The War on Terror, was first referenced by President Bush on October 11, 2001: ‘The attack took place on American soil, but it was an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world. And the world has come together to fight a new and different war, the first, and we hope the only one, of the 21st century. A war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them.’^[32] This seems to make some sense, because terrorists use weapons and so do the militaries and police forces that combat them. But there are two basic problems:

1. No one has really been able to define terrorism. For example, the British Government, which has a lot of experience with terrorism, uses the definition in the Terrorism Act 2000.^[33] This is summarised by the UK Government as:

‘The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism, both in and outside of the UK, as the use or threat of one or more of the actions listed below, and where they are designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public. The use or threat must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.^[34]

The specific actions included are:^[35]

• serious violence against a person;
• serious damage to property;
• endangering a person’s life (other than that of the person committing the action);
• creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; and
• action designed to seriously interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.’^[36]

The problem with this definition is that it could all equally be applied to what the militaries of sovereign states do. The UK was involved in the legal intervention in Afghanistan in 2001. The UK then illegally invaded Iraq in 2003. But both conflicts involved the use of all specific actions listed above to achieve a political objective. We are just now learning of the appalling violence inflicted on Afghan and Iraqi civilians by British forces.^[37] And just defining terrorism as violence to achieve political change makes George Washington, Vladimir Lenin and Nelson Mandela terrorists. There is clearly good terrorism and bad terrorism. An African fighting apartheid is in a very different position than people flying airplanes into buildings. Until we accept that there is good and bad terrorism, we will struggle to define it.

• We might not know precisely what terrorism is, but with the exception of a very small number of radical anarchists,^[38] it cannot be an end in itself. It is designed to achieve some objective. Thus, terrorism is a tactic of war, so declaring war on it is both ridiculous and linguistically otiose. One might just as easily declare a war on violence itself.

The Problem of Victory

Lawrence Freedman has been able to articulate as doctrine something that has been nagging away at our consciences for years now: why do we not win anymore?^[39] The last true victory for the West at least, was NATO’s Operation Allied Force, 1999. This succeeded in stopping horrific violence against a Yugoslavian minority, the Kosovans. But even this has not resulted in a secure status for Kosovo, and the operation is ongoing with NATO forces keeping the peace. Worse still, the operation was clearly illegal. There was no United Nations Security Council Resolution authorising the use of force, although a small number of authors are willing to describe this as a humanitarian intervention.^[40] This author does not believe the concept exists.

Freedman discusses various conflicts and points out that even apparently easy and clear victories are often illusions. His main argument takes us back to Clausewitz: the political objectives set are simply unrealistic. And there is a tendency to overestimate how effective military force as a policy choice can be. This is particularly apparent when one considers the types of conflicts the West has been involved with since 2001. Counter insurgencies never end quickly and they never end neatly. The problem with Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), 2001 and Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003 was that they set unrealistic and unattainable goals. They seemed to be about regime change, but when the existing regimes collapsed relatively easily, the US in particular insisted that the new regimes should be democracies, rather than just a more amenable dictator. Had the second option been chosen, the operations might have succeeded and done so relatively quickly.

Perhaps the main problem for the West is that in truth, most of its interventions, legal or otherwise, are really just picking sides in a civil war. This then develops into a counterinsurgency where it is almost impossible to ‘win’ because either one side or both view the intervention as illegitimate (‘imperialist’ would have been the term during the Cold War). In his recent book The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, Stephen Marche contends that the United States military has not lost a major engagement which was part of a counterinsurgency.^[41] He is correct. From Vietnam until the troop Surge in Iraq, 2007, it has been victory after victory on the battlefield. Even the Vietnamese Tet Offensive (30 January 1968), which is regarded as a moral disaster for the US by most historians, was actually a military victory for the US. Marche diagnoses the problem: the sides in a civil war will just keep fighting because for them, the battle is existential. For the interventionists, it is limited by resources and will. After years of failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, when President Obama committed to defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq, it was strictly an air campaign (Operation Inherent Resolve, October 2014+). The ground fighting was left to local forces. This should signal the end for counterinsurgency as a Western strategy. The Russians also enjoyed no success in Syria. When tallying up the historic victories for counterinsurgents against the insurgents, the insurgents are probably far ahead. Of course it is militarily possible to defeat a counter-insurgency, just not legally: a strategy of simply killing most of the civilian population would work, but it would not be legal.

War as a Symbol

President Trump likes to tweet, or rather, since his ban from the platform, he likes to use Truth Social. President Trump seems to be constantly narrating his own life, engaging in a kind of stream of consciousness. This is not that problematic with most celebrities but it is when the subject controls the most effective military in the world. In August 2017 the President threatened North Korea with ‘fire and fury’ if they threatened the US.^[42] More recently he declared regarding the illegal US bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities: ‘Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term! The white structure shown is deeply imbedded into the rock, with even its roof well below ground level, and completely shielded from flame. The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!’^[43]

To say that President Trump enjoys hyperbole is a monumental understatement. The only people who might be able to match him for excessive references to violence are the Israeli government and Russian President Putin. Yet, unlike them, Trump is not an especially violent leader. He has mainly sought to avoid US military action, with some notable exceptions.^[44] The other two-term Presidents in this century, Bush and Obama, were more violent. Bush got America into two ‘forever wars’ in Afghanistan and Iraq. Once it became apparent that Obama would be unable to deliver his campaign promise to close Guantanamo Bay, he pivoted to a strategy of drone strikes, killing any potential future inmates. He also participated in a half-hearted and destabilising conflict in Libya^[45] and an air campaign against ISIS that liberated territory by flattening it. By comparison Trump likes the language of war but does not seem that enthusiastic about actually waging it. Just as with the war on drugs and poverty, the language of war is being debased and made more acceptable. For example, the September/October edition of Foreign Affairs is titled The Weaponized World Economy.^[46]

The Problem of Agency

For both states and non-state actors, engaging in armed combat requires agency. This is preferable to the narrower term of ‘sovereignty’ which is too overloaded with intellectual baggage and is irrelevant to non-state actors anyway. Using force is perhaps the ultimate form of agency. Despite 7000 years of civilisation, humans still go to war quite a lot. No one really knows why, despite recent attempts to explain it based around our better understanding of neuroscience.^[47] The most common explanation is resources, but this is a lousy argument as almost all human acquisition of resources has been done by trade, at the very least since the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944.^[48] Explaining why humans use armed force when there is almost always a better way of resolving disputes is beyond the purposes of this paper.

International Law legitimates the use of force in at least two and possibly four situations.

1. There is self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
2. The United Nations Security Council can authorise the use of force under Article 42 of the same Charter. 
3. Some jurists believe that there is something called a right to humanitarian intervention. This supposedly empowers states to violently intervene in the affairs of other states when the utilitarian cost/benefit analysis suggests it is a good idea. In the authors’ view, such a doctrine does not exist and there is insufficient space to argue why here.
4. Then there are a series of United Nations General Assembly resolutions recognising the right to self-determination in national liberation struggles, passed in the 1960- 1970s.

In 1960, the UN General Assembly approved Resolution 1514 (XV), the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. This did not endorse a right to use violence, but did term the ‘subjection of peoples to alien subjugation’ as a ‘denial of fundamental human rights.’^[49] Resolution 2105 (XX) of 1965 bemoaned the general lack of progress in five years and declared that ‘the continuation of colonial rule and the practice of apartheid…threaten international peace and security and constitute a crime against humanity’. The General Assembly specifically recognized ‘the legitimacy of the struggle by the peoples under colonial rule to exercise their right to self-determination’ and allowed ‘all States to provide material and moral assistance’ to national liberation movements.^[50] Resolution 2621 (XXV) of 1970, called on UN Member States to render ‘all necessary moral and material assistance’ to peoples struggling for freedom and declared that ‘freedom fighters’ were entitled to protection under the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of 12 August 1949.^[51] This was immediately followed by the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations (Friendly Relations Declaration [1970]). An Annex to Resolution 2625 (XXV), the Declaration stated that its provisions were ‘principles of international law’ which should be observed by all States. It further reaffirmed the right of peoples to ‘seek and receive support’ in combating forcible deprivation of the right to self-determination.^[52]

UN General Assembly Resolution 3103 (XXVIII) of 1973 went even further: Peoples under, ‘alien domination and racist regimes were declared to be entitled to use armed force against their oppressors with such conflicts to be treated as international armed conflict under the Geneva Conventions I–IV (1949).^[53] There is an inherent tension between these resolutions and the UN Charter itself, which is supposed to only authorise force under Article 42 and 51. This was supposedly addressed in UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 1974, known as the Definition of Aggression. It reaffirmed that force could not be used by any state or organisation to ‘deprive peoples of their right to self-determination.’ ‘(P)eoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination’ and their right to ‘struggle’ were excluded from being considered acts of aggression^[54] One attempt to square this circle is to argue ‘that wars of national liberation might be justified as an exercise of self-defence by the oppressed people.’^[55]

This looks like quite a lot of agency. But there is a problem: General Assembly resolutions are not binding. The only way they can be is if they become customary international law, as with many provisions from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But that is a resolution which all states have accepted as customary law, whereas the General Assembly resolutions mentioned above were far from universally supported. It demonstrates that simply having a majority of states agreeing on changes to the laws of armed conflict does not actually change them. This is in fact very little agency.

It could be argued that national liberation movements use terrorism, whatever that term exactly means, as a form of performative combat. Various groups linked to the Palestinian struggle for liberation used to hijack aircraft until it became more or less impossible after 2001. The Black September Organization (BSO), infamously killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Did any of these events move Palestine closer to liberation? Did they generate sympathy for the Palestinian cause? The answer is no. In the case of Munich, they made things worse. Mossad wiped out the network that had been responsible for the attack.^[56] At the same time, Palestinians naturally felt they had to do something to at least keep the issue in the news. The same logic applies to the terror attacks in the US on September 11 2001. These were a disaster for Al Qaeda, but they at least achieved the objective that Osama bin Laden wanted: they made people take notice of his politicised version of religion.

Depending on your viewpoint, performative combat is either the self-denial of most agency^[57] or the illusion of agency, in the same way that someone in a relationship who is being gaslighted really has no agency. ‘Gaslighting’ is a form of emotional abuse where a person is manipulated into questioning their own reality, perceptions and even their own sanity. The abuser gains power and control by systematically denying facts, lying, misdirecting, and using phrases that make the victim doubt their memory and instincts. Significantly, this common definition often involves the use of the word ‘strategy’. This distinction between the self-denial of agency and/or the illusion of agency may be thin at best.

Superman

In yet another iteration of the franchise, 2025 saw the release of another film about the eponymous hero Superman (Dir: James Gunn). One of the movies’ subplots involves Superman preventing Boravia from invading the neighbouring country of Jarhanpur. This has been discussed as an allegory for the Israel-Gaza conflict, but since the leader of Boravia speaks with a heavy Russian accent, it seems Ukraine-Russia is more likely. This is interesting because the character has, in both movies, comics and video games, consistently either refused to meddle directly in human politics or else done so and regretted it. This is the inherent tension of the character and what makes him interesting: he is so powerful that he could become boring. But having the power to organise the world’s affairs and refusing to do so makes for a dynamic character.

In the film, Superman is criticised for intervening in the conflict by some, praised by others. Superman seems to be the embodiment of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention: what he does is morally correct, but is there any sound legal basis for an alien telling humans how to run their affairs? These are incidental points, however.

The main problem with Superman’s intervention, is that the film shows Jarhanpuri’s as completely lacking in agency. They basically just plead for Superman to save them and chant his name a lot. In this world the UN Security Council either does not exist, or it does and Russia vetoes all resolutions condemning Boravia. The Jarhanpuri’s are engaged in a struggle to survive and have their statehood preserved. The film is very clear that the Boravian plan is to take over Jarhanpur and divide its territory up. The Jarhanpuri’s are shown as clearly being morally right and Boravia as morally wrong. We can assume that international law is the same in the world of the film, so Boravia is launching an armed attack and Jarhanpur has a right to defend itself. But they are shown as being unable to defend themselves and in all honestly, they seem rather pathetic. Fortunately they live in a world where Superman and other superhumans can protect them.

This is a version of the ‘white saviour’ idiom, which occurs in films where white people rescue blacks from slavery or other more modern forms of oppression, Here it is being practiced by an alien towards humans. Hollywood likes to make films where oppressed groups are saved by their same oppressors. Alternatively, the oppressed achieve a form of transcendental redemption by being more moral than their oppressors. This is best seen in films like Ghandi (Dir: Richard Attenborough 1982) or Invictus (Dir: Clint Eastwood 2009). Not that these are both white directors. These films sanctify their heroes for opposing violence. But Nelson Mandela had a history of terrorism and no one wants to make a film about that. Violence is necessary to achieve liberation, yet popular cinema is caught between two stools: violence is endemic in popular films, but more ‘serious’ ones have the fortune cookie wisdom that violence does not solve anything.

You might ask why this matters? It matters because it shows a culture where humans have given up on real solutions to armed conflict and resorted to fantasy. Superman is a form of performative combat at a cultural level. We can leave the cinema happy that justice has been served, whilst ignoring the fact that in the real-world injustice reigns supreme. Ukrainians, Palestinians and the Sudanese are still being killed, and we are doing nothing about it. The same problem occurred when Marvel released Black Panther (Dir: Ryan Coogler, 2018). The film depicts a black African superhero who originates from the hidden but technologically advanced state of Wakanda, which pretends to be a typical African developing state. The film was hugely popular in Africa for obvious reasons. But again, it allowed its audience to live in a fantasy, go home smiling and wake up in their poor African dictatorship with exactly the same life they had yesterday. It is performance as a substitute for action. The film also raises the moral problem of why Wakanda has been happy to let things like the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, African civil wars and apartheid occur, without doing anything to stop them. These criticisms could be said to depend on whether you view films as mere escapism or as commentary on society. This author leans firmly to the latter.

Conclusion

War as great power conflict is back. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates this. There are elements of this conflict that are performative, but it is a genuine war with definite if uncertain political objectives.

But some smaller wars are merely performance. Israel has attacked Iran and Iran has responded. But the first of the Iranian responses, on 13 April 2024, was pure performance. It was largely for domestic consumption and the Iranian media pronounced it a great success, despite the fact that barely anyone in Israel even noticed it. Armed conflict has not always been about the use of violence to achieve a political objective. Clausewitz was right in his day, but not necessarily now

The final question to address is whether performative combat is a morally good or bad thing?

On the one hand it is less destructive. Iran has struck Israel twice, but the first was merely performative and avoided a wider war. Arguably, performative combat just does not matter that much compared to typical state versus state warfare. Humans seem to be utilitarians at heart and would gladly substitute boxing for a duel to the death.

On the other hand it necessarily involves the use of force for purposes which are often obscure. Any use of force should be avoided. The fact that only a few people die rather than a lot is cold comfort to those few. Performative combat makes combat matter less and thus makes it more common. It desensitises us to the use of violence. There is also the inherent risk that the performance goes wrong and/or is misinterpreted by the other side, leading to full blown war. The performative strike by Iran against Israel on 13 April 2024 did nothing to prevent the protracted armed conflict between 13 – 25 June 2025.

The only solid conclusions to draw are that we have not seen the last of performative combat and Superman does not exist.

Bibliography and List of Sources

Cases

Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, No. 2024/57, 19 July 2024

Books

Christine Gray, International Law and the Use of Force (4th Edition), OUP (2018)

Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster,‎ January 4, 2022

Journal Articles

Mostafa Ahmed, ‘A Troubled Chain of Command: Politics and the IDF’, Al Habtoor Research Centre, 4 March 2025

Richard Bach Jensen, ‘The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism An International History, 1878–1934,’ Cambridge University Press, 2013

Carol Cohn, ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’, Vol. 12, No. 4, Within and Without: Women, Gender, and Theory (Summer, 1987), University of Chicago Press

Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Age of Forever Wars: Why Military Strategy No Longer Delivers Victory’, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2025, Volume 104, Number 3

Ellie Geranmayeh, Israel and Iran on the brink: Preventing the next war, European Union Institute for Security Studies, 3 October 2025

Rodger A Payne, ‘Grappling with Dr. Strangelove’s “Wargasm” Fantasy’, International Studies Review, Volume 22, Issue 3, September 2020, Pages 464–481

Tomes, R, ‘Operation Allied Force and the legal basis for humanitarian interventions’ In: Parameters, 30, 2000, 1, 38-50

‘The global implications of the US strikes on Iran’, Brookings Institute, July 1, 2025

Ngaire Woods, ‘Order Without America How the International System Can Survive a Hostile Washington’ Foreign Affairs Volume 104, Number 3, May/June 2025

News Articles

BBC News Online, ‘Pope Francis angered by America’s ‘mother of all bombs’, 6 May 2017

BBC News Online, ‘Donald Trump threatens ‘fury’ against N Korea’, 9 August 2017

BBC News Online, ‘What we know about Iran’s attack on US base in Qatar’ , 24 June 2025

Katelynn Contreras, ‘Fifty-Two Years of Fear and Failure: The War on Drugs’, ACLU Arizona, June 17, 2024

Nectar Gan, ‘Who was Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian commander killed by a US airstrike?’, CNN World, January 3, 2020

Courtney Kube and Doha Madani, Iran retaliates for Gen. Soleimani’s killing by firing missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq, NBC News, January 8 2020

Maziar Motamedi, ‘True Promise’: Why and how did Iran launch a historic attack on Israel?’, Aljazeera Online, 14 April 2024

Ben Quinn, ‘UK special forces veterans accuse colleagues of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Guardian’, 12 May 2025

Pjotr Sauer and Luke Harding, ‘Putin annexes four regions of Ukraine in major escalation of Russia’s war’, The Guardian, 30 September 2022

‘Iran says Israel bombs its embassy in Syria, kills commanders’, Reuters, April 2, 2024,

The Jerusalem Post, 14 April 2024 

Svitlana Vlasova, Lex Harvey, Kosta Gak, Victoria Butenko, Michael Rios, ‘Deadly Russian air attacks force power cuts across Ukraine, as Trump-Putin summit shelved’, CNN World, last accessed at 23/10/2025.

Volker Wagener, ‘What is Republika Srpska?’, Deutsche Welle, 15 January 2023

Websites

Altin Gjeta, ‘Kosovo: consolidating its statehood remains an uphill struggle 16 years after independence’, The Conversation, February 15, 2024

‘Conflict in Syria’ Council on Foreign Relations: Conflict tracker, October 3 2025,

Peter Layton, ‘How Sri Lanka Won the War: Lessons in strategy from an overlooked victory’, The Diplomat, April 09, 2015

Birte Julia Gippert ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina in crisis as Bosnian Serb president rallies for secession’, The Conversation, 17 July 2025

Michael Page, ‘Iran Court Issues Sentences in Downing of Ukraine Flight PS752’, Human Rights Watch, last accessed at 23/10/2025

The Lillian Goldman Law Library: The Avalon Project, Yale Law School,

US National Archives, President George W Bush

The White House, ‘Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News’, June 25, 2025

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[1] Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, was a Prussian General and perhaps the single most influential figure in developing military strategy.

[2] Nectar Gan, ‘Who was Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian commander killed by a US airstrike?’, CNN World, January 3, 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/03/asia/soleimani-profile-intl-hnk

[3] Courtney Kube and Doha Madani, ‘Iran retaliates for Gen. Soleimani’s killing by firing missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq’, NBC News, January 8, 2020 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-base-iraq-comes-under-attack-missiles-iran-claims-n1112171

[4] Michael Page, ‘Iran Court Issues Sentences in Downing of Ukraine Flight PS752’, Human Rights Watch, April 20, 2024 https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/20/iran-court-issues-sentences-downing-ukraine-flight-ps752 

[5] ‘Iran says Israel bombs its embassy in Syria, kills commanders’, Reuters, April 2, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-bombs-iran-embassy-syria-iranian-commanders-among-dead-2024-04-01/

[6] Maziar Motamedi, ‘True Promise’: Why and how did Iran launch a historic attack on Israel?’, Aljazeera Online, 14 April 2024, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/14/true-promise-why-and-how-did-iran-launch-a-historic-attack-on-israel

[7] ‘Iran’s UN envoy says attack on Israel ‘can be deemed concluded’’, The Jerusalem Post, 14 April 2024 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-796851

[8] Ellie Geranmayeh, ‘Israel and Iran on the brink: Preventing the next war’, European Union Institute for Security Studies, 3 October 2025, https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/briefs/israel-and-iran-brink-preventing-next-war

[9] ‘The global implications of the US strikes on Iran’, Brookings Institute, July 1, 2025, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-global-implications-of-the-us-strikes-on-iran/

[10] The key term is ‘more comprehensive’. One doubts that even President Trump believes he is going to get Iran to recognise Israel. He just wants Iran to reduce its support for proxy groups like Hezbollah and stop its nuclear program.

[11]BBC News Online, ‘What we know about Iran’s attack on US base in Qatar’ , 24 June 2025 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjxdgjpd48o

[12] Svitlana Vlasova, Lex Harvey, Kosta Gak, Victoria Butenko, Michael Rios, ‘Deadly Russian air attacks force power cuts across Ukraine, as Trump-Putin summit shelved’, CNN World, 22 October 2025, last accessed at 23/10/2025, https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/22/europe/russia-air-attack-kyiv-ukraine-latam-intl

[13] Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Age of Forever Wars: Why Military Strategy No Longer Delivers Victory’, Foreign Affairs, Volume 104, Number 3, May/June 2025

[14] Peter Layton, ‘How Sri Lanka Won the War: Lessons in strategy from an overlooked victory’, The Diplomat, April 09, 2015, https://thediplomat.com/2015/04/how-sri-lanka-won-the-war/

[15] ‘Conflict in Syria’ Council on Foreign Relations: Conflict tracker, October 3 2025, https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker

[16] Altin Gjeta, ‘Kosovo: consolidating its statehood remains an uphill struggle 16 years after independence’, The Conversation, February 15, 2024, https://theconversation.com/kosovo-consolidating-its-statehood-remains-an-uphill-struggle-16-years-after-independence-223390

[17] Volker Wagener, ‘What is Republika Srpska?’, Deutsche Welle, 15 January 2023, https://www.dw.com/en/what-is-republika-srpska/a-64373205

[18] In other words, something like the Yugoslavia that had just spectacularly collapsed.

[19] Birte Julia Gippert ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina in crisis as Bosnian-Serb president rallies for secession’, The Conversation, 17 July 2025, https://theconversation.com/bosnia-and-herzegovina-in-crisis-as-bosnian-serb-president-rallies-for-secession-260618

[20] Mostafa Ahmed, ‘A Troubled Chain of Command: Politics and the IDF’, Al Habtoor Research Centre, 4 March 2025, https://www.habtoorresearch.com/programmes/command-politics-idf/

[21] International treaty for the limitation and reduction of naval armament, London, April 22, 1930

[22] General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, Aug. 27, 1928, 46 Stat. 2343, 94 L.N.T.S. 57 (entered into force Jul. 24, 1929), Article II

[23] Ngaire Woods, ‘Order Without America How the International System Can Survive a Hostile Washington’ Foreign Affairs Volume 104, Number 3, May/June 2025

[24] The International Court of Justice has declared that the territory is effectively annexed, see Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, No. 2024/57, 19 July 2024

https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-pre-01-00-en.pdf

[25] Treaty of Peace between the Arab Republic of Egypt and the State of Israel (signed 26 March 1979, entered into force 25 April 1979) 

[26] Pjotr Sauer and Luke Harding, ‘Putin annexes four regions of Ukraine in major escalation of Russia’s war’, The Guardian, 30 September 2022,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/30/putin-russia-war-annexes-ukraine-regions

[27] Carol Cohn, ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’, Vol. 12, No. 4, Within and Without: Women, Gender, and Theory (Summer, 1987), University of Chicago Press

[28] Rodger A Payne, ‘Grappling with Dr. Strangelove’s “Wargasm” Fantasy’, International Studies Review, Volume 22, Issue 3, September 2020, Pages 464–481

[29] BBC News Online, ‘Pope Francis angered by America’s ‘mother of all bombs’, 6 May 2017 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39830311

[30] Katelynn Contreras, ‘Fifty-Two Years of Fear and Failure: The War on Drugs’, ACLU Arizona, June 17, 2024 https://www.acluaz.org/news/fifty-two-years-fear-and-failure-war-drugs

[31] https://waronwant.org/

[32] US National Archives, President George W Bush https://www.georgewbushlibrary.gov/research/topic-guides/global-war-terror

[33] Terrorism Act 2000 (2000 c. 11)

[34] ibid, section 1(1)

[35] ibid, section 1(2)

[36] Crown Prosecution Service Guidance, last accessed at 22/10/2025, https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/terrorism

[37] Ben Quinn, ‘UK special forces veterans accuse colleagues of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Guardian’, 12 May 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/may/12/former-uk-special-forces-personnel-accuse-colleagues-of-war-crimes

[38] Richard Bach Jensen, ‘The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism An International History, 1878–1934,’ Cambridge University Press, 2013

[39] Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Age of Forever Wars: Why Military Strategy No Longer Delivers Victory’, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2025, Volume 104, Number 3

[40] Tomes, R, ‘Operation Allied Force and the legal basis for humanitarian interventions’ In: Parameters, 30, 2000, 1, 38-50

[41] Stephen Marche, ‘The Next Civil War’ Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster,‎ January 4, 2022

[42] BBC News Online, ‘Donald Trump threatens ‘fury’ against N Korea’, 9 August 2017 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40869319

[43] The White House, ‘Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News’, June 25, 2025 https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/irans-nuclear-facilities-have-been-obliterated-and-suggestions-otherwise-are-fake-news/

[44] The bombing of Iran’s nuclear programme and some actions against the Houthis in Yemen.

[45] Operation Odyssey Dawn, 19-31 March 2011

[46] Foreign Affairs, September/October 2025 Volume 104, Number 5

[47] Christopher Blattman, ‘Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace’, Penguin, 2023

[48] Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund, adopted at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, on July 22, 1944

[49] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 [XV] [14 December 1960] para. 1

[50] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2105 [XX] [20 December 1965] preamble

[51] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2621 [XXV] [12 October 1970] paras 3 (2) and 6 (a)

[52]United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2625 [XXV] [24 October 1970] 124 para. 6

[53]United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3103 [XXVIII] [12 December 1973] paras 1 and 3

[54] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3314 [XXIX] [14 December 1974] Preamble para. 6 and Art. 7

[55] See generally, Christine Gray, International Law and the Use of Force (4th Edition), OUP (2018)

[56] Operation Bayonet

[57] The self-denial could itself be argued as being a very limited form of agency