The New Focus of Violence

Contemporary conflicts are undergoing a critical transformation: the focus of violence is shifting from states to individuals. The Venezuela crisis and the Iran-Israel conflict offer concrete examples of this practice of "personalizing war." Structural problems and geopolitical dynamics are pushed out of the narrative, while the entire responsibility for crises is placed on the shoulders of specific individuals.

The concept of "personalizing war" emerged in the post-Cold War period. In classical war theory—shaped by Carl von Clausewitz's "large-scale duel" and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "relationship between state and state"—the actors were states. The new paradigm shifts the focus of conflict directly to individuals. This is not merely a neutral observation but a powerful discourse that shapes and legitimizes reality. With the practice of the "global war on terror," operations directly targeting individuals such as targeted killings and extraordinary renditions became normalized. This discourse has become a tool that legitimizes certain violent practices and makes it possible to operate outside legal frameworks.

Venezuela: Reducing Structural Crisis to Maduro

The reduction of Venezuela's multidimensional crisis to a single leader figure exemplifies how this discourse operates. Structural dynamics deliberately overlooked include the transformation of the oil market, with falling oil prices and the US becoming a net exporter by increasing its own oil production, and alternative trade systems, with Venezuela conducting its oil trade through the Chinese financial system. Instead of these deep geopolitical dynamics, Nicolás Maduro was presented as the source of all problems. The "it's not a country problem, it's a person problem" narrative made structural dynamics invisible while presenting intervention as a moral necessity.

The most critical consequence is the evaporation of collective responsibility. When the problem is reduced to Maduro, neither the role of the Venezuelan people nor the effects of US sanctions are discussed. The issue is framed not as intervening in a country's sovereignty but simply as eliminating "a bad guy." This rhetorical sleight of hand transforms a complex geopolitical confrontation into a morally simple manhunt.

Iran-Israel Conflict: Mutual Personalization

The Iran-Israel conflict is a striking example where the personalization of war is applied reciprocally, with both sides adopting this strategy. Israel has pursued a systematic personalization strategy against Iran's nuclear program and regional activities. The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the chief scientist of Iran's nuclear program, killed near Tehran with an AI-assisted remote-controlled weapon, is a perfect example of reducing the struggle against a state's scientific and military capacity to a single individual. The operation against Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, killed in Baghdad in an operation coordinated with the US, exemplifies depoliticizing rhetoric, with Trump's statement that "the world is a safer place without these monsters" being a classic example of rhetoric that depoliticizes the action. The killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, on Iranian soil while he was there to attend the Iranian president's inauguration ceremony, is a striking example of legitimizing sovereignty violations through personalization discourse.

What's particularly interesting is that Iran has adopted a similar personalization strategy. Following Soleimani's killing, Iran declared Trump a direct target, with Iranian officials repeatedly emphasizing that Trump was "personally responsible" and would be held accountable. In some of Iran's operations, it's assessed that they targeted locations where specific individuals in decision-making mechanisms were located, rather than military targets. This mutual personalization creates a dynamic completely different from classical inter-state conflict. Both sides try to make the conflict manageable and legitimate by transforming structural issues—nuclear programs, regional power balance, proxy wars—into individual targets.

The Blurring Boundaries of Law and Morality

When the focus of violence shifts from state to individual, the traditional legal and moral frameworks upon which war is built collapse. In the modern state system, war created a framework in which violence could be limited by defining the enemy as a "legitimate enemy" (justus hostis). The enemy was not an object of personal hatred but a representative of a political entity with legitimate rights. When war is waged against individuals, this framework completely collapses. The enemy is now defined as an "unlawful enemy combatant" or simply a "target." Trump's statement about Soleimani summarizes this situation: an attack on a high-ranking official of a state is stripped of being a political act and transformed into an operation to eliminate an individual characterized as a "monster."

This language removes inter-state violence from the political realm and transforms it into global policing activity. Violence is no longer coded as a political act but as a moral necessity. The declaration of individuals as "enemies of all mankind" (hostis humani generis) deprives them of all protection and legitimizes immediate violent responses against them. A world where individuals can be targeted without geographical or temporal limitations eliminates the regulatory principles of the modern state system. Sovereignty is no longer a state's absolute authority over its territory but becomes a permeable membrane that powerful actors can pierce according to their own security definitions.

The Iran-Israel and Venezuela examples show that this transformation is a mutual and widespread practice. When both sides adopt the same strategy, the distinction between war and peace disappears entirely, and the world turns into a permanent state of global hunting and pursuit. This new paradigm raises fundamental questions: Can the solution to complex collective political problems be the elimination of individuals seen as representatives of these problems? Where is this world taking us, where collective state responsibility is replaced by individual guilt? When every political problem can be personalized, when every structural conflict can be reduced to a manhunt, we may be entering an era where traditional concepts of sovereignty, responsibility, and legitimate violence lose all meaning.

Cramer, C. (2002). Homo economicus goes to war: Methodological individualism, rational choice and the political economy of war. World Development, 30(11), 1845–1864. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(02)00120-1,

Tognocchi, M. (2022). The concept of regular enemy amidst the contemporary project of individualized war: Continuities, transformations, and contradictions [Doktora tezi, Università degli Studi di Milano]. NASP Graduate School

Tognocchi, M. (2024). The ‘individualization of war’: Discussion and critique of a discourse. Critical Studies on Security, 12(2), 126–146. https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2024.2308362