Why the Gulf War Hasn’t Started in 35 Years
On January 4, 1991—thirteen days before the bombing of Iraq began—French philosopher Jean Baudrillard published an essay in Liberation titled "There Will Be No Gulf War." The title referenced Jean Giraud's play "There Will Be No Trojan War," in which the characters try to prevent the inevitable.
When the bombings commenced, a second essay was released—"The Gulf War: Is It Really Happening?" After the hostilities ended, a third essay followed: "There Was No Gulf War." These texts were compiled into a book published in May 1991.
In this new piece, we explore why Baudrillard's concept remains relevant today, especially when reading Donald Trump's tweets and more.
About the "War That Didn't Happen"
Baudrillard did not deny that bombs fell in the desert and people died. His thesis was different: what occurred was not a war in the traditional sense—a clash of armies capable of inflicting comparable damage on each other. The disparity in military capability was so vast that direct confrontation never took place.
However, what mattered most to Baudrillard was how events in the Persian Gulf were perceived. The 1991 war was the first armed conflict in history broadcast live on television 24/7. Viewers witnessed missile strikes from onboard cameras but did not see the casualties and destruction—U.S. authorities learned from the Vietnam experience and controlled the media.
“Sometimes the absurdity of media self-representation as a provider of reality and immediacy broke through—such as when CNN cameras switched live to a group of reporters somewhere in the Persian Gulf, only for them to admit they were sitting and watching CNN, trying to understand what was happening. Television news seemed to finally catch up with the logic of simulation,” wrote Baudrillard's translator Paul Patton in the introduction to the English edition of the book.
What Is Hyperreality?
Hyperreality is a situation where the image of an event is more significant than objective reality. The copy displaces the original—not because someone is deliberately deceiving, but because that’s how media operates. They make the image more accessible and vivid than reality itself.
“We prefer the catastrophe of the real world to be exiled to a virtual world, of which television serves as a universal mirror,” Baudrillard wrote.
The philosopher developed this idea long before the Gulf War. In his work "Simulacra and Simulation" (1981), he described four stages of the relationship between image and reality: the first reflects the second, then masks it, then signifies its absence, and finally bears no relation to reality at all—becoming a pure simulacrum.
The Gulf conflict became an ideal illustration for Baudrillard. The televised image replaced the event itself. The war turned, in his words, into an advertising campaign without a product:
“Advertising-informational, speculative, virtual: this war no longer conforms to the well-known formula of von Clausewitz that ‘war is the continuation of politics by other means,’ but rather signifies the absence of politics continued by other means.”
Baudrillard also noted the psychological aspect of the process. Politicians, generals, and viewers became captives of the media rather than real events:
“The war, along with all its military fakes, hypothetical soldiers and generals, supposed experts and TV hosts who speculate about it all day before our eyes, spins before a mirror: am I good enough, effective enough, spectacular enough, perfect enough to take the stage of history?”
The Media Face of War
In 1991, television served as the intermediary between the viewer and the event. Today, there are dozens of such intermediaries: X, Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, news aggregators. Each imposes its own filter on reality.
By 2026, information arrives in the form of short clips, memes, and screenshots—fragments that are easier to spread than to verify.
UNDEFEATED. pic.twitter.com/Jt69bcag5y
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 12, 2026
Social media algorithms amplify the effect. They select content not based on accuracy but on its ability to capture attention. An emotionally charged post gets more reach than a dry fact. This creates a feed where images compete not for accuracy but for reaction.
The difference between 1991 and 2026 lies in scale and speed. Back then, television viewers received one version of events from journalists. Today, users get thousands of versions from anyone: eyewitnesses, propagandists, bloggers, bots. However, the increase in sources has not brought viewers closer to reality; it has widened the gap. The more versions there are, the harder it is to establish what actually happened.
Spice Must Flow, the Show Must Go On
After 35 years, the mechanics of hyperreality are even more evident. American YouTuber Brendan Miller analyzed the U.S.-Iran conflict through Baudrillard's lens in a video essay and compared the situation to a TV show.
The blogger noted a characteristic feature: war exists primarily as a collection of images—videos where combat footage is edited with references to popular culture.
JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY. 🇺🇸🔥 pic.twitter.com/0502N6a3rL
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2026
According to Miller, when a conflict is perceived through the lens of hyperreality, its logic changes. Goals become blurred, deadlines shift, and the main measure of success becomes audience reaction. If it’s a TV show, plans and timelines don’t matter.
This lens is how Miller suggests we view U.S. President Donald Trump’s behavior. Constantly changing goals and timelines, a poorly developed plan—none of this appears chaotic if you understand that for someone viewing war as a TV show, these details simply don’t matter. What matters is the image.
The essence was captured in a quote from an interview with ABC journalist Jonathan Karl, where Trump addressed him directly:
“I hope you’re impressed. So, what do you think of our performance? Venezuela is obvious. And this might even be better. How do you like the performance?”
Miller concludes: this is not the language of a politician or military strategist. It’s the language of a TV producer whose job is to ensure a spectacle.
Baudrillard described this mechanism in 1991. According to him, war lost its political objectives and became a means of proving its own existence:
“Unlike previous wars that had specific political goals—conquest or dominance—what is at stake now is the war itself: its status, its meaning, its future. It has no other purpose than to prove its own existence (this identity crisis concerns the existence of each of us).”
However, hyperreality does not negate consequences—they are felt far beyond the screen.
Baudrillard understood this contradiction. His texts did not claim that reality had disappeared. They documented the gap: the image of an event and the original diverge further apart, but the consequences—physical, economic, human—remain very real.
Text: Sasha Kosovan