How wars, sanctions, blockades, and interventions are legitimized through language
“Power does not always need to hide the victim; often, it only needs to change the victim’s name until they appear responsible for what they suffered…”
1. THE LANGUAGE THAT PREPARES THE GROUND
Before a war, a sanction, a blockade, or an intervention, another, less visible operation almost always begins: changing the words through which what comes next will be explained. Power rarely announces that it intends to destroy, punish, suffocate, or invade. It prefers to speak of neutralizing a threat, responding to a provocation, protecting a population, restoring order, imposing costs, or defending security.
The change may seem small, but it is not. Every word shifts the moral center of the event. Destroy sounds brutal; neutralize sounds technical. Punish reveals intent; impose costs sounds administrative. Invade evokes conquest; intervene can be presented as an obligation. And so, before troops are moved, borders closed, or accounts blocked, the vocabulary that will make those decisions more acceptable begins to be constructed.
The first battle, then, does not always take place on the ground. It takes place in official statements, headlines, speeches, and press conferences. That is where it is decided who appears as the threat, who as the protector, and who will later have to justify the suffering that has been inflicted.
“Before the missile arrives, a word almost always arrives first, assigned the task of making it acceptable.”
2. WHEN THE VICTIM MUST EXPLAIN WHY THEY WERE STRUCK
One of the most effective operations of power consists of reversing the moral position of those involved in a conflict. A country that has been bombed can end up appearing responsible for having “provoked” the response. A population subjected to a blockade can be presented as guilty for living under a particular authority. A sanctioned people can end up being told that their own poverty is exclusively the consequence of their political decisions.
This is how the reversal of the narrative works. Whoever possesses more weapons, resources, alliances, or capacity for pressure can present themselves as threatened, while whoever receives the blow must explain why they did not deserve to receive it. Force ceases to appear as an initiative and begins to be presented as an inevitable reaction.
The mechanism is powerful because it changes the central question. The debate is no longer only about who bombed, blockaded, or imposed sanctions, but about what the victim did beforehand to “force” the other side to act. In this way, responsibility begins to shift from the party carrying out the action to the one enduring its consequences.
“The perfect reversal of the narrative occurs when the person receiving the blow ends up in the dock explaining why they forced the stronger party to strike them.”
3. WARS THAT CHANGE THEIR NAMES
Military language possesses an extraordinary capacity to soften what happens on the ground. An invasion can become a “special operation.” A bombing can be presented as a “preemptive strike.” The deaths of civilians can be reduced to “collateral damage.” A temporary occupation can be called a “security zone,” and an offensive action can be described as a “proportional response” or a “humanitarian intervention.”
It does not matter which actor uses that vocabulary. The United States, Russia, Israel, NATO, or other powers can construct expressions designed to place their own actions within a moral framework. The intention is not to claim that all wars are the same, but to show that the linguistic mechanism repeats itself: change the name in order to change the perception.
Military words often distance citizens from the concrete reality of the scene. “Legitimate target” sounds different from a destroyed home. “Neutralization” seems less violent than death. “Operation” sounds technical; war evokes bodies, fear, ruins, and displacement.
Thus, language does not eliminate violence, but it can make it more tolerable to those who observe it from afar.
“A bomb does not change its nature because an official statement manages to give it a more elegant name.”
4. SANCTIONS: PUNISHING WITHOUT SAYING WAR
Sanctions make it possible to exert pressure without declaring war. Financial blockades, banking restrictions, asset freezes, and controls on exports, technology, or energy can be presented as instruments directed exclusively against governments, leaders, or structures of power. On paper, the objective appears precise. In reality, the consequences rarely remain within those boundaries.
When a financial system is restricted, businesses, workers, and consumers also suffer. When foreign currency becomes scarce, prices rise, investment falls, and essential goods become more expensive. When certain technologies, spare parts, or supplies stop circulating, hospitals, industries, transportation systems, and services can end up absorbing part of the cost. Even when food or medicines are formally exempted, banking, logistical, and commercial difficulties can obstruct their arrival.
The official discourse states that power is sanctioned in order to change its behavior. But those in power usually have mechanisms available to protect themselves, while the population faces inflation, shortages, unemployment, and daily deterioration. Economic pressure can therefore become a form of conflict whose effects extend far beyond government palaces.
“Sanctions usually announce that they will punish those in power; afterward, they discover that power has bodyguards and the population does not.”
5. THE BLOCKADE: WHEN THE BORDER BECOMES AN ARGUMENT
A blockade does not need to destroy buildings in order to exert pressure. It can operate through a border, a port, a maritime route, a bank, or a payment system and, even so, profoundly alter the daily lives of millions of people. Whoever controls passage can also control the pace at which food, fuel, medicines, foreign currency, transportation, and permits circulate.
Gaza offers one of the most visible examples today, but the mechanism is far broader. When a population depends on authorizations to receive essential goods, the border ceases to be merely a line on a map and becomes a political instrument. The same occurs when a port is closed, an international account is blocked, or a trade route is interrupted.
The power of a blockade lies precisely in this: it does not always need to appear as an attack. It can be presented as control, security, economic pressure, or a temporary measure, while its effects directly reach hospitals, businesses, families, and markets.
“When eating, receiving medical care, or trading requires permission from the adversary, the border ceases to be geography and begins to become power.”
6. THE MEDIA AND THE MANUFACTURE OF THE GUILTY PARTY
The media do not need to completely invent a story in order to change its meaning. It is enough to select an image, choose a headline, repeat certain words, omit background information, or consistently favor the same sources. In this way, an interpretation begins to be constructed in which some appear as legitimate victims and others as inevitable threats.
The same dead person can be presented as a civilian, combatant, terrorist, martyr, or collateral damage. The person does not change; what changes is the language placed around their death. The historical context that is remembered also changes, as does the expert who is invited, the official source that is repeated, and the emotion accompanying each image.
The manufacture of the guilty party works precisely because it rarely requires a complete lie. It can be constructed through selection, repetition, and hierarchy. One version receives space; another disappears. One photograph moves people; another is never published. A term is repeated until it becomes an identity.
Thus, the narrative ultimately conditions not only what happened, but also who deserves compassion, who deserves suspicion, and who deserves punishment.
“The difference between victim and threat can begin, far too often, with the word a headline decides to place beneath a photograph.”
7. THE GREAT LIONS AND THEIR EXCEPTIONS
The great actors of the international system proclaim universal principles, but they rarely apply them without exceptions. The United States speaks of security, democracy, and defense of the international order. Russia invokes sovereignty, strategic depth, and resistance to Western encirclement. China insists on stability, non-interference, and respect for sovereignty. Europe appeals to rules, rights, and legality. India defends strategic autonomy and national interest.
The problem begins when those principles collide with concrete interests. Then interpretations, gray areas, and exceptions appear. An intervention can become a necessity. An alliance, a historical obligation. Economic pressure, legitimate defense. An occupation, security. A restriction, protection.
None of the great lions completely abandons its principles; it simply learns to accommodate them when the cost of respecting them threatens its power. There emerges one of the central contradictions of the international system: the rules claim to be universal, but those who possess greater strength retain greater capacity to explain when those rules cease to apply.
“Empires love rules as long as the rules protect their power; when they begin to limit it, they quickly discover the language of exception.”
8. WHEN WORDS END UP KILLING
Language does not pull the trigger, but it prepares the moral space for others to do so. When a population has already been transformed into a threat, a suspect, a guilty party, an obstacle, or unavoidable damage, the next step becomes politically much easier. That is where the deception takes place: first perception is altered; afterward, the consequences begin to appear justifiable.
Violence requires weapons, but it also requires words capable of presenting it as defense, necessity, or response. And when those words succeed in taking hold, the victim can end up losing even the right to be recognized as a victim.
“The victim ceases to be a victim when language manages to convince the world that they deserved what happened to them.”
“The most dangerous power is not only the power capable of destroying; it is the power that succeeds in explaining destruction until it becomes a necessity.”
“And when a society first accepts the words, it often discovers too late that it had already accepted the consequences as well.”
Brief Bibliography:
· Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky — Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon Books, 1988.
Analyzes how media outlets, institutional sources, economic interests, and structures of power can select and prioritize information until they construct dominant versions of wars, conflicts, and responsibility.
· Susan Sontag — Regarding the Pain of Others, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
Examines how images, words, and narratives condition the way distant societies observe wars, victims, and suffering, and how the same scene can acquire different meanings depending on who presents it.
Historical and Political Thought
· George Orwell — Politics and the English Language, 1946.
A fundamental reference on the use of political language to conceal, soften, or make violent realities acceptable. Orwell shows how certain words can transform brutality, war, and domination into seemingly technical or respectable expressions.
· Hannah Arendt — The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951.
Analyzes propaganda, power, the construction of the enemy, and the transformation of human groups into political threats. It is especially useful for your central idea: before justifying certain actions against a population, power often first changes the way that population is presented and understood.