The death of Jürgen Habermas (1929-2026), one of the most important thinkers of his generation, has coincided with a particularly delicate moment: a war whose underlying cause—oil—affects the entire world. What can Habermas's ideas contribute to such a grim scenario? His theory of communicative action extends far beyond the Strait of Hormuz, to put it simply: it allows us to interpret contemporary international politics globally, a world marked by deep-seated and very old geopolitical tensions, as well as by newly unleashed, all-out wars.
Why do we resolve differences over pipes? Habermas distinguishes between communicative action, oriented toward understanding and consensus, and strategic action, aimed at imposing one's own interests at any cost. It seems clear which of the two predominates today: states (and other actors) operate from an instrumental rationality that prioritizes the achievement of objectives at the expense of political legitimacy and the dialogue that, in the long run, underpins it. This asymmetry explains why armed conflicts tend to become chronic, but also why multilateral dispute resolution mechanisms are often insufficient. From a Habermasian perspective, an armed conflict is the result of a prior failure of communication. Is this philosophical naiveté or even an oversimplification? Not at all.
When actors (political, military, economic, or even cultural) do not share a minimum framework of validity regarding facts, norms, or identities, communication deteriorates to the point of making a rational, or at least reasonable, agreement impossible. This is clearly seen in territorial or identity conflicts where the parties do not recognize the legitimacy of each other's narratives. The lack of a common space of meaning then turns any negotiation into a mere tactical exchange, not a genuine deliberative process. We are not talking about some abstraction, but about very concrete things. For example, I can disagree with someone, but at the same time recognize them as a subject capable of disagreeing with me on equal terms (that is, someone who may be right or, at least, some part of it is trueOtherwise, dialogue—and of course consensus—becomes impossible. It is then that the temptation arises to accept the harsh reality as something inevitable.
At a collective level, Habermas emphasizes the importance of international institutions as spaces where communication can acquire a stable, rational formulation. However, in current conflicts, these institutions are often perceived as biased or instrumentalized. Disinformation and violence erode the conditions of truth and trust that make dialogue possible. This contributes to the "colonization of the lifeworld," a concept that describes how systems of power—economic, military, technological—invade and distort spaces of shared meaning. Applying the theory of communicative action to conflict resolution involves recovering the ideal conditions of speech: equality of speech (what the Greeks called isegory), absence of coercion and mutual recognition. Although these conditions are not fully met in almost any war scenario, they should at least serve as a normative or regulatory criterion. That is to say, we should at least aspire to them. If we renounce this noble aspiration, the conflict will not be resolved. It may transform, take on a different form and color, but it will remain where it was, stubbornly: force can impose silence, but it does not generate lasting consensus. This lesson is older than walking, and yet we tend to minimize it or, in the worst cases, ignore it.
In a world where distrust and the shifting logic of blogs tend to prevail, Habermas's ideas offer a more or less plausible compass for envisioning rational forms of coexistence in which human communication is not reduced to strategies for achieving partial objectives, but rather seeks mutual understanding. And when does this occur? When states seek agreements based on common interests and reason. shared —that's the key word—. Put that way, it sounds very—too—easy. The truth is, all this happens rarely, but it does happen. The European Union, for example, is the result of mutual recognition between the French and Germans after they tried to destroy each other on several occasions. It's a lesson that the German Jürgen Habermas experienced firsthand: in 1945 he was sixteen years old.
