After the horrors of World War ll, a general sentiment of peace was largely understood by the world. The original 51 countries that signed the UN Charter of 1945, which was later passed by the “Big Five” or the UN Security Council — the U.S., former USSR, the U.K., China, and France — broadly believed that peace and trust between nations must be ensured in order to prevent acts of unbridled violence. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter of 1945 states that the threat and the use of force are prohibited in international relations. From then on, war was supposed to be understood by members of the United Nations as a violation of international law that required extensive justification and restraint. The ideal goal was a resolution between nations.
Today, war no longer feels like a rarity — but a constant. Conflicts begin, escalate and news outlets consistently update the world on wars thousands of miles away. With their ever-increasing presence online, wars blend into everyday lives.
Particularly in the United States, normalized militarism has made it difficult to perceive and question war preparation. Tolerance for violence is reflected in this normalization, and even justification, in the American psyche. Corporate lobbyists, legislators prioritizing local jobs, and think tanks now see militaristic violence as a source of “valuable jobs and a measure of national pride that provides a powerful fulcrum for the permanent warfare state.” While institutions in international law were designed to specifically limit and regulate war, they often enable it.
International law does not attempt to completely eliminate conflict, but to regulate and prevent it if possible. Concepts like proportionality, “just war” and self-defense exist as ways to monitor violence under a legal and moral framework. But the result is paradoxical. While war is condemned, it is also legitimized under special circumstances.
However, this normalization is not merely state-motivated — it pervades culture as well.
Media coverage and the prevalence of conflicts on our screens shape public perception of violence. In the early stages of war, breaking news headlines flash across screens, recounting in great detail the most recent developments. But as wars persist, their reports become increasingly expected and normalized. As a result, audiences become desensitized as the facts flow in.
Digital media has also evolved the way violence is consumed regularly, displaying images and videos that circulate quickly throughout social platforms. War, a condemned act, becomes another form of easily consumable content. War has become easy to scroll, easy to ignore and easy to accept. The vast amount of information and visual media has dulled the emotional impact of war.
The current U.S. involvement in the war with Iran illuminates a pressing issue: the justification of militaristic violence by officials in leadership positions. Beginning in February 2026, coordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes targeted Iranian nuclear and military sites under Operation Epic Fury. This quickly heightened into a broader regional conflict, with Iran launching retaliatory attacks across the region. Despite the scale of violence on multiple levels and public outcry by Americans — including the deaths of thousands and disrupted markets — the war has been reframed and justified by claims of deterrence and security by the Trump administration.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims that the war should conclude in “weeks not months”— despite Israel’s threats to escalate attacks against the Islamic republic. Meanwhile, G7 foreign ministers have called for an end to violence against civilians and regional partners. These ministers are attempting to regulate violence instead of outright preventing it.
Furthermore, violence as a normal presence is also perpetuated in entertainment, specifically video games. Hyper-realistic military games such as Call of Duty and its many installations often mirror real-life wars, placing players in the first-person view of soldiers in real combat zones around the world. This constant exposure to violence and war shapes the minds of those glued to their controllers. War becomes familiar, common and even enjoyable.
Legal, political and cultural factors intersect to legitimize and normalize wars today. It is no longer seen solely as a heinous violation of international law, but as a condition of state sovereignty. However, this doesn’t mean that all individuals feed into this same belief. Demonstrations and protests across the globe give power to those who challenge the irrationality of certain wars — such as debates surrounding U.S. involvement in Iran. But even these efforts often fail to address the crux of the issue. They debate on the legitimacy of war, rather than questioning whether war should occur at all.
Once war becomes normalized, its standard for acceptance increasingly lowers. Military involvement becomes common sense instead of a last resort, and people are conditioned to blindly accept the choices made by political leaders.
The normalcy of violence is reduced to numbers and strategy, while the relevancy of ethics is forgotten. Moving forward, if society refuses to fight back against this normalcy in the age of rapidly developing technological warfare, we risk lowering the threshold for what entails a “just war,” where the ability to inflict violence from a safe distance desensitizes the physical cost of war.
Michaela Okuyama is an Opinion Staff Writer. She can be reached at okuyamam@uci.edu
Edited by Kailee Kim
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