I have long been struck by the paradox that conflict—whether real, contrived, or altogether imagined—can fuel progress while also causing untold harm. Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “What does not kill me makes me stronger” (Nietzsche, 1888), implying that adversity propels us to evolve. Yet, as I study patterns of war, politics, and totalitarian regimes, I also see how easily unity under conflict can turn oppressive.

Throughout history, many rulers have harnessed hostility—whether external or domestic—to rally public support. Adolf Hitler’s regime, for example, notoriously cast Jewish people as “enemies within” during the Second World War, using systematic propaganda to justify persecution and genocide (Kershaw, 2000). By directing anger at a scapegoated community, the Nazi state solidified its power. Similarly, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four reveals a dystopian society that depends on a steady stream of propaganda about distant wars and shadowy foes (Orwell, 1949). Initially, these threats help maintain order and galvanise citizens; ultimately, however, the deception and enforced paranoia erode personal freedoms and trust. Illusions that serve as rallying points can quickly morph into tools of manipulation, leaving the populace in a perpetual state of fear.

Modern geopolitics features different but parallel scenarios. Tensions between the United States and China, or the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia, can evoke a zero-sum game in which any gain by one side is perceived as a loss for the other. This mindset fosters arms races and spurs technological breakthroughs. The dynamic echoes Thucydides’ account of Athens and Sparta, two city-states locked in a competition that often felt inevitable (Thucydides, 5th century BC)—a phenomenon now dubbed the “Thucydides Trap” (Allison, 2017). Whether it is Sparta besieging Troy (Homer, circa 8th century BC) or nations amassing nuclear arsenals, the fear of falling behind a rival can become a binding force—yet one that risks perpetual conflict.

Ronald Reagan memorably remarked, “I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world” (Reagan, 1987). In principle, an external danger could unite humanity across cultural and political divides. However, as Orwell’s dystopia warns, manufactured threats can degenerate into oppressive control. A government might conjure fictitious wars to keep people in line or inflate real threats until they become all-consuming. These tactics can be turned inward, too—scapegoating particular groups within a nation instead of forging genuine unity.

Reflecting on artificial intelligence, I notice a parallel tension. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) pit a generator model against a discriminator, accelerating both systems’ development through competition (Goodfellow et al., 2014). This process mirrors the notion that adversarial pressures can spark rapid innovation. Yet if AI agents were unleashed into real-world conflicts—or if leaders wielded them as tools of propaganda—they could likewise foster a new realm of zero-sum hostility.

In the end, conflict can indeed bring people together and spark breakthroughs, yet it can also deceive and destroy if it stems from false narratives or stokes baseless suspicions. From Hitler’s vilification of Jewish citizens to Orwellian war propaganda, history shows how dangerous it is to sustain power by manipulating fear. Nietzsche’s insight—that survival under hardship can foster strength—holds true, but only under genuine challenges. When “the enemy” is an illusion—be it an external threat or an internal scapegoat—the resulting unity risks mutating into something far darker. The responsibility, then, lies in recognising how profoundly conflict shapes us and ensuring that it does not corrupt the very freedoms it initially seems to protect.

References

• Allison, G. (2017). Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Goodfellow, I., Pouget-Abadie, J., Mirza, M., Xu, B., Warde-Farley, D., Ozair, S., Courville, A., & Bengio, Y. (2014). Generative Adversarial Nets. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 27.
• Homer (circa 8th century BC). The Iliad. [Multiple translations available.]
• Kershaw, I. (2000). Hitler: 1936–1945: Nemesis. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Nietzsche, F. (1888). Twilight of the Idols.
• Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Secker & Warburg.
• Reagan, R. (1987). Address to the United Nations General Assembly. United Nations, New York.
• Thucydides (5th century BC). History of the Peloponnesian War. [Multiple translations available.]