As Hezbollah pounds northern Israel with rockets, British-made counter-drone systems are being rushed into testing. One cannot help but feel a certain weariness watching this performance. It is the same old script: a sudden threat, a technological fix, a press release promising salvation. But does anyone really believe that a few clever gadgets will reverse the slow rot of Western strategic thinking?
Let us step back. The current crisis is not merely a tactical skirmish in the endless Levantine war. It is a symptom of something deeper: the decadence of the West, its unwillingness to face hard truths, its fetish for technology as a substitute for political will. Compare this moment to 1940, when Britain stood alone against the Luftwaffe. Then, the response was not merely radar and Spitfires, but a nation’s grim resolve. Today, we have algorithms and drones, but where is the corresponding moral clarity?
Hezbollah’s rocket barrages are a form of asymmetric warfare, a tool of the weak against the strong. The strong, for their part, default to a high-tech shield, hoping to avoid the messy business of ground operations or diplomatic ultimatums. It is a cycle as old as the Parthian shot or the Boer commando. Yet the West keeps acting as if each new salvo is a surprise. This amnesia is itself a mark of intellectual decadence.
Consider the historical parallel: the Late Roman Empire faced barbarian incursions not with a reinvigoration of civic virtue, but with ever more elaborate fortifications and mercenary armies. The walls grew higher, the legions less Roman. Eventually, the walls were breached, not because they were poorly built, but because the will to defend them had evaporated. Today’s Iron Dome and the latest British counter-drone prototypes are our Aurelian Walls: impressive but ultimately hollow if the civilisation behind them has lost its nerve.
There is also the question of national identity. The British defence industry churns out these systems, but what do they defend? A nation that has grown uncertain of its own history, that apologises for its past, that cannot define what it stands for. You cannot protect a vacuum. Hezbollah’s rockets are not just aimed at Israeli towns; they are aimed at the entire post-1945 order, at the very idea that Western values deserve a place in the Middle East. And our response is a press release about a drone-killing laser.
One fears that the engineers testing these systems in the Negev or the Hebrides are merely perfecting the art of losing. The next decade will demand more than technological cleverness. It will demand a willingness to see the world as it is, not as we wish it were. It will demand a revival of the kind of tough-mindedness that built empires and fought world wars. Without that, no counter-drone system will save us.
We are witnessing the death rattle of the Victorian era’s faith in progress. The Victorians believed that railways and telegraphs would bring peace and understanding. They were wrong. We believe that drone defences and artificial intelligence will secure our borders. We will be wrong too. The real battle is not in the air over Tel Aviv; it is in the soul of the West. And on present evidence, we are losing.
