The Ukraine war is not a video game

In a typically baffling column in the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman has said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might represent ‘our first truly world war’ because, among other reasons, ‘virtually everyone on the planet can… observe the fighting at a granular level.’

This is primarily absurd because it implies that being able to observe the conflict from anywhere around the world is more significant than the fact that many millions died there, as women and children once did from Tokyo to Tobruk. But another question is whether we are observing the conflict on a ‘granular’ level at all.

It is certainly the case the war has produced more media in a little over a month than most conflicts have in years, all of which we have been able to follow on social media. We have seen the aftermath of bombings. We have seen columns of refugees. We have seen bodies lying in the streets.