They strike the bridges, the steel, the medicine. They believe they are cutting the sinews of the serpent. They do not see they are forging it anew in a hotter fire.

A bridge is a thing that connects and divides. To destroy it is to create two banks that now yearn for a crossing. The steel plant is fire given form; to attack it is to feed the very principle you fear. And the medicine? To make war on the antidote is to confess the nature of the poison. They attack the products and believe they halt the process. This is the sleep of generals.

The hidden harmony: the strike and the response are not two events, but one. The tension of the bowstring, drawn back, is the same force that will launch the arrow. They measure success in rubble and severed supply lines. I measure it in the increased heat of the exchange. Gold for goods, goods for gold. Strike for facility, facility for strike. The medium is fire, and the account balances.

They seek to make the river of their enemy’s capacity stand still. But a river that does not flow is a lake, and a lake becomes a swamp, and a swamp breeds a different kind of life entirely - thick, hidden, pervasive. You cannot step into the same conflict twice. With each strike, the war is a new war, fed by the ashes of the last.

The road of escalation and the road of deterrence are the same road. They walk it, believing they are going up. Their enemy, from the other side, walks it believing the same. They will meet at the summit, which is also the precipice. This is the logos they share while asleep. The waking would be terrible: to see that the fire they trade is the same fire, and it consumes both hearth and forge.