Resumen de La guerra contemporanea fra realtà e metafora: Riflessioni a partire da Gastone Breccia, Missione fallita. La sconfitta dell’Occidente in Afghanistan

Paolo Biondi

• In the last two years, one of the few events that seemed to be able to distract Italian media’s constant attention from the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic evolution has been the end of Western countries’ military involvement in Afghanistan 20 years after its beginning. Taking a cue from the analysis of the Afghanistan War proposed by the military historian Gastone Breccia in his most recent book, the following article tries to reflect on the idea that the conflict and its management had brought to the fore a renovated meaning that the concept of “war” is assuming in Western contemporary culture. The article also tries to highlight that more work is needed to understand the highly deplored, but at the same time highly appealing, use of the so called “war metaphor” with reference to the Covid-19 pandemic.