Al-Maidan Editorial:  

War and the Calculus of Profit and Loss (2–2) 

Al-Maidan 4450, Sunday, April 12, 2026

In the first part of the editorial, we traced the transformation of war from a logic of decisive victory to one of protracted attrition. Today, a more urgent question imposes itself: how are these shifts refracted across regional conflicts - foremost among them the war in Sudan? And does the present condition of international fatigue open a genuine horizon for peace, or merely reproduce the cycle of war in new and altered forms? 

In light of this bitter and complex reality, the war in Sudan acquires a dimension that transcends its national boundaries. It intersects with an international climate marked by growing fatigue that rejects wars and shows an increasing - though hesitant - inclination toward seeking political settlements. 

On one level, the escalating costs of conflict generate international pressures that push toward ceasefires, even if temporary and fragile. On another, the persistence of indecision at the global level risks perpetuating the war in new guises—unless it is confronted and defeated from within through conscious political action and organized mass struggle capable of reshaping the balance of forces on the ground. 

Herein lies the crux of the matter: peace in Sudan will not be delivered from without; it must be forged from within, through the struggle of the country’s active social forces. 

Historical experience affirms that durable peace is not granted - it is won. The balance of power does not shift spontaneously, but through sustained, organized grassroots pressure that asserts the popular will for peace and democracy, while dismantling the social and political structures that sustain war. 

Yet such a transformation cannot materialize without broad mobilization anchored in a deepened awareness of the historical moment and its contradictions. The Sudanese crisis is not an isolated phenomenon; it is embedded in a wider nexus of interlocking national, regional, and international crises - whether expressed through the “Quad” or the “Quintet.” These formations are themselves rooted in an intensifying imperial order and a crisis-ridden global economy that perpetuates dependency and structural inequality. To untangle this web - and to grasp its material and political dynamics - is a prerequisite for any vision that aspires to transcend piecemeal solutions. 

From this perspective, the necessity of a critical understanding becomes evident - one that situates war not merely as a contest for power, but as an instrument of domination and a mechanism for the redistribution of influence, intimately bound to the economic crises that both generate and exploit it. 

War, in this sense, has evolved beyond traditional power struggles; it has become embedded in the very logic of crisis management within the global capitalist system. It is reproduced as a means of imposing new realities, extracting resources, and restructuring markets. Absent such an analysis, calls for peace risk degenerating into hollow abstractions, severed from the structural roots of the crisis they seek to resolve. 

Within this framework, the expansion of the global anti-war movement assumes strategic importance. It can help expose the political economy of war, isolate its social base, and forge a broad front capable of redefining the contours of political possibility in favor of a just peace—linking local struggles to a wider internationalist horizon. 

The trajectory of conflict in Sudan will not be decisively resolved through military means - except at the cost of what remains of state and society. Any putative military victory would, in effect, constitute a deeper national defeat. 

Only a political path - grounded in ending the war, dismantling despotism, and rebuilding the state on civil-democratic foundations - can open the way to a just peace and balanced development. 

Thus, in a world slowly and painfully learning the limits of war, the task before Sudan’s active forces grows ever more urgent: to transform this moment of exhaustion into one of revolutionary agency, and to convert the widespread rejection of war into an organized, grassroots power capable of imposing peace as a historical imperative - thereby opening new horizons for freedom, justice, and democratic transformation in Sudan.

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Al-Midan is the daily newspaper of the Sudanese Communist Party.