India, April 5 --  War is no longer confined to battlefields. It is waged through supply chains, trade corridors, energy dependencies, and the quiet alignment of nations that claim values they are no longer prepared to defend. Like Achilles, the archetype of the great warrior whose strength defined the battlefield, yet whose vulnerability determined his fate; modern states project power while exposing their weakest points. Today, those vulnerabilities are not found in armour, but in dependence: on adversarial economies, compromised supply chains, and the erosion of moral clarity.

From Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific, the world is dividing along familiar lines. Democracies on one side, authoritarian regimes on the other. Yet in this mome...