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Abstract This study highlights the emerging concept of “military orientalism” as an analytical framework for understanding the impact of Western representations and prejudices toward “Eastern enemies” on the formulation of strategies, military decision-making and identity politics in modern and contemporary conflicts. It argues that these perceptions – saturated with epistemological and ontological assumptions rooted in orientalism as a dominant discourse – distort the comprehension of military realities and the overall strategic environment, especially when Eastern adversaries are perceived as “inferior”, “irrational” and “uncivilised”. The study contends that such ethnocentric tendencies in Western military and security thinking hinder accurate assessments of strategic contexts when deciding on war or peace, as well as of battlefield realities when making crucial operational choices. They also shape Western self-perceptions when the “self-evident decisive victories” they envisioned fail to materialise. Moreover, the study underscores the centrality of these representations in constructing glorified notions of military traditions and doctrines. This is evident in the insistence of Western military historians and strategists on affirming the “absolute and eternal” superiority of what is termed the “Western way of war” over its Eastern counterpart, relying on stereotypical orientalist dichotomies while overlooking clear counter-evidence from global military history. By contributing to the conceptual grounding of military orientalism, the study seeks to demonstrate that war against the East is, on the one hand, a material confrontation of manpower and weaponry, and, on the other, a symbolic battlefield where orientalist representations are tested, and where notions of identity, superiority and legitimacy are subjected to contestation and negotiation. Keywords: military orientalism, military history, strategy, representations, othering, war studies.
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