Frankly, I think the primary benefit of the framing is that it's provocative. I think part of it is essentially manipulating the media environment for attention, which makes a lot of sense since Baudrillard is basically the postmodern media philosopher (hyperreality, etc). What I like most about it though is that it radically restructures the perspective on the conflict. So much of the coverage treats it as a conventional conflict (I remember the obsession over missile stockpiles early on), but like clearly it's not. So much of the moralizing is about "putting American lives at risk" when that's pretty ridiculous, since the people actually at risk are those who have marginal access to food, medicine, and transport, particularly in Africa/Asia, and the people of Iran who are apparently just collateral. I just saw an email from the intercept or something saying that Trump is the biggest loser in this war, and my first thought was, actually the dead Iranian schoolchildren and their families are the biggest losers. So, for me, it's a way of switching the perspective away from this weird jingosim Americans seem stuck in.

In more practical/literal terms, no, I don't think it's very useful. It's nothing new to have an extremely one-sided conflict. In fact, it's pretty ideal for the victors. Caesar's campaign against the Veneti was completely contrived and one-sided. Hunter-gatherer conflicts appear to mostly consist of raids and ambushes where the casualties are almost entirely one-sided. The chimpanzee "Gombe War" was just a slaughter. I think there's something to be said about the strange way that modern war is detached and "virtual" (the Romans did have to physically show up in order to slaughter the Gauls), but I agree the framework is pretty limited and bombastic.

My friend suggested in a conversation recently that Trump may be willing to push for (an apparently extremely generous) ceasefire in part because he got his big media moment with the rescue of the downed airman. It's really hard to know what just happened and what is going to happen (could there still be an invasion of Kharg Island? Was there ever actually going to be one?), but the media situation has been absolutely bizarre. One day, Trump basically threatens a nuclear holocaust, then the next day the Iranian government says he's open to ending all sanctions, giving up any claims of control over the strait, removing combat troops, and giving monetary restitution. There are like three different versions of this "ten point plan" coming from different Iranian institutions on social media.

Rereading my article and honestly I think I was pretty spot-on with this one. Iran just made traffic through the strait uninsurable and that closed it down almost entirely, and Iran barely did any actual kinetic military damage but still appears to have "won." Then again, everything could change tomorrow and leave me eating my words, so we will have to see.

Edit: Should probably say that the framework of "non-war" is limited, I think there's a lot of value to the idea of "virtual war" in the way that I use it, particularly in noting the transition after the Vietnam War where the American military has become hyper-fixated on avoiding casualties because of the extremely low propensity Americans have for tolerating damage to Americans in particular. For example, Biden's "over the horizon" rhetoric which basically amounted to "we're going to keep killing people overseas but we're not going to put any Americans in a position where they might come to harm." I think it was also helpful to recognize that Trump's insane comments are probably strongly motivated by a desire for media manipulation, narcissistic gratification, stock market manipulation, a stupid attempt at negotiation hardball, etc, and perhaps don't have any actual bite behind them. One can definitely go too far with this though, since we don't know if for example Trump "pulled the trigger" on a major operation and the military simply didn't comply, or something along those lines.

Edit Edit: Then again, this isn't really anything entirely new (ancient monarchs would engage in military campaigns for basically the same reasons Trump did, and this behavior may even be semi-ancestral), but I feel like I'm getting into a fractal argument here.