Viewed as the sociogenetic product of the violent instinct and historical racialization, whiteness shares the psychoanalytic impetus that also subtends the cycle by which modern war originates and repeats, seemingly perpetually and indomitably. Relating whiteness to war in this way urges a reconceptualization that generates a series of novel insights that cohere as a tripartite theory which spans the dimensions of what whiteness is, why, and how. Ultimately, this leads to a refined understanding that apprehends the distinction between whiteness and war to represent a difference of degree, not kind, and consequently suggests a possibility of liberation from white hegemony through collectively reorienting to whiteness as a melancholic object.