One year ago, a massive explosion rocked the port of Beirut, Lebanon. It killed over 200, injured about 7,500, and caused $15 billion in property damage. Negligence and the improper storage of ammonium nitrate were blamed for the explosion.

To the casual observer, the calamity at the port is an egregious case of mismanagement, a lack of enforcement, and prolific corruption.

In reality, the port blast was a symptom of a deeper and more serious malady: the prominence of identity politics in Lebanese society. Lebanese society is built upon identity politics, reflected in a government and constitution with explicit diversity mandates. The obsession with identity politics has crippled Lebanon since its inception, with the explosion that destroyed the port just the latest in a long list of tragedies its citizens have experienced.

Lebanon’s dysfunction should serve as a cautionarytale for the United States. American politics are increasingly defined by identity and the quest for diversity. For example, in December 2020 none other than President-elect Joe Biden promised that he would deliver “the single most diverse Cabinet based on race, color, based on gender, that’s ever existed in the United States of America.”

The obsession with identity is found at all levels of government. One notable instance is the controversy surrounding the vacancy of Kamala Harris’s Senate seat in California. Representative Karen Bass stated: “Certainly, there will be a void if she [Kamala Harris] is not replaced with an African-American woman.” The Latino Community Foundation took the same tact: “Our [Latino] voice remains missing from the highest levels of our government… It is up to states like California to do their part to ensure that we are building more diverse and inclusive institutions reflective of our society.”

The statements of President Biden, Rep. Bass, and the Latino Community Foundation represent a growing belief that politicians and the U.S. government must be a mirror image of American society. It presumes that a government which “accurately reflects” the various racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identities of its constituents will govern more effectively and produce greater stability. According to President Biden, “Building a diverse team will lead to better outcomes and more effective solutions to address the urgent crises facing our nation.”

Lebanon shows us that a fixation on identity politics and diversity leads to dysfunction and policy paralysis. On paper, Lebanon should be a success. It has an educated population, and a venerable history as a center for trade, banking, and financial services.

In reality, Lebanon is a dystopian state and society. It is enduring one of the worst economic crises in the world since 1850. The Lebanese lira lost 90 percent of its value since September 2019. Lebanon’s debt-to-GDP ratio was 152 percent in 2019, the third highest ratio in the world. Electricity, medicine, and gasoline are in short supply.

And that is just the last two years.

Lebanon experienced two civil wars. Two foreign armies occupied Lebanese territory. A non-Lebanese organization—the PLO—waged a campaign of “resistance” from Lebanon for 24 years. Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party and militia, started a 33-day war with Israel and entered the war in Syria in violation of government policy. A state budget did not pass for 12 years.

The practice of identity politics and the promotion of diversity has produced endemic disorder and division. The identity and diversity dynamics of Lebanon breed a culture where politics is about the maintenance of power, not policy. They breed a culture where each religious community believes its interests supersede the interests of the nation; where identity and nepotism supersede merit and competence.

How could a noble idea—creating an environment that celebrates identity and diversity in its politics and government—produce so much calamity?

The mixing of identity and politics tears at the fabric of a society. It weakens national identity, putting respective communal identities in competition with each other, state institutions, and the nation. Ultimately, all communities must be appeased by being given a “piece of the pie” or “a seat at the table” for the government to be considered “legitimate.”

The problems with such a system are seen in the organization of Lebanon’s government. Lebanon officially recognizes a total of 18 Christian and Muslim communities. Each community is represented in the parliament. The allocation of parliamentary seats is dictated by the population of each community. Furthermore, the parliament is divided 50/50 between Christians and Muslims. Specific government positions are also reserved for the members of certain communities. For example, the presidency is reserved for the Maronite Catholic community.

Some will argue that Lebanon cannot be compared to the United States. Lebanon emphasizes a religious identity while the U.S. is secular and maintains a separation of church and state. Lebanon is a parliamentary system while the U.S. maintains a presidential system.

The reality is that the United States has more in common with Lebanon than people realize. Religious identity in Lebanon is not an indication of religiosity. In fact, Lebanon is not a particularly religious country. In the Lebanese context, religion functions more as a cultural and socio-economic marker, akin to race and ethnicity in the United States.

A striking parallel between Lebanon and the United States is the emphasis on themes of historical oppression and victimization. The institutionalization of religious identities in Lebanon is a reminder of past persecutions and supposed to be a protection against future ones. An argument frequently made in Lebanese politics is that if the confessional system were dismantled, Lebanon’s religious communities will be oppressed by the Sunni Muslim majority as occurs elsewhere in the Middle East.

Themes of oppression and victimization are fundamental to identity politics in the U.S. The racial, ethnic, and gender identities being promoted are reminders of historical oppression and supposed to prevent its perpetuation. San Francisco Mayor London Breed made this clear, regarding the failure to appoint a female African American to the vacant Harris senate seat. “When you think about the history of this country and the challenges that exist for African Americans, especially African American women in the Senate, definitely this is a real blow to the African American community, to African American women, to women in general,” she said.

Identity and diversity politics are employed regardless of the political system to leverage outcomes. Senator Tammy Duckworth’s statement regarding the Biden cabinet is one example: “I am a ‘no’ vote, on the floor, on all non-diversity nominees… I will vote for racial minorities and LGBTQ but anybody else, I’m not voting for.” Senator Mazie Hirono said: “This is not about pitting one diversity group against another. So I’m happy to vote for a Hispanic, a Black person, an LGBTQ person, an AAPI person. I’d just like to see more diversity representation.”

The Duckworth-Hirono tactic succeeded. Biden’s promise to create the most diverse cabinet was not diverse enough. Biden’s press secretary admitted concessions: “The President has made it clear that his Administration will reflect the diversity of the country. That has always been, and remains our goal. The White House will add a senior level Asian American Pacific Islander liaison, who will ensure the community’s voice is further represented and heard.”

What will their demands be for the next cabinet? Will Hirono expect the representation of a specific AAPI community? Will their “reasonable request” come at the price of another community? Or competence?

American politics is slowly emulating Lebanese politics. As the polarization of our politics continues, a focus on identity and diversity will deepen government paralysis and exacerbate divisions, not ameliorate them. As the U.S. proceeds further down the mineshaft of identity politics and diversity in government, hopefully they will recognize Lebanon as the canary in the coal mine before it is too late.

theamericanconservative.com

How many of us can remember the names of the Presidents of Italy or Germany? This is because in these republics, it is the prime minister who wields the real power, with the President largely playing a symbolic role as a grey-haired sage who views the proceedings at a great distance.

This is how many Lebanese would like to think of their own aging President Michel Aoun, who in his mid-eighties (it’s unclear exactly how old he is) is holding Lebanon to ransom over a new cabinet of ministers. Aoun, a Hezbollah servant who once fled Lebanon at the end of the civil war when Syrian troops approached Beirut, has taken the terms of his office too literally in believing that the President has the overall say who makes up the cabinet.

It is for this reason why we will see Lebanon fall into an abyss of rampant crime and poverty not seen since the civil war, following the recent resignation of Saad Hariri, who stepped in as Prime Minister nine months ago, following the Beirut bomb and the appointment of a stooge Sunni PM whose name has been changed to sound like “diabolical” by most Lebanese, such was the magnitude of his uselessness.

But even in Lebanon, being useless can be quite useful.

Hariri, hardly a dynamic player himselft, was Saudi Arabia’s last hope in playing a role in somehow compromising some of Iran’s power it wields through keeping Aoun and his son-in-law, Bassil, a hapless buffoon who never had a real job until he was given the post of foreign minister on a plate without even holding a parliamentary seat, in office. Their plan is probably to present Bassil as a presidential candidate in next year’s elections which will be a major juncture for Lebanon and the country’s future. Some even go as far as to argue that the present set up of a Christian Maronite President, a Sunni PM and a Shia parliamentary speaker could even be scrapped.

For Aoun to refuse to accept that it is for Hariri as PM to choose the lion’s share of cabinet ministers was a move, which might prove to have cataclysmic consequences. For Hariri to not accept the stand-off and resign was predictable, given that he will no doubt be having his own ideas about how to derail even the process of being replaced. It is the oldest after dinner joke in Beirut shared by almost everyone that Hariri believes he is indispensable. A lot of that collateral stemmed from the special relationship his father had with the older generation of Saudi royals who treated the Lebanese firebrand leader as one of their own.

But with now King Salman’s health a question in Saudi Arabia, with many speculating that he may well step down to give the throne to Mohamed bin Salman (MbS), how long can this old record keep getting played?

Lebanon needs fresh flows of outside money to pull itself out of the cesspit which the country has become through decades of being looted by the same cronies who are in office today. The only way that money can come in is with cast iron guarantees signed by a credible new government which is not being hijacked by Iran, so as to let Hezbollah keep hundreds of thousands of sophisticated rockets buried in secret bunkers all over the country, facing Israel, naturally. This old set up of “corruption sharing” which now even the most naive Lebanese citizen knows was all about a farce of scaring people into supporting their militia leaders to apparently keep the peace has also had its day.

Hariri’s resignation should neither shock us or worry us. It is simply another move in the same game which has been played out since the early 90s. Sabotage. The difference today is that Lebanon is reported to be literally a matter of days away from hospital generators being shut down as the government neither has the will, nor the ability, to pay for fuel via the central bank – whose chief is so mired in corruption and embezzlement scandals that no one on the country can tell you if the central bank has anything left of the 40bn dollars it was once believed to have before the entire crisis imploded in 2019. Today, Lebanon’s currency in practical terms is worth not even ten percent of its original value as the country is gripped by new fuel shortages and the relentless hyperinflation on essentials, foods and drugs.

Soon, when the old and weak are dying in hospitals which don’t even have electric light and crime levels sore, those who are linked to Hariri will note that in fact, in the shorter term, it was Aoun and his son-in-law who came out of this recent spat as victors – given that Hariri’s ace card (he can talk to Hezbollah) was played but came to nothing. Even the Lebanese Shiite militia, which acts often as a state within a state inside Lebanon, didn’t want to face a stand-off with a President who is so old and showing signs of senility, over his role. Here we see for the first time real power of this duo which explains why they behave sometimes like they are untouchable. Is Hezbollah looking to Aoun to ‘hand down’ the presidency to Bassil, who is hardly on good terms with the Lebanese group? If this is the case, then the Saudis have got their work cut out if they are relying on the often repeated Hariri ruse of resigning just to create a political vacuum. Surely the capricious young Saudi Prince, who once had Hariri beaten up during a kidnapping ordeal which made international headlines in 2017, must have reached the end of his patience?

Is there no end to Emmanual Macron’s gaffes in the Muslim world? It almost feels as though they roll in on a weekly basis and have given journalists a new Trump-like subject to busy them, distracted away of course from the more serious subjects of the day.

But attacking Islam is no joke. And one has to wonder whether the sanity of Macron is all there, a point made by the Turkish President recently when he suggested the French President was losing his mind. Macron’s response, if anything, was both a strong indication that there may be a grain of truth in the accusation plus an inglorious display of Macron’s sensational loathing of the free press. He immediately recalled the French ambassador from Ankara. The tantrums also seem to be like a never-ending stream which hardly do anything for Macron’s credibility in the region. Oh là là.

And credibility is key.

Whilst the author Tarek Cherkaoui is bang on to point out how this Islamophobia subterfuge by Macron is doomed from the off – reminding us of what happened with Nicolas Sarkozy back in the day when he tried the same stratagem with disastrous consequences – he misses the point about Macron and the Arabs.

Macron sees himself as some kind of T E Laurence figure, revered by the unruly Arabs who can lead them to build their own destiny and restore their dignity. But Lawrence, lived with these people, learnt their languages and was so adored by them, that they anointed him as one of their own ultimately making him a subject of hate and ridicule by the British themselves.

Macron by contrast is woefully ignorant of the peoples, the history and the region and comes across as a political tourist lost in the smoke and ashes of the Beirut bomb explosion. Who can forget his reaction to a lady heckler who chastised him? He moved quickly to smother her with his Gallic hug, squeezing the air out of her lungs to silent here therein. Genius. Deft. Desperate.

The real problem with Macron and the Arab world is that he hasn’t done his homework and can’t be bothered to learn about Arabia and Islam. And the Arabs feel it and see it. They know when they’re presented with fake goods. This is the heart of the malaise now which he is facing with some countries boycotting French goods. Speaking so unfavourably towards Islam and tarnishing so many with the same spoiled brush without even being able to recite one line of the Koran or knowing anything about the history of the Islamic world, is a gross insult which will be remembered for a long time and surely won’t get him the vote from millions of Muslims in France, but might get him some votes from the hard right. If he really understood Islam, or even the terrorism ideology which attaches itself to it, he might have guessed that his comments about the religion might have sparked an Al Qaeda call for a jihadist attack on France, following both Macron’s comments about Islam and a teacher’s caricature of the prophet.

Of course, shoring up the hard-right vote might have been his intention right from the start. Beleaguered by polls which show that he’s in real trouble in securing a second term, he has opted for the nationalistic vote.

Political shenanigans are really all that Macron is all about. And spin. We don’t expect much, certainly not in the Middle East anyway, from the French leader who proves time and time again he only has the requisite soundbite to contribute to the troubles of the region and not the meat-and-gravy of any solid strategy.

Of course, his recent spat with President Erdogan of Turkey runs deeper each day that passes with Turkish exploration in the Mediterranean remaining unchallenged, pushes deeper the thorn in the side of the French president.

And yet Macron’s failures in the Arab world, including this recent tone-deaf anti-Islam rant, are remarkable in that they are compounded by his failure to seize opportunities. Isn’t that, after all, the feral, singular purpose of all politicians? To grasp opportunities when they are presented. Like a fat trout, facing the current, motionless, who seizes the fly which drifts past his nose? Strike!

Oh Lebanon! What now?

But not Macron. Lebanon could have been an opportunity for him to rise above the stench of rank impotence and achieve something. All the ingredients were there. The world’s media for a few days was camped there and was ready for the Macron walkabout. The Macron sound bites. And the Macron bold statements.

But even the Christians of Lebanon find Macron’s intervention repugnant. The Lebanese are deeply complexed and complicated people who really do borrow money they can’t afford to pay back, to buy modern day trappings to impress their neighbours who they despise. Yes, this is the Lebanese. Frail, sensitive, vulnerable and probably the most self-conscious people of the entire region who think first about their profile and public image before anything else. The Lebanese who go to the tanning spa before they go to the beach clad in make-up; the Lebanese who buy an expensive car to park at the front of the apartment block to impress the neighbours, but can’t afford to drive it so ride to work on a moped each day; the Lebanese who are so insecure, that they cannot cope with any kind of professional criticism without practically having an ugly breakdown of some sort while attacking those who offer the advice. The Lebanese who have invented a non-confrontational society where friends and colleagues enter a sort of ‘Truman show’ zone each day of faking everything in front of one’s contemporaries; the same Lebanese who have surely the largest inferiority complex in the entire Arab world in the proximity of westerners who they are attracted to, like a moth to a flame, but also hate so virulently.

How did Macron imagine he could just rock up and tell Aoun, Hariri, Berri et al to stop stealing the money and get better at hiding corruption?

The problem Macron has is not only with the corrupt elite, but those who support them. Many Lebanese just reject Macron’s offer of helping, simply because of these complexes which are just one of the many insecurity pangs which make them so unique. An anti-colonialist mentality has been wheeled out (yawn), perhaps even encouraged by political leaders who can’t see the brown envelope of cash for them in the Macron offer, so reject it, naturally. The word ‘connerie’ (which translates to English, literally, as arsehole-ery) has been modified to Macronerie by these same feeble people who presumably would stand tall and defiant and chant their colonial clap trap when all of their children have died before them, when the hospitals close and antibiotics are so expensive that are only for the elite to purchase. Are these the same people who supported the protest movement (in the early days when it was more of a street party) and demanded change, but weren’t really able to articulate what type of change they wanted?

Macron is a buffoon, yes, but this racist, desperate rejection by many Lebanese, trumps him on gargantuan stupidity. The inferiority/superiority complex (as both are one of the same thing) is partly what has created the crisis in Lebanon in the first place. The unique frail condition of the Lebanese made it possible for the elite to run the country into the ground and then organise at the eleventh hour to ship wholesale their stained wealth out of the country – and get even richer into the bargain. It’s this same complex which supported the militia-political system whereby people were comforted by their respective leaders helping themselves to the billions of dollars (which could have been spent on building the country), while they drew solace from the system which supposedly “protected” them from their neighbours.

And it’s that same complex which fuelled the protest movement whose followers were convinced that the West – or even the Gulf Arab countries – wouldn’t let Lebanon fall into the abyss.

The Lebanese know now that the world won’t bail them out and that the biggest lie of the last twenty years has been the ‘protection racket’ narrative from militia leaders but it is the same complex which is now preventing them from forgetting their sectarian lineage and forming a cross-party opposition party with a shadow cabinet of ministers and a leader to represent their interests in Washington, Brussels, Strasbourg, Berlin and Paris. The chilling photograph of Hariri, Berri and Aoun must have made many want to weep when it was circulated in mid-October immediately after Hariri was sworn in as PM. It used to be said, ‘pity the Lebanese, as all they have is money’. But this has been replaced, it seems, by ‘all they have are these three stooges’.

Macron’s anti-Muslim rant was ill-timed and stupid. But if it can humour the complexed Lebanese to put aside their moronic ‘colonial’ chanting, it might have achieved something in the Arab world. His intervention in Lebanon, if it comes with genuine reform of the political system, might be the only strand of hope the Lebanese can cling to as, surely, the answer to the country’s problems are not to be found with these three men who practically wrote the manual on How To Make Money Out of A Failed State.

While I have no great novel contribution to offer in that growing array of hypotheses (which are slowly turning into noise), I would like to share an insight which addresses a too-often-overlooked aspect of the role of Lebanon in the Great Game. Before proceeding, it is useful to hold in the mind several points of certainty:

1) The official narrative of a chance mishap of Turkish fireworks instigating the detonation of the 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate which had been sitting at the Port of Beirut for six years is entirely unbelievable.

2) This event should not considered in any way separated from the anomalously large pattern of explosions and arson which have spread across the Arab and African worlds in recent weeks.

3) This pattern of chaos must itself be seen in the context of the clash between two systems: The collapsing NATO unipolar alliance on the one side and the New Silk Road-led multipolar alliance on the other.

The Matter of Causality

The Middle East has been labelled the “geopolitical pivot” of the world island by devout adherents to the Hobbesian worldview of Halford Mackinder such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger and Bernard Lewis. Today it is understood that whomever can either stabilize or destabilize this region can control the levers for the “world island” (Africa, Europe, and Eurasia)… and as Mackinder once said “who controls the world island, controls the world.”

In the case of Lebanon, the role that this region plays as “Pearl on the New Silk Road”, and intersection of all major civilizations of the globe, has shaped global policy considerations in Washington, London and Israel for the past several years. The destructive events underway Lebanon cannot be separated from the breathtaking spread of Belt and Road projects across Iraq, Iran, Syria and other Arab nations.

More than Coincidence

In the weeks surrounding the Lebanon disaster, Iran found herself the target of a vicious sequence of attacks as arson and explosions were unleashed beginning with the June 26 explosion at the Khojir Missile production complex, the June 30 explosion at a medical clinic killing 19, a July 2 explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility which set Iran’s centrifuge production schedule back by months and the July 15 fires at the Bushehr Aluminum plant. Additionally, and the UAE experienced its own anomalous fires which ravaged one of the most important markets in Dubai (luckily empty due to Covid-19) on August 5.

If any of these anomalies were taken individually, “chance” could always be blamed as culprit. However when one takes them all together and recognizes the revolutionary BRI-connected agreements currently being finalized between both China and Russia with Iran does one get a solid idea of the deeper causality underlying these apparently separate situations of chaos.

Iran and the New Silk Road

The fact is that the long awaited $400 billion China-Iran economic and security pact which is in its final stages of negotiation includes not only important oil for infrastructure agreements which will extend advanced rail and new energy grids to Iran. This program also includes an important military/security partnership which will dramatically transform the “rules of the game” in the middle east for generations. Elements of this pact include not only defense and intelligence sharing infrastructure, but also also bolster China’s new digital currency the e-RMB which will circumvent western controls on trade.

Meanwhile Russia’s announced extension of the 20 year security/economic partnership agreement first signed in 2001 by Presidents Rouhani and Putin will certainly be finalized in the coming months. Iran has also made it’s interests in acquiring Russia’s S400 system well known and all geopoliticians understand well that this system which is spreading fast across all of Eurasia from Turkey to South Korea renders America’s F-35s and THAAD missile systems impotent and obsolete.

If the China-Russia-Iran triangle can be firmly established, then not only does America’s sanctions regime policy disintegrate, but a vital platform of Middle Eastern development will be established to better spearhead the growth of transport and advanced development corridors from China to the east (and Africa) along the New Silk Road. Since November 2018 an Iran-Iraq-Syria railway has taken great strides towards implementation as part of middle east reconstruction funded by Iran and ultimately connecting to Syria’s Lattakia Port as a hub to the Mediterranean and a 32km Shalamcheh-Bashra railway is in an advanced phase of development with Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Ahmad stating:

“Iran’s railway system is linked to railways of central Asia, China and Russia and if the 32 km Shalamcheh-Basra railway will be constructed, Iraq can transfer goods and passengers to Russia and China and vice versa.”

While the 32 km rail line would be phase one, the 2^nd phase is scheduled to be a 1545 km rail and highway to the Syrian Port.

The Iran-Iraq-Syria regional participation in the broader New Silk Road is incredibly important, especially since Iraq signed a September 2019 Memorandum of Understanding to join the BRI under a new infrastructure-for-oil program. This plan involves China’s reconstruction of the war-torn region under a multiphase program of hard infrastructure (rail, roads, energy and water projects), and soft infrastructure (hospitals, schools and cultural centers).

Similarly, China has made it intention to bring real reconstruction programs to Syria are also well known and President Bashar Al Assad’s long overdue Four Seas Strategy first announced in 2004 (and sabotaged with the Arab Spring) is finally coming back on line. President Assad had won 7 countries over to sign onto it’s construction by 2010 and entailed connecting all four major water systems (Mediterranean, Caspian, Black Sea, and Persian Gulf) together via rail and infrastructure corridors as a driver for win-win cooperation and regional modernization. Assad had said of the project in 2009 “once we link these four seas, we become the unavoidable intersection of the whole world in investment, transport and more.”

A fuller video of this important project can be viewed here:

Lebanon: Pearl of the New Silk Road

Lebanon’s participation in this long-awaited process should be obvious to all, sharing as it does a major border with Syria, hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees and also a vital port to the Mediterranean making it a keystone of east-west development. Connecting this emerging zone of development to Africa where the Belt and Road has emerged as a leading force of change and hope in recent years, Lebanon finds itself among the most strategic keystones.

Designs for rail connecting Lebanon’s Port of Tripoli through Jordan and thence through Egypt would be create a new positive field of prosperity which could dramatically change the rules of the Middle East and Africa forever.

On June 17, 2020 the Chinese Embassy publicized an offer to extend BRI projects to Lebanon featuring a modern railway connecting coastal cities in the north with Tripoli through Beirut to Naquora in the south. China’s National Machinery IMP/EXP Corporation also offered the construction of three new power plants of 700 MW each, a new national energy grid and port modernization. The Embassy’s press release stated: “The Chinese side is ready to carry out practical cooperation actively with the Lebanese side on the basis of equality and mutual benefit in the framework of joint work to build the Belt and Road… China is committed to cooperation with other nations mainly through the role of its companies, the leading role of the market, and the catalytic role of government and commercial operation. Chinees companies continue to follow with interest the opportunities of cooperation in infrastructure and other fields in Lebanon.”

These offers were applauded by Hassan Nasrallah (leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and partner in the coalition government) who had been an outspoken advocate of Lebanon’s participation in the BRI for years. Nasrallah has also advocated liberating Lebanon from the IMF whose structural adjustments and conditionality-laden investments have resulted in the small country’s debt exploding to over 170% of its GDP with nothing to show for it.

It is noteworthy that the same day China made its offers known publicly, Washington imposed the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act to punish all who wish to trade with Syria which itself has not only further crushed Syria’s cries for economic reconstruction, but had taken direct aim at Lebanon which sees 90% of Syrian goods flow through its borders to the Mediterranean.

When Chinese delegations first made their vision for the BRI’s extension to Lebanon known in March 2019 where the Arab Highway from Beirut to Damascus and rail to China was floated, western stooge Saad Al Hariri said no, preferring instead to sign onto a $10 billion IMF plan. Over a year later, not one iota of infrastructure was built. Secretary of State Pompeo played a major role at keeping Lebanon from “going east” as Nasrallah and even President Aoun had desired when he stated in a March 2019 press conference “Lebanon and the Lebanese people face a choice: bravely move forward as an independent and proud nation or allow the dark ambitions of Iran and Hezbollah to dictate your future.”

Pompeo’s obsessive drive to eliminate Hezbollah and especially the influence of Nasrallah in Lebanon has less to do with any perceived threat Israel claims to its existence and everything with Hezbollah and Iran’s embrace of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

When Chinese offers were renewed in June 2020, Pompeo’s stooge David Schenker (Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs) gave a June 23 interview stating that Hezbollah “is not an organization that seeks reform, but rather one that lives on corruption”. Schenker warned Lebanon from falling into the “China Trap” and said that Nasrallah’s demands that Lebanon “look east” was “shocking”.

Without going into a lengthy refutation of the “China debt trap” argument (which is really just the effect of western imperialists projecting their own dirty practices onto China’s BRI), it is sufficient to say that it is a 100% myth. A summary overview of Chinese investments in Africa which are numerically similar to American investments demonstrates that the difference is found entirely in QUALITY as China uniquely invests in real construction, manufacturing and even African banking which are verboten by all imperialists who only wish to use Africa as a looting ground for cheap resources and cheaper labor.

Speaking to this issue, and the hope for Lebanon more broadly the BRIX Sweden’s Hussein Askary stated:

“It is becoming obvious that a tiny country like Lebanon, but fully sovereign and independent can break the back of a global empire by opting to follow the path of progress, national sovereignty and international cooperation according to the win-win model offered by China. This does not mean cutting all bridges to the west. It is necessary to keep those that are in the true interest of Lebanon and its people. If the U.S. and Europe wish to change their policies and join China in offering Lebanon power, transport, water and agro-industrial investments, the Lebanese people and leadership would take them with open arms”.

The author gave a recent interview on this topic and can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

The dust has settled in Lebanon now, after what might be described as its largest explosion to date in the troubled country. But while hordes of so-called analysts pour over the scarce details of what we know as fact, many will speculate about whether the explosion was indeed an accident – and, of course, whether Israel had a hand in it.

But no matter. What everyone really should be focussing on at this juncture, following the visit of France’s Emmanuel Macron who promised, in words at least, to try and muster a new political model for Lebanon, is how the bomb itself has at least focused the minds of world leaders.

If a bomb like that can go off in Lebanon as an accident, then this poorly governed country could pull regional powers easily into a war in Lebanon. Just how badly run is Lebanon?

The answer is that it is not really run at all. The so-called peace brokers of 1990 and the Taif Agreement which ushered in peace, were not state builders but more state looters. Those same craven warlords who control Lebanon today through their armed militias, are not interested in building a state but more intent on making Lebanon as poor and as backward as possible. And President Michel Aoun, whose 4 years in office has been mired in monumental failure on all levels, is part of that generation and mindset of warlords.

The bomb which took 150 lives and wounded over 4000 was a product of 30-years corruption and embezzlement, which gathered momentum in recent years, whereby the offshoot of such outstanding malpractice is inevitable incompetence and wholesale ineptitude. Lebanon is literally a floating time bomb with no one at the helm. The business model of all the various leaders taking their cut out of the kitty doesn’t allow for a strong leader who wants to bring about development and if we are to accept that the explosion was an accident, then we all have to acknowledge that it is far too dangerous to continue with the present gangsters who run Lebanon being in control.

Macron is all about gestures. His move to quickly quieten a lady berating him in the crowd – to smother her with a hug – was pure genius and straight out of the Tony Blair book on “how to turn the cameras on you as the star when getting heckled on the street”. Brilliant. But we should hope that France, a former colonial power, will try and use it weight within the EU to bring about a political change in Lebanon as the Lebanese are now on their knees and anger is directed at the government and its president – who, in case there was any doubt about him being tone deaf and only obsessed with his political profile, obliged us all with threats of legal suits against a TV network which blamed him for the explosion within hours, followed by his orders for police to fire teargas at protestors. Incredible.

Aoun has to go. His own ineptitude and lack of dynamism has led to rather than the gangsters in charge pulling back from taking less out of the pot for themselves, actually taking more. Aoun is such the personification of the out-of-touch dictator that he actually floated the idea once of his hapless son in law “inheriting” the presidency once he stood down. Aoun oversaw the looting and bankrupting of Lebanon.

And now there’s nothing left now to loot as the Ponzi scheme in the central bank which made the elite even richer has collapsed, the currency is in freefall and most Lebanese are now going hungry. President Aoun allowed all of these problems, along with a garbage crisis and an environmental Armageddon to take over the country, all to happen on his watch. To not be with Macron when the French president did a walk about of a trendy suburb immediately next to the port spoke volumes. For sure, Macron didn’t want him in the picture and associates him with the old guard who have destroyed the country and looted all of its assets. Aoun is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And so, if Macron’s hint of helping in political reform is serious, he should start by convincing Mr Aoun to stand down. Then, he should essentially go to regional leaders and ask them to breathe new life in the Taif Agreement 2.0 – a more relevant, modern version of governance for Lebanon to try and root out corruption so as to attract foreign investment and let the country flourish. Historically, we have seen European powers take this initiative in their own back yard for the sake of regional security. In 1830 Queen Victoria invited Russia, Prussia and France to a London conference to create the state of Belgium so as to stop it standing idol and inviting foreign powers to use it as a launch platform to attack Britain from its coast. What Lebanon needs is the same initiative. A ‘Lebanon conference’ which forces this tiny country to reform and paves the way for a new generation of non-corrupt MPs whose first priority in taking office, is deciding on how to spend the 150,000 USD cadeaux which is given to them as a welcoming present; (the money is officially intended for the MP to spend on his own town’s infrastructure, but in nearly all cases goes on buying a new Mercedes.)

The question really is whether Macron is serious to throw his weight behind such an initiative when he has a record of talking the talk with Libya, Yemen and Syria, but not walking the walk. In less that 24 hours the list of countries who contributed material, planes, medical aid, food and even professional helpers, is really quite impressive. Even Iraq sent a plane with aid. But I hate to think of what happened to the 1 million dollars of cash which was sent by the government of South Korea. How do you send that much money to a country which is literally breaking records of self-destruction due to corruption and embezzlement? If the explosion has taught us anything, it is that corruption – when out of control – is as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than regional powers’ lust to attack one another. Gebran Bassil, the son in law of the president and who many would call the very embodiment of graft in Lebanon told the BBC that it was not important that 2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate was being stored at the port, but how it was ignited. Bassil had to resign his post recently under pressure from protestors who considered him the most corrupt minister in the entire government after too many cases of him having his hand in the till were revealed in Lebanese media – one of which involved him personally handling plastic bags full of almost 2m USD of Iranian money which he is believed to have taken for himself.

Darrow’s story is worth keeping in mind now that a massive ammonium-nitrate blast has leveled much of Beirut. Although terrorism can’t be entirely dismissed, it looks like the cause is something more prosaic, i.e. years of government neglect and decay. Ammonium nitrate is a compound used to make both fertilizers and explosives. Due to its inherent instability, it should have been sold off or moved to a safer location. Instead, local officials looked the other way as more than 2,700 tons of it piled up in a waterfront storage depot for years. It was always somebody else’s responsibility as long as it didn’t go off. But now that it has, it’s the fault of an entire political system based on corruption, religious sectarianism, buck-passing, and the belief that public breakdown doesn’t matter as long as people can continue building up their private empires.

Government, you see, is for poor people who have nothing else to fall back on. But what did the quick and clever care if society sank to greater and greater depths? The more it did, the more they would soar above.

But such attitudes aren’t quite so easy to maintain now that the commercial hub has been reduced to dust and debris, are they?

But it’s not just upper-class Beirutis who turned their backs on society in this way. Since the neoliberal revolution of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Milton Friedman, the trend has been well-nigh universal. Basically, neoliberalism is a form of revved-up capitalism that holds that energy shortages, deindustrialization, burned-out cities, and other woes of the 1970s were the fault of economic regulation and over-generous welfare programs. Crime was rising because bureaucrats and intellectuals were encouraging a culture of resentment among the poor. Unemployment was on the upswing because government giveaways encouraged workers to go on the dole. Industry was collapsing because environmental regulations were squeezing profits to the bone.

The litany goes on and on. The solution, meanwhile, was always the same: privatize, de-regulate, slash corporate taxes, and lower interest rates so that the wealthy could borrow and invest. Government was dismantled as a consequence, the financial markets went into overdrive, and the economic elite embarked on a spending spree greater than that of the Roaring Twenties. The story was much the same in an energy-rich Middle East. After the religious wars of the 1970s and 80s, Beirut emerged as a major financial hub, a place where Persian Gulf sheikhs could recycle oil profits, shop, and shower cash on a favorite belly-dancer at an upscale brothel. It was all so giddy and exciting that it was easy to overlook massive political corruption, the vast slums on the city outskirts, and the fact that basic services such as electricity and garbage collection had simply stopped working.

“Capernaum,” a 2018 Lebanese movie about a boy who sues his impoverished Christian parents for bringing him into such a miserable world, summed up the chaos brilliantly. The casinos were bursting, and stylish boutiques jostled for space. But the underlying social and economic decay was crushing the poor underfoot.

When oil prices crashed in the wake of Covid-19, the entire rickety structure collapsed. Money stopped flowing into Lebanese banks, the national currency plunged eighty percent, joblessness ballooned, and huge protests broke out in the streets. Government descended into paralysis. The Aug. 5 explosion was the coup de grâce, a sign that the damage was irreparable. Beirut was truly and completely broken.

This is where Clarence Darrow comes in. If other countries have been spared the same, it’s only because of luck, fate, or divine mercy. A few nations that have maintained high levels of public services may be better off, although they’re probably more vulnerable than they realize. But the countries that embraced neoliberalism in full are teetering on the edge of disaster.

There’s no better example than the United States. Rather than teetering, in fact, it’s already gone over. After all, the U.S. is a society once so sure of itself that it imposed neoliberal policies on other countries and smashed them to smithereens if they refused. From Central America to the Middle East, the ground is littered with the broken bodies of résistants. But now the U.S. is reeling from an overdose of its own medicine. Its economy is faltering, its international standing is plummeting, and its political system has broken down to the point that the November elections may well end in fighting in the streets. With the daily death toll from Covid-19 now at more than 1,200, it’s the equivalent of a Beirut-sized explosion in a half-dozen cities per day.

For years, critics warned that America’s ultra-fragmented healthcare system was heading for disaster, that health standards were declining out in the hinterlands, and that the underfunding of all-important agencies like the Centers for Disease Control was going too far. But no one listened. And why should they when all the experts agreed that privatization and budget cuts were irreversible?

So nothing was done. With less than five percent of the global population, consequently, the United States now accounts for more than 22 percent of world coronavirus deaths. States like Florida, California, Texas, Georgia, and Arizona have more active cases than Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and the UK combined. America continues to blame other countries for its troubles, but the real problems are at home. If you don’t believe it, just ask Lebanese protesters who have taken to the streets yet again. They’ll give you an earful.

The main stream media is in a hurry to ‘shape’ its story of the explosion in advance of the Special Tribunal verdict on the death of Rafic Hariri (now due on 18 August), and which is expected to indict Hizbullah members. Yet there are still many unanswered questions. It will be a further few days until these forensics become available from the site. They will of course be contested, and may resolve very little.

Against this silence, awaiting word from key players, the western and Israeli media headlines are churning out ‘everything you need to know’, and their ‘wrap-ups’ from Beirut. It is however, far from wrapped-up. More questions arise as the days pass. And the region has a collective memory of such geo-political inflection points.

The ‘popular’ 1953 uprising against PM Mossadegh, which transpired to be an MI6/CIA coup, and which – subsequently – was to usher in the game-changing Iranian Revolution; the 2005 assassination of Rafic Hariri, which led to Syria’s exit from Lebanon – and on flimsy computer patterning of calls (of unknown content) on ‘families’ of cell phones – was institutionalised into shaping the culpability of Hizbullah, and concomitantly, the movement’s widespread terrorist designation. (Hizbullah has, from the outset, disputed the western/international narrative on the Hariri assassination).

Yet the truth is, that what happened to Rafic Hariri remains still obscured in the fog of partisan war (as maybe will be the fate of this week’s Beirut devastation). In Syria, the Chemical Weapons story for Douma became another ‘turning point’, amidst the roar of U.S. Tomahawk missiles (as Assad became a Chemical Weapons pariah). Yet, documents from the OPCW in last days show the chemical weapons claim was a fabrication.

Yes, the region has good cause to pause. On the one hand, we have not had the forensics on the Port explosion, and on the other, we have Trump’s assertion – later reiterated by him – that he was told by his military generals that what happened in Beirut was “an attack” (a bomb). The President did not “speculate” that it was an attack. He said plainly that his generals had told him so.

This statement cannot entirely be air-brushed out of the calculus. And nor can the exact mirroring of the strangely unified ‘shape’ and mushroom effect of the Beirut main explosion with a similar ‘unexplained explosion’ some months ago in Syria – be discounted. And finally, there is the question: Were there three explosions?

So, we await what is likely to be a perfectly binary outcome. Either the devastation resulted from culpable negligence by the port security authorities, or was a bold attempt to audaciously ‘explode’ the current regional dynamics; to re-shape narratives and radically to re-cast geopolitics. Both are possible.

What then? The Israeli narrative is that the destruction in Beirut will cause the Lebanese population to rise up against Hizballah, and will demand that its munitions be removed away from population centres. (Israel of course would welcome the visibility into Hizbullah’s arsenals that this would entail). The scheduling of an emergency UNSC meeting for Monday, and calls to place Lebanon under international supervision, suggest that western states will be seeking to use the crisis further to weaken and constrain Hizbullah.

March 14th will seek to capitalise on what has happened to mobilise the Lebanese against Hizballah, but it is unlikely to get the domestic resonance that others may anticipate. The port of Beirut historically has been a Sunni patrimony. It has no single security structure, and these latter are no friend to Hizbullah. The port is also open to inspection by UNIFIL. If the management of the facility were to be characterised, it would be said to be one of decay and rampant venality. It is possible that this – culpable negligence leading to accident – was responsible fully or partially, for what happened.

If so, it would seem that public anger may focus more on the corrupt Za’im (the ‘capos’ of the system that have been ravaging the economic structure for their own enrichment for decades), than necessarily be directed at Hizbullah. Indeed, the present government may have a tough time to survive – even though it was not in office at the time any negligence may have occurred. That responsibility belongs to the Old Guard.

Were it to transpire that Trump was broadly correct, and that what occurred was an attack of some sort, it would not be hard to answer to the question cui bono? Israeli journalists are already preening themselves over the ‘event’s auspicious timing: That “Lebanon [now] is bound to implode”, and that the explosion’s ‘shockwaves’ will discomfort Hizbullah for a long time to come, but more especially in advance of the Special Tribunal report.

One Israeli journalist added that the explosion “at Lebanon’s main port sends a warning message to Iran, too, who only about a month ago said it would deploy ships and oil tankers to Lebanon. There were even talks of a vessel that would host a power station, which would give Beirut electricity … Israel and the United States in particular, fear these ships, if they do make it to Lebanon, would start a regular supply line not only of oil, flour and medicine, but also of weapons, ammunitions and missile parts”.

Much then, hangs on the forensics: Was this a bold ‘false flag’ initiative to upturn the strategic status quo (of the kind on which Israel once prided itself), hiding beneath, and making use of a publicly known vulnerability at the Beirut port – the storage of 2,700 kg of ammonium nitrate – in order to destroy Hizbullah’s strategic place in the region, and to shift politics in an unexpected new direction (favourable to Israel)?

Or, a further example of Lebanese élite lassitude and venality, caring only for themselves and nothing for the well-being of its people?

If the former, and events presage a renewed attempt to crush Hizbullah, the new regional paradigm indeed may be explosive.

It was probably the worst kept secret in Lebanon during most of 2018 and 2019. But the Ministry of Environment had been earmarked for a staggering 5bn dollars of aid, as part of the so-called 11bn dollar ‘Cedar’ aid package negotiated provisionally in Paris. Yet officials in this ministry were rubbing their hands in glee as they were not jubilant over the aid allocation being used legitimately, but were bragging as to how much of this sum was going to be embezzled to a certain political party.

This is Lebanon.

And this is the crux of the problem that any international donor faces when talking about aid in any context: massive, off-the-scale corruption which forgot the wisdom or merit decades ago of merely skimming 10 of 15% off the top in preference for at least half of what’s on offer.

Which is why recent news that IMF talks had broken down in Lebanon is the best piece of news this troubled country has had since October of last year when the country’s economy went into freefall following protests, initially sparked by a government initiative to tax WhatsApp calls.

The last thing Lebanon needs right now is aid which comes in the form of cash. In any formula. All it would do would simply enfeeble any opposition to the present puppet government led by the all-time diabolical muppet PM who surely won’t last the year in office. All any aid deal would do would be to support the mindset of the super-rich who believe that time is on their side in a long drawn-out war against the madding crowd of street parties, or rather street protests which are both dwindling anyway and were never really serious in their objectives. An aid package from the IMF or even the EU would simply be the pat on the back that the elite would welcome as most of it would end up in their pockets, while most Lebanese wonder how they are even going to be able to afford bread.

Recently, when IMF talks with the political elite broke down, no one was surprised to the gall of the politicians who, more or less, said that they wanted some benefits in the package towards themselves, a get-out-of-jail-card while rejecting a mega audit of the central bank and floatation of the local currency. Regulation of the ‘black hole’ of Lebanon’s crumbling electricity provider EDL, which constantly makes the news with its hilarious corruption scandals, is also held up as a good starting point. EDL loses around 2bn dollars a year, simply due to deliberate mismanagement – so as to allow corrupt government ministers to cash in on ‘emergency’ schemes while paying off their friends who run the neighbourhood generator racket.

Corruption comes in many forms other than cash. A local gangster who allows a generator operator to set up shop is worth thousands in an envelope every month compared to the one who gets blocked. And this scam has got so out of control that there are some generator operators who, given the permission by a political figure to set up in a given neighbourhood, actually take electricity from one neighbourhood (which is connected) and sell it on to the adjacent one which is in a blackout without even the generator turning.

And so it’s hardly surprising that Lebanon’s politicians more or less asked the IMF for a brown envelope themselves.

Lebanon faces really very tough times ahead. A brain drain in the next few months is inevitable as the local currency is expected to continue sliding as this battle between the elite and humble people looks set to be drawn out for months and perhaps years.

But if the EU and the IMF can’t do anything in Lebanon, then who can? How is it that the whole world just sits still and watches the suicide rates climb, people’s fridges empty and hospitals shut down due to no diesel in their generators?

Lebanon’s capital appears to be overburdened with too many UN agencies. Can’t the UN at least provide food aid? Or is that linked to a massive bung as well? In one sense, you can almost understand the culture that prevails with those in power to factor in kickbacks and assurances for themselves to not only stay in power but to continue with their unique management of the economy. Just take one look at how the UN operates there with its Syrian refugee program. An investigation I carried out myself in 2015, revealed that up to 70% of all aid coming into the entire program was swallowed up with operating costs [read salaries for UN workers and running costs for the NGOs which administer the programs]. That’s before anyone gets their sweaty hands on any of the cash before it reaches the mouths of starving refugees.

And this is the example that the international community serenades to the Porsche Cayenne gangsters who run Lebanon?

One of the arguments against the president’s son-in-law’s rant recently about kicking the Syrians and Palestinian refugees out of Lebanon is that the hard currency which flows into Lebanon from the UN is one of its last remaining lifelines in terms of buying power for essential commodities.

Think about that for a second. The elite actually regard the refugees as essential aid-bait for dollars needed to buy oil, flour and other such goods. It’s a game they play via pay-per-view journalists in their pocket in Beirut. Announce that refugees will soon be kicked out in a bid to stir the EU and its member states to come up with more money. In reality though the game’s up. EU apaches in Brussels know only too well that in reality the Syria refugees are paying into the system, as their slave labour makes the farms work and their pennies paid for water and electricity actually adds up to quite a tidy sum. And the neo-fascists like Bassil know that the donors know. But they try. It’s a win-won for his own racist white supremacist supporters who dream of the day when he is the President although it’s hard to imagine anyone remaining in Lebanon when that day comes. Bassil is an extreme leader brought in when Lebanon is pushed to an extreme, similar to the Boris vote in the UK which was entirely about getting on with Brexit.

Yet increasingly it appears that the real power in Lebanon – Hezbollah – is reluctant to let Bassil take the reins. And it’s not just because he sucked up to the Americans recently but its more about his lack of political clout where it matters. More likely when push comes to shove after the U.S. elections, we will see Frangieh enter the Presidential limelight as a more pliable Hezbollah-aligned President which might unite the Christians, if there are any left in Lebanon by 2022.

In reality, people aren’t waiting for an IMF deal. This is considered a cash cow only for the elite as no Lebanese person, regardless of which political party he or she follows, sees such an aid plan as beneficial. The Lebanese are not stupid. They know that the cash will only make the elite dig in for longer. It’s a waiting game. And in many respects people are waiting for a miracle in something which might jolt the present stalemate off its rails, like perhaps earlier presidential elections if President Aoun would stand down due to failing health. People starving to death and an economy in freefall is not exactly a shining eulogy for a political legacy and his family might be urging him now to consider how the history books will recall his period on office. But the last thing Lebanon needs in the short term is money. It would be like using gasoline to put out a fire. What it needs is food aid. But where is the UN?

He adduced no argument. It was pure emotivism (after Alasdair MacIntyre’s definition). Which is to say, nothing but an expression of preference, an articulation of attitude or feeling – with the intent to produce an affective emotional response in the audience (and it did just that). Reason then, in an emotivist environment such as the Middle East today, can never compel a solution; we simply have to hunker down and decide our subjective attitude. Moral discussion becomes at best, mere rhetorical suasion.

This, therefore entails that the grandee’s ‘moral’ assertion about the requirement for an Arab ‘21st future’, cannot be as ‘rational’ as it purports to be. It is not. It is non-rational: were all our moral arguments to be nothing other than statements of subjective preference, then any genuine attempt at rational understanding is doomed.

Such an emotive approach, given a group of sufficient diversity (there were Iranians and Arab ‘populist’ protestors attending the event) contains – only – the potential to escalate into a shouting match – or worse. Of course, discussion on these terms can never reach resolution. Lines are drawn early, and participants rush to take sides. But in taking sides, they appear to render themselves incapable of hearing the other; or, of sharing values – or even facts. Everyone feels the heat. But no one sees the light.

Well, the point here, is not so much about the merits, (or the claimed lacunae), in Islamism or the Iranian Republic. It is about a fundamental betrayal by the Arab élites of their peoples.

Modern Arab autocracies and oligarchies, in presenting themselves as being neutral, secular-rational, value-free, in their execution of pre-ordained ends (such as with the coup against President Morsi) – in truth, are simply aping western neo-liberal, market ideology – effectively foreclosing on all escape routes from the coming, crisis engulfing Middle East nations.

The problem with this approach outlined by a ‘modern 21st century’ modern grandee, is that it underplays the extent to which the most important civil and political institutions in the Arab world have been systematically undermined by those very élites who were supposed to lead and represent them.

We all need such institutions, including families, associations (religious as well as secular), and of course, the formal institutions of government. They constitute, together with their underlying legacy of moral archetypal myths and literature, the durable forms of community life. They give life meaning by assigning roles, teaching self-control, and enforcing standards. In the process, they form the character of those who participate in them.

The élite’s betrayal is represented by the extent to which institutions have been undermined, in order to cement élite hold on power, and to anesthetise popular discontents and protest movements.

The discontents at the Arab ‘system’ have been very much on view recently in Lebanon and Iraq, (together with the old Gulf resort of emotivism): An attempt to produce a particular ‘affective response’ amongst protestors –– by shifting the blame for the Arab world’s maladies onto the Iranians, via an orchestrated social media bombardment. Washington, of course has a covert hand in these projects, hoping that, in fomenting fitna (sectarian strife), Iran will be weakened and contained.

And yet, it is the 21st century globalist élites generally (Arab included), that have purposefully targeted precisely those institutions that are most important in the lives of ordinary people. In so doing, they have voided most, or all, civil means for the venting of the rising pressure of discontent. It is precisely ‘value free’ globalism that has sought to dis-embed ‘the individual’ from the clutches of gender, historic identity and from ‘community’ itself. As a result, these important structures largely have been discredited and delegitimised.

What was so striking was that at the very moment that this élite Arab ‘grandee’ was revelling in the outlawing of democracy to Islamists, the new-wave street protestors from the region, (in the same discussion), were making it very clear that they (now) disdain democracy – as much as do the autocrats themselves. In the protestors’ view, democracy has been wholly manipulated in the élite interest – and has become the sham tool used for the containment and smothering of dissent. They say this, explicitly.

So, what the élites have done by their resort to a pseudo-moral discourse – that uses terms like good, justice, and duty – has been to rob the regional discourse of the old context (whether Islamic or philosophic). A context that had made it meaningful, in the first place: Thus, absent any context: altogether too much heat, and no light.

So what (the reader may ask)? Well as the region’s discontents grow, what then will the protestors want (beyond the ouster of their élites)? It is not clear. Jacobinism? But what is evident is that across the region, the present élite model of governance is not associated with ‘the good’, justice or duty – but rather, with greed, self-promotion and corruption.

And having reached this point, the autocrats rest on – or rather, console themselves – with that quality that has been defined as the ‘resilience of autocracy’ in the region: i.e. the ‘surprise’ that monarchies and autocrats have proved more durable than the republics.

But now, that the Middle East is ‘up against the wall’, will resilience, will reform, just boil down to harsh repression?

In Lebanon and Jordan, it is clear that the economic model on which both these states have depended in the past, is bust. Neither state is likely to prove capable of reform. Their élites cannot reform – and refuse to reform. Any new ‘business model’ for either seems ‘beyond elusive’.

But Jordan and Lebanon are not the exception. Other states are up against the wall, either from a failing regional economic model, or from the Trump Administration’s binary either/or-else, approach to Middle East political engineering – linked to its vision for Israel’s destiny, and its Judeo-Christian mission.

It is clear that these Israel-related ultimata, directed at Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Iran are generating huge – and escalating – pressures on, and in, those states. It is hard to see how these states might respond to them. Some may fail; others (Iran, Lebanon …) may see no option but to escalate back – at Washington – in some asymmetric way.

Low oil prices, ballooned populations, high fiscal expenditure, water depletion and climate change damaging agriculture, present a real and present crisis for Gulf States, too.

But with the Arab autocrats’ creation of a ‘21st century secularism’, they have created too, a moral vacuum that will inevitably be filled only by ‘alpha-males’ asserting their individual will-to-power and greed. Or, to put it differently, the emotivist world is neither stable, nor self-sustaining (as Macintyre has written). But rather, it is a battleground of competing wills, awaiting the emergence of some strongman (or tyrant).

And with the loosening of ties to community (and the moral stories embodied in them), individuals inevitably lose their compass in life. They lose Virtu, in the ancient sense of losing their ‘place and belonging’ within a society, the esteem that comes with it, and the notion of service to a community, or to anything wider than their own narcissism.

The well-respected Saudi blogger, Mujtahidd, has carefully recorded these effects amongst today’s Saudi youth: wild car races through city-centres; endemic daylight armed-robbery; car hijacking in broad daylight, an absence of police, or of law and order – and of promiscuous, drunken, partying.

A thoughtful observer, Mujtahidd asks simply what happens to a society such as that of Saudi Arabia – which is both traditionally conservative, and now suddenly licentious too? Can these rending, bifurcated cultures and tensions so lately brought into co-existence, be resolved, or will they one day explode the kingdom? Real reform, per se – as in other Middle East states – has been perhaps now foreclosed by the more pressing need of the élites to focus – as ever – on their own self-preservation.

So what to do? To whom to turn now, for future patronage and subvention (since self-sufficiency is nigh impossible)? It is not easy. Real root-and-branch reform – though universally acknowledged as essential – is effectively blocked by one élite, or sectarian ‘capo’, or another. Hence the desire to do what has always been done before: to try to find a way to hold the ‘stick by its middle’ and solicit patronage from all the differing political poles.

But this ignores something essential: Trump ‘politics’, and his undisguised contempt for the ‘liberal middle’, leaves no middle to the ‘stick’ on which Mid-East States may seize. Trump intentionally polarises issues into binary extremes.

The cumulative effect of this Trumpian, max-pressure, binary approach – against the backdrop of decades of US underpinning for Israel’s security hegemony – may well end: not with the so-called ‘jungle’, but an extended desert, with the region’s few independent means of production devastated by endless ‘hot’ wars; Treasury wars, and harsh ubiquitous sanctions. (The formerly productive olive trees of Syria’s Idlib are stumps, and the agricultural lands of al-Hasakah face ruination, as but one example.)

In other words, we are postulating a collapsed economic model – not just for Jordan and Lebanon, who already face that prospect – but for wealthy Gulf States, too. For, without decisive reforms (which likely will be blocked by one corrupt élite, or another), the richest Middle Eastern states could exhaust their net financial wealth by 2027 and 2034, as the region becomes a net debtor, according to IMF projections out this month. Within another decade, their total non-oil wealth would also be exhausted, the IMF predicts. And ‘this’ prospect – faces an oversized, young, unemployed, and angry youth population, ready to explode.

Here is another Trumpian vanished ‘Liberal Middle’ (taken from the Israeli daily, Haaretz). Jonathan Tobin notes that the problem facing the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, is that the political climate simply is no longer conducive to the way it has carried out its mission for the last several decades. In earlier political times, it was easy for the group to act as an umbrella group, uniting supporters of Israel from the right, left and centre behind a common agenda of support for Israel’s government and the Jewish state’s security, the article observes:

The first obstacle to AIPAC’s ability to maintain at least a façade of bipartisanship rests on the fact that the Trump administration has given both Israel and its American friends more or less everything it has been demanding of every White House for the last 40 years. Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal put him in sync with the lobby’s desperate battle to defeat President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy accomplishment.

But with Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, support for its sovereignty on the Golan Heights, demands for the Palestinian Authority to halt its subsidies for terrorists and their families and now a peace plan that is heavily tilted toward the Jewish state, he’s left no room for the Democrats to compete with him for the title of Israel’s friend.

Worse – there is no ‘middle to the stick’ in the Democratic Party either, (or for the region’s Arab ‘Democratic’ diaspora) – for, as Max Blumenthal, explains in conversation with Robert Scheer, the Clinton Machine will do anything to stop Bernie Sanders (the title of the interview that is focused on the rightward shift of the Clintonite Democratic Party, and of Israeli politics). The discussion converges on Bernie Sanders, the man who possibly might become the first Jewish president of the United States (if the Democratic machine does not succeed in destroying Sanders first, as Blumenthal suggests). Financial markets seem to think that Sanders may win the nomination, only subsequently to lose to Trump in November (which would be fine by US market investors).

“It seems to me [there is] a real contradiction [in] the Democratic Party, which you know quite a bit about,” when it comes to Israel, says Scheer. “There’s this great loathsome feeling about Donald Trump. And many of these people don’t really like [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. You know, the polling data shows that Jews are, you know, just about as open to the concern for the Palestinians as any other group. And Bernie Sanders, the one Jewish candidate, is the one who dared to bring up the Palestinians — that they have rights also, that they’re human beings. He’s being attacked for it, like you [Blumenthal], as a self-hating Jew.”

So, hoping for a more accommodating Democratic President after 2020 may prove a wistful dream: the expectation is that Sanders either will be stopped before nomination, or else defeated, after, at elections. Either way, the “Deal of the Century” stays.

Here lies the dilemma: Netanyahu, working closely with Jarred Kushner, has – piece by piece – taken the middle ground – the two-state solution – off the table, by insisting on conditions to it, intended never to be met. More than that, they have undercut the ‘moderates’ of the region by demonstrating that the Oslo ‘Peace Process’ could be suffocated with no adverse consequences for Israel; the ‘deal of the century’ could be launched to international silence; the US Embassy moved to Jerusalem, to zero adverse reaction; Jerusalem ‘made’ Israel’s undivided capital, and the Golan ‘given’ to Israel – all without any of the damage to Israel that the Israeli and regional ‘moderates’ insisted would result from such actions. Rather, contrary to the moderates’ expectations of Israeli isolation, world leaders flocked to Jerusalem (for the recent Holocaust summit).

Back to Jordan: just as the political climate for AIPAC, after Trump’s Israeli radical polarisation, has become ‘no longer conducive to the way the lobby has carried out its mission for the last several decades’ – so, too, is it for Jordan. And for the same reason.

Once the Jordan valley has been annexed (it probably won’t be long in coming), Jordan will lose relevance for Israel, except as a recipient for Palestinian refugees. (The CIA, already tightly embedded into the Jordanian Intelligence Service, will act for Israeli interests there.) And the writing already is on the wall: Lebanon will be told that it must assimilate its Palestinians with full rights (this is already happening); and Jordan is likely to be next.

It is a commonplace today that Jordan is caught between a rock and a hard place. But even that comfortless expression implies that Jordan has options – whereas effectively it has none. What can Jordan offer the Gulf (beyond being a monarchy, and therefore being a ‘bird of the feather’, with other regional monarchs)? Would Jordan’s future stipends be assured by a more overtly hostile attitude to Iran? Possibly, but already Saudi funding to Jordan is curtailed, and the Gulf States are facing their own financial stringencies. The main import of escalating further King Abdallah’s Shi’a Axis ‘threat’ might simply be to complicate the Kingdom’s economic relations with its neighbours, who all enjoy better relations with Iran, than does Jordan.

This is not intended to pick unfairly on Jordan or Lebanon. In reality, Trump’s deliberate slashing away of ‘the liberal middle’ is to make the key dynamics, and power distribution between the parties, stand out – starkly. In short, to attenuate any negotiation down to a binary ‘take my offer’ or be crushed financially, alternative. This is the New York real-estate way. When a tenant stands in the way of a big development, weaken him; take away his electricity; turn off the water, and finally infest him with rats. That is the binary choice: get out of my way, or stay – and your life will be made miserable.

The Palestinians are being made unwanted tenants (within an actualized Greater Israel real-estate ‘development’). Eventually they will tire of being miserable, (Kushner’s team may presume), and find accommodation elsewhere (i.e. in Jordan and Lebanon, inter alia). Insisting limply on the (now defunct) two-state solution, or any other initiative, probably will not help Jordan – that’s the whole point of binary politics – to brush aside compromise proposals.

No doubt about it. Trump’s binary Middle East policies – in a profound way – threaten Arab States. Some states may not survive the experience intact. Indeed, the editor of Al-AkhbarLebanese daily, Ibrahim Al-Amine, wrote this week: “It seems that the American decision to let Lebanon collapse is being implemented. The Saudis have endorsed the same idea … [and] for the rest of the regional sides: these seem to be standing in a state of major confusion…”.

It may not be so apparent now, but the nature of this threat soon will be. Don’t the Americans understand the implications of creating a desperate, unemployed and radicalised constituency across the entire Middle East? Of course, some do. They are not stupid. But for those who don’t, policy is just process: the long term process of establishing Greater Israel. As the American novelist, Upton Sinclair, said (for those who do have an inkling): “It is [nonetheless] difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”.