With the US war on Iraq in 2003, an argument opposed to the war out of concern for Iraq, democracy and international law emerged. Democracy is not something illegally imposed by force. Doing so undermines both democracy and the law, as well as harming the Iraqis themselves.
The argument was valid, and subsequent years and experiences made it more so. Its weakness stemmed from the fact that most of those who reiterated it care about neither Iraq, democracy nor international law. Imagine a regime like the Syrian regime, one among other examples, reiterating this argument as it sent tools of death to Iraq.
Today, in the axis of resistance circles, a campaign has been waged against international organizations and George Soros in particular: they are pushing values different to our own. They are a fifth column, a Trojan horse!
Of course, it would be ridiculous if the critics from this axis had talked about those organizations using force to impose their values or claimed that these organizations undermine democracy or violate international law. With that, the acrimony with which they are being confronted is akin to that which faced the US war, with its army, planes and tanks.
Where does the actual problem lie then?
In all likelihood, it is any intervention altering our status quo that the axis of resistance hates, whether that intervention is violent or nonviolent, legal or illegal, and regardless of the degree to which it manages to change things. As for interventions that solidify the status quo and entrench it, they are always welcome, as shown by the constant and boisterous celebrations of the Russians and Iranians’ barbarous intervention to support a regime whose origins go back to 1963.
This behavior stems from a broad worldview: We want things to remain as they are and to stifle freedoms that subvert the status quo. Because this worldview is universal, praise is lavished at the policy Russia has pursued in its immediate geographical vicinity, which is to crush any desire the peoples in that vicinity may have. China is also praised for threatening the will of the Taiwanese to maintain their independence and that of the Tibetans to become independent, while silence looms over China’s extremely cruel persecution of its Muslim population.
The so-called policies of resistance can thus be unequivocally categorized as reactionary in the accurate sense of the word, that is, policies only concerned with perpetuating the status quo and putting an end to the transformations that were brought up by the end of the Cold War. Of course, these proclivities go beyond the axis of resistance and characterize other groups and regimes as well. Nonetheless, the axis and its international allies have taken on the task of framing these tendencies ideologically and justifying the stances that stem from them. Those outside this axis who hate all interventions are vulnerable to feeling embarrassed and sometimes even becoming mute.
As for the eternal radical agenda that should never change, it can be summed up in three successive shifts: war- loss- war or resistance- occupation- resistance… that has been the formula since the days of Ahmad Arabi in the late nineteenth century, and it will remain so until the end of times. All that has changed is that the faction that has come to sponsor the implementation of this agenda is no longer spontaneous, grassroots communities; it is despotic regimes whose relationship with their people is not questioned and should not be disputed.
The problem is that this world that the axis of resistance is defending is extremely fragile: it is threatened by trade, tourism, and a channel or bridge being built. It is threatened by life in democratic society, and by its people becoming familiar, through social media or television, with what is happening in the outside world. It is threatened by us comparing themselves with those we are snooping on as they live better lives. It is threatened by cinema and books, “which should be monitored closely” and should “not be allowed to infiltrate us.”
Certainly and unfortunately, this is not the only trend in the world, and it can coexist with weak, populist, nationalist and perhaps racist worldviews. It is, however, powerful enough to raise fears. The countries withdrawn from the world are escaping their isolation through various means. This, for example, is the case for Vietnam, whose experience Laos is trying to replicate. It also would have been the case for Cuba had Donald Trump not reinstated, in 2017, many of the restrictions on dealing with it that Barack Obama had removed. North Korea will likely be the last country to remain isolated and continue to rot from that isolation.
Here, we find some explanation for the pain apparent in the tone of some axis of resistance writers and media outlets, which neighbors an inflated, triumphant tone which fewer and fewer people believe: constantly dwelling on a time gone by and leaders who are long gone and constantly complaining about an epoch in which the old slogans are no longer “in fashion,” as people have become more preoccupied with new concerns and are more reliant on other ways of seeing things and thinking about them.
Indeed, times change, and their changes are precisely what turn them into history. As for not recognizing change, moving like a train whose path nothing can change, and living on the basis of one simple idea that was passed onto us from fathers and grandfathers whom it is not evident had been sufficiently wise… all of that removes one from history altogether.
Leave our societies stagnant and insular so that we can continue to rule and impoverish them. That is the axis of resistance’s motto today.
