It seems all but certain that the Levant, and Iran, are turning the page on the defiance era. As well as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime, the regime in Tehran is itself on the precipice of a decisive phase that threatens its survival, while Iraq finds itself compelled to reconsider its orientations and alliances. And so, the only players remaining on the field are outside the region: Yemen’s Houthis, who wage battle with poor and increasingly limited tools, among them the khanjar.
This era joins that of military coups and police states from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, which had begun to fall apart following the defeat of 1967, before branching into various forms of decay in most of the Arab countries ruled by security agencies and the military.
It is also clear, however, that the trajectory of the transition away from the regional order of defiance is more obscure than the trajectory of the transition that followed the regional order of armies. In many cases, it seems the era we are migrating from encompasses both successive orders, or that it was a synthesis of both.
What remains obscure is the destination that this trajectory is leading us to: the alternative regimes, relationships, and ideas that will emerge in the transitioning countries. This question should raise very broad apprehensions, for plainly visible reasons that need no elaboration, rather than unenviable overwhelming joy.
Indeed, decades of military coups and defiance successively destroyed political life in the countries where they took hold, as well as those that felt the repercussions of their actions and influence. This destruction dramatically reinforced communal loyalties and identities - religious, sectarian, ethnic, regional - as well as hostility and intolerance to outsiders. The ongoing domestic fragmentation of the countries concerned is preventing the emergence of unified and coherent opposition coalitions capable of converging around unified and coherent programs that could lead their countries to safer shores.
This obstacle is further compounded by the fact that the proposed transition has been accompanied by striking population flows engendered by ethnic cleansing or fear of it, as well as the demographic realities these changes produce. We know all too well that numbers are among the most lethal weapons of identitarian conflicts.
These apprehensions are heightened by a bleak economic picture that is aggravating competition over dwindling resources. With the “reconstruction” of devastated countries and areas, such as Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, looming as a basic prerequisite for reasonable public life, this need runs up against American refusal to contribute and Europe’s insufficient means. In their place, buffoonish and self-aggrandizing rhetoric centered on real estate, tourism, and investment projects has taken center stage.
This has two implications that fuel the pessimism further: large segments of the population living over the rubble for a protracted period, grappling with unemployment, and competition among the needy for extremely scarce aid, which could add a dose, big or small, of communal conflicts within national borders and beyond them.
It is unlikely, as these countries, especially those entangled in communal civil conflicts, atrophy from within, that foreign states and alliances seeking to expand their influence will find it difficult to do so. Such a development would, by definition, undermine the interests of the countries concerned, particularly their interest in safeguarding stability. Nor would it be wise to ignore Israel’s strategy, which fuses three explosive elements: rejection of a Palestinian state, or even of a path toward one, in principle, escalating humiliation of neighboring countries and potentially a campaign to carve out “purged” sovereign territories; and meddling in our numerous unresolved crises and unaddressed problems, which it has every opportunity to do, with our social fabric torn amid injustices inflicted on ethnic, religious, and sectarian groups. It then uses these tensions to exert influence and impose its will on the peoples and communities of the region by instrumentalizing their causes.
As for the philosophy of force that now prevails globally, it clearly does not serve the interests of countries like ours, which lack force of any kind, but its victims - unless we assume that the powerful are driven by humanitarian and altruistic impulses as mounting evidence points to the contrary. True, the defeated militias’ insistence on clinging to their weapons provides an additional pretext for the powerful to exert their power over us, adding yet another argument for these militias’ disarmament sooner rather than later.
We should not, however, miss the forest of a world governed by the philosophy of force for the trees of the militias and their regional patron, even as they wither. If Denmark, and behind it Europe, are apprehensive about this philosophy and its implications, how could weak countries like Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan rest assured?
How we interpret the development matters here. Liberation from militias and from Iranian influence is a liberation of the weak who have suffered under the weight of militias’ and Iran’s power. This calls for- indeed, ought to prompt us to collectively ask ourselves how we found ourselves in this position here rather than radiating joy, congratulating ourselves, and triumphantly proclaiming the end of history. Instead of the rhetoric of threats and intimidation, we would have more to gain from equipping ourselves with ideas of peace that oppose the kind of tyranny and violence we have long suffered.
As for joining the party of power, it leaves us unsure whether to laugh or cry - absurdity that mirrors a bald man bragging about his neighbor’s hair and hubris akin to wandering off mindlessly, with one’s chest puffed out, toward the nearest abyss.
