Shock, anger and fear. That is what we are left with. That is what our collective reactions have looked like for years as an era we once believed triumphant and unquestionable slowly unravels.
But how many Iraqs, Ukraines, Syrias, Yemens, Gazas and Venezuelas; how many Trumps, Putins, Xis, Khameneis, Netanyahus, Erdogans and MBSs will it take for us to understand that the shift has already happened, and that many of our references, reflexes, rules and taboos are already outdated?
Does this mean we should accept defeat and resign ourselves to adapting to a world shaped above all by force, fanaticism and money?
Certainly not.
Instead, we should recognize that our outrage, especially when it is selective, serves only to highlight our failure to understand a world that no longer resembles the one we imagined, whether we like it or not.
This is a time for predators, for the erosion of limits on the use of force, for blurred lines between public and private interests, for the conquest of resources, minds and space, for the weakening of democracies, for the crushing of nuance and dialogue, for the triumph of the most extreme visions, and for the fight against all forms of difference, understood in the narrowest sense.
In this context, the only question worth asking, both individually and collectively, is whether we want to settle somewhere in this great upheaval or try to resist it.
If the latter, then with what tools?
Reactions around the world to the U.S. show of force in Venezuela, an illegal operation that recalls the old habits of Uncle Sam, especially in South America, say a great deal about everyone’s intentions in the face of this new global disorder.
There are those who sharply condemn it, yet have done the same or would not hesitate to do so within their own spheres of influence, and who, for years, long before President Donald Trump, have worked to undermine the post-Cold War international order.
There are those who are genuinely attached to that order, but who never equipped themselves to defend it, naively assuming that because they had already paid a heavy price and stepped out of history, everyone else would do the same.
And there are those who welcome the move, or remain silent, convinced that they are better equipped than others to survive in this new jungle and even claim the biggest share of its spoils.
This goes far beyond Maduro, who will not be missed, starting with Venezuelans themselves, and beyond Venezuela, where the regime remains in place and no one yet knows what’s to come next despite the U.S. desire to “run” the country.
For at least three decades, the use of force to weaken or overthrow a dictatorship, through illegal actions sometimes presented as legitimate, has posed an insoluble dilemma.
Faced with a regime backed by an efficient and loyal military apparatus, calling for internal change while condemning any external intervention often amounts to sending the bravest protesters to their deaths.
Yet at the same time, it is clear that no external intervention that led to regime change has produced anything but chaos, often worse than the chaos it claimed to address in the first place.
The proportional use of force remains one of the great gray areas of the post-Cold War order, especially now that the Security Council is completely paralyzed by the hostility between the West on one side and Russia and China on the other.
But that is not the issue here. This is not about whether it is legitimate to remove a dictator by force in order to install democracy in a country that also poses a security threat to the international order.
The Trump approach does not follow that logic, even if it borrows some of its language and methods. It is a much more basic and brutal logic, that of a bully who threatens, harasses, extorts and hits his classmates simply because he is the strongest.
Trump is the king of the jungle and he wished to remind the other predators of that fact. Will his appetite grow beyond “his hemisphere,” or will he accept that other predators rule their own regions in a world divided into spheres of influence? That is still unclear.
What is clear, however, is that no country, no region and no resource is safe from becoming the next prey.
By comparison, the Middle East seems better prepared to understand this new era. And for good reason: in our region, the foundations of this era are not something new at all.
But the U.S., despite its unconditional support for Israel, at least had the merit of imposing a degree of order by asserting itself as the sole hegemon and, more often than not, promoting stability.
Its current behavior, combined with its relative disengagement from the region, will only sharpen the appetite of local predators such as Turkey, Iran, Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia at a time of major realignment after Oct. 7.
It is therefore understandable that some in Lebanon and across the region welcome the weakening of the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” of which Venezuela was a key partner, following Maduro’s fall.
It is also understandable that some hope a similar intervention might finally bring down Khamenei, as so many Iranians desire. But we should be careful what we wish for, not only because of past experience but also because of the regional and international context in which such an operation would now take place.
Finally, we need to understand what this “new world” means for small countries like Lebanon, which are neither alpha predators nor swift, agile hunters. We risk being condemned to trade our sovereignty for the protection of a patron, or to remain a playground for regional and distant powers.
This editorial was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour and translated by Sahar Ghoussoub.
