We live in a region where most actors only understand the language of force and where, at the same time, force solves nothing.
It is both indispensable and almost useless. Everyone resorts to it so they no longer have to use it, yet no one is ever able to do without it.
This paradox is at the root of some of our misfortunes. It puts us in a moral and political impasse.
Without force, the Kurds would not have withdrawn from the Arab-majority territories in eastern Syria.
Without force, the Iranian regime will not give in on nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, or its regional militias.
Without force, Hezbollah will never surrender its weapons.
Without force, Israel will not make the slightest concession to the Palestinians.
And there are many other examples.
Yet, there is no need to be Kissinger to realize that force has almost never solved anything in the region.
It has not silenced the Palestinian cause, nor has it succeeded in killing the Syrian revolution or the Kurds’ desire for independence.
It has not brought democracy to Iraq and Libya and is unlikely to be enough on its own to bury Shiite Islamism, any more than it has managed to do so with its Sunni counterpart.
For more than a century, the Middle East has been breaking down and rebuilding itself in response to the balance of power among regional powers and the interventionism of external actors, with the region experiencing almost no periods of stability.
How do we overcome this impossible equation? By building local, national, and regional orders based on balance and justice, following the example of what Europeans have done in the past at home and among themselves.
It is easy to say it on paper, but how can this be achieved in practice when the other is systematically perceived as an existential threat, and every battle is presented as a matter of life and death for those fighting it?
The diplomatic approach is well-intentioned, but it is often ineffective.
Worse still, it plays into the hands of the strongest at the expense of the weakest: Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians, the Iranian regime vis-à-vis the rest of the region, or Hezbollah vis-à-vis the rest of the Lebanese.
At best, the strongest use negotiations to buy time and improve their image with their Western counterparts.
At worst, they consider the mere fact of negotiating with the other party to be an insult and make these negotiations subject to conditions that are impossible for their adversary to meet.
If Donald Trump has a certain popularity in the region, it is because he speaks to most of the players, with the exception of Israel, in the only language they understand.
It is because we know from experience that if he refrains from intervening in Iran, the regime, which appears to have killed thousands of people in just a few days, will not hesitate to massacre its own population in order to survive, just as it helped Bashar al-Assad do so not very long ago.
It is because we know that militias or regimes built solely on force cannot be dismantled without resorting to force.
There is nothing uplifting about this, but without the recent Israeli war and without the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah still would have been in control of Lebanon.
We therefore find ourselves hoping for military intervention that we know will not only be illegal but also highly unlikely to achieve the outcome the Iranians aspire to.
We know that the regime will not fall without massive intervention and, at the same time, that such intervention is likely to cause chaos in Iran and the region, not to mention its longer-term effects on what used to be called the international order.
But it is precisely because this order has failed so badly in our region that we find ourselves in such a situation.
It is because hope is forbidden that we lock ourselves into a short-term vision.
It is because the conditions for peace are deemed utopian that we find ourselves exalting what we deplore.
What Bertrand Badie famously called the “powerlessness of power” has been on full display in our region for decades.
Yet, more troubling still, the powerlessness of powerlessness is even more pronounced here.
This article was translated from L'Orient-Le Jour by Joelle El Khoury.
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