The Dying Nation States of the Middle East


"The world has shown a limited capacity to prevent conflicts and to find a timely solution for them," it might have been something that the League of Nations press office released in the 1930s in the face of mounting German aggression, but it wasn't, it was something that the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said recently in response to the human catastrophe in both Iraq and Syria.

"Today, we not only have an absence of a global governance system, but we have sort of an unclear sense of power in the world," Guterres told reporters in Beirut recently, as reported by the Associated Press. Well, at least the defunct and utterly ineffectual U.N. is finally admitting what is obvious to everyone!

"An unclear sense of power in the world", describes it all in a nutshell. Power is shifting, in our region it's shifting away from major State actors and towards non State actors unencumbered by requirements to abide by the rule of law and international legitimacy. Instead, these non-State actors are bolstering their right to power and legitimacy with brute force. It's a brave/frightened new world we are in, depending on which side of the fighting you're on.

We happen to be geographically on the 'wrong' side of power, that is our world, the dying nation-State-Middle-East is on the wrong side of power. Our countries, the product of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, are relics of history, much like Tsarist Russia was in 1917, or Austria Hungary in 1916, those countries were dead, but their ghosts just didn't know it. When countries die human suffering takes on epic proportions.

If ISIS is to be believed, they do not plan to stop at Syria and Iraq, they openly make it known that they have countries like Jordan and Lebanon in their sights. I would take them seriously, whether one agrees with their ideology or not, they have proved themselves in the field to be more than a match for the corruption riddled nation States and their armies. The sky is officially falling and the human suffering will multiply. I am a realist and a pragmatist, I just don't see any way of saving the prevailing order.

Da3esh may have had a bit of a push by misguided patrons in our Arab world, but this monster is officially self sustaining like it or not. No summit meeting, no international or regional agreements or pleas for assistance from global powers will stem the Takfeeri tide because the systems of our nation States are incapable of regaining the initiative neither in the field nor on the political, social and economic fronts. Our world is changing fast and we are in a protracted period of flux, a time of uncertainty when the successful and capable will win more ground and the weak and indecisive and corrupt will lose, badly.

Among the successful are the Kurds, who might finally win a viable independent national homeland. Lebanon, a country that can't even elect a new President, is not looking like it might endure this period of flux, unless something drastically different happens to change the status quo. So while I do not like to be the bearer of bad tidings, I can't ignore reality, unlike our Arab national systems.

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