“Deal of the Century” and the American Black Hole

Although there is a lot of criticism of this proposition, which has its origins in Einstein’s general relativity, what is of concern here is using it as a means to simplify US goals from the so-called “Deal of the Century,” which can play the role of a black hole center whose event horizon or gravitational field limits is the entire Middle East region.

Overview

If we try to take a quick look at the terminology of US activity in our region, we will find among them:

In Iraq, intense work is taking place to sharply partition Iraqis along the lines of an unholy trinity (Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish), with false indications that the US is ready to embrace the actual division. This is happening in parallel with the deepening economic and living crises, which in turn push towards growth of the popular movement without a clear horizon for the forms of organizing it. This would increase the possibilities of sabotaging, damaging, and dividing it vertically among the traditional forces processed and designed by the US starting with the occupation in 2003.

In Turkey, the US lost a little while ago any hope that Turkey would resume the traditional role it has played over the past century, as an advanced base for NATO, an enemy of the region’s peoples, and a docile US tool. The Turkish-Russian alliance – and behind it a broader alliance space that includes China, Iran, and others – has become the main determinant of the characteristic of Turkish politics. That is despite the apparent still existing confusion, which – despite its severity – cannot delude Washington from the clear fact that it has lost Turkey, strategically speaking. All this has pushed the US to work on burning Turkey from the inside and the outside, whether through attempts to manipulate the Kurdish issue and by provoking national counter chauvinism – a problem still difficult to remedy in Turkey, through economic pressures, attempts instigate internal sabotage and coup, or by using some European states to further pressure Turkey.

In Iran, the US continues to implement policies of maximum pressure, and using various means, perchance things reach the point of self-collapse, whether using color revolutions means or otherwise.

In Lebanon, the economic crisis continues to deepen, and with it the financial and political crises. Intensive attempts are being made to divide the Lebanese within a made-up alignment, such as March 8 and 14, but with updates and amendments required by new developments, leading to a state of chaos that engulfs the nascent popular movement and turns Lebanon into an additional soft spot for Syria. This would also result in reducing the risks of Lebanon and the its resistance forces lurking on the Zionist entity.

In Egypt, the living crises and accompanying social, security and political tensions are deteriorating, not to mention the dangers and tensions that surround it from all sides, whether in Libya or in Sudan. This makes internal conditions a ticking time bomb that is ready to explode at any moment.

In Syria, the hardliners within the regime and the opposition continue to attempt to sabotage and disrupt the political process. That, in parallel with the disastrous decline of the economic situation due to the impact of sanctions on the one hand, and the frantic activity of big corruption penetrating to the core the structure of the state apparatus, an activity that seems to absorb whatever life remains in the veins of Syria and its people, and spits it abroad as money and fortunes smuggled in dollars, as if preparing itself to leave Syria in ruins, from which it cannot be resurrected.

In parallel and with interdependence, we see the work of the US, whether through imposing sanctions, continuing to isolate the Kurds, or attempting to protect al-Nusra that have become public as expressed recently by James Jeffrey, the US special envoy to Syria, by saying: “We [the United States] recognize that there are terrorists in Idlib. There’s also a very large group, the al-Nusra or Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, HTS, that is an al-Qaida offshoot.  It is considered a terrorist organization, but it is primarily focused on fighting the Assad regime.  It itself claims – we haven’t accepted that claim yet, but they do claim to be patriotic opposition fighters, not terrorists.  We have not seen them generate, for example, international threats for some time.”

In Saudi Arabia, crises do not stop reproduction, whether those resulting from Saudi behavior abroad (the Yemen war, hostility to Iran, and a dispute with Turkey and others), or from the domestic economic situation that suffers from a continuous decline due to exaggerated spending on arms and other activities related to activity abroad more than within the framework of domestic development.

The Role of Regimes and Popular Movements

After the above abridged presentation, the reader has the right to hold the author accountable for what appears to be reducing the liability of the region’s regimes for the existing devastation. In reality, we are not trying to reduce the liability of these regimes at all, and we are not fond of conspiracy theories in their comical forms that the regimes themselves use.

In our opinion, the keyword is the old political space. Since the second half of the 20th century, the prevailing regimes in our region have been in general formulated to express a specific international balance in which the dominance of US interest has been increasing little by little. Perhaps even further, the basic structure of these regimes has been put in place starting from the Sykes-Picot agreement. In other words, we do not see big differences between the structure of the prevailing regimes in our region, and whatever slogans they raise, and between the Western center. Perhaps the best evidence of that, and before any discussion about general national positions, is the unproductive and corrupt economic structure enshrined in these regimes, which deprived the peoples and states of any real development and enabled blundering thereof by the West through the lopsided exchange relations.

In clearer terms, the prevailing regimes and old political space in our region, are essentially nothing other than an extension of the Western colonial center with its old, modern, and post-modern phases.

In this particular sense, popular movements are the primary hope and key to honoring the old political space by burying it and building the new political space. This is a complex historical process that passes, as we are witnessing, through great struggles and pains that are not without counterrevolutions and attempts to ride out and continuously divide these movements.

The US Withdrawal and Black Hole

Returning to the major determinants of the global direction of current times, mainly governed by the major economic indicators, then military and political, it is very clear that the US retraction inward has become an inevitable existential necessity for the US. However, in the same context, a rapid withdrawal and evacuation of sites historically controlled by the West, and the US during the past century, will only provide additional means for emerging rivals to accelerate the process of displacing the dollar from its global throne.

Within this portrait, the US is working to manufacture a set of black holes in our region, holes that would swallow any chances to end crises and establish stability, which would drain the opponents and postpone the issue of translating the new international balance that is based on an economy with new political facts.

We see US focus on restoring and maximizing national and sectarian faults in the entire region, in parallel with revitalizing ISIS, and trying to prevent putting an end to al-Nusra. Furthermore, we see the “Deal of the Century” that would, in the United States’ calculations, turn into the largest black hole in the entire region, so that it creates total chaos that feeds the other elements of chaos in the region, which it has become clear that the US will not be able to continue feeding in the coming period due to the United States’ forced retraction from the ground.

Syria: The White Hole

Unlike the black hole that swallows within certain limits all that surrounds it, the white hole discards within certain limits everything that surrounds it and shuns light too. Metaphorically, we can say that a white hole spreads light in the dark spots surrounding it.

Given the nature of the prevailing crises in our region, Syria – despite the great tragedy it is experiencing and enormous complexity thereof – has the advantage that it is at the heart of the black hole on the one hand, but on the other hand, it is the first candidate to get out of it. When looking at the highly crisised countries surrounding us, especially Iraq and Lebanon, one is compelled to pause at the fact that these two countries have long ago lost the foundation and structure upon which a stable state can be built. Even worse, sectarian and national divisions and political corruption have been legally enshrined in the constitutions and regimes of these two countries, that it has become difficult to imagine an inclusive national uprising that would quickly tip the balance.

On the other hand, there is still in Syria, until now, something that can be built upon, but this will not last long if the crisis persists and continues to worsen. This means that resolving the Syrian crisis immediately is not only an existential necessity for Syria itself – as Kassioun has demonstrated many times over the years, particularly the past few months – but resolving it has become an existential necessity to stop the overall domino effect chaos in the entire region.

One bright spot… one healthy model… will suffice to stamp the entire region with its character; the international balance is permissive… the potential of the popular movement is permissive… implementation should take place within a short deadline!