Human Civilization at a Crossroads

While the apparent dimensions of the economic crisis, represented by Coronavirus and oil, are producing their effects within the existing international system, there are deeper dimensions that constitute the receptors of these crises and the major gaps through which they are managing to permeate. On top of these dimensions is the structure of the existing international system as a whole, a capitalist structure in the general sense, and moreover, an embodiment of the highest degrees of neoliberal brutality, especially in the West.

Perhaps one of the advantages of the current crisis is that it has opened the eyes of the inhabitants of the planet as a whole to rethink what have been considered over the past few decades undisputable axiomatic facts. On top of those "axiomatic facts" is neoliberalism as "the end of history."

Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has been promoted and attempts were made to generalize it and formulate it in a template of terms related to individual freedom and human rights, and the need to completely – or almost completely – neutralize the social role of the state for the benefit of the interests of large corporations.

Today, people see with the naked eye, and in the West before the East, the big corporations to which governments handed over matters, practicing the highest degree of brutality and indifference towards people's misfortunes and problems. The people see these corporations pumping trillions of dollars to save the stock market, while refusing to even give paid vacations to workers to protect them from the epidemic.

In parallel, a different paradigm rises before the people, a model to which Western propaganda has constantly attached all kinds of evils. This model rises as a humane alternative to a system the contradiction of which is no longer confined to the relationship between a few who own the greatest part of earth's wealth and throw the overwhelming majority down the abyss of poverty, unemployment and diseases; furthermore, the system’s contradiction with nature as a whole has become clear and exposed, not only in the system's pollution and arrogant abuse of nature, but also in its disregard for human life and fate.

In the heat of the current crisis, it is also clear that the various types of financial games, which in concert with wars and disasters, have secured temporary exits for the system from its crises. Today, such games have become useless, and perhaps the clearest thing that can be said in this regard is that the policies of quantitative easing and senseless dollar pumping carried out by the Fed, are proving to be useless, and even contributing to further deepen the crisis.

The new international power balance, the centrality of which Kassioun has often stressed in reading all that is happening in the world and in Syria, is now taking a giant stride forward. Pending the completion of this historic step, it is necessary to review all the "axiomatic facts" that have prevailed for decades in the past, including in Syria itself.

In the context of reviewing the "axiomatic facts", the obstruction of moving to reach a political solution, something that hardliners on both sides are doing and using several means converge in their goals despite being contradictory in appearance, will serve to expose that convergence more clearly to Syrians. This is a must in the context of pushing for a comprehensive implementation of UNSC Resolution 2254, the implementation of which represents the share we – the Syrians – have to pay in the context of making the great global stride towards a new world.

Kassioun Editorial, Issue No 958, March 23, 2020