Fight Club (I) – Macau Today

“For with wisdom you will fight, and with the multitude of your counselors you will be victorious.”
Proverbs 24:6 (Mossad motto)

In peacetime, the land is for the people; in peacetime, the land is for the people; in war, the people are for the earth. Where the human beings rule the earth, there is room for real life. In the opposite case, death wins. Humanity ends up underground, both physically and symbolically. We Europeans still firmly believe that we live in the house of eternal peace. War cannot touch us. That is why when it breaks out (elsewhere), we tend to describe it as a series of criminal acts. With a lot of horror scenes. This is a blunt approach that does not acknowledge its historical significance and abolishes its context. Our job is to connect the dots by crossing the perspective of the protagonists. Reading the stories in the chronicles. In some countries, this approach may not be realistic. Our research tools encounter resistance from seemingly incomprehensible and foreign cultures. For example, the space between the Mediterranean and the Asian hinterland, centered on the Iranian plateau, is the scene of the expansion and contraction of great empires for thousands of years, and for simplicity we will call it “Iran”.

In it and around it live populations of different origins and religions, among which Arabs, Turks and Jews, as well as Persians, stand out. On October 7, 2023, another bloodbath breaks out there, destined to rearrange the geopolitical cards. We are in a primitive space of civilization, nothing more than an alien space of which we know little, because we cannot hear the voices coming from inside. We try to make them resonate. Because we are curious about them. Because we certainly will not understand them if we suffocate them with our self-proclaimed universal plans. Paying homage to the relativism of the Persian Letters, Montesquieu, through this book, paints a satirical portrait of the French system through the eyes of two imaginary Persian visitors in 1721. A paradigm out of reach. But it is a very current reminder that it is necessary to listen to others before speaking ill of ourselves, especially when we instinctively prefer to listen to ourselves.

There is no intention to solve the mystery of Persia. But just as mystery adds to the attraction, discovery is nonetheless interesting. Of course, we cannot understand this theater without considering the systemic coordinates in which it is undergoing a rapid transformation. We are experiencing a global geopolitical revolution marked by four structural dynamics. In order of importance, the US shift from deterrence to self-deterrence; Russia and China abandon the integration of the US hegemonic system and decide to challenge it in hot or submarine warfare mode; the sharp decline of the West, reduced to a world minority, declining, aging, weakened, and destabilized by the credibility crisis of its leaders; the biodemographic emergence of a “global South”, young, prone to violence, divided in everything, but brothered by anti-colonial resentment in a new planet-destroying way.

Given the severity of the American identity crisis, there is no going back. The damage may be limited. But time is against the West, which prefers to erase reality rather than face it. For Europeans, this tendency is fatal. The conflict separates our eastern and southern suburbs, exposing our dependence on a space that was once protected by the US Empire but is now contested. This is also why we must also pay attention to the revolutions in the Levant and the Mid-Oceanic region. On land, it lies between the Arabian Peninsula and the Iranian Plateau, and on the sea, from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Starting with the polarity of Iran and Israel. A deeper excavation of the Persian Empire and an investigation of its contradictory relationship with the Jewish state are necessary. Yesterday it was called the Greater Middle East, now it is an unidentified geopolitical object.

Before, everyone ran in their own lane, even to death. A local specialty, fixed movements practiced to the accompaniment of intense music. Today, there are battles without rules. The tracks have been submerged in silt and can no longer be seen. Everyone is afraid of going off the track, but does not know how to slow down. The actors of Levante, wearing colorful masks adapted to the changing seasons, have a hard time finding their place in such a chaotic environment. Who is with whom and where? External references are lacking, and internal references are also unstable. Some people doubt their identity. What is the point of discussing strategy if you do not know where or who it is? Revolutions are terrors for those who suffer them and awakenings of conscience for those who observe them. The flames burn and illuminate.

Since October 7, 2023, the former Greater Middle East has turned into a madhouse. Fraudulent letters are being played there, and so far there is nothing new. Just the fact that they were previously covered, but now they are transparent. Revealing. Three premises are indispensable; historical, geopolitical and methodological. The first. Here, the First World War (2022-?) is another stage of the extended First World War (1914-2022). The game has never been over. The conflict stems directly from the division of the Eurasian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the French Empire and the British Empire. The fragmentation of power is not yet complete. Impotence spreads. Often ambiguity. The second. The indifference of the United States to non-strategic is exacerbated by the perception of Middle Eastern actors, for whom the time for anything to happen has already passed. In the season of the Star-Spangled Banner, some seemingly obscene acts are therefore suppressed by Western countries, but they go unpunished.

The time of the opportunists has come. There are also hegemonic rivals such as China and Russia that penetrate into the spaces evacuated by the Europeans and Americans. For us, this will be an opportunity to make us useful Westerners, who, rightly or wrongly, are not considered useful by the locals and therefore are not seen by the locals as potential promoters of peace. Third. Many countries are in potential civil wars, some effective, others in direct or indirect conflict with enemies near and far. Let us foresee the argument that to control this chaos, the great powers are not and will not be enough. At best, they will be accompanied by the integration of state actors interested in ensuring a de facto regional balance, even if or because they compete with each other. Only opponents with sufficient authority can agree on a minimum order. The alternative is that starting from the south, the land of chaos penetrates Europe, who can re-order the Middle East? In this manipulated and exposed deck of cards, the three dominant suits are Iran, Turkey and Israel. The real state. Two ancient and self-aware empires with different Muslim cultures and obvious rivalry.

The wisdom of the imperial aristocratic distinctions, the recognition of the basis of blood relations between the powers. Add to that the recent Jewish state (1948), which was founded less on the Holocaust and more on the holy book. There are also self-legitimizing or carefully fabricated historical legends. Since the ethno-religious matrix can hardly resist the temptation of the empire, that is, multinational, it is in a permanent state of war emergency. Today, paroxysmal. Common sense tells us that these three powers are destined to clash. Hasty judgments. History knows no undoing. She loves to deny herself, which makes those who want to control her despair. The past of this triangle is a game of shadows. Tomorrow is not a sure thing. But a certain balance in the Middle East depends largely on its summit and its respective strategies for the development of the post-revolutionary world.

While mocking and abusing each other, Israelis, Iranians and Turks have two instincts: Arabs respect and despise each other. Lacking a real state, they will settle disputes with the acquiescence of external powers and balance in the tone of a new empire. Or exacerbate the chaos. Agreement among the three opponents on their respective roles and spaces is necessary to reconstruct the Middle East as a region governed by a certain balance of power, not an excessive imbalance. A future constellation of peace. The differences between Iran, Turkey and Israel are too great for an alliance. But their interests do not prevent a pragmatic alliance recognized by the world. Shock therapy for a madness epidemic, if there is still time. Follow the poison, because we are facing secret lovers who, although they hate each other, are attracted to each other. Secret lovers are eternal. Especially in the suburbs. Hence the untimely reminder.

Among the protagonists of Israel’s birth and its arrival on the national stage, Reuven Siloam is the most mysterious. He was born in 1909 in Jerusalem into an Orthodox Jewish family of an Ottoman subject, whose father was a rabbi. A kindly Sabra (Jew born in the Land of Israel before the creation of the State of Israel), Siloam grew up in Jerusalem’s Orthodox center, near Measherim, and did not receive the sympathy of the pioneers of European descent who would lead the Jewish state from infancy to adolescence. He fought for independence in both secular and socialist environments and died fifty years later while working in Tel Aviv. Professionally and professionally, he was an advisor to the prince, although, like many of his peers, he preferred to lead. However, he lacked the talent and several inches of height of a public figure. He avoided the obligatory recitation of politicians and neglected the love of the pen of spies, especially when they strayed from their course and, in fact, permanently carried out their missions.

He was not bound by convention, a man of ideas rather than of organization. A fervent prophet of patriotic causes, we do not know if he had days off or if he had artistic passions. It is not clear if he ever went to the cinema, perhaps to attend secret meetings. In private, they were able to be fascinating and touching enemies, able to calmly refute and reprogram their leaders, pushing them where they did not want them to go. Always busy weaving and unravelling secret conspiracies around the world. Sneaking into every corridor, opening every door if it served the country. His style of diplomatic infiltration; first go in with your head, then with your feet. And then, it’s done. Almost unknown outside the sanctuary of the Jewish state, Siloam was an agent of influence and a diplomat with a network of relationships at the highest levels, from the American deep state to the sofas of the East, from Africa to the chancellerie of Europe.

He was the founder and first director of the Mossad (1949-1952). An institution in name and in fact. Foreign Minister and later head of government Moshe Sharet would define his closest powerful friends by saying “a reconnaissance unit composed of himself”. Shiloh had a very clear goal, which was to make Israel a great power. The Western vanguard against the Soviet Union from the Middle East, dedicated to dismantling the Pan-Arabist cabal of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, a doubly mortal enemy because of his hostility to Israel and his sensitivity to Moscow’s alarm. How could a small country that was almost strangled in the cradle by the Arabs during the 1948-1949 war have such great ambitions? The answer was to become a secret agent of the United States in the region and beyond, and then fully join NATO, or at least get direct and formal guarantees of protection from Washington.

In Shiloa’s thinking, Israel will, over time, assume global prominence through the supremacy of intelligence, drawing on the classic “brains over brawn” approach of the British leading the Americans from behind, as the Greeks did with the Romans, we might say. The synergy with the diaspora is decisive. “Is there a country in the world that does not have Israelis and Jews, well-connected, with privileged access to treasure troves of information, often with the advantage of occupying key positions in the state and private sector, from where they can pull the right levers? Is there a country in the world that does not have Jews with real or imagined power?” Shiloa argues.