By Lama El Horr – Oct 16, 2024
The American geostrategic theater, which reached its apogee with the eclipse of post-Soviet Russia, is now coming up against recalcitrant players.
China, Russia, Iran and a large number of countries in the South are challenging head-on the distribution of roles by Washington, the self-proclaimed scriptwriter, who systematically assigns the role of loser to its geopolitical rivals, while taking on the role of “Good King Savior.”
The stakes are high. If global players accept the roles assigned to them in the new American scenario, the Western oligarchy under American leadership will preside over world affairs for decades to come. But if the players refuse to conform to this scenario, then they will hinder the emergence of the world Washington dreams of. Clearly, this second option has been chosen, which explains the crises that are tearing several regions of the world apart.
Washington’s latest scenario
The manufacture of consent through intimidation is a classic of the American genre.
To force its geopolitical adversaries to don tailored suits, the United States uses a tried-and-tested method: intimidation. This sometimes takes the form of politico-military interference and coercive unilateral measures, sometimes psychological warfare.
The Atlanticist assault on the alternative order to American hegemony forms the backbone of the story. As in all tragic works, a charge of fatalism announces the coming conflagration from the outset.
The scenario devised by Washington unfolds on both a horizontal and vertical level. Horizontal, because the tensions, crises and confrontations involving Washington and its geopolitical adversaries coexist on the international stage (G7 vs BRICS, NATO vs Russia, Israel vs Iran, USA vs China). Vertical, as the United States prioritizes its assault on anti-hegemonic forces by practicing a Russian doll strategy: nested figurines are dismembered one by one, in the hope of progressively weakening the final target, China.
In this vertical strategy of dismemberment, Russia, along with Germany and the rest of the EU, was the first act. In West Asia, Iran and its Axis of Resistance allies are, as we are witnessing today, the second act. What’s more, as evidenced by the growing US military presence in the Indo-Pacific region, preparations are well underway to set the third act in motion, and flank a China that is supposed to have been weakened upstream by the prior dismemberment of its strategic partners.
The second act of the scenario: dismembering the Axis of Resistance
The second act is being played out right before our eyes, in West Asia. Washington has conceived this act as a great bullfighting spectacle, in which the Axis of Resistance represents the bull to be slaughtered, and Iran, the bull’s lung. The aim is to weaken the beast, targeting every member of its body: Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Iran…, until it is put to death. Several bullfighters are involved in this effort: Washington, London, Israel and the European Union, but all act under the orders of a chief bullfighter, the American matador – who often camouflages himself behind Israeli arrows.
One scene in particular stands out in this second act: that of the “technological Judas”. Without realizing it, the bull carries his own dagger, concealed in a bracelet around his horns, hooves, flank… This is what gave rise to the episode of pagers and walkie-talkies, the Israeli-American state terrorism that stabbed Lebanon in the back on September 17 and 18, 2024.
This scene of the “technological Judas”, unequivocally forbidden by the most elementary international law, had been integrated, secretly and in advance, into the second act of the American scenario. Your technological companion suddenly starts stabbing and mutilating you, in the streets, pharmacies and stores of the city – of all cities – and off the battlefield. There’s no doubt that this scene sets a precedent for the trampling of human rights and the laws of war – but also of the right to war, the only means of resistance against oppression.
For it must be remembered that Hezbollah and its allies in the Axis of Resistance are guilty, in the eyes of Washington and its Israeli accomplice, of providing assistance to a people who have been suffering ethnic cleansing and genocide for over a year.
The functions of the “technological Judas” in the American scenario
In the Israeli-American scenario, the “technological Judas” episode has several functions. First and foremost, it aims to cast doubt on the ability of the Axis of Resistance, and Hezbollah in particular, to continue supporting the Palestinians. In view of the increasingly painful blows dealt to Israeli forces by the Lebanese party and its regional allies, we can already say that this gamble is lost. The pagers’ terrorist operation against political and military members of Hezbollah, and the assassinations of its leading figures, foremost among them Hassan Nasrallah, have increased tenfold the determination of the Lebanese resistance and its regional allies to fight alongside the Palestinians.
The hijacking of technology for terrorist purposes was also intended to intimidate Beijing, Moscow and their southern partners, by attempting to undermine the security credibility of Chinese supply chains. At the same time, by adopting an analogy of reasoning – “We did it, so China will do it too” – the US is using this terrorist operation to justify an intensification of American technological decoupling from the Chinese economy. Here again, the gamble seems lost, as calls to convert to Chinese technology have poured in like a boomerang in the wake of this terrorist operation.
On the other hand, the fact that Iran has finally retaliated against the many Israeli aggressions suggests that there is close strategic coordination between Teheran and Moscow. While these two key states on the Eurasian axis had put off finalizing a strategic partnership agreement (to appease Washington?), it would appear that the evolution of Teheran-Washington and Moscow-NATO tensions, which reflect growing US hostility towards Teheran and Moscow, has accelerated the finalization of this partnership, which is due to be signed at the forthcoming BRICS summit in Kazan.
There is no doubt that the pager episode was also intended to warn Washington’s partners who were not sufficiently docile to the desiderata of NATO, QUAD, the Pentagon or the US State Department. Countries such as India, Turkey, Algeria and Brazil may have felt tacit pressure to conform to the US strategy of containing China and boycotting Russia and Iran. But even beyond these emerging powers, Washington’s aim was to instill fear on a global scale about other technological products whose manufacture depends on Washington and its allies. – The manufacture of consent through intimidation is a classic of the American genre.
Ultimately, the most important thing to remember about this episode of kamikaze technology is that, to maintain their domination of the world, the United States and its satellite countries are now acting without any red lines – legal, diplomatic, human or ethical. That’s the extent of the danger facing our world.
Contemporary challenges must be met collectively
This stalemate in the resolution of global crises is an opportunity to recall the fundamentals: the rules of coexistence between the great powers are not laid down in the bellicose communiqués of NATO, the Pentagon or the US Department of State, but in the United Nations Charter, which constitutes the only legitimate contract supposed to govern relations between states.
Recent events in the Middle East have revealed the Western bloc’s penchant for unbridled obscurantism, and its refusal to deal with the rest of humanity in a civilized manner. These actions will undoubtedly mark the annals of a decadent West, which now knows only how to defend its interests through deception, plunder and mass crime. This is thanks to the unscrupulous media, whose sole role is to coerce the masses by presenting as white what is indisputably black. It is hardly surprising, then, that a Netanyahu can give free rein to his sadism, while a Georges Ibrahim Abdallah spends his 41st year in prison for daring to embrace the Palestinian cause.
This must spur the world majority, led by China and Russia, to stand up more united than ever against American imperialist domination – which is not only illegitimate, since it is repudiated by two-thirds of the international community, but also endangers the very survival of humanity. The contributions of India, Turkey, Algeria and Brazil are indispensable.
If the United States and its allies are capable of committing genocide on camera, of planting bombs in telephones, radios, solar panels or scooters, on the scale of an entire country, then what’s to stop us thinking that they’re also capable of booby-trapping planes, trains, boats, cars and elevators? What’s to stop us thinking that they’re also capable of creating pandemics, or even inserting poison into pharmaceutical vaccines? What’s to stop us thinking that they are also capable of hijacking the functions of agriculture, water and the food industry, if this helps them to harm their adversaries and establish their domination of the world by force?
Hanging from the Israeli scaffold, the fledgling American Empire is committing suicide in the public square, and few would dream of saving it: “If the US continues to have the ability to construct a unipolar world order, then this world order will be the worst that human society has ever seen. People must have a clear understanding of this.”
Lama El Horr
Lama El Horr is the Founding Editor of China Beyond the Wall. She is a geopolitical consultant and analyst specializing in Chinese foreign policy, geopolitics and geoeconomics. She holds a PhD from Paris-Sorbonne University and has also studied at the LSE. Lama El Horr has worked in the government, academic and media sectors in Europe, China, Latin America, and the Middle East, and is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic.
