In one memorable scene from a film starring the US actor Denzel Washington, he tells his opponent, “there are two kinds of pain: pain that hurts, and pain that alters.”
What is happening in the world today has gone far beyond the imagination of Hollywood screenwriters, whether tragic or absurd. Pain teaches nothing unless people change the habits they have long clung to, even after those habits have ceased to fit what is now called the “new reality”.
This is the same familiar phrase that returns with every crisis, much like the oft-repeated saying drawn from the Chinese that says that crisis has two meanings of hardship and opportunity. Some people like to repeat such words the way mourners repeat words of consolation at funerals. Others take them more seriously, reflecting on the lessons of hardship and preparing themselves to seize the opportunities that may emerge from it. Very few, however, do so.
Anyone trying to understand the next steps in the destructive and unjust war, driven by aggressors unconcerned with its catastrophic and economic consequences for millions of innocent people in the Arab Gulf states and beyond in the Arab world as in Lebanon, will find the task extremely difficult. However, the possible scenarios, all of them ultimately resting in the hands of US President Donald Trump, and some mentioned by the British magazine the Economist and elsewhere, can be summed up as follows.
The first scenario is to pack up and leave and then deliver a soaring speech, or perhaps not such a soaring one, declaring victory and claiming that all the objectives of the war have been achieved, even if these were never clear to anyone aside from those who initiated it in the first place.
The second is to continue the military operations much as they began, while absorbing the costs of a war which for the US alone have now reached $200 billion.
The third is to intensify the destructive military campaign and then scale it down later, after exhausting the adversary. This course has reportedly been suggested by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
When the question is asked, half seriously and half sarcastically, which path Trump will choose, the answer comes back that we do not know. How could we know what the man at the centre of things may himself not know?
Then comes another level of absurdity. Perhaps this vagueness is one of the war’s most innovative methods – to prevent the enemy from discovering your secrets because you do not know them yourself. How can a secret be exposed when there is no secret to begin with?
The truth, however, is that none of these paths will end the war, prevent its return, or open the way to a comprehensive peace. This war will eventually stop, but the Arab region will emerge from it without the hope of the stability and security it seeks and without what is needed to save lives and restore confidence and lay the basis for reconstruction and renewal.
This means that we are left facing the losses that this war will leave behind it, even if one day these are given the name of peace, unless the fighting stops at once and a serious post-war phase begins that can lay the foundations for peace and coexistence.
This phase must respect the international conventions shaped by the lessons of the devastation of World Wars I and II. It must rest on international legitimacy and on respect for the sovereignty of states within their internationally recognised borders, instead of surrendering the world to the savagery of the law of the jungle.
People must be left to determine their own fate and manage their own affairs within their own political systems. Attempts to change regimes from the outside have brought nothing but outcomes worse than what previously existed, and fantasies of expelling a people from their land, whether by a colonial power or a racist one, have produced nothing except nightmares for those who have entertained such unjust dreams, followed eventually by freedom through steadfastness and struggle, however much delayed, for the oppressed.
One of the immediate consequences of the war is turmoil in the markets and disruption in the world’s supply chains. The Arab Gulf states have once again shown that they are a weighty force in international economic affairs, far beyond the narrow calculation that reduces their significance to the energy sector alone, important though that is to the functioning of the world economy.
The naivety of those who tried to dismiss the risks of the war on the grounds that the Gulf accounts for no more than two per cent of global GDP has now been exposed. Trading screens have turned red across the board, with losses mounting up on bonds, equities, cryptocurrencies, and gold and silver, and sharp swings in energy prices.
Decisions on interest rates by the US Federal Reserve have moved against the wishes of the White House, which has long wanted lower rates to stimulate the economy and a weaker dollar to raise US competitiveness. This has proved impossible under the conditions that it has itself helped to create.
The hands of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank have all been tied. Should they lower rates out of fears of weaker growth and the onset of recession, or should they raise them out of concerns over rising inflation?
This comes in addition to the energy crises facing both the developing and the advanced economies in oil and gas alike and in terms of both supply and price. These crises weigh on growth and push up the cost of living. They also have serious repercussions for food supplies and transport, threatening shortages for some 45 million people at present.
These crises are also driving some countries back towards the use of coal, with a rise in emissions as a result and the sacrifice of environmental and climate stability. The problem here is that even after the war ends, the dislocation in energy prices may persist. It could take more than nine months for prices to return to their pre-crisis levels and possibly longer depending on how severe the disruption to the energy supply chains is.
Ten years ago, I wrote in this newspaper about “development in a rapidly changing world” and about the repeated shocks confronting societies and economies that make it futile to rely on old methods to deal with new challenges.
What is new today is that a handful of political clowns and economic simpletons have come to the forefront of world affairs, claiming that they are managing them when in reality they have undermined trust not only with their adversaries but with their allies as well.
Under their stewardship, crises have ceased to be exceptions and have become a permanent feature of contemporary history. Yet, despite all this, these figures still insist that they have things well in hand.
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