Editor’s Note: Geopolitical Analysis of the week
Photo: Daria Gusa
Let me mention from the outset that everything I will say about the situation in Lebanon is an analysis based on academic works on geopolitics and on official documents of the UN or other internationally recognized organizations. They are not opinions, they are not condemnations of one people or another, but they are objective and unbiased analyses that in no way seek to incite anti-Semitic or Islamophobic sentiments.
How the Israel-Hezbollah conflict will degenerate
I won’t detail the events of the last week, the last year or the last century regarding Israel-Hezbollah relations, I will only briefly summarize, assuming you are all up to date with the main news. Hezbollah is a Shiite military organization founded with Iranian backing during the Lebanese civil war with the aim of countering Israel, which wanted to expand into southern Lebanon, as well as Western influence in the area. It has been fighting Israel since 1980, and they even fought a month-long war in 2006 that left around 1000 dead. Despite being considered a terrorist organization by most Western countries, Hezbollah is a political party in Lebanon (Hezbollah actually means ”party of god” in Arabic), has been holding seats in parliament since 1992, and is usually defined in academic articles as a non-state military group.
The map shows all the locations where Hezbollah and Iran have been attacked since October 7, in blue are Israel’s attacks and in orange are Hezbollah’s attacks.
As we can see the Israeli attacks reached as far as Beirut, and yesterday the Palestinian attacks reached as far as Tel Aviv. Many of the Israelis in the north even moved south to escape the attacks by Hezbollah, which has repeatedly said that it will only stop the attacks if Israel ends the war in Gaza, but then last week Prime Minister Netanyahu expanded the war’s objectives to include the return of 60,000 Israelis to their homes in the north. Shortly afterward, thousands of pagers exploded killing dozens in the attacks. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says Israel crossed all the red lines. The next graph shows us in the same comparative colors the number of attacks, since October 7 the Israelis have attacked four times more than the Lebanese.
Last week there has been a lot of talk regarding the pager attacks on Hezbollah members, the explosions resulting in several hundred wounded, and international law categorizing this as a terrorist act, since there was no war situation and most of the people who were wounded or killed were civilians, family or friends of Hezbollah members. Pretty much all the analysts were perplexed, because such a one-time attack would be most valuable during a war, not as a prelude to a war, especially given the fact that Hezbollah has a very advanced underground fiber-optic communications network and local organizations are allowed to act even without centralized approval. Israel has extensive experience with such attacks anyway, for example in 1996 Israel blew up the phone of the Hamas “engineer”, their main bomb maker, and the attack would have had to be approved by Netanyahu and a minimum of two members of the war cabinet, so it’s certainly not a mistake. The only reason they could have launched this attack is if Israel were prepared for actual, conventional, ground warfare, but this type of warfare is exactly what Hezbollah excels at, as they demonstrated in the 2006 war, which they won, and have since vastly expanded their military capabilities.
This week, the Israeli army has expanded its offensive, hostilities are no longer confined to the border region, there has been an intense campaign of air strikes targeting 1 600 locations, including Beirut, resulting in over 500 deaths in just 24 hours, half the number of deaths that resulted from the 34-day war in 2006. Israel said it was striking Hezbollah military positions, but homes and buildings in southern and eastern Lebanon were damaged, and hundreds of civilians, including dozens of children, were killed. Although Netanyahu sent a video warning and evacuation message after the attack began, Israel bombed the highway to Beirut on which civilians in the south were trying to escape the war. Hezbollah responded by sending barrage of rockets into northern Israel, most of which were intercepted.
Israel has added another goal to the war in Gaza, namely that all Israelis can return home to the north, as even the first goal of eliminating Hamas cannot be achieved. As I explained in an extensive article on Israel Palestine (The war against the Palestinians isolates and weakens the Israel-US binomial. The geopolitical consequences. – Solid News), the Israelis’ only option is to expand the war in Gaza, to create a conflict on multiple fronts, so that the US will have to go directly to war to defend them. While the White House talks about reducing tensions, it also reaffirms its support for its ally, the US has not put any pressure on Israel, it has only been verbal and Israel can easily ignore advice or even threats as long as they are not backed up by deeds. The US does not just give Israel lots of weapons and lots of money, unconditionally, it does not treat Israel as a normal country or help because it is for US strategic benefit, but the US does what it does only because of the Israeli Lobby, which has the power to push most of Washington’s policy decisions.
If the US gets involved in the war, Iran is sure to get involved on the side of Hezbollah, and by consequence Russia too, so the conflict will become a BRICS vs the West world war. This war unfortunately would be one that the West is predictably likely to lose: Israel cannot sustain or control a four-front war, with Hamas, and with the Yemen Houthis, with the Islamic resistance in Iraq, and now in Lebanon. Nor can America control the two-front war in Gaza and Ukraine, and it continues to provoke China, so a full-fledged war in Lebanon is extremely dangerous for the US as well.
Besides, if further consequences are needed to convince people of the seriousness of this attack, it has totally ruined America’s plan to counter the BRICS economic influence and China’s BRI. India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Israel and the European Union created an innovative plan to link production facilities in Asia with markets in the Middle East and Europe. The plan was called the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and was conceived as an alternative to China’s OBOR initiative. Washington relies on IMEC to preserve America’s pre-eminent place in the global order and to assist the US in its broader ambition to economically constrain China. In fact, the so-called Abraham Accords were made to reach this economic corridor. The agreements were intended to normalize relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, so that the traditional rivals could all agree to work collaboratively on the same integration project. But, of course, Israel’s 11-month rampage in Gaza has erased any hope that Arab leaders would work with Israel, regardless of US pressure. Just last week, Saudi Arabia announced that it would suspend all efforts to establish diplomatic relations with Israel until there is a Palestinian state, which the Israelis will never let happen. To recap, an extended war that includes Lebanon would in the worst (but most likely) case lead to a West vs BRICS world war, which the West has no chance of winning.
Zelensky’s humiliation in the UN plenary. The pact of the future is transhumanist
The UN General Assembly was held, which first of all indicated that Ukraine was almost forgotten, the conference hall was empty during Zelensky’s speech, only translators were there, very sad pictures came out. A UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine was forced at which Zelensky said that Russia must be forced to accept his peace terms, the Russians replied that they would not negotiate until the West changed the regime in Kiev. Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjarto said that arms deliveries to Ukraine would not lead to any kind of peace anyway, but it is important to note that the attention which was formerly focused on Zelensky is now focused on Lebanon and Gaza.
Nearly all the heads of state present had anti-Israel speeches on the Gaza war, saying it is not in line with international law, including the UN Secretary General, Britain, France, Brazil, Brazil, Turkey and the US. South Africa emphasized that what was happening was apartheid, Qatar said it was genocide, and Pezeshkian, the new president of Iran, said he wanted peace but that there would be consequences for the Israelis.
The most important event was the adoption of the PACT FOR THE FUTURE, which Russia wanted to postpone, and I will tell you why in a moment. Russia’s motion to postpone the adoption of the pact on the grounds that it would only represent Western interests was defeated on Sunday by 143 votes in favor, seven against and 15 abstentions – Russia and Iran were against, while China and Saudi Arabia abstained. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Vershinin, said that those who crafted the text over several months – Germany and Namibia – included only “what was dictated to them mainly by Western countries and ignored Russia’s repeated requests for intergovernmental negotiations on the text”.
This Pact for the Future is very much like the WHO’s proposed pandemic impositions and will give the head of each international agency exclusive authority to determine global emergencies and manage them, so there will be no sovereignty in many ways, international agencies will control everything. The same pact also calls for the censorship of misinformation, basically restricting freedom of speech, but at the same time it also calls for the development of freedom of speech – obviously, these are mutually exclusive. This pact also claims that the Sustainable Development Goals are the central objective of multilateralism and the centerpiece of the reform of the international financial architecture, pretending that they are some UN pillar and not a recent invention. Of course, the Pact for the Future also implies some noble goals, such as the eradication of hunger or the elimination of nuclear weapons, but it does not spell out any concrete plan towards these goals. This futuristic pact is certainly a result of the strategic partnership between the UN and the World Economic Forum in Davos (WEF), where these ideas have been presented to us since February. The UN General Assembly has thus become a fighting rink, West vs. BRICS, globalism vs. multipolarity, with the West still in the winning role given that the pact received so many votes in favor.
Changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine
Today is International Day Against Nuclear Weapons, and yesterday Putin proposed some changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine to commemorate the day, specifically the doctrine will include that aggression against Russia by a non-nuclear state in conjunction with a nuclear state will be viewed as an attack on Russia; Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression against Belarus; reliable information about the launch of aerospace means of attack towards Russia will lead to a nuclear response; Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression, including if the enemy creates a critical threat using conventional weapons. A tougher doctrine than hitherto, which has become mainly more dangerous for us in the West, but a far less tough doctrine than America’s, which only upon hearing rumors of an attack can use nuclear weapons on its enemies. Such changes were to be expected in the wake of last week’s brinkmanship, when the US and the UK almost approved the Ukrainians’ request to use their weapons.
Two sentences also about the Quad, the alliance between Australia, India, Japan and the US aimed at countering China’s influence in the Asia Pacific, who held their annual meeting on Sunday. Not much happened, Biden and the Japanese leader are on the back foot, they only talked about topics like pandemics and natural disasters, nothing substantial. When the opportunity comes we can talk comparatively about the Quad and China’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which has certainly surpassed the Quad in terms of Asian security organizations.
