On Washington Journal they noted an editorial in the Washington Post print edition by Henry Kissinger titled After Lebanon. I can't find the thing on the Wapo website. I did find it on Tribune Media Service's web site on Mr. Kissenger's profile page , which likely means it will vanish when he ships his next opus analysis. I snatched it up into my personal cache for later reference but I'd like a more permanent link.
It's weird...I disagree with his premise in the article in what I feel are unsubtle ways. But I see all the movement he discusses. I understand the fear.
Hezbollah is, in fact, a metastasization of the al-Qaida pattern. It acts as an overt state within a state. It commands an army much stronger and far better equipped than Lebanon's on Lebanese soil, in defiance of two UN resolutions. Financed and trained by Iran, it fights wars with organized units against a major adversary. As a Shia party, it has ministers in the government of Lebanon who do not consider themselves bound by its decisions. A non-state entity on the soil of a state with all the attributes of a state and backed by the major regional power is a new phenomenon in international relations.
I think my fundamental problem is he conflates nations, states and nation-states. This is me:
I'm going to call them Euro-nationalists because I believe their errors in approaching the Middle East are rooted in deep cultural history. They're real comfortable working with the descendants of feudal societies but what do you think the concept of a nation looks like to the descendants of a nomadic people?
and
I don't think Hezbollah is a 'state within a state,' Lebanon is a state wrapped around a nation. It's a condition neo-neocons aren't prepared to even recognize.
The nations within colonized territories never ceased to exists. The borders of the states set up by the colonizers when they physically withdrew were designed to break those nations up.
That effort, long term, has failed. Mr. Kissinger details what that failure (I want to call it 'breaking of symmetry' but that abuses the term; still, it's what occurs to me) looks like to him.
This twin assault on the global order, by the combination of radical states with transnational non-state groups sometimes organized as militias, is a particular challenge in the Middle East, where frontiers denote few national traditions and are not yet a century old. But it could spread to wherever militant, radical Islamic groups exist. Leaders therefore are torn between following the principles of the existing international order on which their economy may depend, or yielding (if not joining) the transnational movement on which their political survival may depend.
The irony here is amazing. The "West" is the source of almost every transnational non-state group in the world.
Bank for International Settlements (BIS)
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Global Environment Facility (GEF)
International Labor Organization (ILO)
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
World Health Organisation (WHO)
World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO)
World Bank
World Trade Organisation (WTO)ActionAid
Amnesty International
Human Life International
International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
Nature Conservancy
Oxfam International
World Vision International (WVI)
World Wildlife Fund International (WWF)
I'm not just talking about NGOs, either.
This, according to One World Trust, is a list of the 30 most powerful organizations in the world. Consider how many of them are dedicated to (if I may borrow a term from patent and copyright management) exploiting the resources of the nations that (if I may borrow a term from whiteness proponents) "happen to be" situated in the states where the problem is located.
Go to NGOWatch. It's run by AEI and the Federalist Society. Check their list of NGOs and international organizations. And understand that this, inverted
We are witnessing a carefully conceived assault, not isolated terrorist attacks, on the international system of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. The creation of organizations like Hezbollah and al-Qaida symbolizes that transnational loyalties are replacing national ones. The driving force behind this challenge is the jihadist conviction that it is the existing order that is illegitimate, not the Hezbollah and jihad method of fighting it. For the jihad's adherents, the battlefield cannot be defined by frontiers based on principles of world order they reject; what we call terror is, to the jihadists, an act of war to undermine illegitimate regimes.
...is exactly what we look like to them.
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