The fast evolving contest in the Greater Middle East is one of the key construction sites of the emerging new system of international relations. This region has always been of vital importance in global political processes. And it is not just about its rich natural resources and strategic geography, but also about the deep historical symbolism. The first civilisations originated there and formed the foundation for further development of the mankind. Along the way, three global Abrahamic religions originated in the same region: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
For many centuries, Western thinkers and statesmen, from the Greeks and Romans to the Dutch and British, believed that world domination was ensured through control over this region, where the civilisational and energy arteries of humanity run. This hypothesis has considerable heft. Descendants of ancient Middle Eastern nations, scattered all over the world after the fall and loss of their homelands, have managed not only to preserve their unique and distinctive heritage, but have also made an important contribution to the political, economic, cultural, scientific and educational formation and development of hundreds of countries and nations around the world.
In this essay, we do not aim to analyse the tactical and technical dynamics of the ongoing conflict, since distinct and often invisible nuances and details play an extremely important role here. There are too many unknowns (including – for the main actors themselves) to build any realistic models and scenarios about further development. Therefore, we will leave divination and speculation to those, who have been doing this for a long time – willingly and professionally.
Our scope is different: to demonstrate to the Armenian world a number of simple truths that are often difficult to perceive, yet are at the heart of international relations since time immemorial.
Firstly, strategic survival is always a key motive in shaping and implementing political decisions. Strategic survival should be understood as the ability of a nation to quickly and effectively mobilise internal qualitative and quantitative resources to acquire, preserve, protect and strengthen its status of a subject. However, this does not mean gaining total independence from everyone and everything (there is no such thing in the political world). Subjectivity is about having a well-built competitive critical infrastructure that allows to form, advance and protect own system of political, economic, social and cultural views, i.e. national interest.
Secondly, the preservation, protection and enhancement of one’s own heritage is the basis that determines ideological and value premises. Based on this (i.e. ideology and values), the subject defines its specific strategic goals, sets tactical tasks and creates appropriate tools to achieve them. Heritage gives birth to ideology, while ideology gives birth to a worldview that defines the logic of a complex and holistic existence.
Thirdly, the unwillingness of a nation to learn from its mistakes (own and others’) and to focus on the only objective that matters – gaining the status of a subject (as opposed to an object or a pawn) by unlocking and deploying its own potential – always leads to disastrous consequences.
In the current conflict, different worldviews (concepts) of a number of subjects with substantial national and transnational infrastructure have collided. The nation the State of Israel, which is the product and continuation of the Israeli transnational nation, sees its strategic survival through the concept of total domination in the region. One can criticise them for their excessive ambitions and unrestrained determination to gain a monopoly position, but they act on the basis of their introspective work on mistakes. The main lesson is straightforward: they were denied equality, and any prolonged peaceful state of affairs, in which they could create wealth and prosper, often provoked decisions on their physical elimination as a people. The political history of the State of Israel itself – from its birth to the endless struggle for the right to exist – also does not help the global Israeli aristocracy to attain confidence in this Hobbesian world, where there is a permanent war of all against all.
Iran, in turn, is a state with deep imperial roots. It is a big country rich in resources and an immense human potential. Its desire for hegemony in the region as a condition for strategic survival is as natural, as Israel’s desire to prevent it. Modern Iran is a Shiite-leaning Islamic republic surrounded by a predominantly Sunni world, whose bearers (countries), from Tehran’s perspective, are not independent entities. Turkey is Sunni, the heir to the islamocentric Ottoman Empire, but today it is secular and it is a member of NATO. The Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf were established thanks to Western support for the great Arab awakening and have remained in the Atlantic sphere of influence. Hence the appealing quest to decolonise the region – which the Iranians have adopted as their strategic mission.
In fact, Israeli Zionism (not to be confused with Christian Zionism) and Iranian Shiism are unique ideological phenomena that have absorbed deeply religious (Judaism and Shiite Islam) and vibrant national elements developed over millennia. Reconciliation or peaceful coexistence of these worldviews (concepts) is impossible, since one can be built solely on the ruins of the other.
The starting positions for protection and advancement are different for the adversaries. In general, the Israeli concept is less fragile, more stable. Unlike Iran, which has a purely geographical character (country + networks within regional countries), Israel is the product of a well-organised, influential and extensive transnational network (transnational aristocracy). Of course, the well-being of the current Jewish state will influence the state of the network, but the weakening of Israel, its occupation and even its disappearance will not have a critical impact on the strategic survival of the Israeli transnational nation. Their network has repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary ability for rapid regeneration, mobilisation, and unconventional solutions. In other words, unlike Iran, the defeat of Israel will not be the end of the Israeli subjectivity. By being hung up on narrow geographical parameters (physical ambitions), Iran cannot boast of anything like this. On the contrary, due to lack of a transnational strategy, Tehran has overlooked its million-strong communities, which have become in many ways a part and an instrument of the Israeli worldview (concept).
Today we see the hot phase of these two concepts clashing in real time. Once again, each of them is a subject and, therefore, there is an awareness of the inevitability of losses – both their own and of others. This is the price for strategic survival, and it has always been, is, and will always be.
