Analyze

When conditions in a country descend beyond the bounds of madness, one begins to wonder: what can be done to strengthen our ability to endure such chaos and successive collapses? Chinese wisdom often offers a different approach, one that can help us find balance. The Chinese thinker Zhuangzi was one of the philosophers of Taoism. He is considered the second most important Chinese figure in this tradition, after Laozi, its founder. My first encounter with Laozi came through a sentence in Edward Hall’s book The Hidden Dimension. I dwelt on it for a long time: “Emptiness gives things their meaning”! Laozi believed that “being gives things their qualities, but nonbeing (emptiness) is what makes them useful.”

The Lebanese do not need another explosion to remind them of the dangers of transporting explosives between different parts of their country. The seizure of a shipment at the Dahr el-Baidar checkpoint is enough to bring back images of burned-out cars, destroyed building fronts, victims, and questions that have remained unanswered. In a country that has witnessed assassinations and assassination attempts with political dimensions, the transport of hundreds of kilograms of explosive materials cannot be treated as an ordinary offense. It poses a direct threat to national security and tests the state’s ability to protect people before a crime is committed, rather than merely documenting its consequences afterward.

In Lebanon, moderation is summoned whenever the country approaches the brink of explosion, only to recede once the distribution of power begins. Moderates are asked to calm tensions, smooth over differences, and keep the doors of dialogue open, while the forces most capable of obstruction are left to determine the terms of the settlement. In this sense, moderation is assigned a role in containing crises without necessarily having the ability to alter the conditions that produce them. This is where its fundamental crisis lies. A moderation that limits itself to preventing the worst remains bound by other people’s agendas. It waits for escalation before calling for calm, for obstruction before seeking a way out, and for division before proposing common ground. These roles may be necessary in moments of danger, but they are not enough to build a future. Lebanon needs a form of moderation that has a vision of government, that can take the initiative, confront challenges, and organize, and that can explain to people what will change in their lives if they place their trust in it.

Warnings about the risks associated with the development of artificial intelligence are mounting and, with increasing urgency, are overtaking every other threat in the news, whether war, environmental and climate concerns, or financial collapse. Progress in this field is advancing at such a rapid pace that there seems to be no turning back, with machines emerging from laboratories every day that are capable of moving independently, working in teams, and making complex decisions. This technological revolution now threatens to give rise to an ideology of its own, a form of technological totalitarianism carrying immense promises and dangers that cannot be ignored. Most recently, images of robots in the streets breaking free from control and seizing the power of their developers have sounded alarm bells in more than one quarter. How can a robot trained in a laboratory escape and kill humans? Is it not dangerous to continue manufacturing robots equipped with increasingly powerful guns, such as the “ThunderMax 9000,” which is to equip the future “Death-Machine-8,” currently in the testing phase? Likewise, should laboratories really continue designing highly capable, extremely autonomous, and heavily armed defense systems? And should financial interests ever be allowed to prevail over humanity’s ethical imperatives?

Although the major European leaders did not accept the French President’s invitation to attend the Pope’s speech on Europe in Metz, I would say that the trip was addressed to the whole of Europe, or to Europeans. On his return to the Vatican, Leo XIV spoke of the rise of far-right groups in Germany and, more broadly, of the extreme forms that growing discontent is taking in Europe and around the world. He noted, in particular, the emergence of expressions combining such political positions with a certain form of religiosity which, in the judgment not only of himself but also of the leaders of the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany, “is not an authentic expression of Christianity.” Once again, he said, we must return to “the values of the Gospel.” Pope Leo did not need to travel to France to speak out against the extreme forms that growing European discontent is taking; he had already done so. But the trip did take place, and it was significant, first and foremost, for this reason: “the values of the Gospel.”

The American phase initiated by the Lebanese authorities as part of their efforts to consolidate their sovereign authority, in the face of Hezbollah’s strategy of dismantling the central state, is drawing to a close. It was obvious from the outset that the numerous meetings held by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Foreign Minister Joe Raggi on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly could in no way lead to concrete resolutions or practical results. It is common knowledge, indeed, that the meetings held by the various world leaders on the occasion of the traditional UN gathering each September rarely go beyond the framework of formal exchanges and consultations.

“Anything can happen with me,” President Donald Trump proclaims. And who would deny it? But the real question is what the United States would gain from such an erratic foreign policy. Let us pay close attention to the daily newspaper Le Monde , which took note of this with the headline: “China can only welcome Donald Trump’s United States losing credibility with Washington’s traditional allies.” Indeed, while the U.S. president is floundering in the Persian Gulf, he is—believe it or not—disengaging from the Red Sea. He did not come to Mohammed bin Salman’s aid, even though the latter was urgently requesting his support as, between September 9 and 11, Yemeni loyalist forces—backed by Riyadh, though apparently not sufficiently—were routed.

We are a long way, a very long way, from 2014, when Iranian leaders publicly boasted that they had succeeded in politically and militarily “linking” three capitals to the Iranian Revolution, explicitly naming Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut as the nuclei of an “empire” they dreamed of building. Twelve years later, the Islamic Republic finds itself resorting to all kinds of manoeuvres in an attempt to preserve a minimum of influence in two countries where its military instruments have been significantly weakened. The third, Syria, has completely slipped from its control. On Friday, Baghdad followed Beirut’s lead by closing its airspace to Iranian aviation, dealing a severe blow to Tehran, which regards Iraq as the natural extension of its “empire.”

As world leaders gather this week in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, they face a central problem: the world has become more interconnected than at any other point in the history of international relations since the fifteenth century. Yet, at the same time, it has become more fragmented and polarized, with power increasingly dispersed. National economies are deeply intertwined, technology connects billions of people across borders, while capital, goods, data and ideas move at speeds unimaginable when the United Nations was founded in 1945. Global trade reached a record $35 trillion last year, while six billion people, nearly three-quarters of humanity, are now connected to the Internet.

On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to the White House for a closely watched summit with both economic and political dimensions, given its potential international repercussions. Several sensitive issues are on the agenda: trade, U.S. tariffs, U.S. access to Chinese rare earths, artificial intelligence, U.S. support for Taiwan, Iran, U.S. sanctions imposed on Tehran, and Chinese support for the Islamic Republic. These are all issues that have left many analysts skeptical about the prospect of major announcements, including those quoted by Reuters. In their view, the Xi-Trump summit should primarily enable the two leaders to “stabilize a relationship under intense strain.”