Analyze

Nuclear weaponry is no longer a mere military instrument. It has become the symbol of a deeper question, that of state security in a world where the effectiveness of international guarantees keeps eroding. The war in Ukraine, the persistent tension surrounding Iran, and North Korea’s survival despite its isolation all bring the same question back to the forefront: how can states still protect themselves within an increasingly unstable international order? Ukraine, or the Lesson of Abandoning Deterrence Ukraine represents the most debated case. Having relinquished its nuclear arsenal in exchange for international security guarantees, it found itself confronted with the Russian invasion. Since then, the question has resurfaced with even greater force: do political guarantees alone suffice to protect states against major threats? North Korea, the Strength of Deterrence Beyond Isolation North Korea, by contrast, offers an opposite model. Despite the sanctions and economic isolation weighing upon it, possession of nuclear weaponry has rendered the cost of any strike against it prohibitive. Nuclear deterrence has thus become a guarantee of survival for both regime and state, whatever the economic and political price. Iran in Search of a Deterrent Umbrella Iran, for its part, stands between the two models. It has not declared possession of nuclear weaponry, yet it seeks to strengthen its deterrent position within a turbulent regional environment. From its own perspective, the nuclear program forms part of a strategy meant to prevent any attempt to impose change by force or to threaten its national security. A Deterrence No Longer Confined to the Nuclear Recent developments show, however, that deterrence is no longer limited to the atomic weapon. Iran holds a strategic card through its capacity to influence the flow of global energy via the Strait of Hormuz. North Korea, meanwhile, has managed to leverage its military capabilities to extract economic and technological gains from Russia. Ukraine, for its part, has succeeded in developing advanced technologies in drones and electronic warfare, technologies that are now beginning to draw the interest of other nations. The Middle East at a Crossroads In the Middle East, this reality raises difficult questions about the future of regional security. Can the region continue to rely on shifting international alliances, or is it instead moving toward strengthening its own capacities for deterrence, in forms both nuclear and non-nuclear? Lebanon: When the Human Being Becomes the Source of Deterrence At the heart of this debate over instruments of power and deterrence, Lebanon stands apart as a different case. Its true wealth has never lain in the possession of nuclear weaponry, nor in control over strategic corridors, nor in the development of sophisticated military arsenals, but in possession of another form of power: that of the human being. The values of shared life, the capacity for solidarity in times of trial, and the creative energy that the Lebanese have carried across the world in economics, culture, medicine, education, and the arts, have always constituted a strategic asset granting Lebanon a presence far exceeding its geographic and demographic size. This soft power, even if it appears less resounding than missiles and fleets, remains one of the most essential elements of Lebanon’s survival and of its role in a region that needs, more than ever, models of coexistence and openness rather than division and conflict. The Open Question The essential question may not be whether nuclear weaponry constitutes the sole insurance policy of states, but rather whether the world is entering an era in which the forms of deterrence multiply, even as confidence in the capacity of international law alone to guarantee security and stability recedes little by little.

In a country burdened by an unprecedented economic collapse, a persistent financial crisis and a crumbling infrastructure, the resurrection of Kleyaat airport in northern Lebanon has the feel of a project carrying as many ambitions as questions. But beyond the political and media enthusiasm that has accompanied this initiative, a more fundamental question demands to be asked: does Kleyaat truly represent the most viable option for Lebanon, or has the real debate around a second airport in the country not yet begun? This is not about opposing the project as such. Having a second airport in Lebanon is no longer a luxury, but a national, security and economic necessity. The experience of recent years has shown with stark clarity how exposed the country becomes when it depends on a single airport, whether in times of war, security crises, or under the mounting operational pressure bearing down on Beirut airport. The principle commands near-universal agreement. The disagreement starts with a different question: why Kleyaat? And why now? Geographically, Kleyaat airport holds undeniable advantages. It has an existing runway, is located in a region desperately in need of development projects, and remains relatively close to the coast and the main road networks. But geography alone does not suffice to define national priorities. When a project of this scale is placed on the table in a state with limited resources, it becomes legitimate to ask whether the economic and strategic feasibility studies have genuinely weighed Kleyaat against other options that have been on the table for years — chief among them Rayak airport in the Bekaa. Rayak's proponents argue that this site would offer Lebanon an aerial gateway in the depth of the territory, removed from the coastline and the northern borders, and more naturally oriented toward the Arab hinterland. The Bekaa also forms a geographical hub connecting north to south and east to west, which would give any airport built in this region a national dimension capable of transcending regional considerations. On the other side, Kleyaat's advocates maintain that Lebanon does not merely need additional airport infrastructure, but a development project capable of breathing new life into a region weakened by decades of marginalization. The debate then shifts from an economic question to a political one: is the airport conceived to serve air transport, or to restore a development balance between the regions? The problem is that the Lebanese state has yet to offer a clear vision that answers this question. Airports are not simply runways, but components of a national strategy for transport, economy and investment. When countries that succeed build new airports, they do so within an integrated network encompassing ports, highways, industrial zones, logistics platforms and regional development plans. In Lebanon, the debate sometimes gives the impression of turning around the airport while setting aside everything that surrounds it. The question of the project's timing equally raises legitimate concerns. Lebanon today is not merely facing a transport crisis or congestion at Beirut airport, but a financial and structural crisis of rare depth. Public debt is heavy, foreign investment remains timid, and the major economic reforms are still stalled. In this context, the question is no longer only whether Lebanon needs a second airport, but whether this project represents the most urgent priority when set against the files of electricity, water, public transport and reconstruction. This is not to say the project is unnecessary. On the contrary, it may well figure among the most important strategic undertakings Lebanon will need over the coming decade. But its success will not be determined by the decision to resume operations: it will depend on its capacity to integrate into a comprehensive economic vision. This is where the core difficulty lies. Lebanon has a long history of projects conceived more as political symbols than as economic instruments. Competition between regions, confessions and political forces has more often than not taken precedence over purely technical and economic debate. It is therefore necessary, today, to ask the question plainly: did the choice of Kleyaat prevail because it is the best option for the country, or because it is the most compatible with the political balances currently in place? Kleyaat may indeed be the right project. And Rayak, or another site, could prove more relevant over the long term. But the real problem lies not in the name of the location — it lies in the absence of a serious national debate on the criteria of choice themselves. Countries do not build their airports on the basis of internal geopolitics alone, nor on balanced regional development alone, nor from isolated security considerations. They do so on the basis of a coherent vision that defines where Lebanon intends to stand economically in twenty or thirty years. This is why the debate around Kleyaat should not be confined to the number of flights, the volume of investments or the jobs expected. It is, in its deepest nature, a debate about the way Lebanon makes its decisions. Are major projects still built according to the logic of political balances and communal power-sharing, or has the country finally begun to embrace strategic planning?

When Hezbollah, or those orbiting within its sphere, are questioned about their practice of recruiting children — a category that UNICEF defines precisely, through the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as any human being under the age of eighteen — the answer invariably moves between a few registers: they claim the children want it themselves, that they are mature enough, or that it is perfectly normal and consistent with the practice of every revolution in history. A rosary of references then unspools, carrying us back several centuries. We find ourselves, at once, mired in countless fallacies. To begin with, the definition of age categories is not a fixed datum: it shifts across eras. It is worth consulting Ariès’s encyclopedic work on childhood in particular, and the Annales School more broadly. Childhood as a concept did not exist in the Middle Ages; the child was treated as a small adult. There was no clear boundary between the world of children and the world of adults — not in upbringing, not in clothing, not in play. Early integration into the adult world was the norm, and it was within that framework that their enlistment in wars was considered “acceptable.” But norms and concepts transform over time, which means that what was once held to be “natural” may become morally and legally inadmissible in another era. We know well that child labor was commonplace during the Industrial Revolution, and that it persists today in the most impoverished countries. Yet this has not prevented the international recognition of children’s rights and their need for protection and care on every level — educational, medical, and psychological — so as to support children in growing and flourishing in a healthy way. History itself thus demonstrates that societies abandon practices they once considered “normal.” It is within this logic that UNICEF made its legal determination, through the Convention on the Rights of the Child: every human being under the age of eighteen is a child. This is not a cultural opinion open to interpretation, but an international standard and a legal rule that imposes binding obligations, and underpins the policies of states and organizations alike. As for the argument drawn from revolutions, it is no less fallacious. Revolutions did indeed use children, but child labor was also acceptable at the time, the absence of education was unremarkable, slavery was legal, the deprivation of women’s rights was not only widespread but ordinary, and systematic violence was equally the norm. Does any of this make these things acceptable today? Of course not. There is another fallacy into which they sink: measuring the present by the standards of the past — a practice they extend, moreover, to every domain — while simultaneously availing themselves of the most advanced products of modern technology, from drones to digital media to smartphones, which we know facilitated the pager operation whose consequences are by now well known. One cannot live by the technology of the twenty-first century and justify one’s social practices by the standards of the Middle Ages. What they are actually doing is a redefinition of childhood: they drain the word of its contemporary meaning and replace it with an elastic definition — “aware,” “ready,” “mature” — in the service of policies dictated by their employer, Iran. They dismantle the definition of childhood in order to reconstruct it according to their needs. They convert the child from a “subject of protection” into an “instrument of conflict,” in direct contradiction and violation of developmental psychology, international law, and the whole of contemporary ethics. To invoke historical practices in order to justify the recruitment of children today is to deliberately ignore the evolution of human values and standards — just as one cannot justify slavery, child labor, or the oppression of women by arguing that they were once widespread. The existence of something in the past confers no legitimacy upon it in the present; otherwise, we would have to accept slavery and the dispossession of women of their rights. The problem does not lie in history itself, but in the attempt to instrumentalize it in order to justify what is no longer tolerable today. Everything they do amounts not to any kind of “fidelity to origins,” but to utilitarian selectivity and the projection of rules onto a reality governed by entirely different rules — in other words, they mix distinct normative frameworks in a manner that appears arbitrary but is in fact systematically calculated. One cannot live by the technology of the twenty-first century and justify one’s conduct by the standards of the Middle Ages. And if a concept has evolved, one cannot regress to earlier stages to legitimize the practices of today. What is actually happening is the stripping away of the child’s legal minority, his transformation into a “little fighter,” on the pretext that he is sufficiently “aware” of what he is doing — and it is precisely this mechanism that deprives him of the legal protection to which he is entitled. These same actors invoke international law when it serves them, and ignore it when it does not. They appeal to it when speaking of the rights of peoples, of aggression, of sovereignty… This is not a principled stance, but an instrumental use of norms, which we might name plainly: normative selectivity, or utilitarian double standards, exercised through the manipulation of concepts. The question is not what happened in the past, but what standards we adopt today, and whether we apply them consistently or use them selectively according to the interest of the moment — invoked when they serve the position, set aside when they do not, with the fundamental concepts redefined as needs require.

The Middle East is sinking into wars and upheavals that show every sign of worsening, more malevolent than at any previous moment. This alone is reason enough to devise solutions that might allow the world to escape its predicament — through diplomacy, through acting with sound judgment freed from instinctive reflexes, through demonstrating the limits of military power, or through some combination of these factors — including by curbing the defiance of laws and the recklessness that now prevails in the conduct of war, under what might be called the “law of the authority of the killing machine.” Wars, assassinations and strikes may achieve military objectives, but they far more often serve as media spectacle, generating effects that run counter to those intended. The ideological and nationalist systems of the region rarely collapse under external pressure alone; they tend instead to reconstitute their cohesion by invoking narratives of threat, siege and resistance to anything new. Assassinations carried out in excess belong not only to the technological realm — they are political operations inseparable from the relationship to human beings, to peoples and to history, and they do not necessarily liberate the region from its convictions. Historical precedents consistently suggest that the fall of totalitarian regimes rarely comes about through direct external strikes. Dismantling the environment that sustains them is a far deeper process, and one that is generally underestimated. What begins as a surgically precise news event evolves into escalation, destabilization and identity alliances more powerful than before. Strikes may yield tactical success, but they become a strategic problem when they kindle a fiercer nationalism and a bloodier violence. Killing a leader such as Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei would mark a moment of rupture for the Middle East, and for global Islamism as well, after four decades of absolute power and a theocracy hypermilitarized by the Revolutionary Guards — opening onto social violence, chaos and pressure within a country like Iran, one that has equipped itself precisely to absorb shocks, monitor its environment and manage risk. The United States and Israel took the gamble of a “decapitation” operation against this eighty-six-year-old man. Beyond the act itself, history illuminates the danger of such an approach when it fails to wager on the mobilization of civil society and on social change within closed regimes. Bombardments can kill or neutralize enemy leaders and condense wars into days, or prosecute several wars at once, but they rest on the assumption that “cutting off the head” brings down the entire structure — whereas Franco’s regime fell with his death, while the deaths of Stalin and Mao did not immediately dissolve the systems they had built. This is the trap of the contemporary war machine: it kills individuals, it compresses conflicts rather than resolving them, it weakens regimes without definitively toppling them in societies with a strong doctrinal imprint and a more insurrectionary internal character, as the Middle East and Africa both attest. The conflict with the outside world is distorted by the fusion of identity with martyrdom — as seen in Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran’s leadership — and escalation takes on an ever-wider political dimension. The circle of vengeance and reprisal expands, anchored in a composite institutional and ideological architecture that weaves together religion, politics and society. External elimination within these structures becomes a factor of internal mobilization, liable to reinforce the political framework rather than impel any deep reorientation toward ending the regime. Conflict mutates into a quasi-permanent cycle of violence, accompanied by a steady rise in the capacities for fortification, adaptation and renewal, while the wager on internal transformations — which presuppose complex political, social and economic conditions — gradually fades. Diplomatic negotiations grow longer and less fruitful, and extended war becomes inevitable — all the more so since the Iranians believed they could buy time by redoubling their arguments for endurance, at the cost of their own people’s lives and wellbeing. For his part, Donald Trump overestimates his capacity to carry messages, his ambitions ranging across ceremonial halls — from the Arc de Triomphe to the Kennedy Center — through to the most serious political stakes: inflation, reforms stalled before the courts, public discontent in the months before the midterm elections, and even the international balance of power, from his war against Iran to his diplomacy toward Russia and China. Nothing is going as he wishes in bending what remains of the Guide’s regime to obedience, while Israel relentlessly pursues the opportunity it has long awaited in its endless expansionist war. America finds itself in a situation strikingly similar to that of 2003. Once again, a Republican president wages a war of regime change; once again, the target is a dictatorship within an American equation of control. But this is also the equation that kills people in fishing boats in the Caribbean without evidence or legal process, that imprisons and isolates the Venezuelan president, that threatens Cuba and Mexico, that eliminates the Iranian Supreme Guide — whatever one may say about his record in crushing popular uprisings. And the world has not forgotten how George W. Bush described the invasion of Iraq as “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” nor how he envisioned, in his grand designs, the export of democracy to Afghanistan. There is a singular irony here: Donald Trump, elected by a constituency persuaded by the “America First” banner in a strict isolationist logic during his two successful campaigns of 2016 and 2024, is redoubling foreign interventions and returning to war, premised on assumptions about an Iranian nuclear program that was on the verge of becoming dangerous. Yet tactical success is transformed into making “James Bond” more technological, in the dimension of interference in Venezuela. The phase shift that great military powers can bring about by eliminating foreign leaders with precision is not technological in nature but political. It may well fail to settle the matters at hand or simply erase power, redistributing it instead and turning into a problem in its own right — as the attempted assassinations of Muammar Gaddafi in 1986, of Saddam Hussein in the nineteen-nineties, or of Dzhokhar Dudayev, the leader of the Chechen separatist movement, all demonstrate. Escalation options then take shape that cross a threshold into something else entirely. The assassination of Hassan Nasrallah did not annihilate the resistance as a whole, nor did that of Dudayev, nor those of the historic leaders of Fatah and Hamas: on the contrary, these eliminations ignited the movements in forms more violent and more destructive than before. Things shift toward leaderships less constrained by diplomacy, more disposed toward escalation and violence, with an emotional intensity that sharpens — none of which achieves absolute control, and all of which corrupts it. Afghanistan lived under the Taliban’s theocracy, and America decided to subdue it and drag it into the modern era, imagining a future where girls could go to school, grow up, find employment, stand for public office and dress as they chose, with equal rights. And what came of it? The conclusion is inescapable: war does not succeed in making a country democratic; only a country and its own citizens can accomplish that, from within. It is probable that power is what matters above all to Trump, who will strike deals with whoever holds it — whether religious clerics, socialists in Venezuela, communists in Havana or authoritarian rulers in Iran. He is almost committed to seeking allies without real weight, as is the case with Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela. Iran is not Iraq in 2003, and appears capable of asymmetric retaliation against the painful American-Israeli strikes, as well as against those attacks carried out against the Arab Gulf states, unjustified by any reasonable reckoning. All of this risks leading as well to contradictory diminishing returns, and this war may prove far darker and far longer — a war of attrition for the countries of the region — while the world begins to adapt and accommodate itself to its economic repercussions, rather than focusing the political attention that the West wished to direct toward Asia. Factoring in risks ordinarily accounts for half of any calculation, without sufficient assessment of the scale of damage as to their consequences. There is no doubt that Iran’s vexatory political conduct has caused immense harm to the lives of Iranians and the peoples of the region over half a century, provoking regression and a manifest indifference to the needs of populations in the building of any future. The strategic errors lie in an evil to which no one any longer responds — that of striking a Gulf region that was attempting to accomplish its own modernity. And the greatest challenge remains avoiding the worst in the many wars that the world does not know how to close.

When I recalled the substance of George Orwell's 1984 and Albert Camus's The Stranger , I sensed a certain thread connecting their respective descriptions of the instrument of control — or rather the general framework of domination — and what has been unfolding in Lebanon, particularly in recent years, since power consolidated itself in Hezbollah's hands and under its command. There is a strange convergence between the worlds of Orwell and Camus, despite their apparent differences: the world of external oppression in Orwell, and the world of absurdity and existential detachment in Camus. In Orwell, the individual is subject to absolute external surveillance. Big Brother does not merely monitor behaviour; he attempts to seize control of consciousness itself. The objective is not simply compliance, but the erasure of any possibility of internal dissent. Freedom is threatened from without, and the individual — Winston — seeks to reclaim his own selfhood through rebellion. In Camus, the situation is almost reversed. No visible totalitarian authority watches over the hero Meursault. The problem is not external surveillance but inner emptiness. Meursault does not “rebel” because he simply sees nothing worth opposing. And yet society will not tolerate this neutrality: it puts him on trial not only for his crime, but for his failure of emotional conformity, for not having wept at his mother's funeral. In 1984 , society imposes total surveillance and the individual attempts to escape it in order to recover his humanity. In The Stranger , the individual does not spontaneously submit to established norms, and society exercises a retroactive surveillance over him to bring him back to “proper behaviour”. In other words, Orwell describes a society that pre-empts dissent, while Camus describes a society that punishes it after it has appeared. Oppression in Orwell is political and institutional; in Camus, it is moral and social. In Orwell's world, the individual cannot “stray” from the norm, because surveillance is both pre-emptive and total. And if he does stray — as Winston does — he will be entirely reformatted, compelled to love the very power that crushes him. This “restoration” is all the more terrifying in that it does not consist of a return to ordinary behaviour, but of a re-creation of the human being from within. In both works, society cannot bear any deviation from the “model”, and so it exercises a surveillance whose ultimate aim is to return the individual to the norm, either through coercive persuasion — Camus — or through complete reprogramming — Orwell. In Camus, the norm is moral and social, and what is demanded is that one feel as one should. In Orwell, the norm is political and ideological, and what is demanded is that one think as one should. Both worlds articulate something deeply unsettling: the problem lies not only in behaviour, but in the fact that society aspires to unify the human interior itself — feelings or thoughts. Meursault is condemned because he does not feel as he should; Winston is broken because he does not think as he should. If we now replace the word “society” with “Hezbollah”, do we not discover that this party has accomplished the form of oppression Orwell describes in 1984 , while treating all its partisans and defenders in the manner that “society” treats Meursault in Camus's novel? Applied to Hezbollah, this analytical framework reveals that the party proceeded to a recomposition of collective consciousness — through persuasion, identity and narrative — in a register close to the “symbolic Orwell”, while resorting to direct punishment in the face of refusal, which belongs rather to the “concrete Camus”. It even added a religious dimension to its surveillance, that of accusations of apostasy and rupture with the faith. And its surveillance of socio-moral behaviour resembles what one finds in Camus: it extends to prohibiting the expression of certain forms of grief, since “the martyr ascended to heaven in joy”. What is more redoubtable than death is to be reformatted to the point of no longer perceiving oneself as distinct from the power or the community. It is precisely here that Orwell and Camus converge in the method Hezbollah has practised: the first by expressing the shattering of interiority, the second by expressing the punishment of those who refuse to inscribe themselves within “the prescribed framework” through the culture of sahsouh (Tr.'s note: a Lebanese term denoting the punishment inflicted on anyone who dares to express an opinion contrary to the forces in power). One understands from this that Hezbollah's domination over a large part of the Shia community, and over essential levers of the Lebanese state, was not the result of a single simple factor, and cannot be explained by military force alone or by popular legitimacy alone. What occurred is the fruit of a complex historical accumulation combining violence, identity framing and the internal recomposition of society. To understand this trajectory, three solidly interconnected mechanisms must be examined. First: Coercion — the founding of power and the imposition of accomplished facts In the nineteen-eighties, within the context of the Lebanese civil war, the confrontation was not merely political: it was a struggle for existence and hegemony within the community itself. This period was marked by the liquidation or removal of intellectual and militant currents — Hassan Hamdan, Hussein Mrouwa and others, including among the resistance fighters, of communist, leftist or liberal allegiance. Confrontations also set Hezbollah against other Shia forces, notably the Amal movement in what became known as the “war of the brothers”. Hezbollah resorted to violence, kidnappings and direct deterrence against the Lebanese environment as well as foreigners — bombings of embassies, taking of hostages. And it imposed certain modes of behaviour by force or by threat across various communities. This means that Hezbollah did not emerge in an environment of “free adherence”, but in one that had been partially reconfigured by constraint. We are here confronted with what might be called the foundational Orwellian phase, where boundaries are first imposed before legitimacy is constructed. Second: Social control, or the transformation of coercion into “natural behaviour” After the consolidation of hegemony, the most decisive mutation took place: it was no longer a matter of controlling alone, but of recomposing society from within. This process was accomplished through the imposition of religious, social and cultural behavioural norms, through an attempt to impose the veil by threats of disfigurement with acid, and subsequently through material incentivisation — sums of money paid in exchange for wearing it. A sharp binary was then constructed between “resistant” and “traitor”, between “conformist” and “deviant”, and an intense social pressure was brought to bear on those who diverged, ranging from reputational damage to ostracism and accusations of treachery. At this stage, oppression was no longer always direct: it had become diffuse, integrated into the social body itself. Society had begun to monitor its own members. It is here that one encounters the Camusian logic: the individual is not sanctioned merely for what he does, but for his refusal to conform to the collective model. Third: The construction of the framework that produces conviction and identity The most decisive step in the success of this model was the construction of a powerful narrative capable of giving meaning to everything that had preceded it. This narrative rested on the idea of resistance and dignity, on the protection of the community against external threats, on the valorisation of sacrifice, suffering and martyrdom, and on the fusion of the religious with the political and the identitarian. In parallel, networks of social services were built, along with educational, health and cultural institutions, and an architecture of internal solidarity, visible in the multiplication of religious occasions and the creation of rites and customs largely imported from Iran. It was then that the decisive mutation was accomplished: the passage from a subjected society to a convinced one — at least in part. It is in Erich Fromm that one finds the explanation of this behaviour: the human being does not only flee oppression; he sometimes chooses conformity because it grants him a sense of security and belonging to the community. Fourth: Recourse to political coercion and repression Despite the success of social control and the construction of a body of convictions, political coercion remained present at moments of crisis. It manifested through decisive internal events such as those of 2008, through a climate of assassinations and political deterrence stretching from the martyrdom of Rafic Hariri to that of Lokman Slim, and through the entrenchment of uncrossable red lines — the Doha accords, the blocking third, the black shirts. These moments fulfil a fundamental function: the permanent reminder that force remains present. The balance is thus maintained between conviction on one side and fear on the other. Fifth: How did the “apparent consent” take shape? What resembles “consent” within this environment cannot be simplified: it is the result of an interweaving of complex factors. Genuine conviction in one part of the population, adaptation in another, fear or silence in others still, and the absence of credible alternatives completing the picture. “Consent” is in reality a composite structure, and not a single unified position. At the end of this long trajectory, we find ourselves in a situation where the party dominates no longer through force alone, but through the identity and the framework by which the individual understands himself, his suffering and his choices, perceiving them as logical, legitimate and meaningful. Society then participates partially in reproducing this hegemony by itself. Control thus ceases to be solely external and becomes internal as well. What of today? But recent transformations, under the pressure of regional events and external violence, have brought to the surface a gap between the narrative and reality, interior questionings that remain for the most part silent, and undeclared reassessments. Against this, the external danger continues to tighten cohesion, and social pressure prevents open explosion. We are therefore living today through a phase of silent trembling, without any clear or definitive transformation on the horizon.

What would an indicted or accused person not do to save his own skin? Brought before a court of law for crimes against humanity or war crimes, what would a former Syrian mukhabarat officer not say if called upon to answer for his misdeeds? The Fingernails Torn from the Children of Daraa The first defendant to appear before the “Damascus Trials” was Atef Najib. We followed his testimony on social media: he answered the Criminal Court’s questions in a cold and detached tone, as though he had no concern for the fate of the teenagers whom he had consigned to the worst forms of torment. To be sure, he acknowledged the facts for what they were: around fifteen schoolboys who had scribbled anti-Assad slogans on the walls of their school had been detained for more than a month and subjected to severe abuse, including beatings and the tearing out of their fingernails. That said, Atef Najib vehemently denied any direct or personal involvement in the inhumane treatment inflicted upon these young people. To extricate himself, he invoked the responsibility of other agencies charged with repression. In essence, the torture suffered by these schoolchildren was not, he claimed, the result of his own initiative but rather of a broader “chain of command.” In effect, he was saying: what could I do if that was how the Syrian security services functioned collectively and hierarchically? Shifting Responsibility: A Recurring Defense Mechanism Deflecting blame onto a “higher or diffuse authority,” or onto the system itself, is a classic maneuver used to exonerate oneself or dilute personal culpability. Yet international courts are well aware of this recurring defense strategy, which seeks to place responsibility on the hierarchy. Nevertheless, by invoking—rightly or wrongly—the instructions he allegedly received, Atef Najib effectively called upon the highest levels of the state, where decision-making power resided, to assume responsibility. Ultimately, the issue will arise even more sharply when General Khardal Ayoub appears in court, given his alleged involvement in the chemical attack on Eastern Ghouta in 2013. The Yamashita Standard In international criminal law, command responsibility is also known as the Yamashita standard, named after the Japanese general who was prosecuted and executed for crimes committed by troops under his command during the Second World War. Military leaders have a duty to supervise and restrain their forces. This is by no means a recent concept: it was established by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and has since been continually updated and reaffirmed. To exculpate himself, the deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad cannot plausibly argue that he was unaware of a chemical weapons attack launched by subordinates, whether generals or ordinary soldiers, nor that he had issued no specific instructions to that effect. Under the aforementioned doctrine, as commander-in-chief he bears criminal responsibility whenever “he knew—or should have known—that crimes were being committed and failed to take the necessary measures to prevent them or punish those responsible.” Edgar Morin and Repentance Edgar Morin, the sociologist and anti-Nazi activist, has recently passed away. A Sephardic Jew, he did not advocate revenge against the “architects of the Final Solution.” His deeply humanistic outlook is revealed in a text devoted to the memory of the Holocaust, in which he wrote: “I am among those who await the repentance of the wicked. I am among those who have never confined a man who has committed a crime within the all-encompassing concept of ‘criminal.’” Yet granting forgiveness does not mean consenting to oblivion or concealment. Justice must first be done. It would not be equitable if, in Syria, only Atef Najib and Khardal Dayoub were made to pay the price in place of fugitives sheltering in Moscow. Transitional justice is indeed a prerequisite for national reconciliation. But there can be no true justice so long as Bashar, Maher, and the members of the Syrian high command have not appeared before courts of law—and so long as they have not stood in the dock to hear the verdict condemning them.

One increasingly hears voices lamenting their fate: why were we born in this corner of the world? For Lebanon's geographical position has placed it, today, in a situation that few would envy. Geography is not a blind destiny, and yet it constitutes a rigid framework that delimits the field of the possible and narrows the margin for error. In geopolitics, as Robert D. Kaplan reminds us in The Revenge of Geography , geography does not dissolve behind slogans; it reasserts itself whenever states choose to ignore it, and most acutely for small states situated on fault lines. Lebanon is one of them, caught between two powerful neighbours: one a vast military garrison housing one of the largest armies in the world, backed by the United States, and one that we helped restore to its occupation of Lebanon; the other having already exercised prolonged domination and a heavy-handed tutelage over Lebanon under the authoritarian Assad regime. Lebanon thus constitutes a glaring example of a country in which geographical position plays a decisive role. Its situation between Israel to the south and Syria to the east and north, along an open Mediterranean coastline, made it historically a space of transit and exchange rather than an arena of confrontation. Michel Chiha grasped this singularity early on: the narrowness of the coast, the elevation of the mountain and the absence of continental strategic depth push the Lebanese toward the sea — that is, toward trade, openness and mediation — rather than toward wars and conflicts. Our Phoenician history bears witness to this. In this sense, Lebanese geography was never designed for a military role, but for an economic and civilisational one. The dangerous turn came when Lebanon deviated from this vocation and allowed itself to be drawn gradually into regional conflicts that exceeded its capacities, transforming itself from a space of equilibrium into a theatre of confrontation. In this context, invoking a "curse of geography" amounts to a misreading of the situation. The problem does not lie in the position itself, but in the manner in which it is used. The geography that could have been a source of prosperity — as it was during a certain modern period — became a source of danger the moment it was used as a platform for other people's conflicts, and the moment the state lost its monopoly over the decision of war and peace. It is here that the Lebanese situation converges with a historical transformation that Alexis de Tocqueville had identified in Democracy in America . In the era of empires, small entities were easily absorbed; but with the emergence of concepts of sovereignty and the rights of peoples, and then with the appearance of an international order embodied in the United Nations, it became possible in principle to protect small states through legal rules and international resolutions. This transformation, however significant, did not abolish the logic of force; it reconfigured it. International law confers legitimacy but does not guarantee protection automatically. Small states are preserved not by texts alone, but when their stability becomes part of the interests of greater powers. This is why Lebanon's crisis appears in all its complexity: Lebanon enjoys full international recognition of its sovereignty, yet lacks the internal and external conditions that would render that sovereignty defensible. Foreign interference, direct and indirect, could not have succeeded without the internal fragility that made it possible — confessional sensitivities, a divided sovereign decision, the allegiance of certain local forces to regional axes — all of this within the context of an open conflict between Iran and Israel that is conducted in part on Lebanese soil. In this configuration, geography becomes a fatal vulnerability. A small state, geographically open, cannot afford a duality of decision, nor can it simultaneously be a party to a conflict and an entity seeking protection from it. The solution does not lie in denying geography, but in managing it with clear-eyed realism. And this requires a redefinition of Lebanon's vocation: from theatre of conflict to space of equilibrium, from instrument of external axes to a society in pursuit of common interest. Neutrality, in this perspective, is not a moral slogan but a conditional strategic choice. The experience of countries such as Switzerland and Austria has shown that neutrality rests upon three inseparable elements: a solid internal consensus, a unified national defence capability, and explicit international guarantees. Without these, neutrality becomes a vacuum that outside powers will not hesitate to exploit. Lebanon stands today at a crossroads: either it remains captive to its position as a front line, or it repositions itself as an entity whose stability proves indispensable to all. This requires recovering sovereign decision-making, unifying the security framework, and anchoring the country's stability to economic, regional and international interests that would make any destabilisation costly for all parties concerned. Lebanon's maritime facade could have meant trade, services and financial influence — as it did during the nineteen-sixties and the early seventies. Instead, it has become a country besieged, threatening and threatened, exposed to blows from all directions. Lebanon cannot change its geography, but it can change its position within that geography. And it is only there that geography ceases to be an imposed destiny and becomes a choice managed in the service of the national interest. One fundamental question remains: can Lebanon obtain an "international guarantee" that protects its neutrality without that neutrality becoming a form of tutelage? And what do we mean by "international guarantee"? Not a new mandate, nor foreign administration or dispossession of sovereignty, but an internationally recognised neutralisation and a collective commitment to refrain from using Lebanon as a battleground — which amounts to making Lebanese neutrality a common interest to which all parties subscribe. The evolution of the international environment lends credence to this model: the great powers no longer want permanent flashpoints in the Middle East; the Arab states are turning toward development, favouring de-escalation and reducing disorder; Europe, for its part, needs stability in the Middle East. All of this opens a window of opportunity for Lebanon to seize. The time has come for Lebanon to exit the cycle of conflicts, for the decision of war and peace to rest exclusively with the state, for it to serve as no axis's instrument, and for it to make its stability an interest for all rather than a burden on everyone. For our economy, our schools, the future of our children are not bargaining chips. We refuse to be instrumentalised — from whatever direction that instrumentalisation may come.

We all see it: the world is becoming increasingly brutal, as if devoid of faith or law. Even if the wars in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, Syria, Sudan, and Iran are not fundamentally more violent than those of the 20th century, what strikes the observer is the complete lack of inhibition among protagonists in their use of force. None of the actors involved seeks to burden themselves with moral or legal justifications beyond mere formality. This absence of pretense illustrates the predatory logic that now prevails everywhere. It seems that the only question that matters is: how to gain advantage or avoid losing too much with these new rules of the game? As Donald Trump claims with his talent for sensing the zeitgeist: "No more mister nice guy." For European nations, educated in propriety and respect for rules, the shock is severe. How do they adapt to this brutalization? Reject it at the risk of becoming prey and disappearing geopolitically, or join the predators at the risk of losing their soul and disappearing culturally? The Rafale multirole fighter and the Charles-de-Gaulle aircraft carrier give France technological and military autonomy. (AFP) For Europe, this new world takes the form of a difficult awakening that catches it off guard. Since 1945, after three Franco-German wars in three generations, including two world wars and the Holocaust, Europeans, horrified by this self-destruction, had decided in principle to renounce state violence among themselves. They thus completed an intellectual and political evolution initiated three centuries earlier, following the terrifying religious wars that had also devastated the continent for decades. Modern Europe thus rebuilt itself in the middle of the 20th century around a triptych later described as post-historical: the marginalization of religious matters, the delegitimization of nationalism, and the replacement of power relations by norms, law, and the market. The European Union, as a political construct, was the fruit of this evolution. The objective was achieved. Europeans, weary and afflicted by their guilt and sense of failure, succeeded in eradicating civil war on their continent and gradually abandoned the principle of resorting to violence. The fall of the USSR This "principled pacifism" was not, however, self-evident in the decades after the war when the Soviet threat was consolidating in Western Europe. The dilemma was resolved thanks to protection provided by the United States, which, in addition to its economic, industrial, and military power, was not affected by the repulsion toward war that had spread across the Old Continent. On the contrary, the majority of the American population, removed from European troubles, maintained throughout the century the sense of being a dynamic nation, morally intact and convinced of belonging to the side of good, which authorized them to contemplate the use of force without inhibition. This confidence and lack of inhibition were among the driving forces that allowed them to become "the" Western superpower since 1945 and, from the 1990s onward, the global hyperpower with no real competitor. The fall of the USSR reinforced both transatlantic partners in their respective approaches. Europeans, seeing their last threat disappear, convinced themselves that they had definitively entered a new era where state violence would become residual and eventually superfluous. Americans, for their part, saw in it the righteousness of their imperial model and the interest in extending it. Globalization thus became an opportunity for Washington to promote its hegemony founded on commerce, rules, and the American model. This post-Cold War period was, however, marked by a harmful ambiguity. The term 'Western' indeed encompassed two antagonistic visions: the promotion, on one hand, of a universalist and pacifist European model, and the reality, on the other hand, of an international system controlled by a state that was moving away from Europe and had retained a taste for force. Europeans, ill at ease, preferred to let things happen because it was the price of their peace. French isolation during the 2003 Iraq War illustrated this. Outside Europe, resistance to the empire was not long in coming. First, because this indifferentiation of societies creates unstable equilibrium and remains a source of mimetic violence, as René Girard so aptly identified. Second, because the tools of economic and military power have spread everywhere, allowing the 'small' to stand up to the 'great'. Finally, because the American hegemon could not resist the temptation to impose its rule and the defense of its interests by force. Globalization, which was supposed to be integrative and pacifying, thus led to globalized fragmentation and generated revisionist powers, both large and small, everywhere. Return of identities, alternative models, and national interests. Also a return to the use of military force both because the European framework is crumbling and because military capabilities are now dispersed. If this surge in contestation and conflict is a challenge for the United States, they are ready for it because it is a logic they have never abandoned. Europeans are less comfortable with it. They had renounced power dynamics, they disarmed themselves intellectually, materially, and morally even as they are the target of the United States and their competitors from the East and South for whom they represent the ideal target: wealthy, indifferent, idle, old, weak, cowardly, and sanctimonious. Being at the table and not on the menu We Europeans are thus waking up in a world that is not ours. Confronted with antagonism and vulnerability, we are beginning to realize that our neighbors wish us ill and could succeed. What to do? The temptation to go back to sleep, to protest, or to seek a protector exists, but will quickly run up against the misfortunes that befall the vanquished and the subjugated. In the world that is coming, marked by scarcity and predation, defeat and subjugation will bring their share of suffering. This is why we see hardening positions everywhere. Tit for tat, seizing psychological advantage, striking first, threatening devastating retaliation… Many are doing so or preparing to do so in their own way. Europe cannot escape the overhaul of its software for managing international relations; its survival depends on it. It must rearm itself, conceptually, materially, and above all psychologically, to be stronger and more credible, to be at the table and not on the menu. Europe must become a power again, which requires considerable strengthening of the states that compose it, because European strength cannot be created by adding up the weakness of each. France has much to do on this subject. Soft power But once this power is recovered, must Europe become predatory to have weight among predators? It is not in its interest to do so. Europe has long benefited from a strategic advantage tied to the attractive force of its cultural model, which is more peaceful than elsewhere. This singularity is not by accident. It is the fruit of history and its sufferings. Because it has experienced the horrors of war in its very flesh, it has developed a specific approach built on listening, respect, and compromise. This software worked wonders in bringing peace to the continent. It failed elsewhere because it was not backed by sufficient power. While the United States plunges into a vicious cycle of military escalation, 'without mercy and without compassion,' to use the words of its secretary of state for war, following the example of Russian, Israeli, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Iranian leaders, Hamas or Hezbollah, among so many others, there is another path for Europe and for France. The United States announced a dramatic reduction in its military presence in Germany, which hosts the largest American air base in Europe, Ramstein. (AFP) If they decide to re-engage in the game of powers and provide themselves with the means to do so, they could then make heard the credible voice of an 'Old Continent,' to borrow the phrase from Dominique de Villepin that struck a chord during the Iraq War. France and Europe are therefore not forced to choose between pacifism and warmongering. They could combine the power of force—economic, military, and moral—with the power of their model, the famous soft power theorized under the Clinton administration by Joseph Nye, which the United States is turning away from. We must therefore undertake a twofold movement, apparently contradictory. First, we must rebuild genuine power, a hard power, to have weight and be feared. The budgetary and societal efforts this requires mean that, since we live in a democracy, we must secure the support of our populations and thus rebuild cohesion within our political communities, both national and European. This cohesion, which could seem unnecessary in a post-national world without borders managed by the simple market, becomes essential in an era of the return of geopolitics. We must thus rediscover what defines our identities, national and European, identify our interests, recognize those of others, and restore the ability to inspire fear in order to defend just values and causes. Because, and this is the second movement, this recovered power must not cause us to fall back into the suicidal hubris that characterized Europe a century ago and which is returning from all sides. It must accompany the promotion of rejection of blind force, blackmail, and predation, and make the pursuit of peace through just and lasting compromises a goal. Power will give credibility to this strategy, which must combine realism and pacifism. Because Europe will be strong and therefore respected, its reassured population will not be tempted to escalate aggression, and its interlocutors will not interpret its search for peace as a sign of cowardice. Serene and listened to, Europe will be able to initiate and support the development of a new multilateralism for the 21st century, in resonance with the appeal launched by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in his Davos speech last January. Amid these predators seeking vassals, there is room for strong and benevolent powers that promote a more just order. Europe and France can contribute to this. They would then live up to their legacy. *Pascal Ausseur is Vice-Admiral of the Squadron (2nd rank), Director General of the "Foundation for Strategic Issues Management" (FMES)

The publication of two appeals launched by activists in Tyre and Nabatiyeh, addressed to the Lebanese State calling for the protection of these two ancient cities from the Israeli threat to erase them, for the deployment of the army and security forces within them, and for their designation as open, demilitarised cities, constituted the first public and organised act of resistance from within the Shia milieu. A milieu whose voices calling for the overcoming of fear and the raising of dissent have multiplied in recent times, against those who have confiscated its history, its present, and its future in vengeance for Khamenei. These activists were subjected to a campaign of threats, denunciation, and character assassination that led some to withdraw. I had begun writing this article before these two appeals appeared, in an attempt to understand the mechanisms of Hezbollah's control and its capacity for domination, as well as to grasp the silent resistance of this milieu and the dynamics that sustain its hold. Yet if one were to limit one's understanding of power in partisan milieus to the tools of direct repression alone, one would be overlooking its most operative dimension. As Michel Foucault shows, modern power rests not only on prohibition and punishment, but on the production of individuals who monitor themselves and reshape their behaviour in conformity with the norms imposed upon them. This does not mean, however, that domination is ever fully achieved or stabilised. It is precisely here that James Scott's contribution becomes indispensable, illuminating the other face of the matter: even in the most disciplined milieus, resistance does not disappear ; it assumes hidden, quotidian, undeclared forms. This entanglement manifests with particular clarity in Hezbollah's grip over the entire social and cultural space of its milieu. On one hand, there exists an integrated disciplinary system that operates not only through apparatuses or official discourse, but through the milieu's own internalisation of Hezbollah's norms and its reproduction of them. On the other, one can also discern minute daily practices that betray a silent distance between individuals and these norms, a distance that has grown more pronounced since the current war that Hezbollah itself provoked. According to Foucault, surveillance is effective not because it is comprehensive, but because it is internalised. In watching himself, the individual learns to choose his words, to calibrate his tone, to reconsider what might be understood or misunderstood. This self-censorship becomes, over time, a component of his social formation, without any direct intervention from outside. It transforms into something resembling a "second nature", in which compliance appears to be a personal choice rather than the outcome of external pressure. It is precisely here that the paradox Scott illuminates comes into view. For when individuals are compelled to conform in public, this does not mean they concur inwardly. What develops instead is what he calls the "hidden transcript", a set of attitudes and feelings that find no path into public space, yet circulate within narrow circles or surface in indirect forms. In this context, politics is no longer confined to speeches or demonstrations ; it migrates into the details of everyday life. Silence, for instance, is not always a sign of acquiescence ; it can be a strategy of abstention. Allusive language is not a deficiency of expression but a means of avoiding the cost of plain speech. And even the refusal to participate can be read as a political act, rather than an absence of one. What the conjunction of Foucault and Scott offers is an understanding of the relationship between these two levels. For the system that succeeds in producing disciplined individuals is precisely the one that creates the conditions for "resistance by cunning". The higher the cost of expression, the greater the need for oblique forms of refusal. The deeper the surveillance, the more freighted with meaning the silence becomes. In the milieu under examination, under the pressure of war and continuous Israeli escalation, the behaviour of the "support milieu" reveals a profound transformation in the image taking shape in public space, something that far exceeds mere economic decline or social exhaustion. We are witnessing a mutation in the very relationship between people and the political discourse that purports to represent them. It is here that the intertwining of internalisation and resistance becomes visible. An individual may conform to the public discourse, reproduce its vocabulary, display his belonging, while simultaneously maintaining an interior distance. That distance is not declared, but it surfaces at specific moments: in a passing joke, in an ambiguous remark, in a withheld enthusiasm, or in the absence of a response to a call for mobilisation. And this is where the most formidable form of resistance resides, not the kind that announces itself, but the kind that goes unnoticed. This resistance, however, despite its concealment, does not necessarily imply a radical break or rupture with the dominant power. It tends to remain within the limits of the system, adapting to it as much as opposing it. This is what makes it simultaneously a sign of weakness and of strength: weakness, because it does not translate into visible collective action ; strength, because it reveals the limits of domination. Foucault also reminds us that power is damaged not only by direct opposition, but by internal erosion. When compliance becomes purely formal, when obedience is reduced to performance, power loses a measure of its effectiveness. It may succeed in regulating outward behaviour, but it fails to produce genuine conviction. Within this framework, phenomena such as the absence of response to calls for mobilisation, or the spread of indifference, can be understood not as an absence of politics but as a transformation of its forms. People do not take to the streets, but neither do they engage. They do not protest, but they do not respond either. In the end, this dynamic cannot be reduced to a simple opposition between domination and resistance. What we observe is a continuous intertwining of the two, in which power generates its own forms of rejection, and in which resistance adjusts to the conditions of power rather than confronting it head-on. In this grey zone where silence is not consent and abstention is not neutrality, real politics takes shape, far from the declared discourse. This is how one can understand how a milieu that appears, on the surface, disciplined and cohesive, can carry within itself multiple strata of hesitation, detachment, and silent resistance, imperceptible at first glance, yet leaving their mark with time. It is from this vantage point that the failure to respond to Naim Qassem's calls to take to the streets must be read, not as neutrality, but as a form of silent refusal. People do not announce their opposition, but neither do they confer real legitimacy through participation. It is an intermediate state between obedience and rebellion, a state of suspension, of waiting, and perhaps of reassessment. In this sense, what we are witnessing today is a gradual shift from the "support milieu" to the "exhausted milieu". The support milieu responds, mobilises, engages. The exhausted milieu endures, falls silent, but no longer associates itself. This shift, even if partial or incomplete, carries a profound political significance: the erosion of the capacity for mobilisation. As for the two recent appeals that implored Lebanese State intervention and the withdrawal of arms from Tyre and Nabatiyeh, they mark with clarity and courage the beginnings of a breach in the wall of fear within Hezbollah's own milieu.

The shadow of war and politics — in the Middle East, in Ukraine, under the pressure of an increasingly threatening geopolitics — weighed heavily on the closing ceremony of the Festival's 79th edition. The most remarked-upon political address was that of Andrei Zvyagintsev, whose film Minotaur , a portrait of the Russian invasion of Ukraine seen through the disintegration of a family, was awarded the Grand Prix. The Russian director, living in exile in France, spoke directly to President Vladimir Putin: "Stop this farce. The entire world is waiting for the massacre to end, with millions of men facing each other on either side of the front line, dreaming of nothing but an end to a war that has lost its appeal on both warring sides." His words carried the distant echo of the address that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had delivered from that same stage on 17 May 2022. From meta-fiction to the abyss, there is often only one step — and it was a step the 2026 Cannes Film Festival took by selecting, from among the twenty-two films in competition, six works devoted to war. That cinema, an art form attuned to the pulse of the world, should exert such political force is nothing new. But the complexity of this year's Cannes narrative lies in two competing tensions: on one side, the diversity of perspectives approaching war through historical fidelity and artistic achievement in capturing horror and violence; on the other, the risk that all of this amounts to no more than a glance, with neither tendency necessarily forming a coherent whole in the face of the same reality. The distance was considerable, both aesthetically and philosophically, between Notre salut by Emmanuel Marre — which traces, through the itinerary of a modest employee under Pétain and in all circumstances, the spirit of collaboration — and Moulin by László Nemes, which exalts the testimony of the Resistance fighter Jean Moulin, tortured to death by Klaus Barbie. Fatherland , meanwhile, chooses a third path, pointing to the moral and civilisational catastrophe of the Second World War through Thomas Mann's return to Germany in 1949. It is within this same divide that the presence of actress Julianne Moore at the Festival takes on its meaning, having come during the first week of this 79th edition to receive the Women in Motion award — a distinction that has, over the years, notably honoured Jane Fonda, Viola Davis and Michelle Yeoh. Todd Haynes’s muse expressed clearly defined political positions, recounting how, since childhood, she has lost herself in her libraries, which have become refuges, finding in them a human understanding of the world and those who shape it, whether their fate is tragic or not. Within the sometimes superficial bubble of Los Angeles, Moore strives, with the help of her communications teams, to lend depth to subjects that often remain abstract, even as everything depends on a clear if stifling vision. That same logic brought her the ultimate recognition, the Oscar for Best Actress for Still Alice (2014). "It is the weight of history, and this dream factory that I am proud to contribute to, through commitment against the bearing of arms and against the social chaos in which we live — a chaos that saddens and frightens me within a generally unbalanced geopolitical context," she says. Moore is known for her closeness to the Democrats, while having kept her distance from the most recent political cycle, appearing less frequently alongside Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. She accordingly chose to limit her exposure to the press, preferring, while others gave themselves over to red carpets and premieres, a form of strategic withdrawal from films laden with explosions and bombs, in light of a current world situation she finds "incredibly artificial." It is worth noting the incongruity of the Best Screenplay prize going to Notre salut , a powerful and authentic work on collaboration, all the more so given that director Emmanuel Marre acknowledged that many of its scenes had been improvised. The Jury Prize went to Das geträumte Abenteuer by Valeska Grisebach, a film that divided opinions sharply. The apex was the Best Director prize, which honoured two directors jointly for The Black Ball , a film that traces Spanish history across a century, weaving together the Franco era and homosexuality. In parallel, the world of cinema is distancing itself from more radical voices, following declarations by Maxime Saada, CEO of Canal+. French cinema exhibitors, producers and distributors have expressed their concern at a growing radicalisation of cinematic expression as the presidential election approaches. A petition entitled "Do not turn toward Bolloré" had circulated at the Festival's opening, gathering more than six hundred signatures from cinema professionals. In it they protest against what they perceive as the Breton businessman's grip on the seventh art and his monopolistic ambitions, particularly with regard to cinema financing. With the exception of Adèle Haenel, who has not shot a film in six years, Juliette Binoche, Anna Mouglalis and Swann Arlaud, the vast majority of signatories remain little known within the professional world — some viewing the petition as more of a political front than a professional one — since no one had observed any homogenisation of films or any fascistic grip on the collective imagination through Canal+, including in the left-wing organisations that Bolloré had already dismantled. Many producers nonetheless maintain: "One day, perhaps, we will have to worry about Vincent Bolloré's influence on cinema, the erosion of intellectual and artistic power, and the endgame for cultural progressivism." Whatever the case, and regardless of whether film narratives bear any relation to far-right ideology, the UGC cinemas were not bought by Vincent Bolloré for ideological reasons, but by Maxime Saada, Chairman of Canal+, for industrial ones. "It is a massacre, and it will only get worse," says one distributor — and this Festival may be the last before the far right comes to power, from the perspective of those who defend independence, creativity and democracy. On the cinematic front, everyone may soon be asked to choose their side, between right and left, between solidarity with the human tragedies of the Middle East or refusal to carry them. But more fundamentally still, while French filmmakers battle over Bolloré, the internet giants — YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Disney, Netflix, Meta — are weaving a web that allows them to consolidate their hold over images. This will not be without consequences for the economics of cinema, nor for the diversity of aesthetics, as artificial intelligence makes its way into the world of film, as GAFA companies fund films and series, and as Amazon, at the helm of Prime Video, multiplies its wealth. These same giants simultaneously dominate the advertising market. The "Creator Economy Summit," recently established by the Festival and held for the first time this year, saw the emergence of a new generation of digital creators building vast audiences on platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok — developing, financing and distributing stories with a speed that is now directing them toward long-form narrative and cinema production. This first encounter between two profoundly different worlds — filmmakers and influencers — made it possible to address the major challenges spanning distribution, production, writing, talent management and the fluidity of content diffusion. No GAFAM company or Big Tech firm can afford to ignore the creator economy, whose revenues are expected to exceed 250 billion dollars this year. Cinema is under pressure, and the traditional sector is tearing itself apart. The cultural world risks losing the battle of cinematic narrative, which has nourished itself in part on public money. This is a staggering cultural upheaval, born of an evolution that has unfolded in very different ways, as billionaires proliferate across information channels and a form of ideological totalitarianism imposes itself on cinema — confirming the failure of the "democratisation" of cinematic culture. As for fictional scenarios, social conformity is winning out everywhere.