Politics

The war in Ukraine, triggered by the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, is entering its fifth year. Moscow's offensive initially aimed to overthrow the Ukrainian state in a few days, but it met fierce Ukrainian resistance and massive mobilization by Westerners to help them. The worst conflict on European soil since World War II has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries, while millions of Ukrainian refugees have fled into exile. On the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the conflict's outbreak, Levant Time interviewed Constantin Sigov, philosopher, director of the Centre for European Studies at Mohyla University in Kyiv and of the Dukh i Litera (Spirit and Letter) publishing house.

The Mexican army has killed Nemesio Oseguera “El Mencho”, leader of the Jalisco Cartel and Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficker, wanted by the United States with a $15 million reward. Analysis with Dr. Edgar Guerra, jurist Emiliano Alba, and Levant Time correspondents, Maxime Pluvinet and Miroslava Salazar. The Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection Omar García Harfouch (of Lebanese origin), accompanied by Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico, during a press conference following the death of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho”, leader of the Jalisco cartel. (Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto via AFP)

By February 2026, the temperature in the Persian Gulf is approaching a boiling point. The U.S. Fifth Fleet has completed a military buildup rarely seen since the Cold War. Strategic bomber wings rotate through forward bases. Tel Aviv experiences intermittent GPS signal jamming. News feeds oscillate between predictions of “World War III” and dramatic narratives of a “Sino-Russian alliance defending Tehran to the death.” The world is staring at radar screens, waiting for ignition. Yet if we strip away the ideological noise, the confrontation deserves to be analyzed through a far more sober framework: game theory.

We could have mourned her passing as one mourns a beloved friend, and suffered as one suffers when death severs a part of a shared life: a friendship, a brotherhood, a family. She might also — and perhaps it would have been the easier path — have spent her life in sheltered comfort, protected from the hardships of origin and the harshness of destiny. She was the daughter of a noble and prosperous household, heir to a legacy that allowed her to lean upon inherited security and remain beneath the shade of a family untouched by either disgrace or deprivation. But she was not “just any woman.” She was Leila Shahid.

With every rise in tensions between the United States and Iran, the same question hangs over Beirut: are we facing a delayed war or an inevitable confrontation? Will Lebanon be the battlefield or simply an anxious spectator, witnessing the events? The reality is that the region has been living for years in a state of 'neither war nor peace'. Calculated escalations, localized strikes, inflammatory statements, and movements of military assets by sea and air provoke responses through indirect negotiations and regional and international mediations. This is a delicate strategy of managing relations, taking one step forward and two steps back, but the situation has not yet degenerated into open warfare.

Since the Arab Spring of 2011, Libya has not been undergoing any unfinished transition, but has settled into a durable state of political dissolution. Far from paving the way for a reconstruction process, the brutal disappearance of Muammar Gaddafi's regime, on the contrary, triggered a long sequence of fragmentation, where armed violence progressively replaced the State as the principle of power organization, as in Sudan. This series offers a structural reading of the Libyan war as a stabilized and coherent system in itself, embedded in regional and international rivalries, and now capable of eliminating any political alternative that would not fit into its logic.

The administrative decentralization project is provided for in the Taëf Agreement (1989) but has not yet been implemented. However, many studies have been carried out for this purpose, without success. A look back at a reform in waiting. The concrete implementation of administrative decentralization in Lebanon relies on strengthening local councils, particularly at the caza level, which constitute the second tier after municipalities. According to Rayanne Assaf, doctor of law and legal affairs officer at the presidency between 2008 and 2014, “the decentralization project stipulates that within each caza, citizens elect, under a majority system, a general committee composed of representatives from all localities, even those without municipalities (to ensure the best geographical representation). This committee then elects the caza's board of directors according to a proportional system.”

«The first reform must be intelligent decentralization», Jules Payot Decentralization is a mode of state organization that consists of transferring powers, responsibilities, and resources from central government to elected local authorities, which are legally autonomous, in order to bring decision-making closer to citizens and improve the effectiveness of public action. It allows Lebanon to transfer part of the state's powers, competencies, and resources to elected and autonomous territorial communities – notably municipalities and decentralized entities – while maintaining the unity of the state. The objective is to strengthen and activate local governance, citizen participation, and the balanced development of regions.

The Libyan war ceases to be intelligible when read solely through its internal actors. From 2014, and even more so after 2019, the conflict transformed into a theater of regional projection, where local dynamics serve as supports for strategies that largely exceed them. Libya is thus a fragmented territory, invested, used, and worked from the outside as a malleable space, devoid of effective sovereignty, and, consequently, ideal for indirect wars. Certainly, the rivalry between regional powers alone does not explain the Libyan collapse, but it nevertheless freezes its lines, prevents any endogenous resolution, and transforms every local advance into a variable of a larger game. At this stage, the war no longer only pits Libyans against each other, but competing visions of the regional order, projected onto a territory incapable of absorbing them. The ultimate focal point, like Syria post-2011, or, before, Lebanon between 1975 and 1990.

Since the Arab Spring of 2011, Libya has not been undergoing some unfinished transition but has settled into a lasting state of political dissolution. Far from paving the way for a reconstruction process, the brutal disappearance of Muammar Gaddafi's regime, on the contrary, triggered a long sequence of fragmentation, where armed violence progressively replaced the state as the organizing principle of power, as in Sudan. This series offers a structural reading of the Libyan war as a stabilized and coherent system in itself, embedded in regional and international rivalries, and now capable of eliminating any political alternative that does not fit its logic.