Politics

Following the Allied victory in the Second World War, the United States emerged as a superpower, shaping the course of the Western world. Its vast industrial machine was instrumental in securing the military defeat of fascism. In the first part of this analysis, we examine how the US established its model – not only through military might, but also by creating a new global economic, financial, and institutional order. In a forthcoming second part, we will consider the risks now confronting America. Many economists and commentators argue that the United States has entered the early stages of a secular decline.

While diplomats debate Libya's political future in air-conditioned conference rooms, The persistent fragility of the country's expansive southern region poses significant risks not only to Libya itself, but also to neighboring states, most notably those within the African Sahel. The Fezzan region, spanning one-third of Libya's territory, has become a black hole of governance where state authority has collapsed, armed groups proliferate, and transnational crime networks operate with impunity. The numbers paint a devastating picture. In the Fezzan, 67% of households require humanitarian assistance—the highest rate in Libya. Nearly half resort to crisis-level survival strategies, selling productive assets or forgoing medical care. Youth unemployment reaches 52% in some areas, creating a generation with no stake in stability. Chronic electricity outages last up to 20 hours daily. Maternal mortality rates soar as 73% of health facilities operate only partially, forcing women to deliver at home or travel 150 kilometers for basic care.

Analytical focus on the war in Sudan which, since 2023, has already resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people, with a particularly overwhelming human cost in Darfur, where mass violence, sieges and forced displacement have taken on a dimension that many international actors now qualify as genocidal. Analyzing the Sudanese war according to the parameters of a conflict confined to the national territorial space would be aberrant, as the country's geography is a structuring factor. A Red Sea littoral state, backed by the Horn of Africa and located in immediate proximity to the Arabian Peninsula, Sudan occupies a strategic position that makes it particularly vulnerable to regional power projections.

Lokman Slim was not an opponent in the conventional sense, nor a partisan activist seeking power or position. At the core of his experience, he was an intellectual who chose to pay the full price for his convictions, confronting the system of oppression not from outside, but from within its social environment, through its prevailing narratives and the rhetoric it sought to claim as its own. His assassination thus appeared, from the very first moment, as a symbolic killing before it was a classic crime, a political message before it became a personal liquidation. Lokman Slim was born into a Shia environment from which he never detached himself. Yet he refused to allow it to become an ideological prison or a reductive identity. Early on, he understood that the true danger to a community does not come so much from outside as from the suppression of its right to critique, and the transformation of that community into a closed bloc governed by fear and enforced loyalty. His conflict with Hezbollah, therefore, was not a mere political disagreement, but an existential clash between those who see politics as an open space for debate and accountability, and those who regard it as a closed doctrine, protected by arms.

Following the deployment of the impressive American armada near the Iranian coast, several military options are emerging should the White House decide to intervene. For the time being, the standoff with the mullahs' regime remains essentially verbal: communiqués, warnings, and displays of force punctuate the escalation. With each hardening of Donald Trump's tone, Tehran responds with threats of massive retaliation. On the American side, one thing seems certain: no ground intervention is planned. Several observers, however, believe that the American president will first seek a diplomatic solution before resorting to force. On the Iranian side, uncertainty remains total: how long can the regime resist new American demands? At what point might it back down?

An analytical focus on the war in Sudan which, since 2023, has already resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people, with a particularly overwhelming human cost in Darfur, where mass violence, sieges, and forced displacement have taken on a dimension that many international actors now qualify as genocidal. Sudan did not collapse all at once. It unravelled in successive layers, to the rhythm of a war that aims neither at the lasting seizure of power nor the reconstruction of a political order, but the gradual exhaustion of what still remains of the state. Since April 2023, violence has established itself there as a regime in itself, transforming the country into a fragmented space where the long duration of the conflict counts more than any specific military victory.

A dark corridor, the smell of dampness emanating from it, a broken or unpowered elevator, dirty stairs, then another dark corridor, strewn with coffee cups whose grounds have splashed the floor, empty water bottles, crushed cigarette butts... There, in an office plunged into darkness, a rickety chair awaits its occupant, who settles in, waiting for the generator to deign to light up the premises. Then there was light, revealing the decrepitude. This is not the setting of a post-apocalyptic film, but indeed that of the Palace of Justice in the city that the poet Nonnus of Panopolis, in the 5th century, named guarantor of order and mother of laws: Berytus Nutrix Legum.

Although Russia and China are among Iran's major strategic partners, their support for the Islamic Republic, weakened by internal protests and under threat from Donald Trump, would remain limited in the event of an American attack. According to several experts, neither Moscow nor Beijing is willing to confront Washington militarily. Iran nevertheless holds a significant place in the geopolitical calculations of the two powers. Tehran contributes to the Russian war effort in Ukraine by supplying the famous 'Shahed' type drones that have greatly served Moscow's troops. Iran also came to Putin's rescue by re-exporting Scud-type ballistic missiles once acquired by the Islamic Republic, which produced a modernized version of them.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani's game in Iraq was not a mere clever political maneuver or a misjudgment, but a meticulously planned political conspiracy, orchestrated from within a corrupt system, to reproduce power by causing failure and profiting from it. Sudani is not external to the system that destroyed the state, nor above it, but rather at its very heart, benefiting from its mechanisms and mastering its methods. What distinguishes him from others is not integrity, but his ability to manage corruption discreetly and without fuss. Nouri al-Maliki's return to the forefront of power was neither a coincidence nor a forced compromise. It was a carefully calculated maneuver. Maliki, with his heavy legacy, unresolved files, and widespread popular rejection, was the ideal candidate to bear the burden of the imminent collapse. He was not called to succeed, but to perish. He was not recalled to lead, but to serve as a scapegoat, to bear responsibility for the failures, thereby preparing the ground for his downfall and the dismantling of the entire coordination mechanism.

Iran and the world have been focused since December 28 on the revolt movement triggered in Tehran by Bazaar merchants and thousands of young and old against the rapid deterioration of the socio-economic situation. The demonstrations, which quickly spread to numerous cities and localities, reached an unprecedented scale by January 8, openly defying the Islamic regime, before being violently repressed in blood. A national internet shutdown, which allowed, according to human rights organizations, to mask the repression, was compounded by threats to inflict heavy sanctions on protesters, labeled as "rioters acting on behalf of foreign powers".