Listen To The Article
The recent entanglement that occurred in Russia on Saturday, June 24, 2023, will be talked about for quite some time. This strange day remains shrouded in mystery and clearly shows that much has changed in our ever-shifting world. It is as if “invisible boundaries” – State and non-State – now exist on top of the ones we know, with shady actors prone to gluttony and mob rules that govern mafia States. Today’s Lebanon undoubtedly fits these criteria.
Who won and who lost in Russia on Saint John’s Eve? At nightfall, it was already clear that something uncanny was brewing. A former crook, Yevgeny Prigozhin, began marching on Moscow from the Don River bank with an army of mercenaries, but some 200 kilometers away from his target, he stopped and retreated.
The USSR’s empire fell a long time ago, but the public opinion believed that (Vladimir) Putin’s Russian Federation succeeded at perpetuating the legacy of the old czars and the Soviets. June 24 proved otherwise… The most recent events in Russia were neither a coup, nor a putsch. It was not a plot or a socio-political rebellion, either. Was it a vendetta? If this is the case, why and against whom? Could it be a personal conflict between Prigozhin and Putin? What is the dispute in question about? There was often talk of money and oligarchs, and of mob rule à la Gangs of New York, James Cruze’s famous 1938 movie.
Today, several observers are starting to doubt the viability of the Russian Federation, as opposed to what it used to be in the Stalin days. If the Kremlin’s central power was not shaken to its core, some cracks in its walls are certainly starting to show. The current dictatorship has no ideological foundations, much like the old Marxism-Leninism’s “Democratic centralism.” In reality, Putin’s regime revolves around the Russian leader’s own interests and those of his close collaborators.
Behind the cracked walls, one can go as far as to say that the State’s structure is an empty shell, only housing interests that go beyond the state’s visible boundaries. For someone living in Beirut, this does not come as a surprise at all, given that the Lebanese State itself is ruled by a web of corrupt crooks. But this phenomenon is not limited to Lebanon per se; our world is not governed only by interaction between sovereign nations with common interests. In some cases, other players operating within invisible borders are stronger and more powerful than the states themselves.
Geopolitical analysis should serve to unmask these actors. In his book The Mafia World, Jean-François Gayraud says: “Masks are indeed being worn as political “ideologies” that serve to hide a criminal reality.” The global world we live in is subject to constant deregulation that weakens the rule of law that was once strong within the bounds generated by the Peace of Westphalia. In “Geography in Pursuit of History”, Pierre George explains: “Simple economic and political actions are (…) commandeered by new invisible empires with no financial or legal frameworks whatsoever (…) Depending on the opportunity, they evoke social motivations or find themselves political cover”. It would be fairly superfluous to say that Lebanon is an incubator for such practices. In this case, the rule of law is replaced with mob rule that obscenely pretend to serve legality, whereas they are generated by “hidden powers” whose promiscuity “can either spark conflict or, in many cases, promote cooperation.” To best describe Lebanon, it would suffice to replace “conflict of interest” with “discord or fitna,” and “cooperation” with “dialogue or compromise or tafahom.” Here, these concepts have become political facts.
Surprisingly, the events of June 24 have shown that Russia – like Lebanon – abides by the same rules of crookery and corruption. One can even say the same about other world powers, great or less great, whose political system can – whenever needed – collaborate with the local mafia and transnational criminal organizations.
The events of June 24 helped distinguish between the mafia and the mob. The former is a well-organized hierarchical social group that is always tied to a specific territory. It is governed by a code of honor and is led by an all-powerful godfather that imposes the rule of silence and subjects every single member. The mafia is not criminal by nature, but can be prone to crime circumstantially. It focuses on preserving a certain social order that is often of a rural nature, even if the organization itself is evolving in an urban setting. As for the mob, it can often be defined as an association of bandits, crooks, and other outlaws whose only motivation is financial gain. Prigozhin is seemingly a rich mob boss, whereas Putin could be described as a godfather whose dignity took a blow following the mutiny of one of his subjects.
How is it possible not to mention Lebanon, with its thugs, its mafiosi, and its tie-wearing gangsters? Can one still afford to pretend that this is classic politics, at a time when collaboration with organized crime is forced upon most people? In the name of what, or who, does one agree to deal with the mafia and the mob in Lebanon?
