Strategic Deception and the Selling of Illusions
By Abdelaziz Yaqoub
Henry Kissinger’s question in his book “Does America Need a Foreign Policy?” was not an isolated academic inquiry, but an early warning of a world in which the balance of power loses discipline and values shift from being a moral compass to serving as a convenient cover. Kissinger was not questioning whether America was powerful, but whether it knew how to use that power—and whether the absence of vision would lead to a managed chaos rather than a governed order.
What we are witnessing today, particularly in the Arab region, is the practical answer to that question. Not because the United States alone manages the scene, but because the absence of clear policy among major powers has opened the door to conflict management instead of conflict resolution, and to the marketing of illusion rather than the building of stability. When politics is conducted in this manner, the result is not a new world order, but open arenas of chaos, where weaker states are left to pay the price.
In the first part, the discussion focused on the idea itself—how the absence of vision produces confused policies, and how moral discourse is transformed into a tool of influence. Here, however, we are confronted with the naked reality: how that confused policy translates into destroyed states, exhausted societies, and dismantled homelands under grand slogans that neither save a state nor build peace.
What happened in Sudan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia—and later in Gaza, Syria, and Iraq—was not a series of isolated local mistakes, as we are often encouraged to believe. Rather, it was one long, deliberate trajectory, in which internal divisions were used as an entry point, grand slogans as a cover, and which ultimately resulted in the destruction of the core pillars of the state: the military, the economy, a unifying national identity, and the capacity for independent decision-making.
The greatest deception was not the existence of conspiracy, but the way it was presented. Peoples were told that what was happening was revolution, liberation, protection, or democratic transition, while the reality was a systematic dismantling of the state’s ability to survive. States were not destroyed overnight, but gradually exhausted: an artificially engineered conflict, justified intervention, followed by withdrawal that leaves a vacuum. That vacuum then becomes an open arena for influence, ushering in a phase of shared ruin.
In Sudan, the explosion was not the result of a single moment, but the outcome of years of political erosion, the commodification of identities, and the transformation of the army from a national institution into a player in the power market and a negative arena of partisan competition. The country was left to decay—not because the world failed to see, but because it saw and decided that the cost was lower than intervention, and that chaos served the reordering of influence in a region sensitive in terms of resources and geography.
In Yemen, the conflict was built on illusions of swift victory, only to turn into a prolonged war of attrition that destroyed both the state and society. The question is no longer who will win, but who will remain capable of controlling what is left. Yemen, given its strategic location, has shifted from being a state to a pressure card in a conflict larger than its borders.
Libya represents a stark example of deception cloaked in morality. The regime was overthrown without any vision for what would follow, leading to the collapse of the state and the transformation of the country into a marketplace for weapons and influence. Oil remains, but sovereignty is absent, and decision-making is fragmented among capitals that see Libya not as a homeland, but as a fuel depot and a corridor to African states.
Somalia is often portrayed as a chronic local failure, while in reality it is a model of what happens when a state is left outside major strategic calculations. Chaos here is not incidental, but functional—a weak state on a vital sea route, incapable of control, and carrying no political cost for those who benefit.
Gaza stands as the most blatant example of the convergence of deception and cruelty. A just cause is managed without a political horizon; blood is invested, and suffering is turned into rhetorical material. No serious solution is proposed, because the continuation of the crisis serves power balances more than its resolution. Thus, Palestine is reduced to a humanitarian tragedy, stripped of its political dimension.
Syria and Iraq delivered the most dangerous lesson: when the state is broken in the name of toppling a regime, the alternative is not democracy, but the rise of lethal identities. External powers enter as guarantors or saviors, only to become permanent partners in decision-making. A state that does not monopolize force does not possess politics.
This trajectory did not stop at arenas of collapse, but extended to states that are meant to remain standing, yet constrained. Egypt, for example, is besieged economically and politically—not to overthrow it, but to keep it in a permanent state of crisis management, preoccupied with survival and daily needs rather than leading the Arab or African spheres. An exhausted state is easier to direct; it submits through bread more readily than a collapsed state submits through ruin.
As for the Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, they lie at the heart of a more complex equation. They are not targeted for collapse, but for soft attrition. They are drawn into conflicts, influence rivalries, or roles larger than their natural capacity, ensuring that their economic power is invested in an unstable regional environment, while their security is tied to external balances they do not fully control. When Gulf differences emerge, they are not read as natural divergences of interest, but as valuable opportunities to recalibrate the region from the outside.
In the Maghreb, the scene appears less bloody, yet no less dangerous. Obstructing integration, perpetuating disputes, and keeping states in a fragile balance prevents the formation of a regional bloc capable of negotiating on equal footing. Stability here is conditional, margins are calculated, and strategic decision-making is bound by soft chains.
What unites all these arenas is not a single centralized conspiracy, but a single logic: weakening solid structures, fragmenting political will, and transforming resources into objects of external management. Today’s world is being redivided—not only through political maps, but through functional roles: zones of production, zones of natural resources or energy, zones for waste disposal, transit zones, chaos zones, and decision-making zones. In its current form, the Arab world is being steadily pushed into the category of ease and compliance.
The real deception lies in convincing us that what is happening is destiny, cultural failure, or a historical curse. The truth is simpler and harsher: those who do not possess a clear policy of influence are managed by others. Those who do not invest what they own are invested by others. Those who fail to protect their state and unify their people from within will be reshaped from outside. And those who confuse emotion with strategy lose both.
This is not a call for despair, but a call for awareness. What has happened was not inevitable, and what is to come is not preordained. But the first condition for exiting this path is breaking the illusion—understanding that politics is not slogans, sovereignty is not begged for, and the world does not wait for those who fail to grasp their moment.
