I really have to give it to those living in one of the 19 federated nations; my following defense of a unitary administrative system seems as awkward as denying human rights! But if they remember that of the 193 U.N. member states, their federal system is not conventional but exceptional! Federalism is indeed a mode of government in very big and powerful nations (e.g., the U.S., the Russian Federation), but it is still uncommon. There are other big and powerful nations, e.g., the United Kingdom, despite the word “united” in its name, and China, Japan and seven other nations that remained as unitary state. That is, the central government is the supreme authority, even though there was serious political infighting to create regional-level sub-unit governments. The unitary systems in 174 countries are maintaining the happiness and prosperity of billions of people as one nation and in one piece.
There are more types of federations than the actual number of federations, but basically, they are some sort of fix to prevent dismemberment, disjunction and even dissolution. The political power has been delegated to a dissenting regional, ethnic or schismatic religious group to run their own affairs while the central government is made subordinate to the regional states, or it subordinates regional governments. (Sometimes presidents, e.g., as U.S. President Donald Trump, run the system as a unitary state.) It would not be an exaggeration to say that the federation has been an acknowledgment of the underlying national wish to break up from a larger union and become a smaller but fully sovereign entity. In other words, those who have a larger interest in maintaining the larger union make concessions to the secessionists, saying, “OK, run your own affairs, but stay in the union!” Perhaps that was the historical flow direction of events, but things changed recently.
When I say recently, I mean since 1963, when the United States fell under the domination of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobbying group that supports those supporting Israel and advocates its policies via legislators. I am not overstating the impact of Israel, through its lobbies and directly on Congress and the bureaucracy. Please refer to “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government; but until you read the book, please keep in mind that in the 2024 election term, the AIPAC funded 68% of all members elected to Congress: 361 out of 535 members! They say they have spent $53 million on those members, but many open-source investigation organizations estimate that the real number must be more than $53 million. No wonder Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, an International Criminal Court (ICC) defendant with an issued arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, was applauded 53 times in his 60-minute address at the U.S. Congress.
President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and four some members of his Cabinet also received close to $1 billion from AIPAC and some rich Zionist-Jewish and Evangelical-Christian individuals. No wonder Trump has approved more than $14 billion in military aid and weapons to Israel since February.
Alright then, how has the historical flow direction of events in the formation of federations been impacted by America’s falling under the direction of Israel?
Before trying to answer that question, if you, rightfully, have doubts about how a country could have such an impact on another that is 448 times larger than it, I’ll suggest yet again that professors Mearsheimer and Walt would describe for you in clear and bold terms how it became possible in such a short time.
This incredible relationship and its impact on America's posture throughout the Middle East, in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Libya (and now Syria) affected the U.S. approach to its national problems and its prescription for the type of administration.
If you check country reports from major neocon, globalist and interventionist think-tanks (e.g., the Roosevelt Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Project for the New American Century) for the last three decades, you’ll see that some sort of federalism has been prescribed for Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
Now they do the same for Syria. There are about 10 countries where the interventionist U.S. institutes proposed to establish a federal system, for various reasons, but for one objective: to prepare their road to dismemberment.
The federalization of Syria has been on the table, presumably as a solution to what brought that country to civil war. On the surface, those American regional envoys and presidential representatives lectured the Syrian opposition leaders that if they want to end the civil war and never go through the disaster of brother-killing-brother, neighbor-killing-neighbor, they should be separated from their brothers and neighbors.
“They are not your brothers, anyway,” said former President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk and special envoy Amos Hochstein time and again to Syrian Kurds, Druzes and Sunni Bedouins. Especially, McGurk helped Syrian Kurds militarily and urged them to demand an independence referendum.
However, the Syrian Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Kurdish Patriotic Council (ENKS) and the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PYNK) rejected his pressure to listen to the Syrian extension of the Iraq-based Turkish PKK terrorists. What happened? McGurk and the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) commanders prevailed on ethnic Syrian Kurds to go under the direction of the PKK’s Ferhat Abdi Şahin, better known by his nom de guerre “Mazloum Kobani,” appointed as the commander-in-chief of the YPG.
AIPAC-implanted and neoconservative-perfected military doctrine entailed the creation of a buffer between Iran and Israel, and, in case it also falls into the hands of extremists, between Türkiye and Israel.
If Syrian Kurds follow the suit of Iraqi Kurds and create their own regional autonomous administration, with the help of CENTCOM, the two would merge and create the nucleus of independent “Kurdistan,” which would provide enough incentive for the Kurdish people in Iran and Türkiye to join it.
They would have reshaped the Middle East by removing authoritarian regimes, eliminating the nuclear ambitions of the extremists and guaranteeing peace – according to their dialogue.
Since the first days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Trump has affirmed that scenario, saying that the use of force to achieve long-term strategic transformation in the region was wrong. He bravely ridiculed former Presidents George W. Bush and Biden's theories of “endless wars.” He even said that President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton founded and armed the terrorist organization of the so-called "Islamic State,” also known as Daesh.
But now, eight years later, uttering those words, Trump seems to be falling meekly a second time into the neocon plan that he exposed two months ago in Riyadh. He said, the U.S. would not go into the game of “nation-building” of “the so-called nation-builders, neocons or liberal nonprofits”: First time, Netanyahu yanked him to his 12-Day War in Iran. Now, he is pushing Syria into a new civil war, inciting the Druze, using the Druze immigrants in Israel.
Trump’s ambassador to Türkiye and Special Envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, reaffirmed several times his country’s support for Syria, slamming Israel's intervention. However, as Charles Kong Djou, former U.S. representative from Hawaii, writes in Yahoo’s AOL website, President Trump, after pleading with Netanyahu not to get involved militarily with Iran when he was trying to restart talks with Tehran, had to act with “the very neoconservative vision he once derided” for a long time.
Of course, a U.S. envoy speaks for Washington. He said in various statements he made to the media that the U.S. remains committed to supporting Syria’s new government and its objective of a unitary administrative system, insisting there is "no Plan B" in their mind for Syria.
So, there will be no plan to prevent any possibility of the repeated civil war turning the centralized “Syrian Arab Republic” into a federal republic with autonomous subdivisions. Many neocons had entertained the idea of “federal division”; but as the ambassador said, Türkiye is strongly hostile towards the idea of a federalization of Syria.
I am repeating this because President Trump should listen to his own ambassador, and other friends of Türkiye, that federalization of Syria along ethnic and religious-sectarian lines could end in “division of the country” and “Balkanization” of the region.
