Afrasianet -  Sobhi Ghandour* - In the early seventies of the last century, some Lebanese politicians repeated the saying that "Lebanon's strength lies in its weakness" to justify not building a strong national army capable of protecting Lebanon from Israeli aggression.

Of course, this argument was later proven false when Israel occupied southern Lebanon in 1978, then Beirut and several other regions as its capital in 1982.

What brought this Lebanese saying back to my memory is an opposite situation in America, which is what the US Department of Defense budget for the current year has to do with an amount close to a third of the US general budget and no country in the world is equivalent in that, bearing in mind that the US Ministry of Defense (the Pentagon) deals with about Two million people are military and civilian employees and reservists.

Last December, in a period when Moscow was negotiating directly over its claims in Ukraine and the future of European security, US President Joe Biden signed the $770 billion US Defense Budget Act for fiscal year 2022.

The size of the defense budget for the fiscal year 2022 is more than the size of its predecessor by 5%, and it includes expenditures that exceed what US President Joe Biden requested, by $25 billion.

The budget included many measures to "deter" Russia and China, including allocating $300 million to support Ukraine and its armed forces, $4 billion to support the "Defense Initiative in Europe" and $150 million to finance "security cooperation" with the Baltic states.

Also among the "deterrence measures" is the allocation of $7.1 billion in funding for the "Pacific Deterrence Initiative" aimed at deterring China and supporting Taiwan.

Of course, all of this preceded the Russian-Ukrainian war at the end of last February, and then what was stated in the “American National Security Strategy” announced by the “White House” last week, which emphasized the Russian and Chinese dangers to American security.

Yes, America is the greatest military power now, and so it was in most decades of the last century, but it seems that "America's weakness now is in its strength", that is, the opposite of the Lebanese saying that I referred to, because the huge military force creates paranoia and overthrows principles for the sake of interests, and makes Those who possess it find it easy to think of owning the whole world, then it turns out later on that force without right does not last and does not triumph.

America, which managed to achieve military dominance over both land and space... America that bid farewell to its great rival in the twentieth century, the Soviet Pole, despite its huge potential in all fields...

America that inherited European empires and made its countries stars that swim in the American orbit... America The only international mighty! He stood again (after the experience of the Vietnam War in the sixties), and within a few years of the twenty-first century, he appeared helpless and weak in the face of security and military shocks! The security shock that showed the American impotence was the terrorist operations that took place in New York and Washington and claimed the lives of thousands of innocent civilians who fell not only as a victim of terrorism and the use of civil aircraft to strike civilian institutions, but also as a result of the American political and security failure, and the unwillingness of the Bush administration to do such actions despite Anticipate and warn the CIA of the possibility of its occurrence.

The other shameful military matter that America experienced in this new century, and it was a military and political shock, is the result of the occupation of Iraq and the security deficit and societal rift that occurred during and after it, and a political scandal due to the invalidity of the justifications for the invasion, and then the shameful practices that took place during the occupation period against the Iraqis. The same was repeated in Afghanistan, where the US forces withdrew in a humiliating manner and the "Taliban" returned to rule after 20 years of US occupation.

The events of September 2001 exposed the security and political flaws in America, and the war on Iraq and Afghanistan revealed the inability to use military force unjustly to achieve the desired victory. Just as the problem was not in the security and technological capabilities of America in anticipating and hedging the events of September 2001, the problem in Iraq in particular was also not in the capabilities of America, but rather in the absence of the legitimacy of the decision to invade, and in the suspicious objectives of it, and in the methods of indiscriminate killing and oppression of Iraqi citizens.

Can the two issues (September 11 and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq) be interpreted as the outcome of American “arrogance” and the transformation of strengths into weaknesses and weaknesses for the world’s greatest pole, or is the link between the two things worth stopping before him as well?!

The US intelligence agency report to President George W. Bush in August 2001 was clear in his expectations about the possibility of terrorist acts in New York and Washington, and that elements of "Al-Qaeda" might use civilian planes in their actions, and the US President read this report on 6/6 8/2001 during his vacation in Texas, and neither he nor his administration decided any exceptional measures to prevent the occurrence of what was in the information and estimates of the Central Intelligence Agency.

This matter was known, heard and witnessed by the Americans and the world during the hearings of the US Congressional committees that preceded the release of the famous report on the events of September 2001.

The Bush administration decided not to prepare for the possibility of terrorist acts in America, because it wanted to use these events when they occurred in order to start implementing its agenda, which has given priority to the war on Iraq since it came to power in the beginning of 2001, in addition to employing the reaction to terrorist acts In America in favor of a president who came by a decision of the Supreme Constitutional Court, which gives domestic and international excuses for the policy of wars and the US military deployment in the world, and which also creates a political and legal umbrella for internal and external measures that serve the “neo-conservative” agenda at the time. Increasing the size of the Pentagon's budget year after year is a reproduction of an approach practiced by the "neo-conservatives" at the beginning of this century, in order to preserve the oneness of the global pole, even if this led to direct military confrontations with Russia and China! The real strength of America was in its cultural pluralism, in the diversity of the origins of the peoples of its society, in the integrity of its fifty states, and in its constitutional system that equals all citizens.

These elements of American internal strength are now shaken severely after the outcome of the years of Trump’s rule, where deep divisions are now evident in American society, and where weakness and weakness are not limited to political decision centers in the central government, but have become in the cells of American society as a whole.

The "United States" is now nourishing again in it feelings of racial discrimination and discrimination based on color, religion or culture, after America overcame this situation since the civil rights battles in the sixties, and then through the election of Barack Obama to the most important government position in the world. America is now witnessing cases of differences and conflicts based on affiliations based on color, race, religion or culture, and this threatens the unity of any society and disrupts any healthy democratic practice.

The midterm elections at the beginning of next month will be a test of the elements of American societal strength that are threatened with collapse and internal conflicts, and a negative impact on the role of the United States in the world.