The danger of explaining complex geopolitical crises through the political survival of a single individual
A reader recently raised a valid criticism of my analysis of the recent agreement between the United States and Iran.
His observation was simple: what if the real key to understanding this situation were Benjamin Netanyahu’s need to remain in power? What if most of the decisions made by Israel could be explained by this domestic political need?
This is a legitimate question.
The problem arises when a legitimate question becomes a comprehensive explanation.
Because it is precisely at that moment that geopolitical analysis risks degenerating into a form of reductionism that, while appearing intuitive, ends up obscuring more than it illuminates.
The Single-Variable Fallacy
One of the most common mistakes in contemporary analysis is to take a real variable and treat it as the only relevant variable.
Putin is invading Ukraine because he wants to stay in power. Netanyahu is fighting Hamas because he wants to stay in power. Trump is negotiating with Iran because he wants to appear as a peacemaker. Erdoğan is ramping up his rhetoric because he needs to win the election.
All of these statements may contain elements of truth.
None of them, however, is sufficient on its own to explain the complexity of the phenomena they claim to describe.
The fact that a leader may benefit from a particular event does not necessarily mean that that event exists because of his personal needs.
Confusing these two propositions means confusing a consequence with a cause.
The Inversion Test
There is a simple way to verify the soundness of a geopolitical explanation.
All you have to do is apply what we might call the reversal test.
Let’s imagine that Netanyahu leaves politics tomorrow morning.
Would the tensions between Israel and Iran disappear?
Would Turkey’s regional ambitions fade away?
Would relations between Tehran and Moscow dissolve?
Would the competition between the United States and China for control of major trade and energy routes cease?
Of course not.
This does not prove that Netanyahu is irrelevant.
It does, however, show that Netanyahu is not synonymous with the entire system.
The same logic can be applied to any other leader.
People matter. But systems outlive people.
The Levels of Competition
One of the most obvious limitations of public debate is the tendency to place every phenomenon on a single level of analysis.
Reality is very different.
Every international crisis simultaneously involves multiple levels.
There is an individual level, consisting of the interests, beliefs, and needs of political leaders.
There is a state level, consisting of the enduring interests of institutions and power structures.
There is a regional level, where alliances, historical rivalries, and competition for influence play out.
Finally, there is a systemic level, where the great powers confront one another and international balances are defined.
These levels are not mutually exclusive.
They overlap.
And it is precisely this overlap that makes geopolitical events complex.
Reducing everything to a single level inevitably means losing sight of the others.
From the Middle East of the Cold War to that of globalization
The history of the Middle East offers a particularly striking example of this phenomenon.
For decades, the region has been one of the main theaters of competition between Washington and Moscow.
The local conflicts were certainly real. National, religious, and territorial claims were genuine.
But they were constantly intertwined with broader interests linked to the Cold War, control of energy resources, and trade routes.
With the end of the Soviet Union, many observers believed that this dynamic was destined to disappear.
The opposite has happened.
Globalization has multiplied the number of actors involved.
The presence of the United States and Russia has gradually been joined by that of China.
To an increasing extent, other powers have also begun to pursue their own interests in the region.
The result was not a simplification of the strategic landscape.
Rather, it has led to its further stratification.
History as a Refutation
There is, however, another reason to view explanations based solely on individual leaders with suspicion.
And that is the history of the Middle East itself.
For over seventy years, the region has been ravaged by conflicts, wars, revolutions, coups, decolonization processes, energy crises, and economic transformations that have involved generations of rulers who were profoundly different from one another.
Leaders have come and gone. Regimes have changed. Even the global ideological landscape has changed.
Yet many of the fundamental fault lines have remained surprisingly stable.
When the State of Israel was established in 1948 on the ashes of the British Mandate, the issue was not merely one of coexistence between Jews and Arabs.
It also concerned the Middle East’s gradual shift from the orbit of the British Empire to that of the United States, the true strategic victor of World War II.
From the very beginning, therefore, local and systemic dynamics proved inseparable.
This reality became even more evident during the Cold War.
The Six-Day War of 1967 is often remembered as a regional conflict between Israel and its neighbors.
In reality, it also represented a crucial turning point in the global competition between Washington and Moscow.
Had the project promoted by Nasser’s Egypt with Soviet support succeeded, the Soviet Union could have consolidated a dominant position across the entire Middle Eastern chessboard, radically altering the global balance of power.
That did not happen.
And it was precisely that failure that helped accelerate the strengthening of the American presence in the region.
The lesson is simple.
Governments changed. Strategic logic remained the same. Names changed. Structural interests endured.
With the end of the Soviet Union, many analysts believed that the Middle East would break free from this logic of competition among great powers.
Exactly the opposite happened.
Globalization did not eliminate geopolitical competition.
It made it more complex.
Alongside the United States and Russia, China began to emerge gradually.
Global supply chains increased the strategic value of maritime routes.
The region’s central role in energy remained intact.
Economic interdependencies multiplied.
In other words, the number of variables increased.
It did not decrease.
And it was precisely at this stage that many observers, paradoxically, began to simplify their explanations.
The more complex the system became, the more people sought simple explanations.
The more the number of actors increased, the more each event was attributed to the intentions of a single individual.
It’s a reassuring form of analysis.
But it is rarely a good analysis.
Because the history of the Middle East shows exactly the opposite.
It shows that leaders come and go. Structures remain. People change.
Strategic rivalries adapt and transform.
But they continue to operate according to logics that far exceed the interests, ambitions, and even the political survival of individual actors.
If we truly want to understand the nature of contemporary crises, we must take a further step.
We must distinguish between regional and extra-regional actors.
Israel, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the other entities operating directly on the ground certainly pursue their own objectives, often rooted in history, religion, national security, and local power dynamics.
But above this level, a second level continues to exist: that of the great powers.
For Washington, Israel’s security is not merely a moral or political issue.
It is also a component of a broader system of strategic projection in one of the most important regions on the planet.
For Moscow, support for Palestinian claims is not merely a matter of principle.
It is also a tool through which to maintain influence in a region that, since Soviet times, has been a strategic hub of primary importance.
For Beijing, regional stability is not merely a diplomatic aspiration.
It is a necessity essential to the security of its trade, energy, and financial routes.
In all these cases, stated principles and strategic interests coexist.
But neither can be understood by ignoring the other.
This is why the history of the Middle East cannot be interpreted as a succession of individual decisions.
From 1948 to the present, the region has been the meeting point between local aspirations and global rivalries.
The Cold War transformed many regional crises into proxy wars between Washington and Moscow.
Globalization has changed the tools of competition, but it has not eliminated competition itself.
It has simply added new actors, new dependencies, and new forms of influence.
The Arab Spring is a prime example of this.
Born of genuine demands for change, emancipation, and protest against systems perceived as corrupt or incapable of representing their respective societies, they quickly became entangled with regional and international interests that had nothing to do with the original aspirations of the people involved.
It was then that many viewed the Middle East as if it were nothing more than a series of popular uprisings.
Others interpreted it solely as a power struggle among great powers.
Both made the same mistake.
They mistook a part of the system for the system as a whole.
The same risk exists today.
The October 7 attack, the war in Gaza, the standoff with Iran, Turkey’s role, the U.S. stance, and the moves by Russia and China do not all belong to a single level of analysis.
They belong to different levels that overlap and influence one another.
Reducing everything to Netanyahu’s political survival may be reassuring.
But a reassuring explanation is not necessarily a correct one.
And this is precisely where the limitations of personality-based interpretations become apparent.
Explaining the current Middle East crisis solely through the figure of Netanyahu is, methodologically speaking, equivalent to explaining the Cold War through the psychology of Kennedy or Brezhnev.
Not because Kennedy and Brezhnev were irrelevant.
But because the system in which they operated was immensely larger than they were.
The Problem with Reassuring Explanations
Simple explanations hold a special appeal because they offer a sense of control.
If everything depends on one person, all you need to do is understand that person.
If everything depends on a leader, all you have to do is analyze that leader.
The world once again appears orderly and predictable.
Unfortunately, reality is rarely so generous.
Major international crises are almost always the result of the interaction between multiple actors pursuing different – and sometimes even incompatible – goals.
Israel may pursue certain interests.
Iran may pursue others.
The United States may pursue yet others.
Russia, China, Turkey, the Gulf monarchies, and Europe may find themselves involved in the same crisis while pursuing completely different goals.
To claim to explain the entire phenomenon through a single motivation is to fail to understand the nature of the system.
The Right Question
The question is not whether Netanyahu has gained political advantage from the crisis.
It is possible that he did.
Nor is the question whether his political survival influenced certain decisions.
That, too, is possible.
The real question is another.
Does the crisis exist because Netanyahu benefits from it?
Or is Netanyahu benefiting from a crisis driven by much broader dynamics involving regional and global actors?
These are two profoundly different assertions.
Yet they are often conflated.
Perhaps this is precisely one of the main weaknesses of contemporary geopolitical analysis.
The tendency to substitute simplicity for complexity.
Structure with personality.
Systems with people.
When this happens, the risk is not merely that of misinterpretation.
It is the risk of losing sight of the big picture.
