Perhaps the most dangerous consequence of governance based on the principle of domination is not merely its failure to build a genuine state, nor its inability to establish legitimacy, partnership, or stability. Rather, it is its tendency to push society toward a critical threshold where individuals begin thinking about saving themselves from the nation instead of saving the nation itself.
Nations do not endure simply because their borders are drawn on maps, nor because they enjoy international recognition, nor because they are sustained by lofty slogans and political rhetoric. Their survival and prosperity depend on their ability to embrace and protect all of their citizens, and on the conviction among those citizens that they are equal in belonging, dignity, rights, and a shared destiny.
“Borders define a country; belonging sustains a nation.”
Dr. Yahya Alaridi
When the state fails to fulfill this fundamental function, the fracture begins not at the geographic borders but deep within the human psyche. The question gradually shifts from, how do we preserve the nation? to How do we preserve ourselves within a nation that can no longer protect us?
When a society reaches this delicate stage, subnational identities begin reclaiming their historic role as a final refuge of security. This does not occur because people suddenly abandon their national identity, nor because they willingly replace their homeland with narrower affiliations. Rather, it happens because the homeland itself has failed to remain the inclusive umbrella that protects all its citizens equally.
At that point, the equation of communal survival acquires a force it would not normally possess. Every community that feels its existence, dignity, or security is under threat begins searching for every possible means of protection, regardless of form. The highest priority becomes protecting human beings before protecting slogans, and safeguarding existence before defending abstract nationalist narratives.
From this reality emerges calls for self-determination, as we are witnessing in Suwayda, as well as demands for autonomy, federal arrangements, or any other framework perceived by its advocates as a means of defending dignity, identity, and survival. Such options do not necessarily stem from a desire to separate from the homeland. More often, they arise from a growing belief that the homeland has already separated itself from its citizens, leaving them to face their fate alone.
“People do not abandon their homeland; they seek protection when it abandons them.”
Dr. Yahya Alaridi
When authority becomes an instrument of coercion, when fear becomes the sole language governing the relationship between ruler and ruled, and when the state is reduced to a single group, ideology, or de facto power structure, the search for survival ceases to be a political luxury and becomes an existential right. Herein lies one of Syria’s greatest tragedies.
The problem is no longer that some Syrians are contemplating alternatives to the nation-state. The deeper problem is that the nation-state itself has become incapable of convincing them that it can protect them. The danger is no longer limited to the fragmentation of territory; it now threatens the very idea upon which modern Syria was founded, the idea that Syrians can live together within a single homeland that belongs equally to all of them.
Many Syrians increasingly feel compelled to defend their existence before defending their nation, their dignity before defending the rhetoric of unity, and their right to life before anything else. When circumstances reach such a critical point, the imperative of communal survival becomes more urgent than the imperative of national survival, not because people have ceased to love their country, but because they fear they may no longer remain alive, free, or secure enough to continue believing in it.
“The gravest threat to a nation begins when its people no longer trust it to protect them.”
Dr. Yahya Alaridi
Thus, the true danger does not lie in the calls that emerge here and there, but in the harsh conditions that produce them. The dilemma is not the outcome of collapse so much as the deeper causes that drive it. A nation is not saved by condemning those who fear for their existence, but by removing the conditions that made them fearful in the first place.
This once again exposes the profound impasse of the politics of domination. Instead of drawing Syrians back into the embrace of their homeland, it pushes them toward seeking refuge within their communities. Instead of strengthening trust in the state, it widens the circle of distrust. Instead of reinforcing the equation of national survival, it contributes, intentionally or unintentionally, to making the equation of communal survival more present, more powerful, and more urgent.
When nations reach such a dangerous threshold, the conflict is no longer merely about power or legitimacy. It becomes a struggle over existence itself, over what it means for a human being to belong to a homeland that offers protection rather than a space in which they fear losing their very existence every day.
