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Recent regional wars and crises have revived US influence through new forms of control that do not depend on direct occupation. Washington now pursues a kind of neo-colonialism based on security and economic arrangements, reshaping political maps through initiatives labelled “peace” or “stability”. The US strategy to control the region seems to fluctuate between having their allies in power, economic and military cooperation as is evident in the Gulf states, and most recently through economic control.
Ramez Salah is a researcher specializing in the relationship between democracy and economic development. His articles have appeared in leading regional and international journals.
Lama Ghandour is a Programme Manager for Migration and Feminism at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Beirut Office.
The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Gaza was mediated and sponsored by Trump. The latter proposed plan for the UN security council for managing the Gaza Strip that was developed under the supervision of international figures with American sponsorship, weakening Palestinian national decision-making and making the Strip a field for experimenting with new colonial guardianship arrangements, not to mention the existing Israeli settler colonialism since the 1948 Nakba.
Similarly, there have been proposals to establish an “economic zone” in southern Lebanon with international support. This would require neutralizing the armed resistance group Hezbollah, securing the border, and redefining the role of the Lebanese state in managing its southern borders. However, the proposal does not address the fate of Lebanese villagers or their loss of livelihoods and homes. This is not only considered an occupation that breaches the sovereignty of the Lebanese state, but past experiences also suggest that American control would most likely fail to achieve security and stability.
Securing Syria’s cooperation with the US was essential to shaping the region and controlling its dynamics. There were claims that Ahmed al-Sharaa was being trained by the US to become president. Whether or not this was true does not really matter, as the new government quickly established a strong relationship with Washington, and al-Sharaa was subsequently removed from the U.S. terrorist list.
In parallel, Israel — America’s closest ally in the region — carried out several strikes across Syria, including in Damascus, and repeatedly invaded Al-Quneitra after Assad’s fall, establishing checkpoints that remain in place today, while occupying parts of Quneitra. The latest reports from the Syrian front indicate that the US is planning to build a military base in Damascus.
Perhaps the common denominator among these cases is that they are not presented openly as explicit colonial projects by Donald Trump’s administration, but are marketed as transitional options to protect civilians, deals aimed at reviving the economy, and achieving stability for those countries. However, scrutiny of their content reveals that they establish a new phase of pure American-Israeli influence in the Arab Levant, at the expense of national sovereignty and state unity.
The Birth Pangs of Neocolonialism and Reshaping Maps of Influence
To understand the depth of the Syrian crisis, it must be viewed within its structural and global framework. The Fund for Peace’s annual Fragile States Index shows that most countries experience different degrees of fragility caused by civil wars, resource conflicts, social divisions, and weak governance. This condition, described as “sustainable chaos”, reflects intertwined crises that weaken states and expose them to external interventions through the “spillover effect”, whereby crises spread from one country to another.
Syria exemplifies this phenomenon, ranking third globally in the 2024 Fragile States Index after Somalia and Sudan. This ranking reflects the structural collapse of state institutions and the disintegration of social and political structures, creating an environment for international and regional powers to exploit its fragility — by legitimizing Ahmed al-Sharaa’s rule, advancing normalization with Israel under the Abraham Accords, and promoting an independent Druze state in Sweida as groundwork for the Israeli “David’s Corridor” project and the abandonment of the Golan Heights.
In Palestine, the Trump peace plan for Gaza can be seen as part of a larger project to reshape the Palestinian issue according to American-Israeli priorities.
The war that broke out on 7 October unexpectedly exposed the strategic fragility of the Assad regime. The regime was already internally weak and economically bankrupt due to sanctions. Additionally, it faced a reduced Russian commitment, diverted to the war in Ukraine. This conflict acted as a decisive catalyst, forcing Iran and its militias to allocate critical financial, logistical, and military resources toward the open, high-priority conflict fronts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen.
This overextension created an immediate, exploitable security vacuum in Damascus and its surroundings. The withdrawal of elite forces — particularly elements of the Radwan Unit redeployed by Hezbollah to Lebanon — enabled al-Sharaa’s forces to advance rapidly with minimal resistance, ultimately resulting in the collapse of the Assad regime. Since then, al-Sharaa has been widely portrayed as “the man who killed the Axis [of Resistance]”.
In the aftermath of the regime’s fall, attention has shifted to the broader regional implications. This has reignited discussions on new formulas for reshaping geopolitical balances in the Levant and broader Arab world, and tightening control over the so-called “Fractured States”, according to John Mearsheimer. Direct repercussions for Lebanon cannot be ruled out, as the future of Hezbollah’s weapons remains a contentious issue. What applies to Syria as a fragile state finds a parallel in the Lebanese arena. Statements by some US officials — most notably Envoy Tom Barrack — suggest that Hezbollah’s withdrawal or the restriction of its weapons does not necessarily guarantee that Israel will halt its strikes deep inside Lebanon, opening the door to new escalation scenarios and dynamics.
American Influence in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria
The United States is reasserting its presence in the Levant through a kind of “new colonialism”, employing political, economic, and sectarian tools to exert influence. It can be concluded that the US aims to secure a regional order that protects its interests and those of Israel amidst rising economic and military competition from China and Russia.
In Palestine, the Trump peace plan for Gaza can be seen as part of a larger project to reshape the Palestinian issue according to American-Israeli priorities. Although the plan was presented as a means of “conflict resolution”, it actually involves reallocating roles among regional parties. This reallocation would give Israel and the US control over the Strip’s security and economy. This control would then be used to regulate Palestinian resistance movements and reduce the strategic depth the Strip provides against Israel.
Although the plan is not yet fully designed or implemented, each round of military escalation or humanitarian crisis in Gaza is used to introduce an international-regional approach that turns the Strip into a testing ground for an economic and security mandate managed by a combination of Arab funding and Israeli-American security supervision. From this perspective, the American goal transcends mere “temporary calm”, serving instead as an entry point for reshaping the Palestinian scene to ensure Gaza is neutralized from any future strategic equations that might impede Israeli expansion or security, through what Trump called the “Riviera of the Middle East Riviera”.
Within this trajectory, the Sharm El-Sheikh Peace Summit of 13 October 2025 embodied the imperial continuity of this project — transforming Gaza into a laboratory for neo-imperial management under the banner of reconstruction and stability. While the summit formally ended the Gaza war, it failed to achieve genuine peace, reproducing what Antonio Gramsci described as hegemonic consent — a process through which imperial power secures legitimacy by transforming domination into the language of peace and reconstruction. Recognizing the shifting realities of the region, Hamas understood it had to change and agreed to the ceasefire. Two years after the so-called “Al-Aqsa Flood”, Hamas had no other option but to accept the American-mediated crossing, effectively consolidating the postwar imperial framework.
In Lebanon, the US has focused its attention on the south, where Hezbollah is viewed as the primary threat to Israeli and US interests. Under the pretext of “preventing escalation and protecting civilians”, Washington proposed transforming parts of the southern border into a US-supervised economic zone, aiming to promote stability and development while limiting Hezbollah’s military presence. Although this plan has not yet been implemented, it reflects Washington’s efforts to reshape the security and economic landscape in southern Lebanon and integrate the country more closely within the Western sphere of influence through conditional development and reform initiatives.
As the regional chessboard reaches a critical juncture, the balance of power and the fate of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine are increasingly shaped by external actors.
However, Hezbollah’s armed presence remains one of the most sensitive issues, as the party strongly opposes disarmament, considering its arsenal a legitimate resistance tool under the framework of the Taif Agreement. Attempts to enforce disarmament could trigger severe internal conflicts or even civil war, highlighting the complexities US policy must navigate within Lebanon’s delicate sectarian balance.
This strategy is part of a broader geopolitical effort to influence the sectarian political balance in Lebanon, leveraging economic and political pressures to encourage reforms and rearrange roles within the complex sectarian system, while simultaneously seeking to limit Iranian influence in the Levant. This approach aligns with the nature of Lebanon’s sectarian system, which relies on entrenched partisan settlements and social structures. Political forces often exploit the state’s crises to consolidate power through the management of resources and services, making foreign intervention a complex endeavour requiring careful planning and caution.
As far as Syria is concerned, it constitutes the most sensitive axis in this strategy. For years, the American approach has been based on fragmenting the Syrian conflict into parallel tracks: the Northeast, where Kurdish control is US-backed, and the South, where attempts are made to consolidate a long-standing Israeli dominance over the Golan Heights for decades. Yet Syria’s geopolitical environment today reveals a far more unusual matrix of overlapping foreign spheres of influence. Turkey has entrenched itself militarily and politically in the North through long-standing proxies, while Israel has deepened its intelligence and operational footprint in the South — sometimes with, but often without US approval.
Within this evolving structure, the idea of a “Druze State” or other attempts to divide southern Syria is part of the broader “Balkanization of the Levant” phenomenon, in which competing external powers establish semi-autonomous zones to serve their strategic interests. Amidst this delicate balance of competing spheres of influence, a significant new development has begun to reshape the strategic equation: the planned establishment of a US military base in Damascus. This development represents a major recalibration in US-Syria relations after years of isolation and conflict. According to Samir Aita, the base underscores Washington’s broader objective of anchoring its presence in Syria’s heartland, enabling influence over the country’s future political trajectory — perhaps beginning, at least initially, with a security arrangement with Israel.
The Levant’s Future, Out of Its hands
In any case, these developments highlight Washington’s continued disregard for what it calls “democratic transition”. Rather, they expose a broader pattern of neo-colonial behaviour seeking to ensure that the “new Syria” remains a dependent entity aligned with US interests, regardless of the suffering and sacrifices endured by the Syrian people. It also raises a critical question: can US, Russian, and Turkish military bases coexist simultaneously on Syrian soil, and what would such coexistence mean for Syrians themselves?
As the regional chessboard reaches a critical juncture, the balance of power and the fate of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine are increasingly shaped by external actors. US manoeuvres in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria aim to assert control without direct large-scale military intervention. Direct wars are no longer popular or financially sustainable after Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, the US relies on conditional political settlements, economic leverage, sectarian and ethnic divisions, and regional intermediaries to manage security and influence.
This approach faces significant obstacles: popular resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria against Israeli hegemony, the rising influence of competitors like China and Russia, counter-regional alliances linking Iran and its proxies, and the potential role of other Arab states, which can leverage economic or diplomatic measures to limit US and Israeli moves in the region.
