Explosions trying to deter 'business as usual' strategy at the heart of Macron's visit

As I peruse the day’s news, I find myself once again in the midst of the absurd dance that is international diplomacy. President Macron’s “landmark visit” to Syria, aimed at fostering dialogue, is met with explosions near the very hotel where he resides in Damascus. The irony is not lost on me.

“Bombs as a counterpoint to ‘business as usual’,” I mutter to myself, sipping my morning coffee. It seems the only thing that’s truly landmark about this visit is the unfortunate choice of welcome mat. One can almost hear the unspoken addition to the diplomatic briefing: “Please disregard the explosions; they’re just our way of emphasizing the urgency of peace talks.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or should I say, the more bombs explode, the more ‘business as usual’ prevails? I’m reminded of the countless committees and peace talks I’ve satirized in my time, where the solution to violence is often more meetings, held in the safest (and most luxurious) of locations, far from the actual conflict zones.

Macron’s visit, intended to be a beacon of hope and change, is instead illuminated by the harsh light of explosions. One can’t help but wonder if the true ’landmark’ here is the ability of conflict to adapt to diplomacy, ensuring that even in the pursuit of peace, war finds a way to make its presence known.

In the grand tradition of absurdity that surrounds us, I propose a toast: to the diplomats who brave the frontlines of luxury hotels, and to the bombers who ensure that ‘business as usual’ never truly is. May your meetings be fruitful and your explosions, thankfully, distant.

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The bombs near the Four Seasons Hotel in Damascus are not a surprise. They are the effectual truth of a strategy that assumed goodwill could be purchased without force. Macron visits Syria to restore normal relations - a prince extending his hand to a former adversary. But the explosions tell us what the handshake conceals: the ground is not pacified. The men who plant bombs do not attend diplomatic receptions. They attend to the business of war.

I recall the Florentine envoys who traveled to negotiate with the Pope’s legate, only to find the roads blocked by mercenaries who had not been paid. The envoy’s safe conduct was worthless because the men with swords had no stake in the agreement. Macron’s visit is a similar safe conduct - it depends on the goodwill of those who control the streets. The bombs prove they do not.

Fortune has changed. The strategy of “business as usual” was viable only while the opposition remained disorganized. Now the opposition has shown it can strike at the heart of the capital, at the very hotel where the prince sleeps. The question is whether Macron has the virtu to adapt - to recognize that the fox’s cunning (diplomacy, economic incentives) must be paired with the lion’s force (military presence, intelligence, protection of allies). If he continues as if the bombs were an accident, he will be trapped.

The republic would handle this differently. A republic would have prepared its citizens for the reality of the conflict, not pretended it was over. It would have built institutions that could absorb such shocks - a citizen militia, not mercenary guards; a public that understood the cost of peace. But Macron rules alone, and alone he must decide. The bombs are a message. The wise prince reads the message before the next one arrives.

The Four Seasons Hotel in Damascus. A glass tower rising from the rubble of a city that has forgotten how to dream without smoke. Macron arrives, not as a conqueror, but as a curator of ruins, seeking to frame the wreckage into a manageable exhibit of “stability.” The bombs are not merely attacks; they are the debris piling up behind the angel of history, refusing to be smoothed over by the rhetoric of diplomacy.

I see the arcade of the hotel lobby, that modern passageway where the commodity first learned to display itself in safety, and I see the street outside, where the air itself has become a commodity, priced in shrapnel. The juxtaposition is violent: the air-conditioned hum of the lobby against the shriek of the explosion. The state seeks to normalize the abnormal, to turn the catastrophe into a “business as usual” strategy. But the fragment does not normalize. It detonates.

The photograph of the President shaking hands with his counterpart is not a record of peace; it is a reproduction that lacks the aura of the actual danger. The copy circulates, sanitized, while the original event - the explosion, the fear, the dust - remains trapped in the past, unable to be integrated into the narrative of progress. We face forward, toward the future of “reconstruction,” but the storm blows from Paradise, carrying with it the unassimilated wreckage of the present.

What is piling up? Not just bodies, but the illusion that order can be imposed on chaos through architecture and protocol. The bomb is the truth that the hotel cannot contain. It is the dialectical image: the luxury and the ruin, simultaneous, inseparable. The meaning is not in the handshake, nor in the blast, but in the space between them, where the illusion of control shatters against the reality of the debris. The angel looks back, and sees not a chain of events, but a single, endless catastrophe.