Dr. Mahmoud Bakir*
International media has recently picked up the name of the Lebanese-American George Nader, whose name emerged in the investigations carried out by Robert Mueller, the private investigator on Russian interference in 2016 US presidential election. The common denominator in these articles is the attempt to answer the question: Who is George Nader? Especially as some began to speak about him as the main person in the Russia probe.
Those media outlets added that the investigations went even beyond the Russian interference to include the influence of United Arab Emirates has over Trump administration, noting that the focus on Nader aims at investigating how money coming from many countries is having influence on Trump’s administration. They also reported that Nader had relations with the Jewish lobby in the United States, through The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as former AIPAC official, Jonathan Kessler, worked as editor-in-chief at Nader’s periodical “Middle East Insight”.
Newsweek is one of those outlets which published an article titled: Who is George Nader? Which was about Nader himself, but did not provide answers to what role has Nader played in US foreign policy in the shadows for decades? And how did he manage to craft such a role at this high level? And How could he achieve all this in a government with strong institutions such as the United States, and on top of that, his involvement in opening communication channels with leaders of the Middle East was voluntary?
The focus was mainly on his mysterious character rather than how he came about to be a key player between these people, or his ability to create a structure that didn’t exist before. According to Frederic Hof, director of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East center “He is a man of mystery. Until this recent flurry of interest in him, I don’t think I’ve even heard his name mentioned for 12 years.”
The aim of this article is to help us interpret, understand and become consciously aware of our surroundings which is one way for perception and therefore create a model that can be extended to other areas in life, by looking at the problem from a new angle; using mathematical thinking. Identifying the role pattern in some people, an example of which is George Nader. That is to say, we will not focus on the je ne sais quoi and the shadowy character of Nader himself, who could appear in any society, rather we will try to crystallise and clarify such a role, made by Nader or which can be created by any other individual playing the same roles, in a different context.
From one angle, this type of individuals are naturally connectors. According to Newsweek “Nader seemed to have a knack for connections”. It is an archetype to the “structure” that Nader, and those like him in similar cases, built or can build. However, understanding this type of structure requires some basic mathematical background, because mathematics is more than just study the numbers. It can reveal the hidden patterns of life and is an effective way to describe the world according to British-American mathematician, Keith Devlin – Professor at Stanford University – as he says: “Mathematics makes the invisible visible”.
Some simple mathematical concepts are needed at the beginning to understand the nature of the “structure” that Nader has crafted. To do that, let me start off by telling a short hypothetical funny story, perhaps known to many, but very meaningful, to lay the groundwork for creating a “system” of human relations that can be applied in other contexts.
The story goes that a person went to ask for a large bank loan for his young son, who had just graduated from university, to buy a luxurious house and a luxurious car for him. When his request was rejected because the young man was a fresh graduate, the father immediately told the manager of the bank: “But what would you say if you knew that my son works in the World Bank?” The manager replied, “Well, we would certainly give him the loan.” The father then went to the World Bank director and applied for a job for his son. The application was rejected because the applicant didn’t have any previous experience. “But what would you say if you knew that my son is the fiancé of Bill Gates’ daughter?” the father asked the director. “We would certainly offer him the job without hesitation” the World Bank Director replied.
Then the father went to Bill Gates and expressed his desire to marry Gates’ daughter off to his son. When Gates knew – the story says – that the man, despite being so young, was a World Bank employee with a fat bank account and a luxurious house, he concluded that this young man was promising and had a brilliant future, so he agreed to the engagement!!
This story is a manifestation of the relations and structure that was created from a mathematical point of view. Loosely speaking, a structure is what properties are given to a SINGLE set when we provide it with some relations. The detailed study of this structure can unravel the underlying narrative in many cases and real situations, which can be perplexing and obscure. This confusion usually boils down to the fact that we take our perceptual experience at face value, and we tend to focus on the outcomes without seeing the underlying causes (the cause-and-effect-relationships) behind it, despite the story is fictional.
If we want to understand the story we need to think in abstract terms and take it out of its context, by adopting “conceptual thinking”. Because the single most important thing about this story is not the story itself but about how some people make gains out of nothing, and all that they have is the ability to create an ostensible interconnected structure to connect people that couldn’t be achieved otherwise.
This story may have occurred with the people mentioned, or perhaps with others, or has never happened; but that is not important from our point of view. Because the important thing is the profound significance of the story. The story resembles many similar situations, and this is the important thing. This is because there are many realistic fiction “stories” that are similar to this one and are always present in many fields, at different levels without necessarily us recognising its entirety. There lies the secret of its power, distinction and profound influence and it deserves to be a “structure” of its own, in the conceptual sense.
The story can only be fully understood when we focus on understanding the existing “relationships” that the creator of this structure has created, because it is the key to understanding what is going on, not the context, i.e. regardless of the characters of the story. This type of approach is an expression of modern mathematical thinking that started to focus on the fundamental principle that the “nature” of the entities under study is irrelevant in mathematics, and that the “relationships” between these entities are the only important factor Mathematics takes the process to its ultimate conclusion: the identity of the players is ignored, only their mutual relations are studied. It is this abstraction that makes mathematics such a universal language” said by British mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah.
After taking the story out of its context, the main character (the father of the young man) who created the structure (can be a natural person (an individual), or a legal entity, (a political party, state, organisation, etc.). The bank manager, the president of the world bank, and the bride’s father were all brought into existence, without necessarily any pre-existing “relationship” between them. They may not even know each other. All of this is not important. However, this natural person or legal entity has created an indirect relationship between these characters which were chosen to be part of this structure. This person or entity has created a new perceptive reality for these parties which is completely untrue. He begins
based on an incorrect basis; that is, without concrete basis, he has created it in his own way. This person (the creator of the structure) begins by employing this “false” or wrong perception for his own interest (or for the benefit of the party or state, if it is in the realm of parties or states). It is not entirely wrong, but it is a fabricated “illusion”, of a special kind, made by this person to influence others and benefit from them. Part of this delusion may be realized, or all of it, but later, rather than at the time of establishing the relationship.
That is, it creates “facts” of a particular kind; or more precisely “relationships”, which are invalid (non-existent) and may presume their validity, with a view to influencing others to benefit from them. This influence is different from that one may have on another, or on a group of people in other contexts. The story is of a special nature, it does not include an alliance with anyone against anyone, it is rather a “collective” investment in several parties at the same time. If we define influence as the ability to impose one’s desires on others, the result of this “structure” is to achieve some kind of free influence for the sake of its owner.
Moreover, the three parties in the virtual story may be important by themselves, but for others the important thing is the reflection of the relationship on others, and the relationship determines the nature of this reflection.
One of the benefits of this structure is that it is very suitable for weaving relations in the field of political action locally, regionally or internationally, or in the economic sphere or in business, in order to achieve certain interests. However, the difficulty lies in selecting the elements of the group (which will become the elements of the structure) and in choosing the nature of relationship to be created. This requires political wisdom and acumen. The role of the weaver must remain vague and ambiguous in drawing the relationship, and then in generating the structure. Creating such structure is not economically expensive at all (for those who do it)and may even be profitable from this angle.
Such a structure can apply to some states, just like people. To illustrate, let us assume that we have a small state whose size does not allow it to play an active role on the global or regional stage, yet it believes that it should play a role in its region. It is possible for such a state to create a relationship with major powers affected by “revolutionary” or liberal political movements active in the region. As well as creating a relationship with these movements, and perhaps with other parties. Then it tries to convince each party, separately, about the importance of its status with the other side, and its influence on it and that it is capable of benefiting them as a result of its relationship with the other party to which it is a rival. This role (function) pleases all parties, because they may be able to achieve part of their interests, because there is no direct relationship between them for various reasons. It is also a kind of indirect negotiations between these parties, because what ultimately matters, in relations between states, or multilateral relations, is the realization of their interests.
Resonance of structuralism
It is worth mentioning that structural thinking is not confined to the mathematical framework, it rather extended to many other disciplines, including Linguistics, Literary Theory, Literary Criticism, Psychology, Anthropology, Architecture, International Relations and Sociology. Structuralism, as a way of thinking, has been utilized in those disciplines, after emerging and crystallising in mathematics in the first half of the nineteenth century. Structuralism is simply a way of understanding what is going on around us, and it is probably the most reliable way so far.
The definition of structuralism in the fields of human sciences, in terms of content, is no different from its mathematical definition. The contemporary British philosopher Simon Blackburn, to name one, says: “Structuralism is the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract culture”.
What helps in this is that the structure is a closed system, independent of others, in the sense that they are self-contained, and there is no need to return to others to understand it. It is not replicated, as the case is with numbers, but what is repeated is manifestations of them, i.e. a concrete manifestation of them. Number five, for example, is the same, but there are five books or five birds or any other things from any set of five elements.
In a nutshell, what matters to us to understand what is going on is not George Nader’s character, but rather the role he has played by creating a special sustainable “structure” that can give him influence and money.
Mahmoud Bakir (*):
Is a Syrian mathematician, with specialist interest in promoting the field of mathematics in social sciences and understanding, modelling and finding patterns in human behaviour. His articles and research papers discuss the mathematical modelling of complex social, economic and political issues.
He holds Ph. D, MSc & BSc in Mathematics from University of Sheffield (UK) and Damascus University (Syria). He co-founded the first private university in Syria in 2003; namely “University of Kalamoon” and served as the Vice-Chancellor from 2011 to 2014.