On March 13, 2026, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, in cooperation with the Tunis Association for Culture and Pluralism, organized a Ramadan Masamra entitled «Structural collapses in the cultural mentality that establishes power and legitimizes war». The seminar was presented by Mr. Fathi TouzriNetherlan A specialist in psychological and neurological diseases and an academic, and it was moderated by the director of the center, Mr. Mahdi Al-Mabrouk, with the participation of an elite group of researchers and interested parties. The symposium shed light on the dialectics of war and identity, and the role of cultural determinants in formulating strategic thought and engineering political decisions, with a focus on the American model as a case for study and analysis..
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In this context, the lecturer stopped at the thesis of the American thinker Michael Flahouse (Michael Vlahos), who devoted an important aspect of his work to the study of the relationship between war and identity in the American experience. He showed that Vlahos He belongs to a critical current within American strategic thought that rejects the reduction of wars to the military dimension, and attaches great importance to the cultural structure that shapes the mindsets guiding political decision. He also highlighted that this trend explains the ability of the United States to reproduce its war rhetoric across different times, ranging from the Cold War, through the Iraq War and the “War on Terror”, to current conflicts in the Middle East.
The lecturer also focused on a major aspect of his intervention on what he called "the cultural mentality that establishes power and legislates war," considering that the United States was historically built on a special narrative that combines moral exception, the universal message, and civilizational superiority. He pointed out that this narrative is inseparable from religious and mythical origins, but derives a large part of its strength from the Protestant imagination and the idea of the "chosen nation," which led to war being presented in many historical moments as a tool to establish goodness, protect freedom, or spread democracy..
In this context, Professor Fathi Tozzari analyzed Flahouse's perception of American history as a history governed by sharp dichotomies: (good/evil, freedom/slavery, civilization/threat). This duality, in his view, does not remain just a symbolic discourse, but turns into a practical mechanism in the industry of the enemy and the production of security and military policies. He also showed that the danger of this discourse lies in providing a moral cover for expansion and external intervention, and turning hegemony into a semi-holy task, not just a passing geopolitical interest..
The report also touched on reading Vlahos For what is known as the “war on terror,” he highlighted that understanding armed movements requires linking them to their historical, cultural, and social contexts, rather than reducing them to abstract security or military approaches. In this perception, force and violence are not an isolated phenomenon, but rather an expression of transformations within societies, and may be linked to the failure of externally imposed political models or the blockage of the horizon in front of internal forces of change. Hence, the "war on terror", as Flahouse sees it, becomes a losing war if the United States continues to ignore the cultural and civilizational dimension of the conflict.
On the sidelines of the commentary on the lecture, a number of critical observations were raised. The interventions focused on the need not only to take a cultural approach in interpreting American policies, but also to link them to economic factors and the interests of elites and institutions influencing decision-making. Questions were also raised about the limits of the role played by the religious factor in shaping the American strategic discourse, and the extent to which criticism emanating from within American thought itself is able to review the logic of hegemony and reconsider its foundations.
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In light of this, the seminar stressed the importance of developing a critical reading of Western strategic thinking, and the need to have analytical tools that allow understanding global shifts away from simplification. It was also concluded that any successful foreign policy must take into account diversity and multiculturalism, and realize that ignoring the other or dealing with it with the logic of subjugation is often counterproductive. In doing so, the symposium served as a call to rethink the concept of war, the ways of building security and peace, and the cultural and political conditions that make conflict more complex than what appears in official discourses..