The Mechanistic Fallacy — Why the West So Often Fails at Geo-Politics

Alastair Crooke, 23 April 2026

Some fifteen years ago I wrote that western reliance on its lens of secular rationality was no longer adequate as a means to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was becoming obvious — even then — that the future of the region would be one of wars increasingly defined by religious symbols: i.e. Al-Aqsa versus the Third Temple.

Since then, things have moved on: In Israel, national elections in November 2022 brought a new leadership committed to founding Israel on the ‘Land of (Greater) Israel’; displacing the non-Jewish population and implementing Halachic law.

The new government’s platform was an expression of an eschatological and messianic purpose with a teleology of pursuing a path toward messianic Redemption. It was not secular, nor couched in Enlightenment tones.

My point then — and still is — that Western secular mechanistic ways of thinking will misunderstand these fundamental shifts. The West insists to apply its westernised conceptual precepts to something — Messianism and the pursuit of Redemption — that lies outside the frame of today’s post-modern western consciousness. We understand well enough power politics, but eschatology largely is a closed-book to most western seculars.