The misery of the nation aggravates, as fuel, electricity, food and medicine shortages bring the country to new lows. Justice is yet nowhere to be found. Services considered basic essentials in most countries have turned into rare commodities.

And yet, obsolete mafias continue to waste time, “celebrating” to the press days of “positive negotiations”, as if the people had any time left to wait.

Dollar reserves went down from about $30bn to about $14bn in the span of only 22 months. And yet, the cartel has not even passed a single reform.

How could such indifference, negligence and arrogant attitude be explained?

Since 17 Teshreen, cartel factions have been engaging in a game of chicken. Each faction knows it cannot continue on the same road forever, but seeks to be the last faction to “swerve”, or concede.

The administrative, financial, and public sector restructurings effectively go against the ability of the mafias to preserve themselves. At the same time, not doing the reforms threatens the full collapse of society, which would also bring about the end of the mafias.

Sulta politicians are therefore threading a fine line, where they know they will ultimately have to compromise, but want to minimize their settlement, at the cost of tragic human suffering, and the risk that their losses will be even larger down the line if they don’t compromise now.

The factions playing this game are guided by their ultimate egoistic interests and do not perceive recognition of fault as an honorable virtue. They believe that they can maybe preserve themselves at the expense of other factions that swerve first. Playing the scapegoat card, making fake public remarks about willingness to reform, and passing the ball to each other are trademark moves of this game.

The game ends when the factions are forced to ultimately both swerve. How does this happen?

Information and value systems are key factors to the game. The right information and signals need to be made to politicians, so they wake up from their state of denial, change their interests and realize they need to start cutting their losses ASAP.

None of them will be able to preserve themselves politically, but they can maybe carry on with their lives somehow if they swerve soon enough. The longer they wait, the greater their losses. The smaller the road gets, and the worse the values of the [straight, straight] outcome will get.

Power dynamics are also crucial factors that can move the game. This can be brought about via a collective awakening that brings mass mobilization similar to the Cedars Revolution. Changing the internal balance of power is feasible without any military action, since force is only one form amongst many forms of power.

The game of chicken never lasts forever, but many times, the damage is often greater when the swerving is postponed.