Managing Phases… When Wisdom Is Broader Than Territorial Integrity
The world is no longer facing a single crisis that can be contained; it is living through cascading crises. From the fires of tension in the Strait to the tragedy of Gaza, from the attrition of Ukraine to a global economy that trembles whenever deterrence falters, the pattern is clear. In such moments, when transactional logic prevails and international politics turns into Predatory Hegemony, emotion rises, judgment recedes, and slogans grow louder than wisdom. It is here that a foundational concept in the Saudi political experience returns to the fore: the management of phases.
Managing phases is not hesitation, nor weakness. It is the ability to read political time and order priorities when reality is too complex to be reduced to rhetoric. It is a jurisprudence of survival that goes beyond the mere defense of borders to the protection of a sovereign future. In this sense, the experience of King Abdulaziz stands as a lesson in strategic wisdom: he did not build the state by leaping over realities, but through a precise balance between advance and restraint, between accommodation and decisiveness.
This wisdom also found resonance beyond the Peninsula. In the 1951 meeting with Habib Bourguiba and his companions, the policy of “take and demand” took clearer shape: a gradualism that protects outcomes before they are consumed by slogans. Here, the jurisprudence of phases meets the jurisprudence of objectives and consequences: good intention is not enough if it corrupts the outcome, and enthusiasm is not enough if it drives nations toward what they cannot bear.
The gravest danger today is not the eruption of crises alone, but the maladministration of the moment through impulsive reaction. A state is measured not only by the firmness of its borders, but by its ability to pass through a time of danger without losing its internal compass. In that sense, wisdom is broader than territorial integrity because survival is not only a matter of borders, but also of timing, consequence, and disciplined transition between phases.
In the Peninsula, where memory intersects with statehood, the lesson renews itself: discipline begins from within. The management of phases is not an intellectual luxury; it is a condition of survival in a world that shows little mercy to those who misread their moment, whether in strengthening the nation-state or in pursuing a wise Gulf federal horizon that advances through sober gradualism rather than the noise of slogans.
Discipline begins in Atturaif…
and is tested in the world.
Educational/clarifying note
In international law, territorial integrity refers to respect for the unity of a state’s territory and borders, and to the prohibition on violating them by force or the threat of force.
Prof. Dr. Malik Ãl-Dahlan
Professor of Law and specialist in international law; International Mediator.
Honorary Professor, University of St Andrews;
Emeritus Professor of International Law and Public Policy, Queen Mary University of London, and;
Member, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge.