In this new episode of La Loupe, Xavier Yvon analyzes a potential Pyrrhic victory for the Syrian dictator with Corentin Pennarear, journalist at the Monde service of L’Express, and Fabrice Balanche, lecturer in geography at the University Lumière Lyon-2 .
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The team: Xavier Yvon (presentation), Margaux Lannuzel (writing), Charlotte Baris (editing) and Jules Krot (directing).
Music and design: Emmanuel Herschon/Studio Torrent
Image credits: AFP
Logo: Anne-Laure Chapelain/Benjamin Chazal
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Xavier Yvon: You are starting to know me well, after some 350 episodes of La Loupe… You know that I have a penchant for complex acronyms and neologisms… That I really like riddles… And that I love when the beginnings of episodes have – apparently – no connection with the topic of the day…
But there’s one thing you still don’t know… One of my pet sins that I haven’t confessed to you: slightly outdated French expressions.
I use a lot of them – even if I hold back a bit when I’m in front of a microphone…
And I make this confession to you because while preparing this episode, I heard one that I hastened to write down on a small notebook, underlined in red to think of reusing it as soon as possible. This expression is “A Pyrrhic victory”. So, I did my research to be precise: it is an allusion to King Pyrrhus I of Epirus, who defeated the Romans in the 3rd century BC, but at the cost of immense and impossible to compensate losses.
“A Pyrrhic victory” is therefore a victory at such a high cost that it is almost equivalent to a defeat.
We owe his exhumation to Corentin Pennarear, from the world service of L’Express… He used it when he was explaining to me the attempted diplomatic “comeback” of… Bashar El-Assad.
After twelve years of war and more than half a million dead, the Syrian president is a pariah in the eyes of the West… But he could forge new alliances in favor, in particular, of the conflict in Ukraine:
A Pyrrhic victory, therefore… But which is not yet fully acquired.
For further
Syria: how Bashar al-Assad’s regime is trying to revive tourism
Syria: how Bashar al-Assad wants to “normalize” his regime (and is starting to succeed)
Presidential election in Syria: the underside of an electoral farce
PODCAST. Putin, Erdogan: two allies against the West
