The international community is obsessed with a myth. They call it "stability." They treat Lebanon like a glass vase that just needs enough glue to stay upright. Every think-tank analyst and diplomat repeats the same tired line: "Winning the peace is harder than winning the war."
They are wrong. They are fundamentally, dangerously wrong.
Winning the peace isn't "hard"—it's impossible under the current framework because "peace" in Lebanon has become the primary mechanism of state decay. What we call peace is actually a stagnant, subsidized truce that rewards the very actors who thrive on conflict. If you want to fix Lebanon, you have to stop trying to "win" a peace that functions as a slow-motion suicide pact.
The Stability Trap
For decades, the global North has poured billions into Lebanon under the guise of humanitarian aid and infrastructure support. The logic is simple: keep the lights on, keep the bread cheap, and the people won't go to war.
This is the Stability Trap.
When you subsidize a failing state without demanding the total dissolution of its sectarian power structures, you aren't helping the people. You are paying the ransom for a captured nation. The "peace" we’ve seen since 1990 isn't the absence of violence; it is the presence of systemic theft.
I have sat in rooms with developmental "experts" who talk about capacity building while the local warlords they're partnering with are busy stripping the copper out of the walls. We have mistaken a lack of active frontlines for progress. In reality, the "peace" period allowed the sectarian elite to entrench themselves deeper than any militia ever could during the civil war.
Sectarianism is a Feature Not a Bug
Stop asking when Lebanon will "evolve" past sectarianism. It won't. The 1989 Taif Agreement didn't end the war; it simply moved the war into the ministries.
In a standard democracy, a ministry exists to provide a service. In Lebanon’s "peaceful" consensus model, a ministry is a fiefdom. The Ministry of Energy isn't there to provide electricity (as evidenced by the literal darkness in Beirut); it's there to provide jobs for loyalists and contracts for cousins.
The "lazy consensus" argues that we need to strengthen state institutions. But you cannot strengthen an institution that was designed to be a distribution point for spoils. To "win the peace" in the way the West defines it would require the current ruling class to vote for their own irrelevance.
Imagine a scenario where a CEO is asked to liquidate his company, give away his personal fortune, and go to jail for the good of the market. That is what we are asking the Lebanese political class to do. It is a fantasy.
The Fallacy of the Middle Class Buffer
The most frequent "People Also Ask" query regarding Lebanon involves the "resilience" of its people.
"How do the Lebanese keep going?"
This narrative of resilience is a weapon used against the population. By praising the Lebanese for their ability to survive without electricity, clean water, or a functional currency, the international community justifies its own inaction.
The middle class—the doctors, the engineers, the teachers—was supposed to be the "peace dividend." Instead, they were the first ones to be liquidated. The 2019 financial collapse wasn't an accident. It was a controlled demolition of the only group capable of challenging the sectarian status quo.
The central bank, under Riad Salameh, ran what was effectively a state-sponsored Ponzi scheme. They used high interest rates to attract dollar deposits, then used those dollars to fund the government's deficit—the same government run by the warlords.
When the music stopped, the "peace" didn't break. The people just got poorer. The warlords stayed exactly where they were.
Peace as a Proxy for Stagnation
We need to stop viewing war and peace as a binary. In the Levant, "peace" is often just a period of re-arming and administrative looting.
The competitor's view—that peace is "harder"—assumes that there is a shared goal of a functional state. There isn't. There are multiple, competing goals of survival and regional leverage.
- Hezbollah doesn't want a "peace" that includes a monopoly on force by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).
- The Banking Sector doesn't want a "peace" that includes a forensic audit.
- The Sectarian Leaders don't want a "peace" that includes a non-confessional electoral law.
Everyone is winning their own version of the peace while the country loses.
The Counter-Intuitive Path Forward: Let it Break
This is where I lose the diplomats.
If the current "peace" is a subsidy for corruption, then the only way to "win" is to stop the subsidy. Completely.
We are told that if Lebanon "collapses," it will create a vacuum for radicalization and regional chaos. Newsflash: The vacuum is already here. The chaos is already happening. By constantly "stabilizing" the patient, we are preventing the surgery.
True disruption requires three uncomfortable steps:
- Total Financial Decoupling: Stop the IMF negotiations that rely on the current government's "reforms." There will be no reforms. Any money sent through official channels is a gift to the cartel.
- Bypassing the State: If you want to provide electricity, you don't give a loan to the Ministry of Energy. You fund decentralized, solar-grid cooperatives at the municipal level that the central government cannot touch.
- The End of Neutrality: The "peace" has been maintained by pretending all parties are legitimate political actors. They aren't. They are a syndicate. Treating them like "stakeholders" is the original sin of Lebanese diplomacy.
The Myth of the "Lebanese Model"
For years, Lebanon was touted as a "message" of coexistence. This was the ultimate marketing scam. It wasn't coexistence; it was mutual avoidance backed by a fear of return to 1975.
The "peace" is based on the idea that if we don't talk about the past, it won't repeat. So, Lebanon has no unified history textbook. It has no national memorial for the disappeared. It has no accountability.
You cannot "win" a peace built on amnesia.
The status quo isn't a delicate balance. It's a hostage situation. The "captors" are the political elite, and the "hostage" is the future of four million people. Every time a foreign dignitary flies into Beirut to "encourage dialogue," they are just handing the captors a fresh bottle of water and a sandwich.
Stop Trying to Fix the Unfixable
The question isn't how to make the peace "work." The question is how to dismantle the structures that make peace so profitable for the wrong people.
We have spent thirty years trying to build a state on top of a swamp. No matter how many "robust" (to use a term I despise) frameworks you design, the building will sink because the foundation is made of quicksand and old militia uniforms.
We don't need a "peace process." We need a bankruptcy proceeding.
We need to admit that the Lebanese State, as currently constituted, is a failed enterprise that exists only to protect its board of directors. The "peace" is their greatest asset. It provides them with the cover of legitimacy, the flow of international aid, and the time to move their assets to Switzerland.
If you want to actually "win," you have to stop playing the game by their rules. You have to stop fearing the "instability" of change more than the "stability" of a slow death.
The peace isn't harder than the war. The peace is the war, fought with ledgers and laws instead of bullets. And right now, the people are losing.
Stop trying to save the Lebanese State. Start trying to save the Lebanese. There is a massive difference between the two, and until the international community realizes that, they are just subsidizing the funeral.
Don't fix the vase. Break it and build something that isn't designed to shatter.
