From Brest-Litovsk to Lebanon

Between the lessons of history and the pressures of war, the same question recurs: can an exhausted state defer its ultimate defeat through a difficult settlement, or does an agreement concluded under an imbalanced power dynamic end up weighing on sovereignty and stability for years to come?

When states enter the hour of existential peril, the question is no longer how to win, but how to prevent total collapse. In this sense, the Lebanese debate currently unfolding around the initiative launched by President Joseph Aoun to open a path toward direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel under international sponsorship goes far beyond the boundaries of ordinary political controversy, and raises a deeper question concerning the limits of what realism can achieve when the state itself is threatened in its cohesion and its capacity to survive.

The initiative has generated a visible rupture between those who see in it a realistic attempt to halt the collapse and prevent the expansion of the conflict, and those who believe that any negotiation conducted under the pressure of arms and in a context of unequal power relations risks becoming a harsh settlement imposed on Lebanon, with lasting effects on its sovereignty and political future. In such moments, history returns to offer its precedents: that of states or political regimes that found themselves before a choice of extreme difficulty — that of accepting a painful agreement in order to avert total collapse.

In the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution’s triumph in 1917, the new Russian leadership found itself confronted with a brutal reality: an exhausted state, a disintegrating army, an economy on the verge of collapse after years of world war. At that moment, Vladimir Lenin understood that the continuation of the war against Germany risked precipitating the fall of the new power before it had managed to lay its foundations; he therefore charged Leon Trotsky with negotiating an end to the conflict.

The decision, however, did not impose itself easily. The Bolshevik leadership was divided over the nature of the stance to adopt. Lenin argued for accepting peace, however harsh and humiliating, holding that the priority was to save the revolution and buy the time necessary to rebuild the state. Trotsky, for his part, attempted to chart a middle course, one that would halt the fighting without requiring the signing of a dishonorable treaty, while a faction within the party, led by Nikolai Bukharin, rejected any settlement with Germany and called for continuing what it termed the “revolutionary war.”

Military realities settled the debate swiftly. The German army resumed its offensive and advanced into Russian territory without encountering any significant resistance, compelling the Bolshevik leadership to accept the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918.

The treaty was severe: it forced Russia to cede vast stretches of territory and to sustain significant economic losses, so much so that it was described at the time as a shameful peace. Yet Lenin considered this step, constrained and provisional as it was, to be meant to protect the larger political enterprise: the survival of the revolution itself.

And indeed, less than a year later, Germany was defeated and the treaty collapsed of its own accord, while the Bolshevik power succeeded in consolidating itself, waging the civil war, and emerging victorious. Since then, this episode has become a classic example in political history: that of accepting a hard agreement to save a project or a state threatened with collapse.

This example is today frequently invoked in Lebanese political debates, particularly in the context of the open war with Israel and the catastrophic repercussions that have befallen the country. Lebanon is traversing a situation of extreme fragility: a ruined economy, a fractured social fabric, millions of citizens threatened with displacement or destitution since their cities, villages, and homes were destroyed — pressures of immense weight bearing down on the social fabric and threatening the unity and cohesion of the country.

In such a context, some put forward the idea that political realism may sometimes require accepting difficult or unequal arrangements in order to end the war and prevent the collapse of the state and society. Others, conversely, reject this view and hold that any unbalanced agreement risks becoming a permanent diktat, entrenching the imbalance of power and durably undermining the sovereignty of the state.

This debate is further sustained by a reading of Lebanon’s previous experiences with Israel, where successive stages of negotiation and understanding show that Lebanon’s margin of maneuver has narrowed progressively as the imbalance of power intensified and the state’s capacity to fully control the components of its strength deteriorated. From the May 17 Agreement, which carried broad political and security dimensions but collapsed before it could be implemented, to the April Understanding, which organized the rules of engagement without addressing the root of the conflict, through UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and the series of understandings and security arrangements that followed it in an effort to contain hostilities — the realities of the field and the political landscape pushed gradually toward conditions ever more restrictive of Lebanese room for maneuver.

From this vantage point, some observers hold that the question concerns not only the nature of any possible agreement today, but also whether current conditions — harsh as they are — might remain less costly than those that could be imposed tomorrow should the military and political deterioration continue and the imbalance of power deepen further still.

The Lebanese dilemma is bound not only to the conditions of a possible settlement, but also to the persistence of a political discourse that continues to refuse to acknowledge the limits of power and to conflate realism with surrender — even as the perpetuation of this logic risks dragging both society and state toward a deepening of collapse, and rendering the cost of any subsequent arrangement more severe for Lebanon, politically, economically, and in terms of its sovereignty.

The difference between the era of Brest-Litovsk and our own lies, however, also in the nature of the international system. In 1918, no global institutional framework existed capable of sponsoring agreements or guaranteeing their implementation. Today, despite all the flaws and dysfunctions that afflict the international order, the existence of the United Nations and a network of diplomatic and legal mechanisms can provide a minimum of guarantees. In Lebanon’s case, international sponsorship, combined with Arab stewardship, could constitute a safety net for any eventual agreement, contributing to ensuring the parties’ commitment and reducing the risk of such an agreement collapsing or degenerating into a mere temporary truce.

Yet any serious discussion of a possible settlement in Lebanon runs directly into the question of arms outside the framework of the state — the knot bearing the heaviest consequences in defining Lebanon’s negotiating position and the limits of its capacity to honor any future agreement. The presence of Hezbollah as a military force holding an operational decision-making authority that exceeds the institutional framework of the state renders any negotiation inherently twofold: a negotiation between the Lebanese state and Israel on one hand, and an unresolved internal debate over who holds the final word on matters of war and peace on the other. Without this contradiction being addressed, any arrangement risks remaining precarious, for the success of an agreement depends not on texts alone, but on the existence of a single authority capable of monopolizing sovereign decision-making and fulfilling the commitments that flow from it.

It is for this reason that the question before the Lebanese today is not only whether a settlement is necessary or possible, but how to frame it within an international architecture that guarantees its durability and shields Lebanon from once again becoming the theater of an open conflict.

For in the end, the problem is not that an agreement be hard, but that its rejection today should open the way to still harder conditions tomorrow. States are measured not only by their capacity to endure, but also by their ability to recognize the moment when saving what can still be saved becomes the very condition of their survival.