Analyze

The battle of Ali al-Taher was not merely a military confrontation over a strategic hill in southern Lebanon. Despite its limited size, the site became a point where military, political, and regional calculations converged, exposing one of the core issues at the heart of Lebanon’s ongoing conflict: who controls the territory, who holds the weapons, and who decides on war and peace? What is most striking is not only Israel’s entry into the site, but Hezbollah’s insistence on refusing to hand it over to the Lebanese Army, even though the Army is the only legitimate institution supposed to assume responsibility for Lebanese territory, particularly in border areas directly tied to the country’s security and sovereignty. Why Did Hezbollah refuse? Because handing Ali al-Taher over to the Army would not have been understood as a limited measure on the ground. It would have carried a political meaning extending far beyond the hill itself. Such a move would have amounted to a de facto recognition of the Lebanese state’s authority over security and military decisions in the South, and of the principle that no other armed force can act as though it exercises effective authority on the ground. The site therefore became a test of state authority, rather than merely an advanced military position. Who Killed the fighters? This remains the most obscure episode in the account of the battle. The Israeli version speaks of fighters being killed and others fleeing, while independent information about how many people were present at the site, the nature of their mission, and what ultimately happened to them remains incomplete. The conflicting accounts also raise numerous questions that cannot be resolved through military statements alone. And this is not merely an operational detail: Were most of the fighters killed inside the site? Did they manage to withdraw through tunnels and passageways? Or had they been evacuated before the Israeli operation began? Each of these scenarios carries a different significance. If the fighters remained until the final moments, that would mean the site witnessed a direct confrontation that ended in clear Israeli military superiority. If, on the other hand, they were evacuated beforehand, the questions would concern who made that decision, why it was taken, and whether the evacuation formed part of a broader understanding or was simply a precautionary military measure. And if it were established that a significant number of them had left before Israeli forces entered the site, the central questions would then be: how did they leave, who facilitated their departure, and did it take place with the knowledge of local or international actors? At this stage, there is insufficient public evidence to determine which of these scenarios is correct. But the absence of information does not make these questions any less important. On the contrary, it deepens the uncertainty surrounding what occurred in the hours preceding the capture of the site. What About the U.S. Ambassador’s Visit to Israel? The timing deserves attention. The escalation around Ali al-Taher coincided with U.S. diplomatic moves involving Israel, while reports emerged of discussions concerning the site and the possibility that it might eventually be handed over to the Lebanese Army. This does not necessarily mean that the decision was made outside Lebanon, nor that a fully developed agreement was reached between Washington, Tel Aviv, and Beirut. But it does suggest that the site is no longer being viewed as a purely local military issue. There is no basis for asserting that the U.S. ambassador’s visit was part of a secret deal concerning Ali al-Taher. Nor can it be stated with certainty that everything that happened resulted from a prior understanding among the parties involved. What is clear, however, is that Washington views the future of the site as part of a broader file involving the ceasefire, the stabilization of the border, the prevention of any military presence outside the authority of the Lebanese state, and efforts to ensure that border areas do not become permanent platforms for confrontation. Ali al-Taher thus becomes part of negotiations that extend far beyond its geography. The site may be small on the map, but it is connected to major questions concerning arrangements in the South, the role of the Lebanese Army, the future of weapons outside state control, and the limits of Israeli influence in the region. The Paradox That Embarrassed Hezbollah The central political paradox is that Hezbollah refused to hand the hill over to the Lebanese Army, yet ultimately failed to retain it. If the Israeli operation were to end with the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the handover of the site to the Lebanese Army, the outcome would be very different from the situation Hezbollah sought to impose or preserve: Hezbollah refused to hand the site over to the state, Israel forced it out, and the state then returned to assume responsibility. In other words, Hezbollah refused to establish the Army’s authority voluntarily, but may find itself confronted with a reality that establishes that authority by other means. This is what makes the situation politically embarrassing, because the final outcome may appear to have achieved indirectly what Hezbollah refused to do directly. This raises an obvious question: why was handing the site over to the Army not considered the least costly option for Lebanon? Such a move could have been presented as a strengthening of the state’s role, a means of protecting the South, and a way of preventing Israel from using Hezbollah’s presence as a pretext to remain on the ground or advance further. The refusal to hand the site over to the Army instead kept it within the zone of confrontation and allowed Israel to present its operation as a response to a military presence outside state authority. Ali al-Taher Encapsulates Lebanon’s Problem The issue goes far beyond this hill. Lebanon cannot recover its sovereignty as long as two military authorities coexist: that of the Army and that of weapons outside state control. Nor can it ask the international community to respect its borders while military decision-making within those borders remains divided between state institutions and an armed organization possessing capabilities independent of them. At the same time, Lebanon cannot demand that Israel withdraw from its territory while security decisions concerning that same territory remain the subject of an internal dispute. As long as weapons remain outside state control, the Israeli argument will persist, and the South will remain exposed to further rounds of escalation. Sovereignty cannot be shared. Either the Lebanese Army is the sole military authority, or Lebanon will remain an open arena for regional conflicts in which Iranian, Israeli, and American calculations intersect, while the state and society pay the price of confrontation. This is why the real question after Ali al-Taher is not: Who won the hill? But rather: Who will control it once the battle is over? If the answer is the Lebanese Army, Ali al-Taher could mark the beginning of a transition in the South from the logic of “resistance” to the logic of state responsibility. It could constitute a first step toward redefining national security so that defending the borders becomes the responsibility of state institutions rather than that of any party acting independently. If Israel remains, however, Lebanon will once again have lost part of its sovereignty, regardless of the narrative each side puts forward to justify what happened. In either case, one essential truth remains: Hezbollah cannot substitute itself for the state, and Israel cannot serve as the guarantor of its sovereignty. Lebanese sovereignty can only be restored by the Lebanese state, protected by its Army, and upheld by a clear political decision that puts an end to the duality of arms and authority.

Lebanon is taking an important step toward safeguarding the individual right to life by abolishing the death penalty, at a time when the region lives to the rhythm of news of war, death and destruction, in a reality that at times resembles the collective execution of human beings. The abolition of the death penalty is not merely a legal amendment or a legislative measure. It is a human-rights act that places the right to life above the state’s right to punish and sides with the individual against the power to inflict death. From this perspective, Lebanon’s decision to embark on this path carries significance beyond the legal text itself by strengthening the protection of the individual. Abolishing the death penalty thus amounts to recognizing that the state should not kill in the name of the law, even as wars, conflicts and political and social collapse turn death into a daily practice both within and outside the law. This is where the significance of Lebanon’s move becomes clear, following a de facto moratorium on executions in place since 2004, in a region where human rights are rarely respected. Lebanese Justice Minister Adel Nassar described the abolition of capital punishment as “an essential message in favor of fundamental rights.” Among the member states of the Arab League, Djibouti removed the death penalty from its Penal Code in 1995, although the country is located in the Horn of Africa. In the Middle East, Israel abolished capital punishment for ordinary crimes in 1954, while retaining it for a number of exceptional offenses, including treason in wartime, genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish people. Last March, the Israeli Knesset adopted a law imposing the death penalty for certain murders classified as terrorist offenses committed by residents of the West Bank, while excluding Israeli citizens and residents of Israel, with the possibility, under certain exceptional circumstances defined by the military courts, of replacing it with life imprisonment. Promoted by the far right, this policy regained political momentum after the war that followed October 7, 2023. In practice, its application is aimed primarily at Palestinians subject to military courts. Israeli and international human-rights organizations have criticized the measure, arguing that it entrenches a two-tier justice system. This is not merely a philosophy rooted in the defense of human rights. It is also an assertion that human life does not lose its value because of a crime, because of a person’s identity, or because of their political, sectarian, geographical or ethnic position. In a region where human beings are often reduced to numbers in casualty tolls running into the thousands, defending the individual right to life becomes a political position in the fullest sense. The paradox, however, is that the abolition of the death penalty is taking place in a regional environment where death is inflicted on a massive scale. The shift from individual execution carried out by the state pursuant to a judicial ruling to collective execution produced by war and violence is one of the contradictions that most starkly reveals the crisis of a violent Middle East. The abolition of capital punishment should therefore not be regarded as the end of the debate, but as the beginning of a larger question: how can the right to life be transformed from a legal principle that protects the individual from the state into a political and moral value capable of protecting human beings from war, violence, authoritarianism and the collapse of the state? This is the geopolitical ambiguity of death. In Syria, death sentences in absentia have been issued against former President Bashar al-Assad on charges of premeditated murder, torture, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity, among other accusations related to the war he waged against his own people for nearly fourteen years. Alongside him, senior figures of his regime involved in mass killings, forced displacement and the torture of prisoners have also been convicted, in the context of a deeply ambiguous political transition in which the concept of justice becomes entangled with the imperatives of political revenge and the settling of scores. In Israel, death takes another form. Violence is exercised in contexts described as terrorism, while the killing of the Palestinian human being becomes an instrument in an existential and security conflict. All of this makes the issue more complex still, as death and execution take different forms once death itself becomes a political instrument. Yet the human being remains, in the end, the weakest link. While Lebanon moves toward abolishing capital punishment, killings, executions and bombings continue around it and on its own territory, outside the logic of state sovereignty and the law, or under various political and security labels. Yet the principle of civilization presupposes that no one can claim such a right in absolute terms. But what does justice mean in times of war and upheaval? And what form of accountability can truly be achieved while crimes and political and financial settlements continue? The abolition of the death penalty nevertheless opens new horizons for justice. Lebanon can now renew its request for the extradition of Igor Grechushkin, a Russian-Cypriot national who operated the Rhosus , the vessel that transported the ammonium nitrate linked to the August 2020 Beirut port explosion. A Bulgarian court had refused his extradition after deeming Lebanon’s assurances that he would not face the death penalty insufficient. With the abolition of capital punishment, one of the main legal obstacles to a renewed extradition request has been removed. In the hope of becoming a regional example, Lebanon is also considering whether to refuse the extradition to Syria of former regime officials who would be tried before courts that continue to issue death sentences, if it is able to do so given the scale of foreign interference. From this perspective, abolishing the death penalty is no longer merely a criminal-justice matter. It becomes a coherent position against a political culture that turns death into a means of reproducing power or eliminating opponents. The difference between execution and political violence does not always lie in the outcome, but in the authority that grants itself the legitimacy to carry it out. Capital punishment disappears from the law while surviving within a geopolitical landscape in which it is practiced in other forms. In principle, abolishing the death penalty is a democratic and legal act, and it also falls within the principle of mercy embraced by most revealed religions. But this alone is no longer sufficient for it to be described as a democratic act. Democracy is not measured only by what the state does inside parliament or inside the courtroom that replaces a death sentence with life imprisonment, but also by its ability to protect life beyond those walls. Democracy does not consist only in preventing the state from executing an individual pursuant to a judicial ruling. It also requires the creation of political, social and economic conditions that effectively protect human life from war, poverty, famine, explosions, collapse and displacement. The challenge is therefore no longer limited to abolishing capital punishment. It also lies in abolishing the conditions that make death ordinary, repetitive and acceptable, as though it were a natural part of political life. In the conflicts of the Horn of Africa, in the wars of the Middle East and Ukraine, and amid mass or increasingly frequent executions in Iran, the gap between the legal right to life and human reality continues to widen. This is where the crisis of the state itself is exposed. What value does recognition of the human right to life have if politics is incapable of protecting people from every form of political, military, social and economic killing? Death is no longer an exception in this geography. It is present in war, terrorism, famine, poverty, displacement and economic collapse, in societies exposed to every form of violation. Defending life therefore becomes more than defending a legal right. It becomes a defense of the very possibility that human beings may live ordinary lives, without war, without fear, without hunger and without constantly awaiting death when they leave their country to escape it, only to find themselves facing the sea, borders, detention centers, prisons or barbed wire that follows them from one capital to another. Migration itself thus becomes part of the democratic question. A person who leaves their country in search of life is supposed to enter a safer space, yet may instead find themselves trapped within a system of closed borders, detention, deportation and exploitation. Their right to life becomes suspended between two states: the one that drove them to leave and the one that refuses to receive them. Death is no longer an exception. It is war, execution, terrorism, famine, poverty, collapse, fires and floods. Even those who flee death do not necessarily escape its geography. They may move from war to the sea, from the sea to a border, from a border to a detention center, and from a detention center to another prison, as in cases involving radical Islamist prisoners transferred by air from Germany to Syrian prisons where they were tortured. It is as though prisons themselves are no longer always fixed places. They have become moving trajectories in which geography changes while the human condition does not. The issue, therefore, is no longer simply the abolition of the death penalty. It is the restoration of normal life itself: enabling human beings to live, to move, to cross borders, to dissent, to protest and to rise up without any of these acts becoming a potential path to death.

I was deeply moved while watching the Netflix series Antarctica , and I found myself wondering whether we in Lebanon could achieve something similar to what happened in Japan in 1950, or whether our situation is simply hopeless. The series revolves around the model embodied by the Japanese expedition to Antarctica in the 1950s, illustrating how a scientific and technical project can become a vehicle for rebuilding national sentiment in the aftermath of occupation and defeat. Emerging from the Second World War, Japan did not confine itself to rebuilding its physical infrastructure. It also sought to reconstruct its collective narrative and its image in the world by shifting the basis of legitimacy from the military sphere to the scientific and civil sphere. The expedition played a symbolic role in this transformation, as it was presented as evidence of the Japanese nation’s ability to rise again and reintegrate into the international community through peaceful means. What is striking about this experience is that launching the expedition was not merely an administrative or scientific decision. It was, above all, a profoundly political and symbolic act, framed by a public discourse that linked scientific progress to the restoration of national dignity. Educational institutions and the media played a central role in this process through campaigns of emotional and educational mobilization that simplified the project and presented it as a collective human adventure capable of engaging different segments of society and raising the funding required for the expedition at a time when the state’s resources were limited. This is precisely where the remarkable role played by the mobilization of children becomes apparent. Elements of the polar environment, such as penguins and sled dogs, the huskies, were turned into emotional and educational vehicles that made the project accessible to the public imagination and created an emotional bond between individuals and the expedition. This symbolic use of animals was far from incidental. It was an effective way of turning a complex project into a story that people could understand and identify with, particularly younger generations. In this sense, popular donations were not merely a source of funding. They also became a means of fostering a sense of belonging, as the very act of donating helped reinforce the feeling of participating in a shared national achievement. This brings us to what Benedict Anderson calls “imagined communities,” in which the nation takes shape through shared narratives that give individuals the sense that they belong to an entity larger than their own personal experiences. It also falls within what Eric Hobsbawm described as “the invention of tradition,” whereby rituals and practices are constructed in ways that lend legitimacy to a new form of patriotism. According to Axel Honneth, the nation-state is not built through laws and constitutions alone, which in Lebanon lose their function and effectiveness because of corruption. It is also built through what he calls a “shared ethical life.” Such a life can only take shape when citizens share “practices, living traditions and common projects” that foster solidarity and mutual recognition, making them feel that their individual freedom is connected to the freedom of others and to the success of the community as a whole. This is precisely what Lebanon lacks today, in the absence of any common project capable of redefining national identity beyond the confines of sectarianism and corruption. Yet the success of the Japanese experience was not the result of discourse alone. It rested on specific structural conditions. The first was the existence of a cohesive state capable, despite defeat, of planning, executing its policies and managing its resources. The second was the presence of political and administrative elites that understood the need to move from a militarized nationalism toward a form of civil and scientific legitimacy, and sought to entrench this transformation through concrete projects. The third condition, and perhaps the most important, was the level of public trust in institutions, which enabled citizens to believe that their material or symbolic contributions would genuinely be used in the service of the common good. Without this trust, any attempt at popular mobilization loses its meaning and is reduced to little more than a formal exercise. When I considered launching a similar fundraising campaign in Lebanon to help the people of the South, contribute to reconstruction and prevent the Shiite tandem from exploiting the occasion, a reality radically different from Japan’s became apparent. Lebanon’s current reality stands as the structural opposite of the Japanese experience. Rather than serving as a unifying framework, the state has become an arena of competition between sectarian forces and patronage networks, undermining its ability to launch any common national project. The collapse of trust between citizens and institutions also preempts any possibility of broad-based public fundraising, since public resources are widely perceived as vulnerable to plunder or to being diverted toward factional interests. Added to this is the coexistence of competing narratives about the very meaning of Lebanon as a political entity, between the logic of “resistance” and that of “sovereignty,” as well as conflicting regional and international allegiances. This prevents the emergence of a “shared narrative” on which collective mobilization could be built. In this context, reconstruction and aid mechanisms become instruments for reproducing political allegiances. This is evident in the dominance of clientelist institutions over the distribution of resources, reinforcing dependency rather than building a system of equal citizenship. The purpose of this comparison, therefore, is not to replicate the Japanese model. Rather, it is to expose what is missing in the Lebanese case: a symbolic and institutional framework capable of transforming an economic act into an act of belonging. The problem lies not only in the scarcity of resources, but also in the inability to create a shared sense of purpose strong enough to make individuals willing to contribute voluntarily to a project that transcends their divisions. Accordingly, any initiative aimed at financing reconstruction in Lebanon will remain limited in its impact unless it is accompanied by the rebuilding of trust, the formulation of a shared national narrative, and the establishment of transparent mechanisms that sever the link between resource allocation and clientelist practices. In short: freeing the state from its occupiers. Without that, the contrast between the two experiences will remain the expression of profound differences in the structure of the state, the nature of its elites, and the conditions under which a shared national sense of purpose can emerge.

The escalating tensions in Lebanon, Gaza, the Red Sea, and the Strait of Hormuz are fueling fears of a scenario that Iran and its allies have already employed before: a series of military provocations that would gradually intensify to counter the American economic D-Day. The Israeli military says it is preparing for a possible "multi-front flare-up," on the eve of a series of Jewish holidays beginning on September 11. While Iran is careful not to provoke Israel directly—to avoid a retaliation that would cost it dearly—it would not hesitate to encourage its allies to act as troublemakers, should the American economic vice tighten further around it. That does not yet appear to be the case, however, as Pakistan made clear on Thursday through its Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Tahir Andrabi, that Islamabad "is not obligated to comply with unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran, unless they are imposed by the United Nations." In practical terms, this means Pakistan intends to continue its trade with Tehran, despite U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to sanction any country that maintains any form of economic exchange with the Islamic Republic. According to the Pakistani spokesperson, Islamabad believes that the American sanctions "are not in line with international law and that disputes (between the U.S. and Iran) must be resolved through dialogue." The spokesperson fails to note, however, that this so-called "dialogue" has been ongoing for more than twenty years—specifically since 2006, when the UN Security Council demanded that the Islamic Republic halt its uranium enrichment. For three consecutive years starting in 2006, the UN Security Council adopted increasingly severe sanctions against Iran due to its refusal to comply with UN directives… Nevertheless, Islamabad's stance represents the first official position taken by a state in response to the economic D-Day announced on Monday by President Trump against Iran. Growing tension On the ground, tensions have escalated on nearly every front. In Gaza, the situation involving kites, balloons, and drones launched into Israeli territory nearly spiraled out of control. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Israel Katz both warned Hamas that airstrikes would intensify if such launches continued. In the Red Sea, two strategic sites providing access to the equally strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait—the port of Mokha and the town of al-Khawkha on Yemen's western coast—were targeted in fierce Houthi strikes and remain the scene of intense fighting between the pro-Iranian group and the Yemeni regular army. In the Strait of Hormuz, vessels venturing into U.S.-secured shipping lanes continue to be targeted by attacks. In Lebanon, a woman was killed and six others—including a young girl—were wounded in Israeli airstrikes targeting the town of Arabsalim in the Nabatiyeh district, just hours after Hezbollah launched booby-trapped drone attacks against Israeli forces stationed near the strategic hill of Ali Taher in the same district. Exchanges of fire and airstrikes intensified on Thursday, targeting numerous villages in southern Lebanon. The escalation is all the more alarming given that Israeli military operations are no longer confined to the so-called security zone. Israeli Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir announced a raised alert level among his troops and outlined operational plans "on all fronts, from Iran to Lebanon and through to Gaza," in response to the risk of a "multi-front flare-up." Mediation attempts, but… This situation is an indicator of the failure, so far, of mediation attempts that have resumed between Tehran and the United States. Following the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, and Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Al-Busaidi, who were received consecutively on Monday and Tuesday in Tehran, it is now Doha's turn to attempt to revive diplomatic efforts. Qatari Prime Minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani traveled to Iran on Thursday, where he held two meetings with President Massoud Pezeshkian and the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Are we once again witnessing a race against the clock between diplomacy and the military option? It should be noted that the latter remains a last resort for Washington, according to American officials — but for Iran, where internal pressure is beginning to mount significantly, the calculation is rather delicate: either endure the sanctions or escalate pressure on the ground. This is where Lebanon is particularly affected, and where Hezbollah's role becomes increasingly sensitive, as the state continues to indefinitely postpone the question of disarming the pro-Iranian militia. President Aoun indirectly addressed the (verbal) standoff with this group on Thursday, citing an "internal conflict" between "those seeking to strengthen state institutions and those who benefit from their weakness" — without outlining any possible roadmap to actually resolve that conflict. Beirut continues to pin its hopes on direct talks with Israel, which are set to resume in September in Rome, according to Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, though no specific date has been given. To understand the core of Lebanon's problem, one must follow the statements of the US Ambassador to Lebanon, Michael Issa, who again stressed on Thursday the priority of disarming the pro-Iranian party, while also highlighting the regional dimension of the issue. "Hezbollah," the US Ambassador noted, "must hand over its weapons, and the state must be the sole authority." "As for guarantees, they require that sovereignty rest exclusively with the state and that defense also falls under its purview." "As long as the state holds authority, controls its institutions, and maintains relations with other states, it can always call upon them for the assistance it may need," the US diplomat said following a meeting with the Druze Cheikh Akl, Sami Aboul-Mona. But for this to be possible, Hezbollah must break away from Iran — which is no easy feat, the diplomat acknowledged. "So far, Hezbollah refuses to engage with the state, with us, or with Israel, because it simply takes its orders from Iran," he emphasized.

Superman is known as the Man of Steel, dressed in a tight-fitting suit and a red and blue cape, a figure who takes things seriously and bears on his shoulders, like a policeman, the responsibility of saving the world. This is the man embodied by David Corenswet in his modern Hollywood incarnation: he stops villains and intervenes to save lives threatened by wars, fires, or drowning. This American film also gives rise to another figure of Superman: a character who constantly intervenes in world affairs without stopping to consider the consequences of intervening in other countries’ conflicts. Such a geopolitical approach may seem ill-suited to the values of superheroes. Yet this is what U.S. President Donald Trump appears to suggest through his spectacular moves to reshape the world, in a metaphorical evocation of the villainous figure alluded to by the film’s director in the “MAGA,” without naming it, through the businessman character or others such as Lex Luthor. It is, in other words, a new version of America in an evil world ruled by predatory capitalism, an image of arrogant businessmen reminiscent of Gordon Gekko in the film “Wall Street.” The character of Superman was created 87 years ago to fight independent employers and the Nazis during World War II, and then, in the 1950s, to stand alongside Americans during the Cold War. Each version reflected the threats and concerns dominating American society at the time. Today, Superman leaps to the aid of everything Trump loathes, with Superman himself portrayed as an immigrant from a poor background, while those who object to this image are considered racist when they speak of migrants and “their desire to destroy America.” Every Superman has been a symbol of change, in a world that needs someone to save it in its most turbulent moments, which reflect an era of state capitalism in its vast environment. An even more American version reminds the world of what it can become at its worst, through one of America’s most emblematic heroes, while reflecting the temptations and contradictions of an age engaged in an excessive American search for what it means to be a great power. In reality, Trump presents himself as a version that echoes the original text, yet he brings forth forms of political action far removed from the classical mold, restoring to the international stage the model of an era dominated by state capitalism, the exploitation of global resources, and power politics in geopolitical conflicts. These are contemporary reflections of a political scene represented by the pact Faust made with the devil. At the same time, Trump relinquishes neither luxury nor the spectacular dimension of using visual and symbolic arts to introduce change into his political action. He thus appears as a mixture of aspirations to control and hegemony, together with all the political and social deviations that follow, as he inflames the issue of migration worldwide and revives social, nationalist, and racist conflicts. He plays with everything: international rules as well as diplomatic conventions. He recognizes no limits to his deals or his influence when imposing and manipulating tariffs. Nor does he restrain his audacity in refusing to acknowledge the global energy crisis in the war over the Strait of Hormuz or the dangers of climate change, despite the massive fires, hurricanes, and floods sweeping across the world. And, just as a horror writer might imagine it, the regime in Tehran was weaker than at any point in its 47-year history before the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war on February 28, 2026. It was on the verge of falling without a war, through a gamble on the dynamics of unraveling internal balances and bringing conflicts among different domestic groups and forces to the surface. Fortune then smiled on Donald Trump, notably in Venezuela, even though he had mocked neoconservative visions of regime change and the construction of democratic societies, particularly when he says: “All I want is freedom for the Iranian people.” He declares war in order to eliminate the nuclear threat and prevail over the regional chaos caused by hardliners, promising Iranians that they will finally be freed from the theocratic regime. But the experience of a global Superman is anything but conventional amid the boundless ambition of new admirers among online audiences, eager to exert influence without fearing a descent into political and financial chaos across the world. He seeks to redistribute wealth in a way that lacks any perspective of justice and equality, within an international economic system dominated by the GAFAM giants, while paying insufficient attention to other geopolitical dimensions: poverty, unemployment, and hunger affecting millions of children around the world as a result of his wars. He knows how to impose tariffs, compel leaders and presidents around the world to support his agenda and dance with him, impose sanctions, and know when to retreat after entering arenas of conflict. He then proclaims himself the man deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, granting himself the power to extinguish fires and wars without verifying whether there are any signs that they are actually ending, while presenting himself as fully versed in matters of war and in imposing peace by force. The result is a crisis reshaping the Middle East in ways likely to have long-term consequences for Washington, as regional leaders adapt to a new reality rather than simply submit to it. They consider what exists now better than nothing, amid doubts about the reliability of the United States and suspicions that Israel is a destabilizing force, while this imaginary Superman asks Americans and the world to reward him as he seeks another presidential term. In return, this accumulation of anxiety and division generates unstable dynamics across the world that deepen existing crises. Such confidence cannot be placed in a single man leading the world when he acts through a sweeping deal that does not truly represent two-thirds of the planet, while never ceasing to talk or entertain, and never ceasing to quarrel with others. He attacks international efforts undertaken at the United Nations and speaks disparagingly of the officials of its legal institutions. He excels at shaping the terms of negotiations, his speeches, meetings, and travels in order to contain others, with the exception of digital loyalists who practice “post-irony” toward other societies. The American Superman thus grants himself all this confidence before he has even earned it. For the state of the world remains bound up with the difficulties facing political systems and with a non-democratic, pre-emptive phenomenon that applies its concepts to capitalism and technology, weakening state institutions and paralyzing them. All that defenders of political realism do is little more than submit, to the detriment of the real world, particularly with regard to international politics itself and existing international treaties. The world falls into the trap of believing that results can be achieved through personal and improvised deals rather than through a multilateral order based on shared and stable rules. This is precisely where the danger lies: that humanity may lose its political bearings, while states become trapped within their domestic policies for the benefit of a new feudal system governing the world according to a reactionary philosophy hostile to democracy, under the influence of the political views of technology investors, including Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. This helps shape the current culture of Silicon Valley and the White House instead of defending pluralism and democracy. And if people come to believe that governments should be run by techno-capitalist corporations or by artificial intelligence, or that human society operates according to a logic of singularity, then these ideas become real through the consequences of the failure of declared strategies. They no longer even need America’s adversaries to act against it. All this may follow if this new Superman succeeds, a Superman different from the one we once knew, with Trump’s tendencies toward the darker side of wars and everything that follows: plunging the world and its economies into the unknown. Yet there is still time for cinematic entertainment to avert the worst, before people follow their favorites and promote them in an attempt to bring them back into the center of public attention. Then comes Spider-Man, in the form of a swarm of 1,500 drones crossing the sky above Gwangan Bridge, while his film continues its strong run at the U.S. and Canadian box offices, overtaking Superman under the glare of the spotlights. In short, Trump himself has opened Pandora’s box. This is a new catastrophe in a war waged in the name of global peace imposed by force, without any genuine strategy, where every film leads to another American film. For all to watch.

During one of my visits to Canada, I stopped, as I usually do, at Volume bookstore, which carries valuable intellectual works that are no longer in print. There, I came across a small book by a Canadian author, Michel Poulin: Vivre et laisser vivre . I picked it up immediately because it deals with how people live together, what we in Lebanon call “coexistence.” The book’s central idea appears simple: my freedom ends where another person’s freedom begins. But the real question is: who determines those boundaries? The book rejects two extreme ideas: absolute freedom, which leads to chaos, and total control, which leads to repression. In place of these two, it proposes another form of freedom: “responsible freedom.” These ideas come close to John Stuart Mill’s thinking and his “harm principle,” according to which society or the state may legitimately exercise coercion over an individual against their will for one purpose only: to prevent harm to others. They also echo Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s treatment of the social contract, namely the attempt to reconcile man’s absolute individual freedom in the state of nature with submission to political and legal authority in civil society, without losing that freedom or becoming dependent on others. What is particularly compelling about this book, however, is that it does not offer a theoretical discourse. Instead, it begins with lived examples drawn from everyday life, from the family to the workplace and then to the public sphere. It uses concrete situations to show how the principle of freedom turns into a daily struggle for influence and power, and therefore into disagreement over the very definition of “right” itself. How does this play out in Lebanon? Let us begin with a question: do we have a single definition of freedom? Or does each group define freedom according to its own interests? One group believes that only its weapons protect its freedom. Another considers those very weapons a threat not only to its freedom, but to its existence and to Lebanon’s existence itself. A third believes that its influence is what protects its freedom. These conflicting conceptions bring competing freedoms into conflict. Instead of complementing one another and allowing peaceful coexistence, they lead to an imposed coexistence or a forced balance. Lebanon’s competing sectarian communities do not clash because their religions or cultures differ, but because they are driven by the same “mimetic desire,” to borrow René Girard’s term: the desire for domination, monopoly over power, and recourse to foreign powers in order to strengthen themselves. Every community has, at some point in Lebanon’s history, enjoyed a period of political hegemony: Maronite political hegemony, then Sunni political hegemony, and now Shiite political hegemony. At each stage, the other communities felt the desire to imitate the dominant group, viewing it at once as a “model and a rival.” Thus, when one community possesses weapons or enjoys regional influence, the others do not necessarily demand its disarmament from a purely civic standpoint. They are also driven by a form of “mimetic envy” and by the desire to acquire a power advantage of their own, both to protect themselves and to reinforce their position by relying on an external power. Lebanon’s communities are “rival twins” who sacrifice national interests to similar impulses: domination and monopoly over power. But this mimetic rivalry has now reached its peak. The social order is in crisis as state institutions, the only common denominator among all the adversaries, collapse. This is what drives some to demand autonomous security arrangements and cantons. The paradox is that the demand for autonomous security arrangements and cantons does not arise from a coherent political vision. It is, rather, one of the clearest expressions of “mimetic rivalry,” a mirror response to an unequal balance of power. For decades, Hezbollah has succeeded in building its own “private canton,” with its military apparatus, financial institutions, social services, and independent security system. When the other communities see this group, entirely autonomous within its own “state,” while at the same time dominating central decision-making, they do not see an equal partnership. Their natural sociological response, driven by fear for their very existence, becomes: if the central state is unable to protect us, then we must build our own cantons in order to survive. This is precisely what Girard warns against when he speaks of “rival twins.” In trying to resist Hezbollah’s model or protect themselves from it, the other communities end up reproducing its behavior and demanding isolated areas of their own. In doing so, they serve Hezbollah’s objective: to make the establishment of a sovereign, civil, centralized state governed by the rule of law impossible. The “Mimetic Crisis” and Collapse: The War of All Against All When mimetic rivalry reaches its peak, the social order collapses and boundaries and distinctions begin to dissolve. This is what Girard calls the “mimetic crisis.” We seem to be at the heart of such a crisis, because state institutions, our only common denominator, are collapsing. When the state collapses, each community comes to see itself as the absolute victim and the other as the demon that must be eliminated. This is what happened during the civil war we lived through, and whose return continues to haunt us today as sectarian divisions deepen and Lebanese citizens endure one shock after another. Historically, Lebanon’s pluralistic system has managed, after every crisis we have gone through, to reproduce itself. Each time, the communities, or rather their leaders, manufactured a “scapegoat” to whom they assigned full responsibility, as a way of releasing collective violence and reviving coexistence. It began with the phrase “the wars of others” on our soil, used to explain the civil war. Then came the Palestinian refugee issue, followed by the Syrian refugee issue, with these “foreigners” blamed for the economic collapse. Judge Bitar then became the system’s scapegoat in the aftermath of the crime at the port. Even the political class itself was targeted in 2019, when the street chanted, “All of them means all of them.” And when the system managed once again to save itself, it sacrificed a few figures. The governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh, thus became the scapegoat made to carry the sins of the entire banking system, 40% of whose owners are themselves members of the political class, as well as those of the political system as a whole. The rest survived. Can this truly be called “coexistence”? Or is it a ritual that worships fear? This coexistence, endlessly recycled and reproduced through political rituals that the system has excelled at marketing, national dialogue sessions, sectarian allocation of posts, and mutual vetoes, is not intended to build a state in any real sense. Its purpose is to prevent “mimetic rivalry” from exploding. It is a coexistence built on fear of a return to conflict. In other words, what is sacred in Lebanon is a “precarious civil peace,” worshipped like an idol, in whose name justice, the law, accountability, the rights of the port victims and of depositors are sacrificed, to the point of sacrificing the state, the land, and the country itself. But we are now living through the most dangerous phase Lebanon has ever known, and the gravest of its crises, because the “scapegoat mechanism” is beginning to lose its effectiveness. The system can no longer invent a victim capable of convincing all Lebanese. The fracture has deepened, and there is no longer any “shared victim’s blood” capable of bringing the adversaries together. The hope is that the new generations, who will assume tomorrow’s responsibilities, will reject this “false coexistence” built on burying the truth. The hope is that the new generation will demand a transition from a society that bargains away its victims to one that holds people accountable, and toward a state governed by law and justice, whether for the port or for the country as a whole.

The saying “All roads lead to Rome” is one of the most famous expressions in political history and the history of civilizations. It was not merely a literary metaphor, but a description of the reality of the Roman Empire, which built an extensive road network that made Rome its political, military and economic center, with all the major roads leading to the capital. From the Middle Ages onward, the phrase became a proverb meaning that a variety of means does not necessarily alter the final outcome, and that different paths may lead to the same destination. Lebanon today may offer a contemporary political illustration of that saying. Since the end of the latest war, speeches and slogans have multiplied, as have the options being proposed. Yet one question remains: does Lebanon truly have several strategic choices, or do they all, one way or another, ultimately lead to the negotiating table? This article neither advocates negotiations nor opposes them, nor does it seek to justify any particular political choice. It simply attempts to read reality as it is, away from slogans and political passions, and to ask a straightforward question: does Lebanon still have any strategic option that does not, in the end, pass through negotiations? From War to Politics In international relations, wars are not ends in themselves. They are often a means of reshaping the balance of power in preparation for negotiations. Wars rarely end in absolute victory. More often than not, their outcomes are translated at the negotiating table, whether through direct or indirect talks. In Lebanon’s case, the latest war has produced a new reality shaped by several factors: Israel’s reoccupation of parts of Lebanese territory; growing international pressure to implement Resolution 1701 and other relevant international resolutions; the linking of reconstruction to a new political and security process concerning weapons outside the authority of the state; profound regional transformations that have redrawn the balance of power and shaken many of the assumptions that shaped the region over the past two decades. All of this has brought Lebanon face to face with a challenge that can no longer be deferred. What Options Does Lebanon Have? On the surface, the options appear numerous. But once examined more closely, they prove far less diverse than they seem. First: The Military Resistance Option One camp believes that continuing military action provides an alternative to any negotiating track. But this option runs up against several realities: a clear imbalance of power; a human and economic cost that Lebanon can scarcely afford; the absence of international support for an open confrontation; the domestic need to rebuild the state and its institutions. Continuing the confrontation, therefore, does not eliminate negotiations. It merely delays them or alters their terms. Second: Waiting Others are betting on regional or international changes that might eventually offer Lebanon more favorable conditions. But waiting is not a policy in itself. It amounts to suspending a decision. Meanwhile, realities continue to change, balances of power shift, and new facts on the ground become entrenched, only to become part of any future settlement. Third: Internationalizing the Crisis Some call for placing the entire file in the hands of the United Nations or international powers. Yet even the most internationalized conflicts have never been resolved by international resolutions alone. Their implementation and translation into reality have ultimately required negotiations among the parties concerned. Fourth: Indirect Negotiations This is a model Lebanon has experienced on several occasions, whether through the armistice agreement, negotiations over the maritime boundary, or American and international mediation. This option allows understandings to be reached without requiring either side to assume the full political cost of direct contact with the other. Fifth: Direct Negotiations This is the most politically sensitive option. Yet it remains a possibility if the parties come to believe that mediation is no longer sufficient to achieve the objectives they seek. The Negotiations Everyone Refuses to Acknowledge The actors most adamantly opposed to talking about negotiations appear, in fact, to be among those most closely tied to their outcome. Hezbollah, which rejects any discussion of direct Lebanese negotiations with Israel, is now part of a regional equation that extends far beyond Lebanon’s borders. Many of its strategic calculations today appear linked to the outcome of negotiations between Iran and the United States. The future of sanctions, the nuclear program and Iran’s regional role are all factors that directly or indirectly affect Hezbollah’s position and choices. This means that even if Hezbollah is not sitting at the negotiating table, it is waiting for the results and basing much of its calculations on them. Rejecting negotiations in Beirut does not mean rejecting negotiations altogether. It simply means that the negotiating venue has shifted to another capital and to a different dossier. Israel , despite its military superiority, faces a similar dilemma. Military force can destroy or weaken an adversary’s military capabilities, but it cannot by itself produce lasting stability along the northern border. Ultimately, Israel needs arrangements that can guarantee the security of its northern settlements, enable their residents to return, and prevent the threat from re-emerging. Whatever name is given to such arrangements, they cannot be achieved through force alone. They will require political or security understandings, direct or indirect, with the Lebanese state or through international mediation. In other words, despite their different rhetoric, both sides are moving within the same negotiating framework, even if they are not sitting at the same table. Hezbollah is waiting for the outcome of Iranian-American negotiations, while Israel is seeking negotiated arrangements that can secure its northern front. Both understand that war alone cannot produce a sustainable outcome. Is There Any Real Alternative to Negotiations? This is where the central paradox lies. After examining the various scenarios, it becomes clear that the real divide is not between negotiations and no negotiations , but between the form, timing and level of negotiations . War can be a means of improving negotiating terms. Deterrence is also an instrument of negotiation. Mediation is itself a form of negotiation. International resolutions require negotiations to be implemented. And waiting is, ultimately, nothing more than postponing negotiations. Even the continuation of occupation or limited clashes cannot constitute a permanent solution. They are merely transitional phases that sooner or later end in some form of settlement. The real question, therefore, is no longer: will there be negotiations? Rather: what kind of negotiations? Who will represent Lebanon? And what cards will it have to play? What Does This Mean for Lebanon? The fundamental issue is not the principle of negotiations itself, but the Lebanese state’s readiness for them. States are not judged only by their ability to enter negotiations, but also by their ability to define their objectives before taking a seat at the table. What does Lebanon want to recover? What are its priorities? What can it accept? And what can it not concede? The answers to these questions are what determine the outcome of any negotiating process, not the mere fact that negotiations take place. A state that enters negotiations united and capable of defining a national position becomes a partner in shaping the settlement. A divided state, by contrast, becomes an arena where settlements crafted by others are played out. Perhaps the saying “All roads lead to Rome” is no longer merely a description of the Roman road network, but an unusually accurate description of Lebanon’s current situation. The paths differ, the slogans change and the rhetoric shifts, but the outcome appears to remain the same. Hezbollah, despite rejecting negotiations with Israel, is waiting for the results of other negotiations that will determine a significant part of its future. Israel, despite its military superiority, is also seeking negotiated arrangements capable of providing the security that force alone has failed to guarantee. And the Lebanese state, however much it tries to postpone the issue, will eventually find itself confronting the same question. The question is no longer: will Lebanon negotiate? It is now: how will it negotiate? Who will negotiate on its behalf? On the basis of what national vision? And will it enter negotiations as a state that is master of its own decisions, or as an arena where the negotiations of others intersect? For in politics, as in history, the issue is not simply that all roads lead to Rome. It is knowing why you are taking a particular road, and having the ability and courage to set your own destination before others choose it for you.

The Middle East is no longer merely undergoing a realignment of alliances. It appears to be entering a period in which the very concept of regional security is being redefined. After decades in which the Arab system functioned, however tenuously, within common frameworks such as the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council, new security and economic arrangements are now beginning to emerge. They transcend the boundaries of the Arab world, bringing Arab and Muslim states together with regional and international powers on the basis of strategic interests rather than identity alone. It is in this context that what has become known as the “Mecca Agreement,” signed by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan on August 7, 2026, has emerged. It is based on the principle that an attack on any one of the three states is considered an attack on all of them. In its wording, this principle echoes the collective-defense principle enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, although it is still far too early to describe it as a fully fledged “Islamic NATO.” The significance of the agreement lies not only in the three countries themselves, but also in what each of them represents: Saudi Arabia, with its Arab, Islamic and economic weight; Türkiye, with its military power and NATO membership; and Pakistan, as a nuclear-armed state. It is this nuclear dimension that gives the agreement, at least in theory, a strategic weight extending beyond conventional military cooperation. The relationship between this agreement and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, however, is neither one of integration nor dependence. Türkiye remains a NATO member, while the Alliance itself reaffirmed at its Ankara summit last July its commitment to collective defense under Article 5. At the same time, NATO is developing increasingly close security cooperation with several Gulf states, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. This is where the picture becomes more complex. On the other side, a different network of relationships is taking shape, bringing together the UAE, India and Israel, with links extending to Greece and Cyprus. Precision is necessary here: there is, as yet, no formal four-way military alliance bringing together the UAE, India, Israel and Greece in the traditional sense. What exists is an expanding network of strategic, economic and security partnerships, alongside publicly articulated Israeli proposals for building an axis stretching from India through the UAE to Greece and Cyprus. The importance of this axis lies in the fact that it is based neither on religion nor identity, but on interests: trade, technology, security, energy, maritime routes, and connectivity between India, the Middle East and Europe. This is also the context in which the competition surrounding the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor, or IMEC, should be understood. The project was intended to link India to the Gulf, then to Israel and Europe. Regional wars and divisions, however, have made its future more complicated, while Saudi Arabia has begun exploring routes that could bypass Israel. Are We Facing an Arab Divide? Yes, but not in the traditional sense of the word. It would be more accurate to say that we are witnessing a transition from a single Arab system, even if at times only nominally so, toward a set of competing and overlapping axes. Saudi Arabia no longer wants to rely on a single security umbrella. For years, the UAE has chosen to build broad strategic relationships with the United States, India and Israel. Türkiye operates both within and beyond NATO, while seeking to carve out an independent regional role for itself. Pakistan adds its military and nuclear weight to the equation. India, for its part, acts according to the logic of a major power seeking its place in the emerging global order. This means that Arab states no longer necessarily act as a single bloc. The greater danger, however, would be for this plurality of alliances to turn into an inter-Arab confrontation between rival blocs, with Arab states becoming components of competing axes rather than actors pursuing an independent regional project of their own. And this is where the Lebanese question becomes more urgent. Where Is Lebanon? Lebanon is not Saudi Arabia, nor the UAE, nor Türkiye, nor India. It is a small state in an exceptionally sensitive geographical position, with a multi-sectarian society and an economy that needs both the Arab world and the West. For that reason, the question “Which alliance should Lebanon join?” may be the wrong one. The real question is this: how can Lebanon preserve its identity and national interests in a world where alliances are becoming overlapping networks? The Lebanese Constitution provides an initial answer. Its preamble clearly states that Lebanon is “Arab in identity and belonging,” that it is a founding and active member of the League of Arab States and is committed to its covenants. It also affirms Lebanon’s place in both the Arab and international spheres. This is not a poetic phrase inserted into the preamble of the Constitution. It is part of the identity of the state itself. But Lebanon’s “Arab identity” does not mean that it should become a party to any Arab axis regardless of its policies. Nor does belonging to the Arab world mean entering into confrontation with Türkiye, Iran, the West or any other state. Lebanon’s Arab identity should be a framework of belonging, not an instrument of military alignment. This is precisely why Lebanon today needs a different policy: neither a policy of axes nor one of isolation, but rather a policy of positive neutrality and balanced openness. Is It Too Early to Define a Position? Yes. It is still too early for Lebanon to announce that it is joining any new security axis. Indeed, doing so now would be a mistake. Even the “Mecca Agreement” itself is still in its formative stage. The details of its implementation, the mechanisms of collective defense and the extent to which it may evolve into an integrated military structure have yet to become clear. As for the opposing axis, it is not yet a formal military alliance, but rather a network of strategic partnerships and interests. If Lebanon were to adopt an early and definitive position, it could find itself, within months or years, in a configuration that no longer serves its interests. More importantly, Lebanon cannot afford to be drawn into a contest between competing axes. It is still struggling to address its domestic crises, restore Arab and international confidence, rebuild its economy, and strengthen the army and legitimate state institutions. What Should Lebanon Do? First, it must state clearly that security and military decision-making is the exclusive prerogative of the Lebanese state. Lebanon cannot be a sovereign state if its security choices are determined outside its constitutional institutions. Second, it must preserve its Arab relationships, particularly with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, without allowing this to become a commitment to a military axis. Third, it must maintain its relations with Türkiye, Europe, the United States, India and the Gulf states, while refusing to allow itself to be trapped into an “either-or” choice. Fourth, it must redefine “neutrality” in practical terms. Neutrality does not mean that Lebanon should have no position on Arab causes, the Palestinian question or international law. It means that Lebanon should be neither a battlefield nor a military platform serving any regional axis. Fifth, Lebanon must restore its place in the Arab world through the state, not through parties or armed organizations. This is where the central issue lies. If Lebanon truly wishes to uphold the principle that it is “Arab in identity and belonging,” it must rebuild its relationship with the Arab world through the Lebanese state, not through any sect or party. Lebanon Does Not Need a New Alliance Perhaps the greatest mistake Lebanon could make in the coming period would be to seek an “external umbrella” to protect it. What Lebanon needs first is an internal umbrella: the Constitution, the army, institutions, the judiciary and legitimacy. Only then can it build a broad network of external relationships. Regional alliances change. Saudi Arabia may draw closer to Türkiye and Pakistan today, while the UAE may deepen its partnership with India and Israel. Tomorrow, these alignments may shift again. But if Lebanon ties its future to a single axis, it will pay the price when those alliances change. A new guiding principle for Lebanese policy should therefore be the following: We are Arab, but we are not part of an Arab-versus-Arab conflict. We are open to East and West, but we are subordinate to no axis. We support regional security, but Lebanon’s security must be decided by Lebanon. The Arab world itself is changing. Perhaps the Arab League alone is no longer capable of producing a regional security architecture. The coming phase may be one of multiple alliances: Arab, Islamic, economic, maritime, technological and security-based. Yet amid these transformations, Lebanon can play a different role: it can be a bridge rather than a trench, a state of dialogue rather than confrontation, and an independent Arab state rather than the satellite of any axis. This is the true meaning of the phrase “Lebanon is Arab in identity and belonging.” It is not a call to choose one axis against another, but an invitation to restore Lebanon to its natural place: a sovereign Arab state, open to all, and unwilling to allow anyone else to decide on its behalf where it stands, when it goes to war, and why. At a time when alliances are being reshaped, perhaps the strongest position Lebanon can take is not to rush into choosing an alliance, but to choose the state first. Then, once the region’s new map becomes clearer, Lebanon can determine its partnerships on the basis of its national interest first, its Arab identity second, and its sovereignty above every other consideration.

Anthropologists were hardly pleased to see their discipline portrayed as a hotbed of “bad political groupthink,” or to read that “scientific neutrality” is, at best, an illusion and, at worst, a political dictate. They reacted angrily to the Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences , commissioned by Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis and prepared by a group of ten scholars. Recently released, the report presents anthropology as an example of a discipline experiencing a widespread decline in scientific standards, accompanied by a corrosive intellectual climate in which reasonable disagreement on politically controversial subjects is suppressed and punished. What, then, remains of science when disagreement over methodology itself becomes subject to political, moral, and identity-based pressures? Anthropology is a relatively recent discipline, yet it is among the fields that have acquired an increasingly prominent place in contemporary research, particularly at the intersection of history, politics, society, and culture. Political anthropology, in particular, has expanded its scope from the study of power and institutions to the study of the state, nationalism, identity, citizenship, violence, collective memory, religion, and the everyday practices of power. It has also become increasingly engaged with history, political science, and political philosophy. Contemporary academic institutions and programs thus present anthropology and politics as an interdisciplinary field for understanding cultures, politics, and international affairs in their historical, social, and cultural dimensions, through the collection and interpretation of evidence from different regions of the world. In 2023, the American Anthropological Association and the Canadian Anthropology Society canceled a panel titled Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology . The two associations justified their decision in the name of the safety and dignity of their members and the “scientific integrity” of the program. They argued that the panel rested on assumptions that presented sex and gender as simplistically binary. But the decision itself drew objections from organizations committed to defending academic freedom, including PEN America and FIRE, which argued that canceling a panel on the grounds of the potential “harm” it might cause raised serious concerns about freedom of debate. Can a scientific institution refuse to allow a scientific question to be asked because it believes that some of the possible answers might be harmful? And can it do so on the basis of judgments that may themselves fail to account for the full physical, biological, and anthropological complexity of the issue? This preoccupation with knowledge that remains largely conjectural reignited intense debate in 2026, as part of a broader crisis concerning politicization, scientific standards, and their reconfiguration in a context marked by significant theoretical breaks with the philosophy of the previous century. These attacks come in particular from political forces advocating a biological reading of the world. Other political discourses likewise mobilize biological and social arguments to portray human differences as natural and immutable facts: billionaires are geniuses who deserve their wealth, while the poor are weak people born to remain poor. Such discourses challenge many of the insights produced by the social sciences concerning race, gender, class, and power. The problem is not whether the social sciences are “left-wing” or “right-wing,” but that the boundaries of what may legitimately be subjected to scientific inquiry are sometimes drawn before the research itself has even begun. Yet anthropology emerged precisely to deconstruct what appears natural and self-evident. Today, however, it risks turning some of its theoretical conclusions into assumptions that may no longer be questioned. In other words, it risks moving from the critique of received truths to the production of new ones. The social sciences unsettle the established order of social relations and distinctions and challenge the discourses of power. Should they therefore be silenced? They can also contribute to social justice. But what happens when social justice itself becomes a criterion for determining which knowledge is acceptable? A report declares a crisis in the humanities and social sciences, and anthropology becomes emblematic of the conflict. The cancellation of the panel on biological sex provides one example. The question, then, is this: are we witnessing the politicization of science, or a legitimate scientific course correction? The task is a difficult one. For a researcher, claiming scientific neutrality can amount to denying one’s own relationship to the world and may even constitute a form of bad faith. Yet objectivity, on the other hand, remains a fundamental principle of science, one that must constantly be strengthened through procedures and principles that make the pursuit of truth possible. In the United States, the attacks initially targeted the social sciences before extending to climate science, microbiology, and even vaccines. In Europe, gender studies have long been under attack in countries such as Hungary. In France, an intervention by Higher Education Minister Frédérique Vidal in 2021 led to a call for an investigation into certain strands of critical scholarship. It therefore seems essential to highlight the protocols and principles governing scientific work, which rests not on the neutrality of the researcher but on the objectivity of the method, as well as the conditions under which science can challenge what appears self-evident, and thus be genuinely critical. Politics should not determine what is scientifically true, just as science should not pretend to exist outside politics and society. Carolyn Rouse, a professor of anthropology at Princeton and president of the American Anthropological Association, notably criticized the report’s authors for using artificial intelligence to analyze large bodies of text, even though this method is becoming increasingly common across many of the social sciences. She also argued that requiring biological anthropologists to teach that there are only two sexes would be “like turning an astronomy department into an astrology department.” This divergence of views comes at a time when academia is facing an unprecedented assault. It needs communications experts capable of explaining the value of higher education to the broader public. Yet many academics continue to do and say things that remain largely unintelligible outside their own circles. The same applies to university presidents who stumble during congressional hearings, public-health experts whose pronouncements contradict one another, and think tanks attempting to rebuild trust and organize the objections being raised against the theoretical foundations of an anthropology that sees itself as constantly evolving. The notion of “neutrality” in research is often associated with Max Weber. The famous concept of “value neutrality,” however, points to a more complex question: the distinction between a relation to values, which is unavoidable in the selection and construction of an object of research, and the value judgments made by the researcher. The French translation of two of Weber’s lectures, brought together under the title Le Savant et le Politique , was published by Plon in 1959, translated by Julien Freund and preceded by an introduction by Raymond Aron. The very translation of Wertfreiheit as neutralité axiologique , or “value neutrality,” has since been debated, with some preferring the notion of the “non-imposition of values.” Another important contribution to the construction of scientific objectivity is Pierre Bourdieu’s (1930–2002) theory of reflexivity, which emphasizes that the social-science researcher is also subject to biases. Anthropology has never been a “neutral” science in the sense that physics or mathematics might be. Researchers enter the field carrying their own culture, language, social position, and prior questions. One of the reasons most frequently cited for declining trust in academia is its perceived “political agenda,” followed closely by the cost of higher education and the perception that degrees no longer adequately prepare graduates for the job market. For years, academics have lent their institutions’ credibility to a variety of political projects. They now find themselves reputationally bankrupt. Unless they repair the damage, many of their institutions may eventually become financially bankrupt as well. Objective science cannot, after all, be separated from a democratic society subject to the same critical demands of objectivity and contextualization. Science is a collective enterprise and, in defining what counts as knowledge, requires a certain form of democracy. One of the criticisms currently leveled at universities is that freedom of expression is under attack. Yet such accusations sometimes seek to challenge an intellectual liberalism that has not resulted in censorship, but rather in the establishment of legally defined boundaries, particularly against anti-democratic, racist, or misogynistic speech that some of these critics would seek to legitimize once again. And yet these are sometimes the same people who, without fearing contradiction, attack academic freedom through policies designed to control or silence scholars, as well as all those who work to defend freedoms and rights in the fields of justice, journalism, or an emancipatory culture, in the service of the public interest and the common good, and toward a world that is livable for the greatest possible number of people. Science does not die when it becomes politicized. It dies when it becomes immune to correction.

Since the Ain al-Rummaneh bus incident in 1975, which served as the symbolic spark of the war, the Lebanese people have been caught in an unbroken cycle of organized fear, rather than occasional fear. This falls within what some thinkers call the “economy of fear” or the “politics of fear,” in which fear becomes something that is manufactured and managed, rather than merely a spontaneous emotion. Fear performs three dangerous functions here: First, it paralyzes collective action. When a society lives under the permanent threat of war, civil strife, collapse, or an external or internal enemy, its primary concern becomes individual survival rather than collective action. The possibility of organized resistance to any form of domination or occupation consequently begins to disintegrate. Second, fear reproduces narrow communal loyalties, because it drives people to seek protection within their primary groups of belonging: their sect, their leader, their party. Fear thus becomes a mechanism for reproducing the very system that is supposedly responsible for the crisis. Finally, under the sway of fear, everything becomes justifiable: weapons beyond the control of the state, the suspension of the law, repression, corruption, and even dependence on foreign powers, because “the circumstances are exceptional.” We thus enter a state of exception that never ends. Our history bears witness to recurring stages in the manufacture of fear: The civil war: fear of the sectarian other. Successive occupations: fear of the external enemy. The post-2005 period: fear of assassination and chaos. Since 2019: fear of economic collapse. Regional wars and wars of support: persistent fear and anxiety over existence itself. The problem, then, does not lie in the existence of real dangers, for such dangers do indeed exist, but in transforming them into a permanent structure for managing society. Nor does it lie in the fact that the population has succumbed to fear, but rather in the fact that this fear has often been fabricated, amplified, or exploited in ways that prevent any genuine moment of emancipation. The ultimate result is what might be described as a society living in a permanent state of psychological emergency. If fear is produced as an instrument for controlling the political sphere, its deepest effect lies in the redefinition of the human being within that sphere itself, something Giorgio Agamben’s theses on “bare life” capture with particular precision. In the Lebanese context, this involves not merely spreading a climate of fear, but transforming the citizen into a biological being stripped of protection, living in a gray zone between law and non-law, where rights are suspended in the name of security or sectarian necessity. In this sense, the “economy of fear” intersects with what Michel Foucault calls “biopower,” which does not merely control bodies, but reproduces them within systems of discipline and surveillance: the prison, the hospital, the school, the barracks… The Lebanese case, however, reveals a further shift: instead of life being managed with a view to improving it, as in classical models of biopower, fear is managed in order to keep life at its bare minimum, at the level of “survival” rather than “living.” The Lebanese individual thus approaches the condition of “bare life,” in the Agambenian sense, constantly exposed to exceptional sovereign decisions and deprived of any prospect of legal and political stability. This convergence between the production of fear and the stripping of human beings of their political status gives rise to an invisible structure of governance, in which the social contract is replaced by the logic of permanent emergency and a “politics of neglect” prevails over the exercise of power itself. More than that, it becomes a management of deterioration: of the economy, healthcare, education, emigration, and even the Beirut port explosion… If the “state of exception” provides the theoretical point of departure for understanding the transformation of sovereignty in the Lebanese context, it does not represent a mere temporary legal condition. Rather, it has established a permanent structure of governance within which the relationship between power and society is continually reshaped. In this sense, the “manufacture of fear” can be regarded as the practical extension of the state of exception, since the suspension of legal and institutional rules can only be sustained through the continuous production of a climate of threat. In this context, the citizen ceases to be a political actor and instead becomes the object of emergency policies, governed by the logic of individual survival and severed from any shared contractual horizon. Dismantling this system therefore requires more than simply restoring the rule of law. It requires restoring the political meaning of life itself, that is, reintegrating the individual into the sphere of citizenship beyond the logic of exception and fear. Fear thus becomes an invisible instrument of governance, reshaping collective mindsets and entrenching what might be called a “permanent psychological emergency,” in which anxiety is continually reproduced as a structural condition of precarious stability. This process does not rest solely on the existence of objective dangers. It also feeds on a social vulnerability rooted in deep divisions and the absence of a shared national narrative. Dismantling the economy of fear therefore entails not only exposing its mechanisms, but also rebuilding trust and institutions and producing an alternative collective meaning. Hezbollah’s Role In this context, the mechanisms of domination cannot be understood without addressing the role of Hezbollah and the policies it has imposed on Lebanon, in conjunction with the ruling establishment and with the support of the Syrian regime and Iran, particularly during the period when this axis exercised absolute dominance, a dominance that is now visibly receding, especially since the fall of Assad. A crucial philosophical and legal distinction arises here. A rigorous distinction must be drawn between a “state of emergency,” which derives from the law and is regulated by constitutions within clearly defined limits and conditions, and a “pre-legal state of exception,” imposed by this axis as an open-ended fait accompli, without limits or safeguards. In the latter case, laws and boundaries were swept aside and rights stripped away, entirely transforming the role of Lebanon’s Constitution and institutions. Instead of serving as a shield to protect society, under the weight of this domination they were reduced to little more than an official and legal cover for the abuse of power and the entrenchment of authoritarianism. The parallel sovereignty exercised by Hezbollah did not stop at the legal control of individuals. It penetrated, insidiously, into “bare life” itself, stripping it of value and exposing it to the violence of arbitrary sovereign decisions. Consequently, this “bare life,” viewed through the prism of the “exception,” became the vital fuel sustaining Hezbollah’s exercise of sovereign power, which perpetuates itself through the continuous production of a repressed and domesticated “biopolitical body,” subjected to absolute control under the cover of law and a false sovereignty designed to prevent any form of dissent. This logic has manifested itself concretely in the assassination of intellectual and political activist Lokman Slim in an area under Hezbollah’s control; in the events of May 7, 2008, when weapons were used domestically to impose political equations through the force of a fait accompli; and in the obstruction of the judicial investigation into the Beirut port explosion and the open threats made against judges. Such practices have entrenched a principle of total impunity and effectively nullified the sovereignty of the Lebanese judiciary. Through this systematically engineered fear, human beings in Lebanon have been reduced to the condition of “bare life.” Political opponents are exposed to physical elimination, accusations of treason, or symbolic forms of condemnation that effectively strip them of protection. Meanwhile, citizens from Hezbollah’s own support base are themselves exposed by being thrust into cross-border regional wars, whether through military intervention in Syria or the unilateral opening of fronts of attrition, without authorization or cover from their state, reducing them to mere biological fuel for a transnational project. This exposure has not been confined to individuals. It has also extended to the very structure of the Lebanese state and to neighboring states, whose sovereignty has been violated through the legitimization of illicit smuggling routes, the usurpation of the decision over war and peace, and the transformation of borders, along with the usurped sovereign decision itself, into open arenas for advancing military and security agendas entirely outside the frameworks of international law and the political contract. State and society alike have thus been left at the mercy of an exceptional sovereignty that feeds on the eclipse of law and the perpetuation of fear. Ultimately, the visible and continuing decline of this axis, both regional and domestic, is opening a breach in the wall of the permanent “state of exception” and providing an unprecedented historic opportunity to free human beings in Lebanon from a condition in which they are left defenseless before arbitrary power and restore them to the protection of the law. Yet the military and political decline of the militia and the Iranian project does not automatically entail the immediate restoration of state sovereignty. Such a restoration faces another formidable barrier within the political establishment itself: the structure of Lebanon’s “deep state.” This “deep state,” sustained by networks of sectarian interests, factional power-sharing, and systemic institutional corruption, constitutes the hidden bureaucratic and financial extension that originally enabled militia domination to emerge and endure. It is this structure that now refuses to relinquish its gains and forcefully obstructs the effective implementation of judicial accountability mechanisms, structural reform, and the building of genuinely legitimate institutions. Accordingly, the future of the Lebanese state and the restoration of its full sovereignty cannot be achieved merely through the retreat of parallel arms or the weakening of their regional sponsors. They depend on a deeper and more complex battle: dismantling the deep state’s clientelist system. Putting an end to the exposure of human beings and the nation to arbitrary power requires moving from the realm of “terror and military salvation” to that of “citizenship, law, and the cleansing of public administration.” Without dismantling this infrastructure of disguised authoritarianism, sovereignty will remain little more than a deferred promise, while Lebanon’s future will remain caught between a weakening armed power and a deep state that refuses to be born anew.