Politics

With every rise in tensions between the United States and Iran, the same question hangs over Beirut: are we facing a delayed war or an inevitable confrontation? Will Lebanon be the battlefield or simply an anxious spectator, witnessing the events? The reality is that the region has been living for years in a state of 'neither war nor peace'. Calculated escalations, localized strikes, inflammatory statements, and movements of military assets by sea and air provoke responses through indirect negotiations and regional and international mediations. This is a delicate strategy of managing relations, taking one step forward and two steps back, but the situation has not yet degenerated into open warfare. Why does Washington not want war now? The United States understands that any large-scale confrontation with Iran will not be a simple surgical operation. Iran is not an isolated country without leverage. Iran has a regional influence network, missile and drone capabilities, and exerts considerable influence on many fronts. A direct war would entail: • Strikes on strategic facilities in Iran. • Missile retaliations against American bases and interests. • The simultaneous eruption of several fronts. Moreover, the global priorities of the United States are numerous: a struggle for influence with China, a war in Ukraine, and energy and economic crises. A new war in the Middle East would mean an increased weakening of its resources, with uncertain consequences. Why does Tehran not want war? Iran is also not ready to commit strategic suicide. Its economy is weakened by sanctions, and its internal situation is precarious. A direct confrontation could severely damage its military and nuclear infrastructure and potentially trigger internal unrest. This is why Tehran favors a policy of 'indirect retaliation', using its regional allies as leverage without engaging in direct conflict. Thus, a fragile balance is maintained: controlled escalation with carefully calculated limits. What is Lebanon's place in this equation? Lebanon is at the very heart of these calculations. The presence of Hezbollah as an active military and political force integrates it into the Iranian deterrence network in the region. Consequently, any evolution of the US-Iranian confrontation will have a direct impact on Lebanon. The question is not whether Lebanon will be affected, but to what extent. Scenario 1: Continuation of the shadow war In this scenario, localized attacks and media tensions persist without escalating into open conflict. Hezbollah then maintains its policy of 'calculated engagement': • Keeping the front within certain limits. • Avoiding a large-scale war with Israel. • Using its influence without fully involving Lebanon. This scenario is the least costly domestically, but it keeps the country in a state of constant anxiety and delays any real economic or political stability. Investments remain hesitant, tourism is seasonal, and banks are paralyzed, caught between the hope of a breakthrough and the threat of collapse. Scenario 2: A large-scale confrontation If the decision to go to war is made, the entire region will enter a new era. There will be retaliatory strikes, cross-border missile fire, and potentially attacks on vital infrastructure. In this case, Hezbollah will face a critical dilemma: 1. A massive intervention in support of Iran: this would mean opening a major front with Israel and the risk of widespread destruction in Lebanon. 2. A limited and calculated intervention: symbolic strikes to save face and avoid total collapse. 3. A relative neutralization of the Lebanese front by an Iranian strategic decision, if the preservation of power is deemed more important than its use. The first option carries existential risks for Lebanon. Its economy, already in ruins, cannot withstand a new war, and its infrastructure is struggling to recover from accumulated crises. Reconstruction will not be easy, and society, exhausted, could experience a new wave of emigration. What about the Shiite community in Lebanon? Any war will disrupt the situation within the Shiite community itself. Some perceive the confrontation as part of a broader regional conflict, while others fear that Lebanon alone will bear the consequences. If the war is short and limited, it could strengthen the discourse of 'deterrence and resistance'. On the other hand, if it drags on and leads to massive destruction, it risks opening an internal debate about the relevance of associating Lebanon with regional issues. But it's too early to be certain. Political circles react to results, not forecasts. The Israeli factor Any confrontation is inseparable from Israel's calculations. Striking Hezbollah's military infrastructure constitutes a strategic objective, but Israel is also aware that a war against Lebanon would be far from a walk in the park. The experience of 2006 remains vivid in military memories. This is why Israel prefers localized strikes and gradual attrition to a total and uncertain war. Is a new agreement conceivable? The possibility of a US-Iranian understanding remains. A limited agreement on the nuclear issue or a lifting of sanctions in exchange for certain restrictions could ease tensions. In this case, détente would spill over into the regional scene, including Lebanon. Tensions would subside, and attention would refocus on internal issues. However, any agreement will remain fragile if it does not address the root causes of the conflict: regional influence, Israel's security, and Iran's ballistic missile program. Lebanon: the weakest link The fundamental problem is that Lebanon does not fully control decisions regarding war and peace. It suffers the consequences of decisions made outside its borders. In a context of economic collapse and recurrent constitutional voids, the country is even more vulnerable to regional upheavals. If war breaks out, it will not just be a military event, but also a political and social earthquake. This could raise major questions about Lebanon's position in conflicts, the limits of its role, and the future of Hezbollah's weapons in the international context. Between fate and probability At present, war does not seem inevitable. But it is not impossible either. We are facing a dangerous tug-of-war, marked by shows of force and exchanges of messages, but everyone is aware of the price of a major explosion. Lebanon, as always, is on the brink. It is unable to completely neutralize itself and is not prepared for a new conflict. Therefore, hope rests on international rationality and on the conviction that igniting the region will bring no decisive victory to any party, but will plunge everyone into a long spiral of chaos. The real question is not just: will war break out? Rather: does Lebanon have a plan to protect itself if it does? For now, the answer is as painful as it is obvious: preparations are made externally. While internally, people live in hope that the door will not be opened.

Since the Arab Spring of 2011, Libya has not been undergoing any unfinished transition, but has settled into a durable state of political dissolution. Far from paving the way for a reconstruction process, the brutal disappearance of Muammar Gaddafi's regime, on the contrary, triggered a long sequence of fragmentation, where armed violence progressively replaced the State as the principle of power organization, as in Sudan. This series offers a structural reading of the Libyan war as a stabilized and coherent system in itself, embedded in regional and international rivalries, and now capable of eliminating any political alternative that would not fit into its logic. From the moment Libya ceased to be an effective sovereign state, it became nothing more than an international object. Not a central issue, far from it, but an available space, open to indirect strategies, opportunistic investments, and influence games at a low political cost. The Libyan war is not prolonged despite the international order, but because of it , or, more precisely, due to its increasing fragmentation. The first illusion to dispel is that of a frontal competition between great powers for control of Libya. None of them genuinely seek to govern the country, nor even to durably stabilize its institutions. What is at stake is more diffuse: the exploitation of a void, the normalization of exception, and the acceptance of a “manageable” and “stable” conflict. Russia fully fits into this logic: in this sense, its involvement in Libya is neither ideological nor structuring in the classic sense, but pragmatic, modular, reversible. Through paramilitary networks, advisors, and implicit security agreements, Moscow secures strongholds, levers of nuisance, and a disproportionate capacity for influence compared to its real investment. Libya indeed offers Russia several simultaneous advantages, as it allows for projecting a presence in the Mediterranean without massive official commitment and also provides a training and testing ground for hybrid devices. Finally, it constitutes a space where the weakening of the Western normative framework becomes visible and exploitable. Every blocked resolution, every ineffective ceasefire, every aborted political process contributes to establishing the idea that the liberal international order is no longer capable of imposing constraints outside its immediate perimeter. In fact, Russian strategy has no need for a victory stricto sensu . It aims for the durability of instability, an ideal condition for a power that seeks less to administer than to exert influence - as was more or less the case in Syria. A pacified Libya would be a normed, framed, less accessible space. A fragmented Libya is, on the contrary, a flexible playground. A godsend for Moscow. The case of China China, for its part, adopts a radically different but equally structuring posture. Beijing intervenes neither militarily nor politically in a visible manner, and adheres to its doctrine of non-interference, avoiding sharp positions, while maintaining open channels with all actors. But one should not be mistaken: this apparent neutrality is not an absence of strategy. It merely reflects a long-term calculation, in the pure tradition of the Chinese dragon, attentive, patient, and resilient. Moreover, for China, Libya is a space of potential interest, without being an immediate theater of projection. Resources, infrastructure, and geographical position indeed matter more than the current political configuration. Thus, Beijing can afford to wait, true to itself. As long as the conflict does not hinder its essential interests, the status quo is acceptable to it. Fragmentation, in this sense, does not constitute a problem for it, but a transitional state compatible with future economic integration, when conditions are met. This positioning has a major indirect effect, inasmuch as it neutralizes any dynamic of international constraint. In the absence of a consensus among powers capable of imposing real costs, declarations, symbolic sanctions, and UN processes lose their deterrent capacity - as is the case in all territories transformed into festering sores. Here, as everywhere in the current world configuration, international law flounders outside of grand principles. Iran rubs its hands together Without being a central actor in the Libyan issue, Iran, for its part, has benefited so far, as in Sudan, from this configuration, since each lasting peripheral conflict contributes to the dispersion of Western attention, to the erosion of pressure capacities, and to the normalization of entanglement. For Libya, like other theaters, contributes to an international environment where the multiplication of crises makes each of them more difficult to deal with decisively. Iran does not need to be present to profit from this dynamic: it simply needs the international order to be busy elsewhere, fragmented and unable to prioritize. Libya thus becomes a satellite conflict, whose very existence contributes to a global strategic blurring. “Create their many Vietnams,” Guevara said. Tehran doesn’t even need to do it. The mullahs’ regime watches and rubs its hands together. A disunited and hesitant West Faced with this, the West appears disunited, hesitant, structurally weakened. The United States oscillates between disengagement and minimal management. After the 2011 intervention, no political investment commensurate with its consequences was therefore made. Libya has thus become a secondary issue, managed intermittently and without a long-term vision. Priorities have shifted. Ukraine, the Middle East, Israel and Iranian nuclear issues, the Indo-Pacific and Latin America now relegate Libya to the background. Europe, for its part, has never spoken with one voice. Chronic and habitual divergences between member states, energy interests, and migratory concerns have prevented the emergence of a coherent strategy. The stabilization of Libya is regularly invoked, but rarely considered as a demanding political project. The “European misfortune,” with its multi-speed diplomacy, in all its splendor… This combination of Western withdrawal and opportunistic engagement by non-Western powers is not without producing a cumulative effect: Libya becomes a strategic blind spot, too unstable to be integrated, but also still manageable enough to be treated as an absolute emergency. In this context, diplomatic processes follow one another, but without ever modifying the fundamental parameters: international conferences are fond of communiqués, nothing more, and ceasefires succeed one another like tactical pauses, with no horizon of a lasting solution. As for unity governments, they are temporary arrangements, devoid of coercive levers… and thus ideal for managing the continuity of the conflict, since no one has an interest in ending it. It is clear that Libya does not suffer from an excess of contradictory interference, but from a global tacit convergence towards the acceptance of instability. Each actor finds, in the short or medium term, sufficient interest to avoid a radical reset. Libya bleeds, yes, but with the blessing, if not a certain sadistic satisfaction, of all parties. Seif al-Islam: the assassination that closes the field of possibilities The assassination of Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, on February 3, 2026, nevertheless marks a certain silent, but decisive, rupture in the bloody conflict. Until his death, Seif al-Islam occupied a paradoxical position: politically neutralized, legally challenged, militarily without his own apparatus, but symbolically available. His mere existence maintained the hypothesis, however fragile, of a third path: neither the continuation of the militia system, nor authoritarian restoration based on regional balances, but a form of reinterpreted continuity, capable of capturing a still vivid social memory. This option was not mainstream, and probably not viable, but it still existed as a latent variable in the Libyan “system,” and forced armed actors, regional patrons, and external powers to contend with an additional uncertainty: that of a return of politics through the detour of the past. The son kept alive the specter of a return to the father’s “order.” Seif al-Islam’s elimination closes this breach. In this context, it is more than a man who was assassinated. It is the illusion of the eternal return to the “mythical golden age” maintained by all dictatorial dynasties. But, beyond that, this murder also says something fundamental about contemporary Libya, inasmuch as it confirms that the political field there is no longer simply constrained by violence, but is delimited by it. Any figure likely to introduce a symbolic recomposition escaping the existing armed balances becomes, by definition, incompatible with the “system.” Seif al-Islam did not directly threaten any camp militarily. The threat he posed was much deeper: he introduced a dissonance and a possibility of rupture, even regressive, in an order based on controlled fragmentation. His disappearance does not, however, cause an immediate shift and does not redistribute the cards of power. It does, however, produce something more lasting. In this case, a confirmation that post-2011 Libya can no longer be thought of as an open transitional space. It is a locked territory where only configurations based on force, regional alliances, and external interests are tolerated. With the liquidation of Seif al-Islam, the past can no longer be mobilized as a political resource, and the future is no longer negotiable outside of armed power relations. In this sense, his assassination acts as a final revelation, as it confirms that the Libyan war is not just a prolonged conflict, but it is a stabilized system, capable of eliminating any alternative that would not fit into its logic. This is where the cursed cycle that began in 2011 closes. Instead of paving the way for the long-awaited blossoming of spring, the fall of Muammar Gaddafi inaugurated an era where sovereignty itself proved impossible with the disappearance of the Leviathan - and, ironically, the ultimate confirmation of this reality lies in the elimination of his son. Rather than moving towards reconstruction and democracy, Libya has become a territory administered by default and maintained in a form of conflicted but agreed-upon equilibrium. Yet, peace is not impossible there. It is, more cynically, incompatible with the rationalities currently at play, a victim of the cold cynicism of realpolitik. As long as no one has an interest in it, will Libya remain nothing more than another brutal laboratory of contemporary conflict? And the Libyans, in all this? “The Libyans? Well, too bad for them!” Read on the same theme: 2011 or Libya in the post-state era (1/5) The Libyan conflict: an excessive “militiarization” of politics (2/5) “Two Libyas” and an elusive sovereignty (3/5) Libya, a regional festering sore (4/5)

The administrative decentralization project is provided for in the Taëf Agreement (1989) but has not yet been implemented. However, many studies have been carried out for this purpose, without success. A look back at a reform in waiting. The concrete implementation of administrative decentralization in Lebanon relies on strengthening local councils, particularly at the caza level, which constitute the second tier after municipalities. According to Rayanne Assaf, doctor of law and legal affairs officer at the presidency between 2008 and 2014, “the decentralization project stipulates that within each caza, citizens elect, under a majority system, a general committee composed of representatives from all localities, even those without municipalities (to ensure the best geographical representation). This committee then elects the caza's board of directors according to a proportional system.” Each board of directors would be composed of twelve members, endowed with broad powers to ensure local development and resource management. This administrative architecture would allow the population to directly control the actions of their representatives, thereby strengthening accountability and limiting the practices of clientelism and feudalism that have long characterized Lebanese political life. Administrative autonomy and competence criteria Ms. Assaf emphasizes the importance of establishing specific conditions to guarantee the effectiveness of local councils. “Caza council members must hold a university degree,” she specifies, to ensure that officials have the necessary skills to manage budgets, coordinate projects, and oversee regional development. This technical requirement aims to professionalize local administration and establish a standard of competence for all councils, thereby reducing the risks of mismanagement. This approach contributes to creating a direct link between the competence of elected officials and citizen satisfaction. The population will be able to see concrete results of the caza council's work, which promotes closer citizen control and better transparency in the management of public affairs. Financial resources One of the most critical points of decentralization concerns financial resources. Ms. Assaf insists that there is no “financial decentralization” in Lebanon. “We speak rather of financial autonomy, because it is impossible to transfer powers without providing the necessary means for their exercise,” she explains. Currently, municipalities have revenues, particularly from telecommunications taxes, as well as other sources. Funds are deposited in the autonomous municipal fund but do not allow municipalities to fully carry out their missions. Municipalities legally have broad powers, but are unable to exercise them satisfactorily and appropriately due to insufficient financial means. The decentralization project plans to replace the autonomous municipal fund with a decentralized fund, designed to ensure balanced development between regions. This will be based on precise criteria and indicators, four in number with specific coefficients, to correct inequalities and support less developed areas. By broadening the geographical scope of resource collection and redistribution, the project aims to increase the financial means of marginalized localities. Municipalities, which have powers but currently lack sufficient resources, could thus better exercise their competences and contribute to regional development. The decentralization project also provides for the creation of a Ministry of Decentralization, responsible for coordinating local policies and ensuring the coherence of actions throughout the territory. According to Ms. Assaf, this institution would be essential for framing the functioning of councils and guaranteeing a balance between local autonomy and national cohesion. Transversality and control The reform planned by Taëf also emphasizes the strengthening of control and transparency. A committee continuously monitors the board of directors, ensuring the conformity of its actions with current rules and the proper use of funds. This control structure aims to reassure both citizens and international donors, who demand guarantees on the management and distribution of resources. Also, the Council is required to publish a periodic newsletter and create a website on which general decisions and audit reports of justice accounts will be obligatorily published. Ms. Assaf recalls that these measures not only professionalize local administration but also prepare the ground for a sustainable culture of accountability at the national level. “Technical decentralization can serve as a model for spreading transparency and accountability throughout the country, even in the absence of a more comprehensive political reform,” she specifies. Practical impacts for citizens For residents, decentralization means increased proximity to decision-making centers. Taxpayers would be more informed about the real needs of their respective cazas and how their resources are used. According to Ms. Assaf, “by bringing governance closer to citizens, they can demand more accountability, which will encourage local councils to work to effectively meet the expectations of the population.” For her, decentralization is the adequate answer to those who do not think that a solution can be found to overcome many problems related to the management of public affairs. “It is the only mechanism that allows governance to be brought closer to the population and to ensure that resources and powers are used effectively at the local level.” This approach allows residents to concretely see the results of their elected officials' work, demand accountability, and get more involved in the management of their caza. Primarily developmental in nature, administrative decentralization could help reduce local political tensions and disputes. Its main assets, however, remain coordination between municipalities and caza councils, as well as the creation of employment opportunities and regional development, limiting rural exodus and the excessive concentration of activities in Beirut or a few urban centers. Chronology and blockages She notes that the delay in implementing this reform mainly results from a lack of political consensus, with established forces reluctant to lose certain prerogatives and powers to local authorities. She dismisses fears that administrative decentralization risks fragmenting Lebanon. On the contrary, she says it will strengthen the development of the cazas, especially since they are multi-confessional. Ms. Assaf sounds the alarm: “Today, the Lebanese state has very limited financial means. Decentralization appears as a pragmatic way to mobilize resources, strengthen governance, and improve accountability.”

«The first reform must be intelligent decentralization», Jules Payot Decentralization is a mode of state organization that consists of transferring powers, responsibilities, and resources from central government to elected local authorities, which are legally autonomous, in order to bring decision-making closer to citizens and improve the effectiveness of public action. It allows Lebanon to transfer part of the state's powers, competencies, and resources to elected and autonomous territorial communities – notably municipalities and decentralized entities – while maintaining the unity of the state. The objective is to strengthen and activate local governance, citizen participation, and the balanced development of regions. According to Ms. Rayanne Assaf, doctor of law and legal affairs officer at the Presidency of the Republic between 2008 and 2014, “in politics, there is no miracle solution.” “Change happens gradually, step by step, and this reality is particularly true for pluralistic countries,” she emphasizes. Lebanon, with its complex confessional and political mosaic, like all pluralistic countries, has no universal recipe or miracle solution capable of resolving institutional imbalances or guaranteeing national cohesion.” For Ms. Assaf, who was a member of the special commission established in 2012 by the Prime Minister for the elaboration of the administrative decentralization bill, “decentralization constitutes an essential step on the path of progress.” “It is a pragmatic tool to strengthen the state, improve governance, and bring decision-making closer to citizens,” she specifies. If one were to speak of a “miracle” in Lebanese politics, she adds, it could be identified in the part of the Taif Agreement relating to decentralization. In a context where parties struggle to agree on structural reforms, reaching a compromise on this point constitutes a historical event. At the time, some factions were in favor of decentralization, while others opposed it. Despite these divergences, an agreement was reached, enshrining decentralization as a fundamental reform. Taif and the implementation deadlock After the Taif Agreement and until President Michel Sleiman's mandate, no concrete bill on decentralization was adopted. The available texts were more about deconcentration than decentralization itself. Ms. Assaf insists on this distinction: « Deconcentration consists of representing the central state administrations in the regions, without transferring real powers. Decentralization, on the other hand, involves councils elected directly by citizens, with their own competencies and real administrative and financial autonomy. » Some initiatives, such as the bill presented by the late MP Robert Ghanem, were described as decentralization, but they did not provide for the election of local councils. However, the absence of elections goes against the very spirit of decentralization. Today, Lebanon has a first degree of decentralization through municipalities . These entities have powers, but they lack adequate financial means to exercise them fully. The example of some of them, endowed with considerable financial resources, contrasts sharply with other less favored municipalities. The role of decentralization Decentralization allows for the creation of genuine democratic control. According to Ms. Assaf, “thanks to decentralization, citizens become more capable of holding to account and controlling public action.” The reform in question also helps to better identify regional needs, reduce congestion, create local employment opportunities, foster regional development, and mitigate political disputes. However, these benefits cannot be achieved without a strong central authority capable of guaranteeing the coherence and unity of the state. Decentralization is not a means to weaken the state, but a tool to strengthen governance and improve the effectiveness of public action. For Ms. Assaf, decentralization could play a catalytic role in accountability at the national level. Chronology of initiatives In accordance with the Taif Agreement, during the presidential mandate 2008-2014, at the initiative of the President of the Republic and in agreement with the Prime Minister, a committee chaired by former minister Ziad Baroud was created in 2012 to draft a decentralization bill. This committee brought together experts and specialists from several fields, as decentralization involves administrative, financial, political, cultural, social aspects, etc. In 2014, the final draft was endorsed by the presidency. It respects the Taif Agreement and includes advanced standards for local governance. In 2015, a dialogue conference supported the principle of decentralization. MP Samy Gemayel then took up this project and presented it as a bill to Parliament. Since then, the text has been examined by parliamentary committees without being adopted. Ms. Assaf emphasizes that its approval depends on a political will that is still lacking. She adds that decentralization is a technical reform and that it would be illogical, even absurd, to link its approval to the implementation of other eminently political reforms, such as the establishment of a Senate or the abolition of sectarianism, which will require years of effort. Financial autonomy and regional balance According to Ms. Assaf, in application of the principle 'transfer of powers, transfer of resources,' decentralization cannot be achieved without financial resources. The term “financial decentralization” is often misused in Lebanon, she explains. According to her, decentralization is based on two inseparable pillars: administrative autonomy and financial autonomy. The project advocates for the allocation of financial resources to elected local councils (for example, a share of income tax and property tax collected at the caza level, etc.). It also provides for the creation of a decentralized fund, which will replace the current autonomous municipal fund. This new fund aims to ensure balanced development and reduce inequalities between regions, based on indicators of development status, annual tax collection, census of the population registered in the community, and the area of the caza. Decentralization allows citizens to elect local officials capable of effectively managing the resources of their caza. It helps to limit clientelism and feudalism, while establishing a culture of accountability. It should be noted that the historical and institutional framework highlights the fact that decentralization in Lebanon is both a democratic imperative and a lever for institutional resilience. The chronology of initiatives reveals a constant political will on paper, but hindered by partisan interests and lack of consensus. The effective adoption of this reform would be a major test for the political class.

The Libyan war ceases to be intelligible when read solely through its internal actors. From 2014, and even more so after 2019, the conflict transformed into a theater of regional projection, where local dynamics serve as supports for strategies that largely exceed them. Libya is thus a fragmented territory, invested, used, and worked from the outside as a malleable space, devoid of effective sovereignty, and, consequently, ideal for indirect wars. Certainly, the rivalry between regional powers alone does not explain the Libyan collapse, but it nevertheless freezes its lines, prevents any endogenous resolution, and transforms every local advance into a variable of a larger game. At this stage, the war no longer only pits Libyans against each other, but competing visions of the regional order, projected onto a territory incapable of absorbing them. The ultimate focal point, like Syria post-2011, or, before, Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. The first fault line opposes two antagonistic conceptions of stabilization. On one side, an authoritarian, security-oriented, vertical logic, supported by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. On the other, an opportunistic and transactional intervention logic promoted by Turkey, based on a different reading of regional balances. For Cairo, Libya constitutes a strategic lock. The long and porous Egyptian western border has long been perceived as a direct threat to national security, especially after 2011. The specter of weapons, fighters, and hostile ideologies circulating has structured the Egyptian position. Therefore, supporting a force capable of imposing a military order in Cyrenaica appears as a defensive necessity. From this perspective, Khalifa Haftar embodies less a Libyan project than a tool for stabilization by proxy. The Emirates, for their part, place their commitment within a broader strategy of projecting influence. Libya is one of the links in a regional policy aimed at containing political Islam, structuring allied security networks, and controlling critical points of commercial and energy flows. The support provided to eastern Libya certainly responds to an ideological logic; but it is even more part of a pragmatic approach, based on anticipating long-term power relations. Reconfiguring the Regional Equation Facing this axis, Turkey intervenes with a different rationale. Its massive engagement from 2019 marks a decisive turning point in the conflict. For Ankara, it is not only about saving Tripoli from an imminent military offensive but about reconfiguring the regional equation. Thus, Turkish intervention combines direct military assistance, drone deployment, advisors, Syrian mercenaries, and, crucially, a maritime agreement that redefines borders in the Eastern Mediterranean. And this agreement is not a technical detail. It places Libya at the heart of an energy and geopolitical rivalry that extends far beyond its borders. By aligning with the Tripoli government, Ankara gains legal legitimacy to challenge competing projects in the Mediterranean, weaken the Greece-Cyprus-Egypt axis, and establish itself as a crucial player in the eastern basin. Libya ceases to exist as such and to be an objective in itself - it is more than that: a strategic platform. This regionalization of the conflict thus produces a cumulative effect, inasmuch as each Libyan camp is gradually dispossessed of its strategic autonomy. Major military decisions are no longer made in Tripoli or Benghazi but are calculated according to the red lines and interests of external patrons, and the war thus transforms into a space of indirect negotiation between regional powers, where escalation is controlled, calibrated, sometimes suspended, but rarely resolved. The Berlin conference, initiated by Germany and the UN in January 2020, and the multiple diplomatic initiatives that followed, illustrate this impasse. They sought to re-establish a multilateral framework but encountered a bitter reality: the regional actors present in Libya have no immediate interest in a sovereign unification of the country. A weak, divided, negotiable Libya offers more opportunities than a strong central state capable of setting its own rules… A Management Phase The war in Tripoli, between 2019 and 2020, was in this regard a particularly revealing moment, in that it demonstrated that external intervention can alter a balance of power without producing a political solution. The failure of Haftar's offensive against the official government did not, however, pave the way for state reconstruction; instead, it confirmed Libya's transformation into a zone of conflicting equilibrium, where no actor can prevail without causing uncontrollable regional escalation. From then on, the conflict enters a phase of management rather than resolution. Ceasefires are respected as long as they serve the interests of the patrons. Violations are tolerated as long as they do not cross certain thresholds. Libya becomes a space where war is contained, but never defused. This dynamic also has a maritime and migratory dimension. Migration routes, ports, and departure zones for Europe have become stakes in implicit negotiations with European powers, often politically absent but present through their security concerns. Libya then serves as a buffer zone at the cost of brutal outsourcing of migration control and the invisibility of the accompanying violence. What is happening in Libya, therefore, has nothing to do with a classic civil war. It is a regional war of position being fought on Libyan territory, inscribed in a space where the front lines are as much diplomatic as military. Welcome to the realm of extreme instrumentalization. ‘The war of others,’ Ghassan Tuéni would have said… with local cannon fodder. In this context, there should be no illusion: any attempt to resolve the crisis as strictly Libyan is doomed to failure. As long as regional balances remain structured by rivalry, and as long as the Eastern Mediterranean is a space of energy and strategic competition, Libya will remain a field of ‘adjustment.’ The formula is undoubtedly cynical, but it perfectly describes reality. The war is maintained specifically because it fulfills a function in an unstable regional order, as it also does in Sudan. And as long as this function is not challenged, no solution, no lasting peace can emerge. Next article: Libya in the Fragmented International Order (5/5) Read on the same theme: 2011 or Libya in the Post-State Era (1/5) The Libyan Conflict: An Extreme ‘Militianization’ of Politics (2/5) ‘Two Libyas’ and an Elusive Sovereignty (3/5)

Since the Arab Spring of 2011, Libya has not been undergoing some unfinished transition but has settled into a lasting state of political dissolution. Far from paving the way for a reconstruction process, the brutal disappearance of Muammar Gaddafi's regime, on the contrary, triggered a long sequence of fragmentation, where armed violence progressively replaced the state as the organizing principle of power, as in Sudan. This series offers a structural reading of the Libyan war as a stabilized and coherent system in itself, embedded in regional and international rivalries, and now capable of eliminating any political alternative that does not fit its logic. The notion of “two Libyas” frequently recurs in analyses of the Libyan case, serving as a metaphor for the country’s territorial fragmentation. Yet the formula is misleadingly imprecise, suggesting a seemingly clear-cut – even nearly symmetrical – political division between a West dominated by Tripoli and an East structured around Benghazi. Such a depiction, however, dangerously oversimplifies a far more troubling reality: Libya is not split between two competing sovereignties, but stripped of sovereignty altogether. The institutions that claim to embody it do not, in practice, govern. They survive by delegation, under armed protection, in a state of constant dependence on forces that are external to – or hold authority over – them. In the West, the Government of National Unity led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh – and recognized by the international community – exists within a kind of enduring legal fiction. It enjoys diplomatic recognition, formal access to Libya’s overseas assets, and a seat at the United Nations – yet such recognition does not give it any real capacity to enforce decisions across the territory it is supposed to govern. In Tripoli, to govern means to bargain incessantly with armed groups that control neighborhoods, roads and key institutions. The executive decides nothing. It survives by playing Scheherazade – negotiating its own reprieve day by day – operating through a loose coalition of civil and armed actors who remain autonomous on the ground (the Special Deterrence Forces, of Salafist persuasion; the Stability Support Apparatus, structured around local militia leaders; the Misrata factions; the Tripoli Brigades; and others). This perpetual bargaining has reduced the state to a hollow, procedural shell. Ministries operate only intermittently; public policies exist mostly on paper; budgets are swallowed up by informal redistribution mechanisms designed to preserve fragile armed equilibria. The Central Bank – often portrayed as the country’s last remaining backbone – has itself become the object of rival attempts at capture and cross-cutting pressures. In the East, a Relative Order In the East, sovereignty is no more secure, despite the appearance of military hierarchy. Khalifa Haftar’s authority rests on a patchwork of tribal loyalties, security structures and external support. It imposes a degree of order, but one that is military rather than institutional. It does not rest upon an autonomous administration, but upon a chain of command and a war economy. The claim to sovereignty there encounters a fundamental contradiction: how can a power so structurally dependent on external patrons for its survival exercise full sovereignty? Strategic decisions – on war, the economy, or diplomacy – are invariably shaped by the expectations and red lines of regional and international backers. Eastern Libya does not truly govern. At best, it manages its dependency. Unsurprisingly, the coexistence of these two poles produces no stabilizing equilibrium. On the contrary, it creates a system of mutual obstruction and contained – if persistent – disorder, all the more acute because neither camp is strong enough to enforce a lasting unification, nor weak enough to be sidelined. Libya thus settles into a configuration in which division itself becomes functional, enabling local actors to maintain their positions – and external actors to project influence without taking on the burden of any genuine state reconstruction. Oil, a Driver of Fragmentation This lack of genuine sovereignty is more evident in the management of resources. Rather than fostering national cohesion, oil has become one of the major drivers of fragmentation. Terminals, fields and pipelines are controlled – or blocked – according to local calculations, and production can be halted at any moment as a political lever. As for the revenues, when they do circulate, they serve to sustain patronage networks rather than any national project. The Libyan paradox is that the country possesses ample resources to finance its own reconstruction – yet remains structurally incapable of converting them into sovereignty. In this setup, rent does not strenghten the state; it paradoxically perpetuates its dispersion, a dynamic reinforced by the institutional architecture itself. Governments succeed one another, agreements pile up, dialogue processes multiply – each presented as a decisive step towards reunification – yet, in reality, none alters the balance of power on the ground. Libyan institutions are nothing more than ghostly, hollow transit points where promises made on all sides are never fulfilled. In this landscape of desolation, the very notion of legitimacy has lost any operative meaning. Electoral legitimacy is invoked, only to be neutralized; revolutionary legitimacy is exhausted; security-based legitimacy is contested. What remains in practice are partial, local and provisional claims to authority, anchored above all in capacities for coercion. Its corollary – sovereignty, understood as the ability to decide and to compel within a given territory – dissolves amid this proliferation of competing sources of power. In Libya, authority no longer coheres; it fragments, negotiates and endures, but rarely governs. A Festering Stalemate Territorial fragmentation is not frozen in place. It is fluid, adaptable – perhaps even reversible in the short term – yet, like the wider dynamic, persistent in its logic. Zones pass from one authority to another without altering the overall structure of the conflict. Cities change hands, alliances are reshuffled, yet the absence of a unifying center remains the constant. It is precisely this fluidity that makes the Libyan predicament so resistant to attempts at resolution. There is no stable front line on which a lasting ceasefire could be imposed, nor is there any single actor capable of bringing the entire country into a binding political process. Every initiative runs up against a simple reality: no one can commit everyone, and everyone can obstruct anyone. External actors are, of course, accused of fueling division. It is true. Yet in truth they merely exploit an existing configuration – backing one camp, then another, and adjusting their level of engagement, without ever making a serious attempt to restore a sovereignty they consider unrealistic in the short term. Libya thus becomes a space to be managed – and, indeed, another festering sore within this part of Africa. As for solutions… The civilian population finds itself trapped in a double bind. On the one hand, it depends on weak institutions for essential services; on the other, it lives under the constant pressure of armed groups. In a context where politics has withered as a collective horizon, it is hardly surprising that exile becomes a personal strategy of survival. To speak of “two Libyas” is to miss the point entirely. A more accurate description would be of a country administered in pieces, where the state is little more than cardboard, sovereignty a hollow claim, and war an inexorable curse. This is neither a temporary nor accidental arrangement, but the product of a decade of compromises, patchwork fixes, and misguided rational calculations. As long as this architecture remains unchallenged, any reunification will be purely formal. Libya may change governments, sign new agreements, or convene yet another conference – but it will not regain genuine sovereignty as long as violence remains the gateway to power, and dependence on external actors its principal mode of operation. Next article: Libya as a Regional Festering Sore Read on the same topic: – 2011, Libya in the post-state era (1/5) – The Libyan Conflict: An Excessive 'Militiafication' of Politics (2/5)

Since the Arab Spring of 2011, Libya has not been undergoing some unfinished transition, but has settled into a lasting state of political dissolution. Far from paving the way for a reconstruction process, the brutal disappearance of Muammar Gaddafi's regime, on the contrary, triggered a long sequence of fragmentation, where armed violence progressively replaced the state as the organizing principle of power, as in Sudan. This series offers a structural reading of the Libyan war as a stabilized and coherent system in itself, embedded in regional and international rivalries, and now capable of eliminating any political alternative that does not fit its logic. Considering the 'militiafication' of Libya as the result of an accidental post-2011 malfunction is at least a hazardous initial premise. The process of normalizing militias has become a kind of structuring logic of the post-Gaddafi 'system.' From the moment the state collapsed without a succession mechanism, armed violence ceased to be just another tool, progressively establishing itself as the central driver of politics. And this shift, far from being caused by a sudden break, settled in insidiously, through successive slips, at the pace of tactical compromises presented as temporary and which, along the way, became irreversible. In the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi's fall, the revolutionary brigades were initially perceived as transitional security forces, tasked with filling a void while awaiting the reconstitution of national institutions. But this fiction of 'armed transition' rested on the erroneous assumption that violence would agree to disappear on its own once its initial function was accomplished. Not at all! Violence was not instrumentalized by politics; rather, it slowly and inexorably substituted it. Thus, the militias were never demobilized. And for good reason: no authority was able to compel them to do so. Very quickly, they understood that their existence depended neither on legality nor international recognition, but on their ability to control territories, infrastructures, and flows, through military control, obviously, but also economic, social - and sometimes even symbolic control. A militia's authority over a piece of territory - a neighborhood, a port, a ministry, or a bank - is pernicious par excellence, insofar as it makes any governance impossible without it. This process profoundly transformed the nature of power, as the question was no longer who governs... Power became synonymous with blocking and torpedoing, insofar as it aims to prevent others from governing without its consent. In this sense, politics was reduced to a game of armed veto, with each significant actor possessing sufficient capacity for obstruction to hinder any attempt to centralize authority. “Political entrepreneurs” The direct consequence of this configuration has been the devaluation of institutions. Successive governments, whether based in Tripoli or elsewhere, have no longer been evaluated on their capacity to administer, but on their ability to deal with prevalent armed groups. The state budget has become an instrument of co-optation, ministerial posts bargaining chips, and legitimacy has withered in favor of the brutal realism of power relations. Thus, militias have ceased to be peripheral actors to become, in a way, 'political entrepreneurs,' developing rational strategies, investing in alliances, and diversifying their sources of income. The control of migration routes, trafficking, oil installations, or public markets is today the economic 'essence' of Libyan politics, built on the vestiges of a continuously vampirized state reduced to a legal fiction, a 'cash cow,' and a trinket for legitimizing parastatal relations with the outside. Textbook 'militiaism,' in other words. textbook , in other words. Consequently, militias have no interest in fully rebuilding the state apparatus, since a functional state would reintroduce rules, hierarchy, predictability. Meaning. Law. Conversely, a weak, fragmented, permanently negotiable state maximizes their room for maneuver at will. A windfall. Managing an unstable balance Amidst this militia order that has established itself through disorder, governing in Libya now amounts to managing an unstable balance between competing armed groups, each capable of tipping the situation through targeted escalation. And it is according to this logic that the emergence of military figures whose leitmotif is to 'restore order,' purportedly, should be explained. Khalifa Haftar is the perfect expression of the excrescences generated by chaos. His rise to power rests entirely on the promise of a regained pseudo-verticality. However, this promise relies on the same mechanisms it claims to overcome: armed loyalties, external support, war economy, etc. Failing to dismantle 'militiafication,' Haftar simply seeks to centralize it under his own authority. And the attempt partially fails because it collides with other militias that are just as rational, just as locally entrenched, and just as externally supported. The war in Tripoli, in 2019-2020, which produced neither a lasting victor nor state reconstruction, illustrates the impasse of the 'Haftar approach,' in the sense that it constitutes proof of the failure of military force as an instrument for refounding the political order. An adjustment variable The 'militiafication' also has a significant deep social effect: it redefines local hierarchies, values the capacity for violence, and marginalizes civilian elites. Unarmed political actors are thus relegated to the role of secondary mediators or symbolic figures, and their room for action depends entirely on their ability to lean on an armed force, even at the cost of major concessions. In such a landscape of desolation, the civilian population becomes an adjustment variable. Periods of calm do not correspond to pacification processes, but to temporary balances between armed groups. War is never far; it is suspended, never resolved, and this permanent suspension produces a form of normalization of violence, which becomes predictable, integrated into calculations, and accepted as an insurmountable horizon. The only horizon of war is war, war, and again war. The 'militiafication' of Libyan politics is not a fleeting pathology, but the logical result of a precise historical sequence, in this case, the destruction of the state without succession, followed by an implicit delegation of coercion to local actors. Once this threshold is crossed, returning becomes extremely costly. Disarming a militia does not only mean taking away its weapons. The current example of Hezbollah in Lebanon is the most striking proof of this. It also means taking away its role, its income, its social position, and sometimes even its identity. This explains why all attempts at reintegration, disarmament, or security reform fail. 'Militiafication' is no longer a technical problem since it has established itself as a total political fact. And to downplay its importance is to postpone the solution indefinitely, and infinitely prolong Libya's agony. The problem is not an excess of militias stricto sensu , but the absence of a political order capable of rendering them obsolete, useless, laughable. And as long as this order is not rethought from its roots, violence will continue to be the pivot of the system through self-generation. Next article: 'Two Libyas' and an elusive sovereignty Read on the same topic: 2011, Libya in the post-state era

Since the Arab Spring of 2011, Libya has not been undergoing just any unfinished transition, but has settled into a durable state of political dissolution. Far from paving the way for a reconstruction process, the brutal disappearance of Muammar Gaddafi's regime instead triggered a long sequence of fragmentation, where armed violence has, as in Sudan, progressively replaced the state as the organizing principle of power. This series offers a structural reading of the Libyan war as a stabilized and coherent system in itself, inserted into regional and international rivalries, and now capable of eliminating any political alternative that does not fit into its logic. The fall of Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011 is mistakenly presented as a foundational event from which Libya has never managed to recover. However, this reading is simplistic, even misleading, insofar as it assumes that the collapse of the Gaddafi order would have made possible a thwarted transition, hindered by exogenous factors or by the immaturity of local actors. But the reality is more radical: Libya did not fail to rebuild after 2011, because no reconstruction ever truly began. Rather than being reformed, the state was dissolved, without a succession mechanism, replacement architecture, or durable arbitration principle. To understand this, we must return to the specificities of the regime established by Gaddafi, which did not function at all like a classic state. Gaddafi founded his power on an extreme concentration of decision-making, accompanied by a systematic neutralization of institutions and the establishment of an unstable balance between tribes, security apparatuses, and the redistribution of oil rent. A model of tyranny, all in all quite common in the Arab world, which, despite its iniquitous nature, produced a certain order. By destroying it without the slightest thought for minimal continuity, the 2011 intervention paradoxically removed the last center of gravity capable of organizing the political field. Thus, the fall of the tyrant did not free up the Libyan political space as logically it should have. Instead, it created a void of sovereignty. And no actor was able to establish themselves as a legitimate successor to the order established by Gaddafi. The historical oppositions, long fragmented or neutralized, had little in the way of a homogeneous territorial presence or a common institutional project capable of constituting an effective and lasting alternative. The state structures, already fragile, thus collapsed with the regime that contained them. Consequently, violence, until then monopolized and contained by the dictator, dispersed. Gaddafi's lynching, instead of purging Libya of its demons, opened Pandora's Box. Libya entered a new phase, disjointed due to this 'institutional' vacuum left behind by the colonel-Leviathan. True to Gramsci's formula, this in-between, which was neither a classic civil war nor an unfinished post-authoritarian transition, created monsters. Within this post-state space, authority is no longer transmitted vertically. It has fragmented horizontally, according to local and regional power dynamics. An armed recomposition of politics The first years following 2011 have often been described as a period of nascent chaos. But here again, the term is inappropriate, insofar as what was put in place, far from spontaneous disorder, is an armed recomposition of politics. The brigades arising from the insurgency did not disappear after the fall of the regime. They became institutionalized, de facto substituting for the state structure by capturing territories, establishing their control over infrastructure, and negotiating with central authorities already deprived of any coercive capacity. Organized from 2012, the electoral process failed to reverse this dynamic. The elected assemblies formally exist but have no monopoly on force. Legal legitimacy proves powerless in the face of military reality. The vote has therefore ceased to be an instrument of conflict regulation to become a secondary issue, instrumentalized by armed actors who do not depend on it to exercise real power. The result, as in all countries abandoned to the law of the jungle, is that politics now depends on power dynamics, and state actors must deal with those who control the ground. Stripped of its function as an organizing structure, the labeled state finds itself dis-substantialized and reduced to a space where any prospect of relief is knowingly and continuously torpedoed by para-state military organizations. This rise in militia power was accompanied by an equally structuring phenomenon: the capture of rents. Far from unifying the country, oil thus became one of the engines of its fragmentation. Installations, ports, pipelines transformed into levers of pressure, based on the logic that whoever controls a terminal or a strategic road no longer needs to govern the entire country. Their de facto power is based on their capacity for neutralization, blocking, negotiation, and extortion. At this stage, Libya has not, however, plunged into total war. It found itself in a low-intensity conflict, punctuated by acute crises, but structured by local balances. This situation, often described as transitional, has nonetheless gradually solidified. Armed actors have adapted, funding networks have consolidated, and alliances are made and unmade, as no central authority can arbitrate them. The case of Khalifa Haftar It is in this context that the figure of Khalifa Haftar emerged. Haftar's ascent does not follow any coherent ideological project. It can be defined as an attempt to recompose a military verticality in a fragmented landscape. The restoration of the state is not his concern. Haftar offers an authoritarian alternative to anomie, backed by regional support and a promise of order. This promise, however, relies less on institutional reconstruction than on security dominance. The Arab misfortune. The emergence of Haftar confirms that post-2011 Libya can no longer be understood as a unified national space. It has become nothing more than a field of forces where political projects are subordinated to military capabilities and external support. From this point, the Libyan trajectory is largely determined. The absence of state succession in 2011 is not a corrigible accident a posteriori . It constitutes the founding act of a lasting configuration. Beyond classic schemes, one can consider that the war no longer even aims to conquer the state, but to organize its absence. Libya is therefore not in a classic war between factions for power stricto sensu. The protagonists of the conflict are actually waging a war against the very possibility of a central power. And it is precisely this fact that conditions everything that follows: the 'militianization,' the regionalization of the conflict, the intervention of external powers, and this unheard-of, absurd stabilization within instability. Next article: An excessive 'militianization' of politics

What would be the point of a strike ordered by Trump? Are we to believe it would put an end to the repression raining down on Iranian protesters? In reality, no one is in a position to halt the reprisals that the Revolutionary Guards are inflicting upon their fellow citizens. And even if an agreement were concluded in Oman to avert an American military operation, nothing suggests that civil peace would immediately take hold. In either case—whether the mullahs reach a cut-rate understanding with the United States or not—the Iranian protest movement will be left to the ferocity of a so-called “pacification” that fires live ammunition at point-blank range at demonstrators and other opponents. “Brinkmanship” and “Misreading” In Oman, beginning Friday, February 6, representatives of Donald Trump and those of Massoud Pezechkian came face to face—two masters of bluster and theatrics: the former, who boasts loudly yet hesitates to carry out his threats; the latter, who, adopting maximalist positions, demanded that the venue of the conference deciding the fate of the Persian Gulf be transferred from Turkey to Oman. If the President of the United States no longer surprises anyone with his erratic conduct, what can be said of the regime of the mullahs, which, cornered to the utmost, still continues to swagger? Their nuclear program has been “eviscerated,” as Patrick Wintour writes in The Guardian , and thirty of their senior commanders have been eliminated in the wake of 160 massive strikes—yet the Iranians believe they can dictate to American envoys the parameters of the talks and the negotiating agenda? The brinkmanship they practice to perfection is a strategy of the abyss: pressing forward with dangerous actions to force the opponent to retreat and extract concessions. If they stick to it, it is because they are deeply convinced that Trump will never resort to military action. This entrenched conviction may well lead them to ruin. It is all the more perilous to play double or nothing as U.S. naval vessels converge on the Strait of Hormuz, that strategic choke point for global oil transit. The mullahs, confident in their righteousness and seasoned in arduous negotiations, should fear above all a misreading—a grave miscalculation of the facts and the interests at stake. They risk falling victim to their own arrogance, so convinced are they that Trump is a bluffer who quickly backs down. An Uncertain Outcome The occupant of the White House would do well to disabuse his adversaries, for he appears to be growing impatient. According to Israeli leadership circles, as reported by Haaretz , the Islamic Republic is bound to sabotage the negotiations, having entered them merely to buy time and grant a reprieve to its nuclear program. Yet dismantling that program—or “diluting” highly enriched uranium—would, for the ayatollahs, amount to shooting themselves in the foot. In short, the rounds of talks underway in Oman may drag on indefinitely, or be suspended only to resume later. The affair promises to be long and will likely fizzle out—or at best end in a maritime blockade. Unless, of course, there is an Israeli coup de Jarnac! Væ victis But the great forgotten and the great vanquished of the Omani conclaves will remain the dissidents, whose fate is nowhere on the agenda. Thirty thousand victims have been mentioned. May they rest in peace. But what fate awaits the 50,000 detainees languishing in prison? For Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, head of the judiciary, those involved in the protests should expect “no leniency.”

A few weeks before the international Paris Conference scheduled for March 2026, whose goal is to mobilize international support for the Lebanese army, the army's commander-in-chief finds himself at a critical strategic turning point. In a Lebanon beset by political and regional uncertainties, every decision made on the ground or within the general staff can have repercussions far beyond its borders and influence not only the survival of the military institution, but also the international perception of its role as a national stabilizer. According to General Maroun Hitti, the army does not only face external and internal threats: it is subjected to cumulative pressure, where multiple mandates, ambiguous political decisions, and popular expectations combine to test its endurance, cohesion, and credibility. The stakes are twofold: maintaining its credibility in a volatile internal context and convincing the international community that the army remains an indispensable pillar of Lebanon's stability. Strategic Stretch and Multiple Fronts General Maroun Hitti highlights the army's « strategic and operational stretch ». Today, it is called upon to monitor the southern sectors of Lebanon, control borders, ensure internal security, fight terrorism, and implicitly or explicitly limit Hezbollah's actions, all while anticipating a potential confrontation with Syrian forces hostile to the Shiite party. This « stretch » reflects a deep tension: having to manage actors with contradictory strategies without a political clear and unanimous mandate or adequate means. The consequence, if this risk is not controlled, could be the dilution of missions, the exhaustion of forces, and the weakening of the army's image; a scenario that would compromise the troop's credibility in the eyes of international donors called to meet in Paris. For General Hitti, the solution involves three axes: a clear and unanimous mandate from the Council of Ministers, the determination of strict mission priorities, and an alignment of international support with essential priorities. When the Army Becomes a Substitute The army also faces the risk of political instrumentalization. Too often, it has been used as a substitute for unmade decisions concerning national sovereignty, the management of weapons outside state control, or defense policy. This ambiguous role directly threatens institutional neutrality, weakens internal cohesion, and can erode public trust. In the context of the Paris Conference, this risk takes on an additional dimension: the institution must demonstrate to international partners that its actions are professional, neutral, and effective, and not a reflection of internal political stakes. Clear strategic communication thus becomes an imperative to avoid any misinterpretation of its role. Impossible Choices External risks remain present. Limited Israeli strikes could escalate into open confrontation, forcing the army to react precipitously. The feared scenario is one where the army becomes a scapegoat if the Israeli army fails to achieve rapid results against Hezbollah. The example of 2006 remains vivid in people's minds: 43 soldiers died in a war not desired by the Lebanese people. But beyond direct threats, the army must face an invisible but formidable degradation, fueled by regional and international pressure. The escalation involving Hezbollah and Iran constitutes a potentially explosive factor. Any regional conflict could spill over and draw Hezbollah into an existential confrontation, destabilizing the internal political balance and forcing the army into impossible choices: remaining neutral while protecting the territory, or intervening in a scenario where its legitimacy and security would be compromised. This escalation is not only military: it is political and psychological, with the risk of fragmenting the institution if strategic decisions lack clarity. In parallel, the army must contend with a potential fatigue of international donors, which would directly threaten its operational capabilities. A reduction or suspension of support could affect the maintenance of equipment in operational condition, infrastructure, and training, generating critical failures in protection and mobility, and contributing to a moral degradation among the troops. In this context, holding the Paris conference is a key factor: it is not only an opportunity to strengthen material support, but it also represents a test of political and strategic trust. An Army Under Internal Pressure In addition to these external threats, the army faces other pressures inherited since its inception: Excessive centralization of command, which slows down decision-making in crisis situations. Overload of responsibilities in internal security, particularly in the face of social and economic tensions. Insufficient intelligence and equipment, which limit the responsiveness and security of forces. Loss of control over the public narrative, which exposes the institution to internal and international criticism. All these cumulative pressures can prove more dangerous than a classic military defeat, as they erode the cohesion, discipline, and credibility of the army even before a conflict arises. Preserve the Army Before Fighting For General Hitti, the army's survival today depends less on a victory on the battlefield than on its ability to resist institutional and political wear and tear. The commander-in-chief must anticipate crises, protect the cohesion of his troops, maintain the morale and credibility of the institution, while refusing unfunded or politically ambiguous mandates. Every decision, plan, or communication thus becomes a strategic lever, crucial for convincing international partners of the institution's effectiveness and reliability. Between 2026 and 2030, the challenge for the Lebanese army will not only be to defeat an adversary, but to preserve the institution itself. Three conditions are essential: 1. Total political clarity with a unanimously decided mandate, a sine qua non condition for action. 2. A definition of mission priorities to avoid strategic and operational « stretch ». 3. Well-defined strategic communication to control the narrative both internally and externally. Without these conditions, the army risks losing its role as a national stabilizer and seeing its unity and credibility erode under the weight of institutional wear and tear and political ambiguity — a risk that the Paris 2026 conference will have to consider. An Existential Challenge It thus follows from the foregoing that the analysis of the army commander's dilemmas highlights an essential reality: the most serious threat is not a military defeat, but the gradual erosion of the institution. Every conflict, every incident, or political pressure acts like a small « earthquake », revealing deep fissures that threaten the cohesion and credibility of the military institution. Between extended missions without clear mandates, political instrumentalization, risks of regional escalation, and the weariness of international donors, the army is condemned to permanent strategic gymnastics: maintaining its neutrality while remaining ready, preserving unity while anticipating possible fractures, convincing the public and international partners while managing internal pressures. This complexity far exceeds the classic framework of conventional warfare: it is an institutional and existential challenge. The Paris 2026 conference embodies a decisive moment. It is both an opportunity and a test. International confidence rests on the perception that the institution can master its missions without becoming an instrument of internal political fractures or regional maneuvers. This is one of the major challenges its leader will have to face. To achieve this, he must be given every chance of success. Between 2026 and 2030, the Lebanese army will not only have to defend the national territory: it will have to defend its very raison d'être. Its survival and its role as a stabilizer depend on clear political choices, institutional discipline, and a strategic vision — parameters that only a resolute leadership and unanimous support, both internal and international, can guarantee. In this context, the Paris conference will not be a simple diplomatic meeting; it will reveal Lebanon's ability to maintain its last pillar of stability in the face of uncertainty and multidimensional crises.