Amid a pressing need for new arguments following the collapse of the theory that Hezbollah provides Lebanon with "protection" and "strength," a talking point is being echoed by those who defend this same party: The Lebanese did not build a state, and they did not do so because of sectarianism and the corruption and quota system it gave rise to. So long as this is the case, any and every action is excusable at the very least, and glorious at the very most.
The fact is that defending the Lebanese state, or claiming that it has overcome structural defects, is always a difficult task; nonetheless, it is far less difficult than aligning with this sort of convoluted critique and the position from which the critics are making it.
Strikingly, the proponents of the "no state was built" argument have, traditionally and exclusively, made this critique of the Lebanese political experience, while the military regimes and police states of the Levant were never criticized for not having built a state. Since these regimes understood the state as a single party and a network of repressive apparatuses that weigh on the chest of society and its citizens, it is fair to treat this criticism of the Lebanese model as a critique of its non-militarization and its limited policing of politics. More than that, for many decades, those regimes, especially Assad’s Syria and Saddam’s Iraq, along with Gaddafi’s Libya, had been characterized as "patriotic" and "progressive," and their weapons and money were used to undermine the Lebanese model that is said to not build a state.
As for the literature of the critics, it is brimming with demands for censorship, punishment, prohibition, boycotts, defamation, and reprisal; as to their intellectual sources of inspiration, which range from regional military dictatorships to the totalitarian regimes that had once been in power in Europe, they give credence to the worst assumptions one can make about the critics and their criticism.
Moreover, only 15 years had gone by since Lebanon's independence (1943) when the first attempt to break the nascent Lebanese state was made, through violence and the arms that the "United Arab Republic" generously flooded us with. Although there is something of a consensus around the fact that the late President Fouad Chehab put a serious project to build the state and state institutions into action in the 1960s, it is clear that these critics of ours supported the effort to push back against this project the moment its institutions clashed with the Palestinian resistance at the end of that same decade, labeling it isolationist.
In both cases - the siding with Nasserism in the 1950s and 1960s and then with the Palestinian resistance in the 1960s and 1970s - it was evident that the critics’ ideal state is a state of power, which is presented as nationalistic and patriotic but is, in practice, founded on militia violence and fragmenting society along sectarian lines. Sovereignty and borders were never on their agenda, and to them, the notion of Lebanon being the "nation" and the object of "patriotism" was outrageous.
It has always been the task of "objective analysis" to render convincing claims that even a child would not believe - like that the internal contradictions of the Lebanese system have, and continue to, create conflicts that leave an impact on the map of the Middle East and the state of the world. This "analysis," which stresses that "we did not build a state" (among other cliched hyperboles about Lebanon’s flaws), simultaneously exonerates violent foreign interference in Lebanon’s affairs of any wrongdoing or strives to divert attention away from them.
According to this "objective analysis," the "Two-Year War" of 1975-76 cannot be understood without the collapse of Intra Bank in 1966, and the "savage capitalism" of Rafik Hariri’s policies justifies downplaying his assassination in 2005. As for Iran’s interventions in Lebanon, they can be seen as having reinforced the resilience of Lebanon’s state and Lebanese society against Israel, Zionism, and behind them, imperialism...
Nonetheless, the real scandal lies elsewhere: Even if we accept this analysis’s assumption that we did not build a state in any sense whatsoever, does that justify finishing the state off completely by aggravating its flaws and agreeing to the emergence of a parallel state - one that has an arsenal and army that are stronger than those of the state and that can instigate and end wars at will? And even if we also accept that sectarianism, in any sense of the word, has indeed prevented us from building a state, does that justify intense affection for Hezbollah - a religious and sectarian party that, on top of its religiosity and sectarianism, appoints only religious clerics, and no one else, as leaders?
Hatred of the Lebanese model probably explains, itself, many of the positions voiced by those labeled progressive, leftist, and liberationist, regardless of how applicable to them these labels actually are. The primary reason for this hatred might be the fact that this model does encompass the sorts of security apparatuses that the hearts of the model’s haters yearn for, demanding, instead, that we seek friendships that are not governed by geography and that we not allow historical legacies to determine our enemies.
This hatred might be among the main reasons for the enthusiastic support for plunging Lebanon into a "support and distraction war" that could annihilate the country and its model once and for all, while also granting us everything we desire: the glory of "grand devastation" and countless martyrs and victims.
