Lebanon’s Sovereignty or the Missiles’?

Students of political science trace the concept of “sovereignty” back to a Frenchman by the name of Jean Bodin. Bodin was himself a politician, as well as a thinker and jurist. He lived in the sixteenth century, before the “Social Contract” school of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
His conception of the idea was inseparable from his repulsion at the Catholic-Protestant conflict that had broken out after the Reformation. Thus, Bodin preferred central monarchical authority over this conflict, arguing that it guarantees sovereignty by safeguarding peace within its jurisdiction, that different religious communities can coexist under its skies.
He consequently defended the idea of empowering the monarch, not a particular king, at the expense of regional feudal princes, which later propelled Europe leaps forward. As Bodin saw it, the king, any king, is the "sovereign;" his sovereignty is absolute and permanent, and can be neither divisible nor undercut.
Bodin’s diligent work leads us to conclude that “sovereignty” is inseparable from domestic peace and that the single authority guaranteeing this peace can have neither a partner nor a competitor.
It could be said, correctly, that many of his opinions have become outdated and that it is not appropriate to accept them without scrutiny. However, the most pertinent criticism of “sovereignty” stems from the experiences undergone under the many authoritarian regimes that have used this concept to do as they please to their people, exploiting it to obstruct external intervention that seeks to put an end to their oppression. However, it is with this skewed approach that the Lebanese authorities recently turned to the concept, not to impose an oppressive regime on the Lebanese, but to impose an oppressive situation: Hezbollah’s possession of armaments, a state of affairs that inherently brings with it total chaos.
Contrary to Jean Bodin's wishes, this arsenal does not put an end to civil strife. Instead, it perpetually lays the foundations for civil war. It does not unify state authority and make it “sovereign” either, but nibbles off chunks of it wherever possible, refusing to recognize the need for unity that the French philosopher had envisioned. As to the “sovereign,” the ruler symbolizing the “sovereignty” embodied in him, Lebanon has failed to elect his equivalent, a new president of the republic, and its republican institutions are all almost completely paralyzed.
This is said on the margins of the latest UN Security Council meeting on extending the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Lebanon's ambassador to the United Nations was horrified, on the brink of tears, at the powers that might be afforded to those forces, which disregard Lebanon’s sovereignty. Meanwhile, figures close to the Axis of Resistance went further, claiming that these powers were designed to protect Israel from our strong, sovereign country.
Is Lebanon strong and sovereign then?
This assessment is repudiated by every estimate, every fact, every figure, and every experiment. It is refuted by the country’s politics, economy, inter-sectarian relations, emigration figures, the state of education and public health systems, and everything that moves on Lebanese territory. The state of the port, the state of Beirut, and the conditions of every region show it to be untrue. Indeed, legitimacy and meaning are so scarce under the current status quo that a light joke made by a comedian has become an existential threat, and the state and society's foremost task has become to obsess about so-called moral questions.
Facing this claim to sovereignty, we know that a substantial segment of the Lebanese population have begun to call themselves “sovereignists,” by which they mean that their country does not have sovereignty and that they are therefore obliged to work on retrieving that sovereignty, or at least some of it.
The fact of the matter is that the situation we are in is more dangerous than we had imagined: half of its gravity can be attributed to the total collapse of the country, while the other half stems from taking pride in this collapse. Rather, amid this state of affairs, one finds us making claims to sovereignty and threatening Israel or whoever else. This fact has two implications, one that worries the mind and the other that embitters life.
On the one hand, sovereignty, as defended by our diplomacy and those among us aligned with the axis of resistance, is empowered and enriched by the exacerbation of our failures and the deepening of the collapse. On the other hand, this ability to threaten others arises from our weaknesses and deficiencies; it is not the result of some concealed force. In this sense, the wars that these deficiencies could potentially give rise to will combine humanitarian and material calamities with a complete loss of the model. At best, it is enough to think about the warriors who chose the current models of life found in Beirut, Damascus and Tehran, and went on to conquer the world in their name.
In the meantime, only our missiles enjoy sovereignty, and only this sovereignty is embodied by a sovereign or ‘sayyed’. Bodin could never have imagined such a state of affairs. Lebanon may have relatively sinewy arms due to these missiles today, but its body consists of a gawky head, an empty gut, and bare feet, making it difficult to maintain its sinewy arms indefinitely.