Friday, 26 December 2008
By Abdullah Iskandar
The debate over a defense strategy in Lebanon has been seemingly restricted to the technical aspects, as revealed by the papers submitted during the national dialogue sessions. These papers focus on how to organize certain armed forces, whose legitimacy is contested whether directly or indirectly according to the architect of the theory himself.
At the same time, the importance of dialogue is not contingent upon reaching a national agreement over the hoped-for strategy, or laying out duty-bound constants, or ending the organic conflict between the different Lebanese parties. Such a dialogue is important in its capacity as a temporary "safety valve" for the internal conflict and an occasion to keep a lid on the situation prior to the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for next spring. The Lebanese sides wager on these elections, on the assumption that their results, coupled with other factors, will determine the nature of the defense strategy. Accordingly, each side brandishes slogans that mobilize and attract the constituents, members of a particular confession, instead of turning the election campaign into an occasion to ponder over the nature of this strategy and attract the voter-citizens.
According to both camps, the March 14 group on the one hand and Hezbollah and its allies on the other, the role of the new defense strategy is either to neutralize the party's weapon at first, in a prelude to cancel it completely at a later stage, or to consecrate the legitimacy of this weapon. Thus, this argument has turned into the dialogue of the deaf, as it is linked - in both cases - to a current political situation, the solution to which is restrained by the internal and regional requirements, namely the political stance towards Israel, whether to stay in a state of war or to engage in peace.
This crisis has existed since the rise of the state of Grand Liban. Every political mantle since then has managed its own affairs, overlooking the economic, social and developmental dimensions in any national project, except for the short-lived Chehabi period which was thwarted by the same political mantle.
Like any national issue in a multi-sectarian and conflict-prone country as Lebanon, the fate of any defense strategy will not be any better than others, as long as it addresses a current political crisis. The same problem will resurface when the balance of powers changes. The crises that plague Lebanon's modern history are nothing but a duplication of the ones that erupted in the past, some of which evolved into civil wars, with the proposed solutions failing to defuse these crises.
Today, the same story repeats itself, with a huge difference in the uneven military power between the Lebanese rivals who will likely resort to extreme solutions in the coming period, thus reviving violence.
We cannot escape this vicious circle with technical prescriptions, regardless of the intentions behind them. We should build upon Lebanon's pluralism and Arab affiliation. This pluralism cannot withstand any extreme actions by any side, while Lebanon's Arab affiliation does not allow any side to monopolize a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Any national defense strategy that does not take into account this pluralism and the developmental concerns (with all their dimensions), will fail to produce national leaders who can manage the affairs of the Lebanese people and gain their trust, or at least reach out all sects. Any strategy that is based on the current balance of power and which secures the interest of a specific party, will only empower that party and will be challenged when this balance of power changes.
