One of the most consistent laws in history is that no power vacuum remains vacant for a long time. When a State voluntarily or unintentionally renounces its full exercise of its prerogatives, other actors always occupy the space left free.
The cost of non-choice
The Lebanese tragedy is that the country has gradually become accustomed to living in the temporary. However, the temporary one that lasts always becomes a system.
For years, Lebanon has postponed the settlement of the issue of arms outside the exclusive control of the State. Each government preferred to save time. Each political leader hoped that regional circumstances would solve the problem in his place.
The spectre of territorialization of conflict
One of the most constant lessons of regional history is that conflicts sometimes end up changing territorial realities when they last too long.
No one can say with certainty what the future of South Lebanon will be. But one thing is certain: the longer the Lebanese state is able to fully reaffirm its authority, the more the risk increases that de facto realities that are difficult to reverse will arise.
Conclusion: the real cost of inaction
Nations do not usually disappear in one day. They gradually weaken when essential decisions are constantly postponed.
The cost of inaction is not limited to the visible destruction caused by successive wars. It is also measured in lost opportunities, in generations forced into exile, in investments that never come and in national confidence that slowly erodes.
Tomorrow, this cost could become even heavier. It could take the form of a lasting limitation of Lebanese sovereignty, further damage to infrastructure, cities, the economy and potentially exploitation of the natural resources that Lebanon is entitled to develop.
Beyond geopolitical and economic considerations, there is an even deeper loss: that of the national heritage. Lebanon has an exceptional historical, archaeological, cultural and religious heritage. Each period of conflict poses a risk to this legacy accumulated for millennia.
The question the Lebanese still refuse to ask
Had the Lebanese State long exercised its exclusive monopoly of armed force, Israel’s security argument to intervene regularly in Lebanese territory would have been considerably weakened.
However, in the absence of a clear national decision, part of what is normally a State’s sovereignty is now treated de facto by a foreign power pursuing its own strategic objectives.
Why would a regional power accept a significant military, diplomatic, financial and human cost without in return seeking benefits corresponding to its national interests?
The history of international relations shows that States first act according to their interests. It would therefore be naive to believe that a situation in which a foreign power considers it necessary to intervene on a sustainable basis could remain without any long-term strategic compensation or consequences.
No one can predict what forms might take these consequences. But as Lebanon slows to resolve its own sovereignty issues, it increases the risk that others will solve them according to their own interests rather than their own.
For when a nation forsakes too long from exercising certain fundamental responsibilities, it often ends up discovering that others are exercising them in its place — and rarely under the conditions it would have chosen itself.
Bernard Raymond Jabre
