The U.S. has an opportunity to help rebuild Lebanese sovereignty

Here’s where the United States could make a decisive difference. For more than a decade, U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, has been working with the Lebanese Armed Forces to bolster its ability to recover control of the nation’s borders, should Hezbollah’s grip ever weaken. That moment appears to have arrived.

Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah — culminating in the killing of Hasan Nasrallah last week — has created a security vacuum in Lebanon. The shellshocked lower ranks of Hezbollah undoubtedly hope to fill the void. But for the first time in a generation, there’s a real chance that the LAF takes control of the nation’s security and its borders, with proper assistance.

The Biden administration sees a “massive opportunity” in Lebanon, a senior official told me this week. But to help Lebanon regain sovereignty, the Biden administration will have to move quickly and decisively while Hezbollah is still in disarray.

The Pentagon has been rehearsing for this role for several decades through its support program for the LAF. Less than four months ago, the Pentagon hosted the LAF’s commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun, in Washington and at Centcom headquarters in Florida.

“Biden administration officials want the LAF to prepare a force that could potentially deploy near the border to monitor a future buffer zone negotiated between Israel and Hezbollah,” Al-Monitor news organization reported at the time of Aoun’s visit in mid-June. Amos Hochstein, Biden’s special emissary to Lebanon, stressed that this LAF deployment would require “an enormous amount of currency,” explaining: “You need to recruit, train and equip, and that takes time.”

A “day after” mission in Lebanon would be risky for the United States and its partners. For a haunting reminder of the possible costs, recall the bombing of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. Those operations, conducted by the Iranian-backed predecessors of Hezbollah, were meant to sabotage a vaguely defined American “presence mission,” as officials described it to me at the time. The United States had hoped to steady the Lebanese state after Israel’s traumatic 1982 invasion.

Any American presence on the ground this time would have to be very limited and well-protected to avoid a rerun of the 1983 catastrophe. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Centcom has been training regularly with the LAF for years, and officers on both sides have close contact. U.S. forces operate in other vulnerable places in the region, including Syria and Iraq.

After an 11-day joint exercise in May 2021, Dana Stroul, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said, “With the LAF … we are interested in developing a long-term partnership with an institution that responds to the Lebanese people, is committed to what’s in their interest, and is a national representative institution to provide an alternative to Lebanese Hezbollah.”

Michael Young, a veteran Lebanese journalist, explained the dynamics after Nasrallah’s death in a post Sunday for the Carnegie Endowment’s Diwan website. He juxtaposed Hezbollah’s “logic of resistance” with “the logic of the state” and said the latter “imposes itself on a country that has been carried into a catastrophe by an armed group that has disregarded the Lebanese state.”

Young wrote that in the view of many Lebanese, “the single national institution that retains credibility and widespread popular endorsement is the Lebanese army.”

Over this past year of war, Israel’s growing tactical mastery hasn’t been matched by good strategic planning for the aftermath. In Gaza and Lebanon, it is leaving behind rubble and seething anger, a breeding ground for future wars. Stable governance of a future Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank may unfortunately be in the “too hard” category, for now.

But rebuilding the Lebanese state behind a strong army — supported by a population that is sick of Hezbollah’s violent fantasy of resistance — is an achievable goal. It will require disciplined American effort and political will. But it’s a worthy task for Joe Biden’s final months in office and for his successor.