Lebanon, the Dilemmas of a Monumental Unraveling Charles Elias Chartoun/March 10/2020 شارل الياس شرتوني: كشف معضلات التحلل الكبير في لبنان
The latest developments are symptomatic of the structural breakdowns that have led to the demise of whatever is left in this agonizing Republic: The endemic crisis of national legitimacy and conflicting loyalties, the recurrent trials of dysfunctional governance, the pliability to foreign interventions and its swaying impact on internal dynamics, the brittleness of economic and financial sectors in an instable environment, and the stultifying effects of destructive power politics and private interests on public policy making. The endemic instability which has repeatedly questioned Lebanon’s civil peace, constitutional governance, liberal political culture and lifestyles have permeated the Lebanese psyche and created a set of defense mechanisms which account for the survival instincts of a population used to live through alternating stages of political and civil instability, socio-economic volatility, cultural wars and intertwining internal and external conflicts. The latest episode highlights the compounded nature of the latest financial crises and their reverberations across the political, economic and social systems, highly damaging consequences, and metonymic recapitulation of the manifold existential threats which hover over the country’s future and rickety civil peace:
A- The destructive fallouts of the financial crisis are expressive of systemic deadlocks which put at stake the country’s operational sovereignty and ability to tackle them amidst ramshackle governance, imploding consensuses, and the incapacity to come up with working compromises on financial policy, in spite of the exceptional opportunities offered by the civic rebellion and the creative dynamics it elicited. The Rentier-State status that accounts for the nature of governance is no hazard, since it reflects the idosyncracies of a deeply fractured polity made up of a collection of power centers subsumed under the fiction of a Constitutional State.The nature of the public debt which has been building up throughout the last three decades, reveals the arcanes of a plundering mechanism operated by the coalesced Sunnite and Shiite oligarchies, and their ancillaries among different Christian constituencies. The contracted odious debt was deliberately initiated to cater to the concurring oligarchic power strategies, personal self enrichment and in compliance with the agendas of regional power brokers ( Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey). Rather than being spent on the assignments of post war reconstruction and integrated development, the 350 billion dollars dilapidated on staggering institutional rents ( 85/ 90 per cent ), have not yet delivered, and if so they have failed to uphold the basic standards of professional credibility. The completion of forensic auditing should help us identify the sources and venues of this monumental robbery, public mismanagement and outright violation of the rules of elementary civic boundedness and sense of the common good.
B-The Hezbollah takeover of governance with the due complicity of well crafted and micro-managed intercommunal and political coalitions, highlighted through the partnership with General Michel Aoun and his political formation, overlaps with the radius of Iranian power projections in the larger Middle East, the expanding dynamics of a self defeating Iranian imperialism undermined by an eroding national legitimacy and the demise of its foundational narratives, failed governance and systemic economic and societal breakdowns, and the hazardous outcomes of its imperial overstretch. The attempt at foreclosing governance, building stonewalling tactical alliances, and flouting the normative and operational rules of a working consociational democracy are unlikely to be managed in the long run, since they have elicited multiple oppositions, internally and externally, and are swayed by the concurring regional and international power politics, the bolting weaknesses of the Iranian regime, and the inability of Hezbollah to curb the Shiite opposition unwilling to endorse its power drive, and the illusions prompted by the fallacies of a counter-international order ( along the schemes outlined by H. Chavez and M. Ahmadinejad in the 2000 ). The intertwining dynamics of a lethal financial debacle, and the pitfalls of outsized power projections attempted by Hezbollah have proven to be non dissuasive, so far, and might be at the roots of a new wave of destructive conflicts. The statements of Hezbollah about the financial and economic crises betray the inconsistencies of its ideological worldview, economic illiteracy and the irrelevance of economics on its scale of priorities, whereas it runs a vast international underground economy, promotes the fortunes of an illegal and parallel economy, and replicates the ground rules of the predatory economics of the Iranian regime.
C- The probability of a consistent reform in Lebanon hinges upon an integrated approach whereby, the reform of political and economic governance, the overhaul of civic culture, and the delineation of developmental agendas predicated on an integrated approach based on the complementarity between the economic, social, educational and environmental variables, evolve symmetrically. The priority of financial reforms revolves around the following objectives: The recapitalization of the banking sector, the negotiated solution of the compounded debts, the recovery of the immense public heist, the reform of the banking sector in conjunction with the structural reforms of the economy mandated by the international institutions and the community of potential donor countries, the implementation of an overall plan of economic reforms congruent with the epistemological norms of the international community ( IMF, World Bank, ILO, WTO, European Bank of Development and Reconstruction,…. ), and the inevitable nexus between consolidated political stability and sustainability. The stabilization of political life, and the distancing from the disruptive political and military dynamics of an imploded Middle East, prohibitive political alliances, imaginary economic shelters, and purported segregated trade spaces advocated by Hezbollah ( Iran, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea / Syria, Iraq and Jordan ) are the preliminary conditions of a steady reformist course, and the creation of its congenial environment. Short of these prerequisites, the regressive dynamics already in place, are likely to question civil concord and compromise the chances of cumulative reforms.
The most striking feature of the systemic unraveling we are witnessing, is the brittleness of social order, its fictitious and fiduciary nature, and the centrality of social constructivism in any future attempt at recasting the matrices of statehood, governance and participatory politics. We should avoid the fallacies of “ misplaced concreteness “ and make sure to keep in sight the dialectical relationship between political and financial reforms, and the prevalence of destructive regional power politics, shaky political consensuses and their stifling role. The civic rebellion sparked last October 2019, is mandated to build a functional platform of coordination, overcome the traps of maximal aspirations and the divisiveness of ideological politics, if we were to oversee a tangible reformist course and preempt their deleterious impact on its fortunes. The actual oligarchies and ongoing power politics have already erected their defenses around the demarcation lines of their interests, regional patronages and determination to use violence and civil war threats to protect their power turfs and absconded riches. Summarily, at the end of its first centennial ( 1920-2020 ), Lebanon is experiencing the worst economic tribulations after the excruciating famine of WWI ordered by the Turkish authorities ( 1915- 1918 ) which eradicated half of the Maronite population in Mount Lebanon ( 50/ 100, 400000/ 200000 ), and left its enduring imprints on the future of the emerging polity, its internal political dynamics and geopolitical entanglements.
The decision will appease protesters who have clamored for the government to prioritize domestic concerns. But it does little to solve the nation’s financial woes.
