Through lack of foresight, and under internal and outside pressure, Lebanon has never been able to work out a national defence and security strategy. It has delegated this sovereign responsibility, albeit unwittingly, to the international community, which has shared it according to its interests and the evolution of regional actors. For them, immediate neighbours or less close regional powers, Lebanon has been systematically seen in terms of its nuisance value, which has always granted it a place that it has never sought in their defence and security strategies. Thus, lacking a national view on its security, and deprived of a defence strategy that is its own, Lebanon has endured the paradoxes and contradictions resulting from its wavering between hostile axes and has been powerless to resist repeated violations of its sovereignty.

Today, the international community is again mobilised for Lebanon, this time in another attempt to contain the nuisance capacity of this country that has again become the setting for all the region’s contradictions. Even though Lebanon is now more than ever under the responsibility of the international community, it appears again to be condemned to relinquish its right to defend its sovereignty by it own means, through a national and global vision of its security and by drawing up by itself a coherent defence strategy. Will the internationalisation of Lebanon’s security or the pacification of the Lebanese scene by the international community help this country to exist once again as a sovereign state that can aspire to a national defence and security strategy?

The 1982 Israeli invasion designed to eliminate the threat from the PLO, and establish a friendly regime in Beirut, was followed by Syrian occupation motivated by many reasons, including Damascus’s need to install in neighbouring Lebanon a regime that was totally subjected to it and on which it could count to counter any threat to the Alaouite regime. During both periods, Lebanon was ‘internationalised’, with the direct presence of multinational forces and other interposition forces, then with political and economic rescue packages. The 1989 Taif Accords, which were imposed at a time when Lebanon was tearing itself apart, were international agreements (with US participation), sponsored by a regional power (Saudi Arabia), whose implementation was to be subcontracted to a neighbouring country (Syria). These agreements reflected the evolving internal balance of power with the decline of the Christian Maronite regime, and transferred most of the executive’s prerogatives to the Muslim community. They were to be accompanied by financial and economic arrangements also decided by international partners with a substantial contribution of the regional Arab powers involved (at the Paris I and Paris II Conferences).