American Policy on a Remote Control

Two American administrations wanted a democratic Lebanon. Bush tried to contain the Syrians with sanctions and by ignoring them, and Obama tried with dialogue. Both of them have failed.

No one really cares about the Lebanese. Israel does not for sure. Israel cares about Hezbollah. She cares that rockets will not fly from inside Lebanon. That Lebanon will not turn into an Iranian power base on her northern border. Iran also does not care: Iran is using Lebanon and its residents as hostages of her policy in the region. Syria wants the territory. And if needed, she’ll be glad to rule over the inhabitants — with a heavy hand or a light one. And she wants to prevent Iran from becoming the main patron of Hezbollah, because this is the card Bashar Asad holds, too. And what about the Americans? Once, for a moment, they did care. Somewhere in the middle of the decade, when the Bush administration still believed that it was within its power to inject democracy to the Middle East, they found signs of success in Lebanon. With time, the American ideology wore off, and so did the Lebanese success.

There are numerous reasons for the problems of Lebanon, and both the close and remote past include plenty of failures, which have many fathers. But two of them are particularly interesting to examine: the miscarriage of the Bush administration and that of Obama administration — two sequential American administrations which swore allegiance to the free, democratic Lebanon, liberated from the caprices of outside players. Two administrations that have not succeeded in carrying out this pledge and turning it into a policy that also works in practice. As a matter of fact, they are two administrations and two defaults that constitute a keepsake of what should have been obvious: statecraft engineering on a remote control cannot achieve good results. What the players in the arena don’t want — and aren’t able — to do, the coach or the judge can’t do either.

The Bush administration wanted to present Lebanon as evidence of correctness of Bush’s claims regarding the feasibility of an Arab democracy in the Middle East. Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, operated daringly for strengthening the free Lebanon government and, most importantly, for curbing the Syrian attempt to gain influence. This is one of the arguments in the basis of the policy which made it possible for Israel to engage in the prolonged attack on Lebanon in 2006. Bush simply hoped (Rice was a doubter, and the cooperation was largely forced on her) that Israel would cause Hezbollah damage it wouldn’t manage to recover from — damage certainly instrumental for the security of Israel but also for Lebanon itself in undermining the major factor threatening the democracy from the inside.

It’s been a disappointment. Israel didn’t do her job, and neither did the Security Council. She made tough decisions, but the performance, as expected, was lousy. Hezbollah hasn’t been dismantled but has grown stronger. And even if it hasn’t dared to bully Israel since then, the pressure on the Lebanese government has only intensified.

Ahmadinejad’s Visit: A Painful Reminder of the Fiasco

The Obama administration provides the mirror image of Bush’s policy. Obama too wanted to help out the free Lebanon; he too saw in her an element of hope; he too understood that distancing the Syrians is one of the main keys to success. But the thing is, Bush tried to restrict the Syrians by means of ignoring them, severing contact, sanctions and threats. Obama took a shot at doing this through dialogue, meetings and luring them. Different tools but same result.

The visit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week hasn’t been a turning point in the annals of Lebanon, but it has been a public, sharp reminder of her gloomy situation and the fiasco of the West to stabilize, shape, support and control the regional trends with force or with talks.

Two weeks ago, in a conversation with an American official, chiefly about settlements matters, I inserted — as if by the way — a question about the policy in Lebanon. He sighed. “Can we go back to what we were talking about?” he asked — like that was about different subject matter. But this is actually about the same subject.