The Need for Deterrence
Deterrence can be defined as the capacity to make an attack cost an attacker more than it is willing to pay. The aim of deterrence is not to invite conflict but exactly the opposite: by raising the cost of aggression on both sides of the border, deterrence is what makes restraint the rational choice, and stability more durable than the current status quo.
Switzerland, often invoked as a model of neutrality, illustrates exactly this point. Its history of neutrality was never passive but rested on a policy of conscription, territorial defence, and a strategy designed to make invasion prohibitively costly.
In the context of Lebanon, deterrence should not be sought through parity but rather through denial and resilience, whereby the LAF should seek to increase the costs of external attacks, thereby making acts of aggression a less attractive choice. Denial means making territorial incursions, raids or prolonged deployments harder to execute and sustain. Resilience means ensuring that the army and the state can continue functioning after an initial attack.
For a resource-constrained LAF, these two concepts could take several forms, such increased surveillance and intelligence, drones and counter-drone systems, secure and redundant communications, and better protection of command infrastructure and military assets. Resilience would also require the capacity to protect critical civilian infrastructure, restore access to affected areas and keep essential state and military functions operating after an attack. Some of these capabilities would complicate incursions; others would ensure that the state remained functional under pressure.
None of these options would eliminate Lebanon’s military asymmetry. Indeed, against an air campaign, Lebanon’s protection will remain largely legal and political for some time yet. Taken together, however, a purposeful approach to denial and resilience would make coercion more difficult, reduce the vulnerability of Lebanese territory and institutions, and raise the costs of limited incursions or repeated attacks.
Building a credible deterrence doctrine will also require a re-imagination of what international support can provide the LAF. Washington has for two decades provided more financial and military support to the LAF than any other country. The nature of that support has been hamstrung by US law, which mandates that it uphold Israel’s qualitative military edge over its neighbours.
While parity must therefore be acknowledged as undesirable among some of the LAF’s key backers, it should also be warned that a complete neutering of the LAF creates exactly the conditions for Hezbollah to assert the indispensability of its own, independent forces. Meanwhile, international stakeholders should recognise that regional stability and Israeli military hegemony are not synonymous, particularly in Israel’s current political reality.
Thinking Creatively Needs to Go Both Ways
For the LAF to be capable of both offering credible deterrence externally and disarming Hezbollah, a radical rethink of the institution is also required. The Lebanese government needs to offer its international partners more than a call for additional funding to support existing LAF structures.
The need for LAF reform needs be understood in the context of the wider role it plays in Lebanese society. With over 80,000 personnel, as many as 400 general-grade officers, the army is the country’s largest public employer and provides healthcare, education, pensions and other benefits to serving personnel, retirees and their families. In poorer regions especially, where formal employment is scarce and social protection weak, the army has often functioned as an economic lifeline.
This social role, however, comes at a cost. In 2025, the Ministry of Defence spent around USD 1.09Bn on the army, of which 76 percent went to personnel costs. By contrast, capital expenditure amounted to less than 2 percent of total spending, and just 0.4 percent of this expenditure went to the provision of equipment. For a fiscally constrained state, maintaining a large payroll comes directly at the expense of being able to invest in the capabilities that deterrence requires.
Reform will therefore require a gradual rationalisation of the force itself, with difficult choices on how to prioritise expenditure to meet strategic needs. But avoiding reform carries its own strategic cost. If the LAF is expected to become Lebanon’s sole legitimate armed force, its limited resources need to follow its military purpose over employment and welfare. This will require re-defining the priorities for the institutions at the top political level.
Lebanon has been able to reform public institutions before. Middle East Airlines survived the civil war only to face a crisis of its own: by 1997, annual losses had reached $87 million and the carrier was overstaffed and flying an ageing fleet. Rather than simply keeping it, afloat, new leadership drove a five-year restructuring that turned the carrier into a once more profitable enterprise. The national carrier is far from perfect, but MEA has remained one of Lebanon’s few consistently functional state-linked institutions that turns a profit almost every year. Alongside disarmament and deterrence, this same ambition should also apply to one of Lebanon’s most critical and valued institutions: its armed forces.
