Small Carrot, Long Stick: Lebanese Government’s Foreign Backers Demand Compliance Without Protection

This shift, however, does not appear to have offered any protection from the Israeli military, which is openly targeting state infrastructure, invading South Lebanon, and declaring its intent to permanently occupy all territory south of the Litani River. 

Under these conditions, the Lebanese government’s geopolitical realignment risks the country settling for a strange sort of “sovereignty”, one defined by foreign powers who call upon the Lebanese state to quickly comply with their political and security demands, but offer it little protection or support in return. 

Moreover, Lebanon alone will bear the risks of this arrangement. Hezbollah and Iran are openly defying the government’s orders, with their primary effect having been to ratchet up intra-Lebanese political tensions and push the country closer to renewed civil strife. 

An Army Pointed Inwards 

Nowhere is the gap between compliance and protection more visible than with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). At the start of 2026, the army had begun building credibility by moving into positions vacated by Hezbollah in the south, with the government presenting that deployment as a visible extension of state authority.  

Following the outbreak of war in March and the expansion of Israeli operations, the LAF pulled back from its border positions, while Hezbollah returned to direct confrontation with advancing Israeli forces. The sequence is difficult to square with a government claiming to have reasserted its monopoly on force. The LAF is more rightly described as a symbol of state presence that can help manage territory, but when the cards are down, it has no capacity to determine the military balance on the ground. 

Nor was it ever meant to. Western military support for the LAF has been calibrated for internal stabilization: salaries, logistics, armored vehicles, and help for the disarmament track. The army has not been equipped to confront a conventional state military, but rather to accompany the state’s push to monopolize arms and manage the domestic consequences. This entails pursuing the internal, policing aspect of state power, while the other, protection from external force, remains absent. 

Importantly, Lebanon’s realignment is also driven by economic desperation. The country’s 2019 financial collapse and reconstruction needs from the 2023-24 war have given Gulf and Western actors considerable leverage over the country’s direction. Saudi Arabia’s renewed engagement with Beirut was explicitly tied to reforms, with the Salam government committed to adhering to a new IMF program and banking-sector restructuring. In this light, Lebanon’s pivot to the Western-Gulf axis is less a choice than a financing model, and the returns remain mostly promised rather than delivered. None of this means the government has no agency. But its immense financial needs mean its realignment is taking place under severe duress. 

Clear Demands, Cloudy Commitments 

The compliance benchmarks Western and Gulf sponsors espouse compound the problem. “Disarming Hezbollah” is not a fixed objective with a clear endpoint; it is an elastic condition that can be widened, prolonged, and reinterpreted at will. Economic actors, meanwhile, are unlikely to commit seriously while hostilities continue. Lebanon may keep paying the political and security price of realignment without ever reaching a moment when it secures protection, reconstruction, or a diplomatic return. 

Israel’s invasion and threats to annex South Lebanon have put the West’s perfunctory support for Lebanon on full display. On March 31, the foreign ministers of 10 European countries and the EU High Representative issued a joint statement calling on Israel to avoid a ground operation on Lebanese territory and affirming the country’s territorial integrity. France has coordinated similar statements among UNIFIL-contributing nations. Canada has told Israel that Lebanon’s sovereignty must not be violated. Spain has condemned Israeli threats against civilian infrastructure. None of these calls have produced an enforcement mechanism, a security guarantee, or a material consequence for noncompliance. The same statement that urged Israel to respect Lebanon’s borders called on Lebanon to implement “concrete and irreversible measures” to restore the state monopoly on arms and adopt financial reforms in line with IMF requirements. The demands on Lebanon are specific, while the commitments to Lebanon are atmospheric. 

Paying the Price, but for What? 

The domestic costs of this arrangement are already materializing. The government’s moves against Hezbollah and Iran are provoking retribution from within. Pro-Iran actors, including Hezbollah, organized a rally outside the Iranian embassy in support of the ambassador, while a senior official in the party’s political bureau publicly threatened Lebanon’s foreign minister. Yet with Iran’s ambassador still in Lebanon despite the expulsion order, the episode has so far produced more confusion than control. Rather than consolidating state authority, it has intensified contention within the cabinet and damaged the government’s credibility.  

With the war escalating, the government now faces a bind: to continue complying with external demands means confronting Hezbollah, which, despite its losses, is still the country’s most powerful nonstate actor. Failing to comply, meanwhile, risks losing the international backing the government has staked its future on. Both paths are destabilizing, and the war means the margin for error in managing the tension between them is exceedingly small. 

It was long clear that Lebanon’s previous diplomatic ambiguity was untenable, that a state which could not define its own geopolitical orientation was vulnerable to being pulled apart by those who could. But diplomatic clarity without reciprocity is a different trap. Lebanon is no longer balancing between equivalent poles; it is being pulled into a far more asymmetrical order, where alignment means immediate compliance with no reciprocal guarantees on territorial integrity or recovery.  

Put differently, the government can ban Hezbollah’s arms and expel ambassadors, but this isn’t stopping Israel from dropping bombs on Beirut or reoccupying South Lebanon. Indeed, the only meaningful outcome of the realignment thus far has been increased civil tensions. The question then is not whether Lebanon is clarifying its geopolitical allegiance, but rather what sort of sovereignty awaits without any meaningful protection in return. 

Victor Masson is a Policy Analyst at BADIL | The Alternative Policy Institute  

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BADIL | The Alternative Policy Institute or its editorial team.