Lebanon is gone

As Lebanon grapples for the second month with popular anti-government protests, there’s been a tempest in a teapot on Capitol Hill over the status of military assistance to the country. Following a trip to Beirut last week, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy took to Twitter to attack President Trump over a delay in releasing aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces, or LAF. “Trump still refuses to send congressionally mandated security aid. Lebanon may become the next Ukraine,” he charged.

In fact, military aid to Lebanon has been a bipartisan failure for more than a decade, and reconsidering it is overdue. But the delay in assistance, which it was announced on Dec. 2 had already been released, was not the result of such a reconsideration, let alone a shift in U.S. policy. Neither was it “the next Ukraine.”

The brief holdup in the transfer of $105 million in security assistance — the United States gives Lebanon around $250 million a year — caused much distress among supporters of the policy, who boosted a messaging campaign alleging the critical importance of the aid to U.S. national security and the supposedly catastrophic consequences of its suspension.

Neither contention is true, and this is a good opportunity to explain why.

First things first: The nefarious freeze that President Trump purportedly imposed on military assistance to the Lebanese military is a myth. The administration, regrettably, has not reversed or altered its policy of funding the Lebanese. The reason for the delay was a bureaucratic technicality. The Office of Management and Budget reportedly sought to ensure the president had explicitly given the green light on the transfer. Once this happened, the matter was closed. Moreover, it had no effect whatsoever and would never have had an effect, as the State Department has clarified, since no Lebanese expenditures or purchases of military materiel have been delayed.

So why the furious outcry? For one, the episode presented another opportunity for the president’s domestic opponents to attack him politically. Suddenly, Lebanon analysts and Democratic members of Congress, but also alumni of the Obama administration, picked up the cause. And they did so specifically by folding the Lebanese military into their political messaging on Russia and Ukraine, the latter’s own military aid holdup being at the heart of the Democrats’ impeachment effort. It is “not normal” and “not legal” for the president to withhold aid, opined Ned Price, a former official in the Obama White House. The president, according to Price’s yarn, was seeking to “normalize” freezing aid as he offers justifications for withholding it from Ukraine. Against this backdrop of political warfare, it’s hardly a surprise that the Russia theme is now more than ever at the forefront of explaining the supposedly critical importance of the Lebanese military.

But the panic among supporters of aid to Lebanon also reflects the recognition that their preferred policy could unravel as skepticism about its soundness increases. Powerful voices in Congress, such as that of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, have been highly critical of the policy of unquestioned, open-ended aid to a country dominated by Iran’s terrorist arm, Hezbollah. The current upheaval in Lebanon only adds to the anxiety of those who support continued aid.

Sending money to a failed state run by a terrorist group is absurd on its face, which is why advocates of the policy must continuously adjust their talking points. They cannot run with the argument that the aid works against Hezbollah’s military buildup and political dominance in the country, as the aid has done nothing of the sort in the 12 years since it began. In fact, Hezbollah’s power has grown exponentially during that period.

So, the arguments become increasingly farcical.

For instance, Murphy maintained that “if Trump cuts off support for the LAF… Hezbollah will take over.” Price added that “weakening [them] invites Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia deeper into Lebanese society.” It’s amusing to hear an alumnus of the Obama White House, which unleashed and financed Iranian expansionism, express concern over Iran’s influence, but this description of Lebanon’s dynamics is downright ridiculous.

The reality is that Hezbollah took over Lebanon years ago. For the past seven years, as Hezbollah prosecuted its war in Syria, Lebanese forces coordinated closely with it and protected the group’s rear and logistical routes. During battles in eastern Lebanon against Syrian militants in 2017, the Lebanese military deployed jointly with Hezbollah and provided it with fire support, using U.S.-supplied munitions and systems. When Israel uncovered Hezbollah cross-border attack tunnels late last year, Lebanon’s military denied the United Nations interim force in the country access to the sites for inspection. Hezbollah sites for upgrading rockets into precision missiles are situated near Lebanese military bases that receive U.S. aid.

Hezbollah’s power is manifest in Lebanon’s political order as well. Hezbollah’s coalition currently holds the majority in parliament. The executive branch of the government, to which the Lebanese military answers, has been dominated by Hezbollah and its allies. The security apparatuses all coordinate closely with the group. Hezbollah likewise maintains a powerful presence in Lebanon’s ports of entry, allowing it to bring in weapons, including by air through Beirut International Airport, and run its vast global criminal enterprise.

For this reason, Hezbollah has emerged as the most ardent defender of the current system, against the popular protests. Hezbollah is the Lebanese political order.

With the eruption of protests in mid-October, backers of the aid introduced yet another talking point: Supporting Lebanese forces is critical because it protects the protesters against attacks by Hezbollah’s thugs. One problem with this claim is that it is, at best, only partially true. In some cases, the Lebanese military stood between protesters and the partisan goons, although it did not disarm or arrest those goons. In other cases, it either stood aside and did nothing, especially in Shiite areas and in Beirut, or it actively broke up protests, forcibly reopened roads blocked by the demonstrators, or harassed, arrested, and roughed up others.

In response, the talking point was tweaked: It was pro-Hezbollah units in the Lebanese military, acting outside the chain of command, that were responsible for these acts. In other words, we are now asked to somehow fund the moderate, non-Hezbollah wing of the Lebanese military. This, after years of reassurances that claims of Hezbollah’s sway over the military were overblown if not outright false. In fact, according to Murphy, Hezbollah has “the least influence in the LAF, [which is thus] the counterweight to Hezbollah.”

In the end, this is a moot point. The statutory basis for U.S. aid is not grounded in whether Lebanese forces protect protesters; it’s what the forces are doing to disarm Hezbollah (though, admittedly, as the proposition of the Lebanese military doing that became more laughable in recent years, new, more vague language about “border security” was introduced in its stead). The answer to the question of what Lebanese forces have been doing, for 12 years, to disarm Hezbollah is: nothing. It’s not just because various units or commanders are under Hezbollah’s sway. It’s because the government and political order in which the Lebanese military operates is run by Hezbollah. What’s important, therefore, is the address, not the name of the addressee on the U.S. aid package.

The people in Lebanon today are protesting against this very political order, the same one U.S. policy is predicated on stabilizing and propping up.

That supporters of the aid policy have now integrated the Lebanese military into the political campaign against the president, and are gloating with mythical claims about how the Pentagon and State Department supposedly steamrolled the White House and forced it to release the aid, only underscores the weakness of what already was an unsound policy position. American taxpayers should not be funding a Hezbollah-controlled state.

Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @AcrossTheBay.