Half a Billion Questions
As UNIFIL bows out and the Army steps in, Lebanon edges closer to an answer—or another half-baked delay.
Hello readers,
It has been a while since my last edition of Think with K. I pressed pause for a summer break, but as Q4 begins, the news cycle is regaining speed—and so must we! Since the last issue, disarmament has made its way to the top of the government's agenda. We await the Army's plan and a cabinet meeting this Tuesday, but already, the planned retreat of UNIFIL is a defining inflection point. The question now is: what comes next? (I realize I've been asking this for months—clearly, I'm as tired of asking it as you are of reading it. Perhaps Tuesday's cabinet meeting will finally give us answers worth exclamation points instead of question marks.)
🇺🇳 UNIFIL's Failure—and the Opportunity It Opens
Security Council Resolution 1701 was supposed to ensure that the area south of the Litani River was free of armed groups other than the state. UNIFIL's 10,500 personnel, burning through $500 million annually (with $125 million courtesy of Washington), was tasked with enforcing it. Instead, southern Lebanon was turned into a Hezbollah fortress. UNIFIL patrols were obstructed, its personnel harassed, and killed. A force designed to oversee sovereignty became a costly backdrop to its erosion…
A few days ago, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend UNIFIL's mandate "for a final time" until December 31, 2026, followed by "an orderly and safe drawdown and withdrawal" within one year. As US Ambassador Dorothy Shea noted, "the first 'I' in UNIFIL stands for 'Interim.' 47 years later, the time has come for UNIFIL's mission to end.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)—with 85,000 personnel—have well expanded their deployment south of the Litani. 6,500 soldiers are already reportedly there; soon it will be 10,000. This is where hope lies: not in another 500 million for blue helmets, but in investing that money in our men and women.
What $500 Million Could Buy in Military Terms
I'll admit I had no context of what $500 million means in military spending, so I looked it up. Here's what half a billion dollars—UNIFIL's annual budget—could translate into for Lebanon if reallocated:
Rocket artillery (HIMARS and equivalents): these are truck-mounted rocket launchers, mobile enough to relocate after firing, accurate enough to strike military targets dozens of kilometers away. A recent deal saw Bahrain buy a HIMARS package of launchers, rockets, and support for roughly this amount. For Lebanon, such systems would vastly out-range current artillery.
Air defense and radar systems: air defense means equipping airspace against jets, drones, or missiles. It combines radars that "see" incoming threats with interceptor missiles that can shoot them down. Germany recently allocated a similar sum to provide Ukraine with radar-guided interceptors. For Lebanon, this would mean, for the first time, presence in the sky.
Ammunition and sustainment: weapons without ammunition or logistics are ornaments. $500M could secure years' worth of munitions, fuel, and training cycles. It would sustain LAF deployments south of the Litani long term.
Half a billion dollars wouldn't just buy weapons—it could provide the LAF with modern capabilities, sustainable logistics, long overdue increase in personnel salary and pension, and the tools to effectively secure Lebanese sovereignty. And unlike UNIFIL, the LAF has the trust of Lebanese across all communities.
Yet even with that investment, the LAF1 will never match Israel militarily. Lebanon spends under $2 billion annually on defense; Israel spends over $24 billion. Israel fields 600+ combat aircraft; Lebanon has none. Israel has over 2,200 tanks; Lebanon has around 200.
The gap is unbridgeable. Which is precisely the point: deterrence cannot be built through military symmetry and guarantees must come from the US.
🔦 Three Scenarios Post-Tuesday
I see three scenarios for Tuesday:
Walking on eggshells: the LAF continues its cautious southern expansion, discovering tunnels here, seizing weapons there, while smuggling routes remain porous and the Hezbollah base quietly revives. Israel responds with targeted strikes, everyone claims progress, nothing fundamentally changes.
This is Lebanon's comfort zone: enough movement to claim victory, enough ambiguity to avoid real confrontation.
The Iran gambit: direct negotiations involving Tehran and Washington—the only approach that addresses root causes rather than symptoms. As Carnegie's Michael Young argues, "accepting" the current U.S.-Israeli stranglehold "means addressing disarmament while disregarding the ultimate decisionmaker on the matter; it means, potentially, allowing other countries to discuss Hezbollah's disarmament, with the Lebanese forced to accept an outcome over which they have no say." Such dialogue would need to be conducted "quietly, under the radar," and could "gauge Iranian intentions and determine if there are possible openings to advance a mechanism for disarming Hezbollah." Probability? Low, but not impossible if regional calculations shift.
Against all odds: against its risk-averse DNA, the LAF drafts an aggressive, phased military operation targeting Hezbollah infrastructure nationwide (bearing in mind a quarter if not more of the LAF is reportedly Shia). Even if they somehow muster the courage to propose such a plan, it dies in cabinet—killed by fears of sectarian clashes and within the LAF itself, to maintain sectarian balance.
👉🏼 The resulting stalemate hands Israel justification for "solving" the problem themselves. Scenario 1 is another ticking bomb, scenario 2 bets on regional calculation that seems on the backburner of the US administration since the last Iran/Israel conflict, and scenario 3 is great show of sovereignty and strong arm but low likelihood of following through. As Senator Graham warned during his Israel visit: "we'd rather Lebanon handle this internally, but either way, Hezbollah will be gone." The question isn't whether this card gets played—it's how much time we have.
If it's as short as it took for Barrack to lose his temper with journalists and Ortagus to get a Lebanese hairstyle, then the timeline for Israel to grab any opportunity to re-escalate is running tight (at time of writing, news of dozens of airstristkes towards Nabatiyeh are reported, north of the Litani).
🇱🇧 Beyond Military Solutions: The Economic and Social Imperative
UNIFIL's withdrawal can be seized as an opportunity. DDR (disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration) has a poor global record—African examples show militias persist despite billions spent—but Lebanon has a unique card: prosperity and neutrality. It's time for the emergence of a Shia narrative that surrendering weapons is not a zero-sum game. If Hezbollah truly gives up its military facet, the South gains investment, reconstruction, jobs—and reintegration into Lebanon as a whole, ending decades of de facto partition.
As Tom Barrack's recent diplomatic mission made clear, the American strategy centers on economic incentives. Money talks. The sales pitch2 at the core of the American-led strategy is to make an offer that Hezbollah's constituents, crippled by Lebanon's economic collapse, cannot refuse. The proposed economic zone in southern Lebanon, backed by Saudi and Qatari investment, aims to substitute Iranian funding with reconstruction capital. The goal is a hostile takeover of sorts: replacing Hezbollah's entire political economy of resistance with a marketplace of reconstruction.
There are signs this approach can work. The disarmament of Palestinian camps is a good beginning, with arms collected and checkpoints reintroduced. But these small wins can also be attributed to direct discussions with Palestinian authorities and acknowledgment that arms don't serve any purpose. The lesson is clear: dialogue with the big bosses and public narrative are necessary for DDR (precondition we still lack for the Hezbollah case…) But beginnings are meaningless without continuity - this progress in Palestinian camps must be sustained through permanent checkpoints and extended to Hamas-controlled areas.
Lebanon must resist its favorite trick of smoke and mirrors—leave that for weddings and plastic surgery, not for national survival :)
Beyond security concerns lies a deeper challenge that wasn't addressed since the end of the civil war: national identity. My mind went to mandatory military service as an idea to be explored.
Since 2013, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait have reintroduced or introduced mandatory military service specifically to foster national cohesion and strengthen ties between citizens and the state. In the UAE3, conscription serves as ‘a cultural tool of nation-building, forging identity through collective experiences to instill a sense of belonging and group loyalty vis-à-vis the nation.’ After a decade, their program is part of how the country diagnoses the strengths and weaknesses of its societal fabric. The results speak for themselves. UAE conscription has trained over 50,000 conscripts with high social acceptance4, combining intensive physical fitness training with military training, national education, and character education. This sounds exactly like what Lebanon needs…
Because our crisis isn't just military or economic; it's existential. Today's generation is defined by concerts, nightlife, cuisine... We've been lacking a national identity exercise since the civil war—something bigger than sect, bigger than party.
Closing Thoughts
Senator Graham put it bluntly: the US is ready to guarantee Lebanon's security. Not at Israel's level, of course. Nor should it be. Lebanon's miracle was never martial—it was socio-economic. Its strength was always being neutral, prosperous, and open amid regional turbulence.
This is our chance for our generation to get a taste of that miracle. The Army's disarmament plan and government's decision will test whether we can follow through or fall back into half-baked measures. If we never try, we will never know. So here's to trying,
K.
Fascinating LSE case study on the military factor in the UAE’s nation building
Excellent analyis of the situation as usual! Unfortunately you are so right, we are so good at "smoke and mirrors" especially for" weddings and plastic surgery" and not so good at " national identity exercises"!! Hope your article will wake some of us up!
Superb article, as always ! Well done Kristy ! You are soo right… for the time being we are lacking a cohesive national identity ! I hope that politicians are reading your page 🙏🏻