For a “state” to exist in a specific geographical area that contains a human group, it is necessary to have institutions that monopolize the use of violence. Without that, “chaos” will prevail, and it is not possible to talk about a state in the modern sense.
This is what the German sociologist Max Weber said, defining the state as “the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence,” in a lecture he gave in 1919, which was published in a book entitled “Politics as a Vocation.”
Under this umbrella, that is, the umbrella of the state which monopolizes the use of violence, comes modern politics, with what it means in terms of “seeking to share power or to influence its distribution, whether between states or groups within the state,” according to Weber.
This theoretical approach may help in understanding what is happening in Lebanon today. The continued existence of Hezbollah as an armed organization capable of challenging the state’s monopoly on violence prevents the emergence of a modern state and even hinders the practice of politics in its modern sense.
Under the current situation, Lebanese parties cannot compete in democratic elections to increase their share of power, because there is a party that reserves for itself in advance, regardless of democratic elections and their results, a large part of this power because it possesses weapons outside the “state’s” weapons.
This weapon, the weapon of “Hezbollah”, imposes a reality of inequality between Lebanese parties, and consequently between Lebanese citizens, and challenges fundamental concepts without which a modern state cannot exist, including the concept of the “rule of law”, which also requires the state to have a monopoly on the use of violence, and also the concept of the “democratic system”.
The reality we are living through arose from the “state’s” abandonment of its responsibilities towards the people of its south, who happen to mostly belong to the Shiite sect, when it allowed the sharing of its monopoly on violence in this geographical area with the “Palestine Liberation Organization” in the Cairo Agreement of 1969.
Had it not been for this agreement and its subsequent developments, Lebanon would not have witnessed two Israeli invasions and occupation, Hezbollah would not have emerged in its current form, and perhaps a civil war would not have occurred. Therefore, from a historical perspective, responsibility for the current situation can be seen as transcending sectarian lines, but in the present context, it primarily rests on the shoulders of the Shiite duo, who resist efforts to rectify this abnormal situation and transition to a state where all Lebanese, Shiite and non-Shiite alike, live in a modern state where parties and sects compete for power democratically.
The current debate in Lebanon is governed by the age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Hezbollah officially argues that its weapons remain necessary to defend Lebanon (or the Shia of Lebanon) against Israel, and unofficially argues that they are necessary to counter potential threats from its eastern border and to protect the rights of Shia citizens within Lebanon’s internal power-sharing system. It maintains that the condition for surrendering its weapons is the establishment of a “strong, capable, and just state that protects Lebanon and the Lebanese people.”
In its argument, Hezbollah ignores the fact that achieving a strong state is impossible as long as it continues to bear arms, because sharing the state’s ability to exercise violence prevents the availability of the necessary conditions for the establishment of a “strong, capable, and just state.”
Hezbollah knows this, but it sees it as being in its interest to continue its discourse on this issue, as it appears positive and convincing to many, and contributes to producing a Shiite public mood that lacks confidence in the state, its institutions, and its officials, and even mocks them. This is a mood necessary to maintain the current power relations between the “state” and the “Hezbollah mini-state,” or those that existed before its defeat in the last war.
Hezbollah knows that restoring people’s trust in the state and its institutions, or simply their shift to relying on them, makes it difficult for it to overturn the understandings that followed the last war, since its entire existence requires a relationship of contradiction between the logic of the state and the mood of the Lebanese Shiites.
There is no doubt that the Lebanese state is weak and fragile, if we understand “state” as the political authority and the bureaucratic apparatus that manages it. Indeed, it is extremely weak and fragile. However, authority is not the only pillar of the state; the state has three fundamental pillars: territory, people, and authority.
Hezbollah’s discourse on the state, and also the discourse of most political-sectarian forces in Lebanon, almost ignores the people, as it portrays the state as an entity that is transcendent to and separate from people.
This omission ties all debate to the present moment and its immediate circumstances, excluding the future from the equation. The future, and the form of the state within it, is determined by the people over time, not overnight, but only after the necessary conditions are met to pave the way for the emergence of a modern state, or at least to make it a viable possibility.
This is precisely where the role of the Shiites should come in, as they are the ones who have suffered the most from the absence of the state and its consequences, and as they are perhaps the largest sect in terms of demographic size, and therefore the largest popular bloc participating in policy-making in a hoped-for democratic system, to be a lever for the modern state and a democratic system, in partnership with the rest of the Lebanese.
This is not an easy task, and its positive results will not be immediate, but it is a path that must be taken if we want a better future.