The Emergence Of A New Lebanon

Long the most familiar of the Middle East countries to Americans, Lebanon has become something of an alien. Those who have only recently come to know the name associate Lebanon with extremism, bigotry, and violence. Their portrait is that of a poor, war-torn land not unlike other Third World states except in the savagery of its divisiveness. Those Americans who knew Lebanon in years past, and there were many, have tended to err just as grievously by assuming that the Lebanon whose shattered landscape they see on the front pages of their newspapers or in the more vivid images of television is the same Lebanon they once knew. Geography is more static than society. Apart from literature on the violence in Lebanon - which is largely one-sided material - there is no body of knowledge dealing with contemporary Lebanon. The conflicts in that country both resulted from and created numerous and far-reaching changes in Lebanese society. Let there be no mistake - whatever Lebanon will be in the future, we have passed a watershed. Lebanon is not the same country it was five, ten, or fifteen years ago; the political circumstances have fundamentally and irrevocably changed. This book is an attempt to begin to look at the nature of the changes that have taken place in Lebanon. --

After fifteen years of reconstruction in a relatively peaceful environment spanning the years 1990 to 2004, Lebanon has experienced successive violent political events resulting from complex entangled internal and external struggles. The Syrian crisis and its political, economic and demographic consequences on Lebanon have increased these tensions. This atlas sheds light on these new challenges and adds new data that complete the analyses already published in the Atlas du Liban. Territoires et société (Atlas of Lebanon. Territories and Society) released in 2007 by the same research team. Some of its components are included in this edition. Beyond the international regional crisis and the population movements, it takes into account Lebanon’s socio-economic dimensions, the environmental issues linked to uncontrolled urbanization and to natural risks, as well as conflicts due to local territorial management. This atlas is the result of a collaborative endeavor between French and Lebanese researchers. It uses a geographical approach that puts in the foreground a spatial analysis of social and natural phenomena. Public sources are scarce in Lebanon, especially at the local scale. They are sometimes less reliable and difficult to access. It is particularly the case for the Lebanese census data, conversely data are abundantly available on the refugees population, which is less known than the population of refugees. International data help compare Lebanon to its neighbors. Thematic data produced by some ministries are helpful to provide a detailed view regarding specific domains. Analyses processed on aerial and satellite images have produced essential data on urbanization and environment. Local thematic fieldwork surveys have provided additional data. The book consists of seven chapters. The first one deals with the territorial state-building seen in the light of regional geopolitics, and emphasizes internal violence and the reemergence of militias and armed groups that fight each other and the state army. Lebanon is once again perceived as a territory divided between multiple allegiances. The second chapter is devoted to the analysis of population dynamics, despite the lack of reliable data whose sources are subject to discussion. It includes analyses of internal population flows, the Lebanese diaspora, and the assessment of Syrian refugees’ influx. The third chapter shows the fragility of the Lebanese economic model. Its dependency on foreign investments and on...

Tamara Chalabi highlights the development of a 'politics of demand' and the increased political activism of this community in a time of great change. It also explores how Arab nationalism was transformed from an ideology of opposition and empowerment of marginal communities, into a tool for the assertion of political domination.

This is the updated edition of the first comprehensive history of Lebanon in the modern period. Written by a leading Lebanese scholar, and based on previously inaccessible archives, it is a fascinating and beautifully-written account of one of the world's most fabled countries. Starting with the formation of Ottoman Lebanon in the 16th century, Traboulsi covers the growth of Beirut as a capital for trade and culture through the 19th century. The main part of the book concentrates on Lebanon's development in the 20th century and the conflicts that led up to the major wars in the 1970s and 1980s. This edition contains a new chapter and updates throughout the text. This is a rich history of Lebanon that brings to life its politics, its people, and the crucial role that it has always played in world affairs.

In this book, author Nader Moumneh–a Canadian senior policy adviser of Lebanese descent– examines the research of the formation and evolution of the Christian resistance in Lebanon he performed as a graduate student at the American University of Beirut in the early 1990s. He has conducted hundreds of lengthy interviews with senior Lebanese Forces leaders who were thoroughly impressed by his communicative yet assertive personality, his scrupulous presentation of facts, his obsessive attention to detail, and most importantly, his unwavering determination to unveil behind-the-scenes events. Mr. Moumneh drew upon his self-acquired persuasion tactics and negotiation strategies to earn the Lebanese Forces’ trust and gain access to top secret, never-before published information. Since then, he has continually revised and expanded the manuscript to address the rapidly changing situation in Lebanon and the Middle East. The Lebanese Forces: Emergence and Transformation of the Christian Resistance has taken twenty-five years to produce and is unique in its own right. Mr. Moumneh’s work is not a typical re-telling of the Lebanese crisis, rather it is a magnificent blend of skillful craftsmanship, an unprecedented wealth of painstakingly referenced chronological research and now declassified intelligence information.

The first decade of independence (1943-1952) was crucial to the political history of Lebanon, following the creation of the state in 1920 and the subsequent years of French tutelage. This period is defined by the presidency of Bishara al-Khuri, the first elected president, a founding father who played a vital part in forming the distinctive character of the Lebanese state and in Lebanon's later history, both rich and successful and troubled and tragic. During this period the old order in Lebanon, shaped over centuries, clashed with a 'new order', transforming Lebanese politics and society. Khuri's task was to protect Lebanon's fragile independence and to try to ensure political stability among warring factions – strife which in 1975 erupted in civil war causing immense disruption and suffering in Lebanon and with deep and widespread national and international effect. This study draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources including official state papers and private collections from Britain, France, the USA, Lebanon and Israel. _Contents_: Introduction: The Birth of the Lebanese State; First Steps Along a New Road; The 1943 Elections; The National Pact; The November 1943 Crisis; Between East and West – Lebanon on the International and Regional Scene; Domestic Challenges – 1943–1947; At the Peak of Power; The 1948 War in Palestine; The Syrian Lebanese Crisis; The Confrontation with the PPS (1947–1949); Khuri and Sulh: a Parting of the Ways; Rift with the West; The Overthrow

In the post–Cold War era, states increasingly find themselves in conflicts with nonstate actors. Finding it difficult to fight these opponents directly, many governments instead target states that harbor or aid nonstate actors, using threats and punishment to coerce host states into stopping those groups. Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili investigate this strategy, which they term triadic coercion. They explain why states pursue triadic coercion, evaluate the conditions under which it succeeds, and demonstrate their arguments across seventy years of Israeli history. This rich analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict, supplemented with insights from India and Turkey, yields surprising findings. Traditional discussions of interstate conflict assume that the greater a state’s power compared to its opponent, the more successful its coercion. Turning that logic on its head, Pearlman and Atzili show that this strategy can be more effective against a strong host state than a weak one because host regimes need internal cohesion and institutional capacity to move against nonstate actors. If triadic coercion is thus likely to fail against weak regimes, why do states nevertheless employ it against them? Pearlman and Atzili’s investigation of Israeli decision-making points to the role of strategic culture. A state’s system of beliefs, values, and institutionalized practices can encourage coercion as a necessary response, even when that policy is prone to backfire. A significant contribution to scholarship on deterrence, asymmetric conflict, and strategic culture, Triadic Coercion illuminates an evolving feature of the international security landscape and interrogates assumptions that distort strategic thinking.

A wide-reaching analysis of post-World War II U.S. policy in Lebanon posits that the politics of oil and pipelines figured far more significantly in U.S. relations with Lebanon than previously believed. By reevaluating U.S.-Lebanese relations within the context of America's collaborative intervention with the Lebanese ruling elite, Gendzier aptly demonstrates how oil, power, and politics drove U.S. policy as well as influenced the development of the state and region of Lebanon.