From the Specter of Civil War to the Inevitability of the State!

Nothing is more dangerous for societies exhausted by crises than the management of fear instead of the management of public affairs. In Lebanon, the constant invocation of civil war has ceased to be a passing remark or a political slip of the tongue; it has become a systematic instrument to paralyze public reason, justify failure, and postpone the fundamental entitlement, the entitlement to a sovereign State. When politics fails to produce solutions, scarecrows are summoned; when projects collapse, fear is weaponized.

Yet this rhetoric, no matter how often repeated, reflects neither strength nor realism. It exposes a deep fragility in approach, confusion in performance, and bankruptcy of political imagination. Civil war, in its historical and social meaning, is not a ghost conjured by words; it is the outcome of a comprehensive breakdown of the social contract, a systematic disabling of institutions, and a dead end for justice and citizenship. To instrumentalize it today as a tool of intimidation is nothing more than political immaturity, an affront to the memory and consciousness of Lebanese citizens, and a hollowing out of politics of its ethical and national meaning.

Lebanese men and women have lived through war and know its cost. They do not need reminders of its hell. What they need is a State that protects them, institutions that function, and governance that recognizes their rights instead of blackmailing them with their fears. The constant threat of civil war does not safeguard civil peace; it weakens it by reproducing a bunker mentality at a moment that should be dedicated to dismantling it once and for all.

Conversely, and at this pivotal geopolitical moment, despite all obstacles, the trajectory toward building a State of Citizenship in Lebanon is advancing not as a rhetorical slogan or a suspended wish, but as a national necessity imposed by the pressure of reality and the logic of the Constitution. The State is not one option among others, nor a temporary compromise open to postponement. It is the condition for justice, sovereignty, and stability. Any attempt to bypass it or replace it with fragile balances or extra-legal loyalties produces nothing but further collapse, anxiety, and division.

The most dangerous aspect of today’s extra-state political discourse in Lebanon is not its sharpness, but its irrationality. Instead of managing disagreement within constitutional and institutional frameworks, there is investment in agitation, polarization, and fear. Instead of transforming differences into legitimate competition, they are recast as existential threats.

Thus, politics is stripped of its function as the art of managing public affairs and reduced to a tool for exhausting both society and the State.

Rationalizing political narratives is not an intellectual luxury; it is a prerequisite for protecting civil peace and building the State simultaneously. Rationality does not mean denying differences or diluting them, but managing them through clear rules, legitimate institutions, and a discourse that names realities without demonization or incitement. States are not built through shouting, nor protected through threats, but through accumulated trust, respect for the Constitution, and assumption of responsibility.

In this context, warning of the unraveling of the social contract under the Constitution becomes a dangerous paradox. The Constitution has never been the cause of Lebanon’s crises; it has been the framework for managing them. It remains the only reference capable of transforming conflict into peaceful mechanisms of resolution and difference into legitimate competition. Circumventing it or casting doubt upon it does not signal strength, but fear of the State of Citizenship and an inability to commit to its rules.

Lebanon, with all its diversity and pluralism, can only be sustained within a Civil, Constitutional State that embraces differences under the unity of law. Insistence on exceptionalism or attachment to extra-state options protects no group; it weakens everyone. Sovereignty is indivisible, legitimacy cannot be borrowed, and the State is either fully empowered or it does not exist.

The present moment is therefore a moment of unmistakable choice, not a moment of war, but a moment of discourse. Either a discourse that reproduces fear and prolongs collapse, or one that confronts reality with courage and places the path of the State above narrow calculations. Only the latter opens a realistic horizon for exciting the crisis, because it starts from a simple truth: there is no salvation outside the State, no justice without legitimacy, and no stability without an applied Constitution.

Hence, the inevitability of the State of Citizenship is neither a moral slogan nor an elite luxury; it is a historical necessity advancing despite the noise. This path may stumble and may be delayed, but it will not be broken, because it is rooted in society’s deepest needs: security, justice, dignity, and equal opportunity. Any attempt to obstruct it through fear or denial merely accumulates the causes of explosion instead of preventing it.

In sum, Lebanon does not stand today on the brink of war, but before a test of political and ethical maturity: the test of transitioning from a politics of scarecrows to a politics of the State; from bunker logic to institutional logic; from emotional reaction to rational governance; and from statelessness to a sovereign, free, just, and independent State of Citizenship. This is the only viable wager. Everything else is merely a rotation within the cycle of fear.