Paris and the Next Phase of the Lebanese State

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s visit to Paris for the September 17 preparatory meeting on support for the Lebanese Armed Forces and Internal Security Forces comes at a potentially transformative moment for Lebanon. The meeting, convened at the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron, is formally concerned with financial assistance, military equipment, training, and institutional capacity. But its political significance goes considerably further.

At stake is not simply whether the Lebanese Army will receive additional resources. The deeper question is whether Lebanon’s international partners are prepared to help strengthen the state sufficiently for its legitimate institutions to become the principal guarantors of security throughout Lebanese territory.

This question matters especially in southern Lebanon. The army is being asked to assume greater responsibilities at precisely the moment when continued Israeli military operations, regional instability, and changing security arrangements are placing unprecedented demands on an institution weakened by years of economic crisis. The international community increasingly expects the Lebanese Army to deploy, monitor borders, maintain internal stability, and become a central actor in future security arrangements in the south. Yet these expectations cannot be separated from the army’s material capacity to fulfill them.

The Paris meeting therefore sits at the intersection of security assistance and state reconstruction.

The real issue: restoring state authority

For decades, Lebanon has lived with a fundamental contradiction: a formally sovereign state has coexisted with armed actors possessing military capabilities and strategic autonomy outside the effective control of state institutions. The most consequential expression of this contradiction has been Hezbollah.

The question facing Lebanon today is therefore not simply how to strengthen the army, but what strengthening the army is ultimately intended to accomplish. If international assistance merely provides additional equipment and salaries while leaving the underlying fragmentation of coercive authority untouched, its political impact will remain limited. If, however, assistance forms part of a broader strategy to establish the Lebanese state as the sole legitimate authority responsible for national defense and territorial security, Paris could mark the beginning of a more consequential transition.

This is why developments in the south are central. The international community wants a Lebanese military capable of becoming a credible partner in future security arrangements, while Lebanon insists—reasonably—that new responsibilities must be accompanied by the resources necessary to fulfill them.

The equation is straightforward: greater state responsibility requires greater state capacity.

A Lebanese Army capable of replacing parallel security structures

The challenge, however, is not simply military. It is political and institutional.

For the Lebanese Army to become the effective guarantor of national security, it must acquire not only weapons but also surveillance capabilities, communications systems, transportation, training, logistical infrastructure, reliable salaries, and sustained institutional financing. Lebanon is therefore seeking several interconnected forms of assistance: financial stabilization, military and logistical equipment, training and capacity building, and—most importantly—a long-term support framework rather than another collection of temporary programs.

This distinction matters. A weak army dependent upon intermittent foreign assistance cannot credibly assume responsibilities previously exercised by powerful non-state actors. A professional military institution backed by predictable resources and functioning state institutions potentially can.

The inclusion of the Internal Security Forces is therefore particularly significant. It suggests an emerging division of institutional responsibility in which the army concentrates on territorial defense and strategic security while the ISF assumes greater responsibility for policing and domestic law enforcement.

In other words, this may signal a broader reconstruction of Lebanon’s security architecture.

France’s political objective

France’s role should also be understood politically, not simply financially. Paris has historically regarded Lebanon as an area of particular diplomatic responsibility, but French influence has increasingly competed with that of the United States and regional powers. The September initiative allows France to reposition itself as the coordinator of an international coalition supporting Lebanese state institutions.

Jordanian participation adds an Arab dimension to the initiative. American and Saudi participation would be still more consequential.

The United States has long been a principal supporter of the Lebanese Army. Saudi participation would carry a different political meaning: it would signal renewed Arab backing for Lebanese state institutions and could encourage broader Gulf involvement.

France’s most useful role, therefore, may not be that of the largest donor. It may instead be its ability to bring together American, European, Saudi, Jordanian, and other Arab support behind a common institutional framework.

The Hezbollah question cannot be avoided

Nevertheless, diplomatic language surrounding the Paris meeting tends to leave one issue implicit: Hezbollah.

Any serious effort to restore Lebanese sovereignty eventually confronts the question of whether decisions concerning war, peace, territorial defense, and the possession and use of major weapons can remain divided between the state and an autonomous political-military organization.

This does not mean that Hezbollah can simply be “removed” through international pressure. Hezbollah is deeply embedded in Lebanon’s political and social structure and represents an important constituency, particularly among Lebanese Shiites. An attempt to resolve the issue exclusively through coercion could deepen sectarian polarization and further weaken the state.

The more plausible path is institutional rather than confrontational: strengthen the Lebanese Army and state institutions sufficiently that the justification for an autonomous military structure gradually becomes more difficult to sustain. The objective should therefore not be the defeat of one Lebanese community but the construction of a state within which all communities—including Hezbollah’s social constituency—can locate their security and political interests.

In this sense, the Paris initiative will succeed only if strengthening the army is accompanied by a political process that gradually brings coercive authority under state control.

From assistance to sovereignty

President Aoun’s presence in Paris gives the meeting precisely this larger political meaning. He is not simply traveling to solicit weapons and money. He is seeking international backing for a Lebanese state that is being asked to assume responsibilities it has often been unable to exercise.

The distinction between supporting an army and rebuilding a state is crucial.

Weapons can strengthen military units. Training can improve professionalism. Foreign funding can alleviate immediate financial pressures. But none of these measures alone can resolve Lebanon’s fundamental problem: fragmented political authority and legitimate coercion.

For international assistance to have lasting significance, it must therefore be embedded within a Lebanese national project aimed at strengthening public institutions, enforcing the law, protecting borders, and restoring effective state authority. The source text itself correctly identifies this connection between external military assistance and the reconstruction of state authority.

The Paris test

The real measure of September 17 will consequently not be the size of the pledges announced in Paris.

It will be whether the meeting begins to produce a durable institutional framework: clearly identified military needs, commitments from specific countries, a timetable for delivery, mechanisms for implementation and oversight, and sustained financing rather than episodic assistance. The preparatory meeting could then become the foundation for a broader international conference and a longer-term compact between Lebanon and its international partners.

But the ultimate objective should be stated more clearly than it usually is. Lebanon does not simply need a stronger army. It needs an army strong enough, legitimate enough, and nationally representative enough to make parallel military structures unnecessary.

That is what connects Paris to the larger question of Lebanese sovereignty. The transition will necessarily be gradual and politically negotiated. Yet if international support can strengthen the army while Lebanon simultaneously develops a political framework for consolidating legitimate coercive authority within the state, Paris may eventually be remembered not merely as another donors’ meeting, but as part of the transition from a fragmented security order toward a more sovereign Lebanese state.