Hard cedar: Lebanon seeks Trump’s help
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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The Economist.
Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor.
And I'm Jason Palmer.
Today on the show, could Red Bull have its wings clipped? And trophy wives may finally be going out of fashion.
But first...
Today, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun will visit the White House. It's the first such presidential summit in nearly two decades, and it comes at a challenging moment for Lebanon. The country faces a deep financial crisis, an ongoing power struggle against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia militia, and a conflict between Hezbollah and Israel that's wreaked enormous damage and continues to wreck lives across the whole country. Lebanon certainly needs help, but what will it get?
The past seven years have been by far Lebanon's worst period since the end of its civil war in 1990.
Greg Carlstrom is a Middle East correspondent.
It's been through one of the worst financial crises in modern history, an enormous explosion and almost three years of war with Israel, just to name a few. And it endured most of that without even having a proper government in place. Now it finally has one. There's a new president and a new prime minister, and they are trying to enlist help from Donald Trump and from other allies around the world to get Lebanon back on its feet.
Greg, before we get to the details, why is Lebanon so important?
I think you can make a couple of arguments. One is geopolitical. If things go well in Lebanon, you can imagine it's an enormous blow to Iran's influence in the region. It's If things don't go well in Lebanon, the risks include more war with Israel, an emboldened Iran, perhaps internal conflict and a migration crisis. So that's one piece of it. And then you can also make an argument around Lebanon itself. This is a diverse country that churns out lots of well-educated, entrepreneurial, talented people, but it ends up exporting most of that human capital because Lebanon itself is so dysfunctional and corrupt that most people... You mentioned dysfunction there.
Lebanon, for a while, lacked a proper government. Who was in charge during that time?
In effect, no one. If you go back to late 2019, when the economic crisis started and there were mass anti-government protests, Saad Hariri, who was the prime minister at the time, resigned but stayed on in a caretaker capacity. And then he was followed by two additional caretaker prime ministers. So there was no empowered PM, no empowered cabinet that could take decisions. And then you had a stretch of more than two years where the presidential palace was vacant. which is not uncommon in Lebanon. The president is selected by parliament and often MPs can't agree on a president. And so you end up with a vacancy. But this was one of the longest in Lebanon's history. The vacuum finally ended at the beginning of last year under very strong international pressure.
Parliament chose Joseph Aoun, the former army chief. as president. And then shortly afterwards, Noef Salem, a former head of the International Court of Justice, was named as the country's new prime minister. They look like an odd pairing. Aoun is this former soldier who spent his whole life in the army. Salem is bookish. He's an academic and a diplomat. He's been outside of Lebanon for most of his life. He was also the country's ambassador to the UN at one point. So they're both Political outsiders in a country where politics has long been dominated by the same set of ex-warlords who ran militias during the civil war. They both promised to come in and tackle some of the country's longstanding problems, but they came in in a very difficult situation.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:59
2
What is Lebanon’s immediate political and economic crisis as Joseph Aoun visits the White House?
6:59–13:22
3
Why does Lebanon matter geopolitically and what are the risks if it collapses?
13:22–20:00
4
How did Lebanon end up without effective government for years and who filled the vacuum?
20:00–23:15