Volume I of The Maronite Cause book traced the long arc of a community shaped by geography, endurance, and political realism. It also outlined how the self-determination mechanisms were eroded under a state structure that no longer protects it. The conclusion of Volume I is structural and decisive:
The Lebanese state, as it currently exists and functions, does not guarantee the future and dignity of its Christians because it cannot guarantee sovereignty, security, equality, or continuity of decision-making.
That sentence tends to trigger two reflexes.
The first is denial: the state is weak, but it can be fixed; we just need reforms, good governance, elections, international pressure, a better president, or a better deal. These are not foolish hopes. They are the default posture of people who want to avoid the pains of conflict, and therefore still believe the Lebanese system is fundamentally recoverable. In the last chapter of Volume I, we discussed why reform in the Lebanese Republic is impossible. If you still believe in such an attempt, it is advisable to read that chapter and draw your own conclusions.
The second reaction to our conclusion is usually fatalism: Lebanon is finished; its Christians are done for; nothing can be done; we must adapt as individuals, emigrate, lower our expectations, accept the reality of power, and resign from public life. This posture sounds like cowardice, but it’s actually just sheer despair. It is the predictable psychology of living in chronic instability, where institutions do not provide or protect.
Volume II of The Maronite Cause is a roadmap: it is written for readers who reject both reflexes, not because they are naïve or romantic, but because they take the facts seriously enough to seek a third posture: strategic continuity.
The question we pose here is no longer whether the state “should” protect us. The question is what should we do when the state cannot. The cost of waiting is existential.
If Volume I answers how we arrived here, Volume II asks a narrower, harder, and more practical question:
What must be built to thrive again? What must we do to reclaim our right of self-determination and preserve our freedom and ensure a future for our children in their homeland?
This is not a call for reaction, nor for nostalgia, nor for hatred. It is a framework for action under constraints.
What Self-Determination Is and What It Isn’t
Before outlining the path forward, it is necessary to define the perimeter of any roadmap, because in Lebanon every serious proposal is immediately dragged into one of two traps: moral panic or sectarian caricature.
Self-determination is not a manifesto for aggression. It is not a call for civil conflict. It is not a fantasy of instant separation achieved by a single dramatic move. It is not politics of resentment, and it is not a theology of supremacy. It is not an invitation to outsource responsibility to foreign patrons, and it is not something that will be handed to us on a plate by a powerful state, whether near or far.
Self-determination is a synonym of institutional survival: thick cultural, social, political, and economic institutions that can withstand shocks and preserve autonomy and independence in a volatile country.
In the roadmap we outline in the book, we study what small nations have done under pressure; we examine ways to translate principles and identity into institutions; and we confront, without romance or illusions, the resistance, risks, and obstacles that will emerge.
The moral line is simple and non-negotiable:
The strategy we propose insists on competence and building, not slogans and grievances. It insists on doing the work.
The mountain state in the title of this book is not a romantic metaphor or a geographic confinement to a single place. It is an operating concept: a model of governance anchored in Mount Lebanon as a strategic fortress, historical sanctuary, and workable perimeter.
The Mountain state might include areas well beyond the borders of the current administrative Mount Lebanon in the Lebanese Republic. The word “Mountain” in this context is used to signify our historical heritage of endurance and center of gravity, and not necessarily the borders of the state itself. The ultimate purpose of our thesis is to create a defensible, administrable space that can function as the wider state fails.
Some readers will object to the language immediately: is this federalism? decentralization? partition? These labels can become distractions. What matters is the function:
- Can our nation community secure itself and choose its future?
- Can it administer law predictably?
- Can it keep economic life running?
- Can it preserve identity without being subject to coercion or erasure?
- Can it endure pressure without collapsing into militia chaos?
Answering these questions leads us to a simple logic: survival requires governance and enforceable authority, and cannot be rented from a state in a permanent collapse.
“This is Nice, but Self-Determination is Impossible to Achieve.”
Among all reactions, this one is the worst: being convinced of the truthfulness of our cause, but being equally convinced that it cannot be pursued. Our community has been pre-conditioned to refuse its own self-determination by decades of cultural programming, but there are also realities that we should take into consideration if we’re genuine.
We can’t answer all these questions here because, well, they need a book. So instead let’s outline how we went around to address the central question of our premise.
A plan is only serious if it is designed around pressures that do not care about our moral intentions. That’s why Volume II begins with a mapping of existential threats.
The condition of Lebanese Christians today is not defined by one enemy or one event; it is defined by a system of pressures: demographic erosion and land loss, political marginalization, institutional capture, security vulnerability, economic fragility, cultural fragmentation, and the slow psychological normalization of decline.
The purpose of naming these threats is not to frighten. It is to anchor the reader in an action map: you cannot design a strategy if you cannot describe the battlefield.
After the map, we move briefly into a unique chapter about the Maronite Spirit. Some readers will find this chapter an unusual inclusion inside a political roadmap. It is included because small historical communities like ours only survive by maintaining a moral compass strong enough to outlast fear and fatigue. This chapter is especially important in a cultural atmosphere that glorifies nihilist universalist non-identities and demonizes rooted identities of meaning. Our work here aims to not only show what the Maronite Spirit is, but to also show how beautiful and meaningful it is and to make the case of why young Maronites need to preserve it as a living tradition. Strategy is discipline across time. Discipline requires a spirit that can endure setbacks without collapsing into despair or rage, and that’s why identity matters.
Chapter 10 delves into comparative examples that extract useful lessons for our situation. Many small nations and pressured communities have faced dilemmas that rhyme with ours: hostile environments, demographic vulnerability, contested legitimacy, dependency risks, great-power games, and internal fragmentation. Some survived by building institutions early. Some failed by confusing rhetoric with capacity. Some traded long-term autonomy for short-term protection and paid the price later.
From their experience, we extract design principles on what tends to work, what tends to fail, and what costs are non-negotiable. The examples we discuss, are in themselves proof: the revival of Israel in a hostile environment, to the survival of Armenian identity in exile, the concept of Whole-of-Society-Defense in Finland, the E-Residency of Estonia, The Export-First economy of Slovenia, and the Subsidiarity of Swiss federalism. There’s no security or economic question we have that hasn’t been solved before.
The next chapters delve into political and legal questions: how can we achieve autonomy or independence? What precedents exist, and what arrangements from our history were durable? We analyze the legal architectures that could plausibly carry a future arrangement.
This is where readers who fear “chaos” should pay attention, because the central danger in Lebanese separatist dreams has always been the same: a project that produces fragmentation and militia rule rather than state capacity.
This chapter is designed to separate serious self-determination from fantasy by demanding legal and institutional coherence.
Chapter 12 is where our self-determination proposal becomes decisive. Here, we outline a state that is:
- administrable rather than poetic,
- lawful rather than personal,
- stable rather than performative,
- capable of resisting capture,
- And above all, a state that provides equal rights for all its citizens and restores the future of Christians and the founding role of the Druze community.
A mountain state, if it is to mean anything, must be designed for modern pressures: finance, information warfare, diaspora flows, cross-border logistics, and the reality of living under constant political contestation.
This chapter sketches the institutional bones while Chapters 13 and 14 address the walk from theory to reality.
The roadmap presented in Chapter 13 is built around a sequence that is both historical and practical: culture and political awareness, then organization that transforms will into politics, then institutions that serve all the sons and daughters of our community, which pave the way for internal legitimacy first and international recognition later.
This is the How. This is an answer to all of those who say: “nice idea but there’s no roadmap”. Well there is; this is a problem of culture, politics, and logistics that can be easily solved.
The aim here is to present a roadmap that is neither reckless nor passive: something that can be pursued under constraint, can be built without permission, and can be defended intellectually and morally.
This chapter will disappoint readers looking for a single magic lever. That is intentional. Survival is not achieved by one dramatic day. It is achieved by building the machinery of continuity over the years. I personally think we need at least one generation of true work to get there because we’re starting from below zero.
Finally, Chapter 14 faces the inevitable: any serious move toward autonomy or independence will generate resistance and might even lead to war and chaos. We address this concern in-depth.
Resistance will not be only military. It will be legal, political, economic, diplomatic, and psychological. It will include attempts to split the community internally, delegitimize the idea internationally, exhaust supporters, punish financiers, and manufacture chaos to prove that self-rule is impossible.
This chapter treats opposition as a predictable system, not as a surprise event. It asks what a movement must do to remain lawful, disciplined, and competent while being attacked from multiple angles. The short answer is this: if we build proper institutions, moved by the right political awareness, there’s no event or opposition, local or regional, that can stop us from attaining self-governance in our homeland.
An Invitation to the Future
This work does not ask the reader to adopt a slogan. It asks them to accept a basic truth: survival requires governable reality; governable reality requires institutions; institutions require discipline; discipline requires spirit; and spirit must be translated into law, design, and action.
That is our framework. Our work argues that the time for vague hope has passed. What remains is to replace paralysis and decline with a lawful strategy, a design, and a sequence. We should let go of hope and start relying on will and work.
Our survival will not be on prayer alone; it will not be petitioned or permissioned; it will be an executable project and a destiny forged by our own hands.
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The books can be downloaded for free on these links:
The Maronite Cause Volume II: Self-Determination and the Path to a Mountain State – Free PDF edition
The Maronite Cause Volume I : History, Collapse, and The Case for Survival – Free PDF edition
For those who want to support the work, the book can be ordered via Amazon:
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