The Maronite Cause

Three major events in recent history express the complete disintegration of the Lebanese state:

• The financial collapse and bank insolvency crisis in 2019, and its following large-scale impoverishment of the Lebanese population.
• The Beirut Port blast in 2020, where no one was held accountable for the lives and property lost.
• The war of 2023-2024 and then 2026 between Hezbollah and Israel, in which Hezbollah dragged the entire country into a destructive war for its own agenda.

All this comes on top of complete state failure on all fronts: a dual security system that undermines the state’s monopoly of violence, the complete absence of basic services as the country plunges into permanent blackout, and total judicial capture by “phone justice” hollowing the rule of law. I’m not gonna go into all the details of our economic and political collapse because we are living this reality daily; what I want to talk about today is what this means for Lebanese Christians.

Failure without Accountability

The World Bank assessment in March 2025 estimated that the 2024 war cost $6.8 billion in physical damage, and another $7.2 billion in economic losses, and requires $11 billion in recovery and reconstruction needs. Lebanese GDP contracted by 7.1% in 2024. That’s only the 2024 war; the current one in 2026 is even more destructive, but we don’t have the final loss tally yet.

As is customary in the Lebanese regime, no one was held accountable for the losses and destruction that Hezbollah brought on the country. Hezbollah’s political grip was weakened, but most things continued with business as usual in the Republic.

This is a repeat of the same lack of accountability during the 2019 monetary crisis that evaporated the life-savings of the entire Lebanese population, and the Beirut Port blast in 2020 that left thousands dead and wounded. It’s the same case for countless other crimes committed by the ruling class and their thugs over the past 36 years.

Instead of accountability, after the 2024 war, the Lebanese government moved to dispense millions of dollars in support for Hezbollah’s popular base and the wider Shiite community. It dedicated millions of dollars in compensation, it exempted the majority of Shiite Southern areas from taxes and fees, provided full health coverage for the wounded fighters of Hezbollah, and enacted a decree that compensates the dead terrorists with the same salary and family support available for Lebanese Army personnel. This signals the complete capture of the state under sectarian favoritism. The rest of the Lebanese sects are left on their own to pay the price of Hezbollah’s war.

After the 2024 war, the international community gave the Lebanese Republic the opportunity to disarm Hezbollah and implement fiscal and political reforms, in exchange for substantial investments and support. The support is still there despite a second war, even as our government is walking back on all its promises.

At the time of writing, the opportunity seems already lost, and none of the reforms or disarmament had happened. Despite such a rare chance in history, the Republic is sinking deeper into failure. We’re barreling towards a third round of war, while those responsible for this situation are still at their posts without any kind of accountability.

How does this affect us as Christians?

Two conclusions should be clear to us at this point:

1. We are second-class citizens in this Republic. The Christians today, despite their posts in government, do not control their destiny – the least of which being the choice of peace and war, but they also barely have any input in policy-making. The Christian society is basically funding a welfare state for another sect while we are excluded from support and decision-making.
2. The dysfunction of the Lebanese state is structural and permanent. There’s no reforming this mess. There’s no reversal possible of the majoritarian rule. There’s no fixing it with a new government, a new parliamentary majority, or even with limitless foreign support. The Lebanese Republic is what it is; there’s no use in dancing around this fact anymore.

State Collapse And Christian Future

For Maronites and Christians whose continuity depended during all their history on effective institutions, predictable security, rule of law, good administration, fair courts, workable services, and viable livelihoods, the evidence is definitive: the centralized Lebanese state, in its current form, cannot safeguard our lives or guarantee our future.

From late 2019 to 2026, Lebanon moved from a banking freeze to institutional failure to war: blacked-out grids, gutted water utilities, stalled justice, and a persistent dual authority over war and peace. Such a system cannot protect life, property, or the livelihood of anyone, but it’s especially dangerous against a community that’s been driven out of the political sphere. The Druze are in the same boat. The line here is drawn by those who have policy-making abilities at the top, which neither Christians nor Druze currently have.

For a Christian community that’s been under siege for more than three decades, demographically, economically, and politically, the collapse of the state and its capture by a religious fanatical militia is a devastating signal. We’re being left without institutions and a body of power to defend our interests and lives. This is an existential-level risk.

Bringing the threads together, the Lebanese central state has failed us, not just in the sense that it actively dislikes us and constantly tries to diminish our existence through land theft, demographic engineering, economic impoverishment, and political marginalization, but also in the practical sense that it cannot protect, provide, or plan at the level a citizen may rightfully expect.

In the vacuum left by the Republic, Lebanese Christians are on their own without support. On the other hand, the Shiite sect continues enjoying the protection of both the Republic and its own parallel state, and the Sunni sect is deepening its connections with Syria and Turkey and becoming politically revitalized.

The Christians are being left without a strategy or vision by their own institutions. Waiting and hoping are not viable strategies for an entire nation at risk. Neither is improvisation.

From now on, the task of every Christian political organization and activist should be to define a strategy, come up with a vision for salvation, and work on what it requires.

Rebuilding Christian Anti-fragility

“When central authority decays, resilient communities rely on thick institutions, shared norms, and practical self-organization to preserve the substance of freedom”. This is the consensus of social sciences about the survival of small communities such as ours in times of crisis.

The problem today is that the traditional institutions of Lebanese Christians have long been eroded and rendered impotent. From family to parish to political party, the Maronite and Christian ecosystem of life-preserving institutions is severely lacking. Even the Church, our historical political spine during existential times, is largely absent.

Christians of Lebanon let their own institutions and traditions decay and put all their faith in the Republic and its institutions. The problem is that this Republic is not theirs anymore, and its institutions were deformed to serve against their interests.

The Lebanese state functions today in a way that erases them. Its institutions are disintegrating fast and cannot even provide us with the very basics like jobs, electricity or internet. This leaves Christians completely exposed to economic hardships and all the socio-political turbulence that are sweeping the Near East, accelerating their immigration rates and withdrawal from public life.

This void is extremely dangerous to the future of Christians in Lebanon and the East. Collapse, in the end, is about the loss of confidence that tomorrow can be organized by law and sustained by public good. When that confidence disappears, communities either submit to whoever can impose order, or they must recover order from within.

The question today for Christians of Lebanon is: do you want to stay in this situation forever, disappearing gradually under the heavy burden of crisis and collapse? Or do you want to try something different, other than waiting for a failed state to miraculously fix itself?

A self-governing Christian entity that starts in Mount Lebanon, which is our most defensible and viable perimeter, with hard rules and the rule of law, is the only rational way forward for a nation that is today without a state.

If our Christian community does not do its work and build its own order, sooner or later, others will impose theirs on us.

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This article is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of The Maronite Cause book Volume I. Our books are available on these links:

The Maronite Cause Volume II – Free PDF edition

The Maronite Cause Volume I – Free PDF edition

The Maronite Cause – Paperback Edition (Amazon)

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