Michael Young

Tammam Salam made it clear earlier this week that the prospect of a resolution to the presidential crisis was slim. One doesn’t need the prime minister to reach a similar conclusion.

But for Michel Aoun, a central player in the presidential stalemate, what are the calculations? Of course Aoun wants to be president, and for years has impaired the country with his unrelenting ambition. But beyond his impulse to advance his personal interests, the general has to be careful. The long-term benefit of the Christians may suffer greatly from a continuing presidential vacuum and Aoun would see this if only he looked beyond the presidency to grasp the regional context.

If Bashar Assad’s regime falls, as seems more likely by the day, how will this influence the behavior of Hezbollah? And how might it affect the Taif agreement and, with it, Christian fortunes? These are the questions the Aounists, who purport to defend the interests of Lebanon’s Christians, need to ask, but aren’t asking, lost as they are in quietly preparing for the succession of their leader, who is over 80.

To put it bluntly, if Hezbollah loses Assad in Syria, they will seek – indeed will have no alternative but to seek – a fundamental overhaul of the Lebanese system that favors the Shiite community, and the party especially. Only such a transformation can protect Hezbollah and its weapons in the long run, as the party adapts to a situation in which its military capacity will be contested by non-Shiite Lebanese.

Many Christians, weaned on the destructive populism of Aoun, have never understood that the Taif agreement is the best protection they have against the reality of demographics. As they continue to lament the lost powers of the presidency, they cannot accept the far more important truth that Taif has fixed Christian representation at a proportion significantly higher than the Christian population. As such, it is the best, indeed the only, protection they have in the sole country of the Middle East where Christians retain a measure of political power.

But today there is much to fear that the extended vacuum in the presidency, by subverting confidence in the workability of the political system, is a first step in doing away with Taif and bringing about constitutional changes that would dissolve the 50-50 breakdown in representation between Christians and Muslims. And, most convenient, the vacuum is not being perpetuated by Hezbollah and the Shiites. At least publicly this is the work of the Christians themselves, Aoun above all.

Hezbollah is simply allowing the deadlock to continue. The party is cleverly hiding behind Aoun’s conditions, offering no compromises, making no efforts to mediate, subtly indicating that Aoun is its preferred candidate, in that way making sure the vain general will carry on blocking an election.

But Aoun has only so many years left, while Hezbollah is planning much further ahead. If, or once, Assad is removed, the prospect of a Sunni-dominated Syria will isolate Hezbollah. Within Lebanon the party will have to deal with an energized Sunni community that will actively oppose the party’s hegemony. In Syria, even if Hezbollah can defend an Alawite enclave along the coast and lines of communication between this area and the Shiite-majority northern Bekaa Valley – in itself a highly tenuous project – the party will no longer enjoy strategic depth in the event of a conflict with Israel.

For all intents and purposes such dynamics would end Hezbollah’s capacity to maintain an autonomous military deterrent. That’s not to say that the party would be disarmed. Rather, it would find it far more difficult to use its weapons against Israel, because a large portion of Lebanese would reject this and because the possibility of rearming the party in the midst of battle would be severely constrained.

What would Hezbollah’s options then be? Only one comes to mind: To enhance its power in governing institutions in order to portray its military actions as a Lebanese state decision. The party could seek to exploit Christian fears of Sunni predominance to put on the table the notion of an alliance of vulnerable minorities, one between Shiites and Christians.

But here is the rub: Hezbollah would have to persuade Christians that by giving up part of their representative power under Taif they could enhance their overall long-term security in the Lebanese state. In other words under a new system where Christians accept a change in representation, so that Maronites, Shiites and Sunnis each control roughly a third of seats and posts in the system (with adjustments for other minorities), to replace the 50-50 ratio of today, Christians would actually be better off. How so? Simply because the new Christian-Shiite alliance would, together, control two-thirds of the representation in national institutions, over the Sunni third.

This may sound appealing to some Christians, and Aoun in statements in the past had indicated his partiality toward such a scheme. But it would also represent a blow to the consociational system by aiming to create a permanent majority and minority, and by formalizing almost systemic Christian opposition to the Sunnis. This could break Lebanon apart and effectively undermine what remains of the National Pact.

The only way Christians can survive in Lebanon is if they maintain good relations with both Sunnis and Shiites. Taif is their single guarantee, and relying on an alliance of minorities would be absolutely mad – all the more so if this is manipulated by Hezbollah to preserve its weapons and autonomy. Christian leaders, and the Maronite patriarch, Beshara Rai above all, must warn against this. Their fear of marginalization should not push them into taking decisions that would lead to far worse.